When Erich Fromm was born at the turn of the century, many Germans were experiencing upheaval in their lives. As a student in a Frankfurt gymnasium, he witnessed the last months of the German empire and the outbreak of the “Great War.” He was still a student when the Weimar Republic emerged from the war’s rubble. Experiments in democratic socialism pervaded Weimar, especially in new social services such as free medical clinics and psychological counseling agencies. But there was also an ideological and political struggle being waged between communists and fascists, which deepened as inflation crippled the national economy. This was a time of great creativity in German art, theater, architecture, and film. A 1930 film, The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich, reflected the uncertainties of the time. In the film, Immanuel Rath, an eminent professor at a distinguished gymnasium, falls in love with Lola Lola, a beautiful if deceptive cabaret dancer. The film ends with Rath, disgraced and humiliated in front of his former colleagues, clinging to a desk that had once represented his eminence and learnedness. In brief, The Blue Angel registered a clash in German culture—old traditions and values facing off against the more liberated spirit of Weimar. When Hitler took power, the world of Lola Lola was pushed aside, and the cultural and social institutions of Weimar were upended. What had been the world’s center of scientific innovation, research, and scholarship when Fromm was born became a crude and bellicose nation—a development that prompted his classic, Escape from Freedom.