Cosmology in the Cosmopolis: Planetaria in the Weimar Republic

Cosmology in the Cosmopolis: Planetaria in the Weimar Republic traces the invention and subsequent popularization of the planetarium in Germany from 1923 to 1940, with particular focus on the three most celebrated planetaria in Munich, Jena, and Berlin. Literature on the history of planetaria is scant, and much of what does exist is limited to an institutional history of the invention of the planetarium projector by the Carl Zeiss Optical Company in 1923. In contrast, my dissertation contextualizes the planetarium within the urban cultural landscape of the Weimar Republic and the early years of the Third Reich. The early planetarium, I argue, encapsulated the tension between modernism and a rising conservative nostalgia for the pre-modern; on the one hand, it was a marvel of modern technology, and on the other, it was embraced as a refuge away from the city, offering a glimpse of a sky obscured by modern artificial light. My goal is thus two-fold: first, I situate my work as a critical intervention into the dominant narrative of the planetarium’s role in the history of astronomy; and second, I argue that a focus on the planetarium as a popular site of spectacle and education in the Weimar period offers a crucial perspective for understanding the relationship among cultural forms, scientific discourse, and nationalism in urban spaces. The planetarium emerges as a site in which conflicting ideas about modernity, nationalism, and the public were contested