The Weimar Republic - Doomed to fail? (School Project)

“Was the Weimar Republic doomed to fail?” — a five-week analytical essay project, paired with an alternative presentation project on everyday life in the 1920s.
This pack gives Year 12 / A-Level History students (bilingual-ready) a structured route through Germany’s first democracy — from its founding in the chaos of 1918 to its collapse in 1933 — culminating in either a substantial analytical essay or a researched presentation, depending on which track fits your group.

1. Main Project: Was the Weimar Republic Doomed to Fail? (5 weeks) — A scaffolded route to a 400–600 word analytical essay. Students build an annotated timeline of all 21 key events (1918–1933), choose one additional source-analysis or stability-assessment task, and prepare for two individual oral discussions with the teacher (the Weimar Constitution, and Gustav Stresemann as “a good German or a good European?”). Includes a full lesson-by-lesson overview, an essay-writing-tips table, oral task prompts, and a curated list of online research resources (no fixed textbook required).
2. Alternative Project: Life in the 1920s (5 weeks, 14 lessons) — For groups better suited to research and presentation work. Students choose one topic — Medicine, Fashion, Entertainment, Sports, or School & Youth — and research it both globally and within Weimar Germany, ending in an 8–12 minute presentation plus a one-page handout. Each topic comes with a ready-made double-column overview (global developments vs. Germany/Weimar), key terms with definitions, and curated resource links. Includes a full phase-by-phase project plan and assessment criteria with weighting.
   Why this pack works: both projects address the same guiding question from different angles — one through sustained argumentative writing, the other through research and presentation — so you can differentiate by group, or run them as alternatives across two classes. Both are fully online-research-based, with no dependency on a specific textbook.
   Includes: 2 complete project briefs (essay project + alternative project), full lesson/phase plans, oral task prompts, assessment criteria, research resource lists, and a project-pack cover. Available in English and German, editable Word + PDF.