What would be good sources for such a short campaign? Interesting historical details to include?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I'd think you'd have to watch Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, M and the Testament of Dr. Mabuse. I'd think you'd almost have to include Dr. Mabuse somehow in a game set there. At least if you don't mind fictional characters. It would be like having Moriarty in a gaslight game.

And for the nightlife aspect,  The Blue Angel and maybe the much more recent Cabaret

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari

German Cthulhu supplements
http://www.pegasus.de/cthulhu/1/liste/

I'll second Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler (the Gambler). It's one of my favourite movies anyway, and you could easily file off the Dr Mabuse's serial numbers to create a great overarching foe for the PCs. It also gives a good feel for the look of the time.

Fictionwise I'd recommend Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, though I'll warn it's modernist fiction and so if you're not used to that it might be a bit hard to swallow. More palatable is Christopher Isherwood's Mr Norris Changes Trains, which is a great novel set in the period.

Also, there was a choose your own adventure game based on the Isherwood novel there, but it doesn't seem to be available any more from the Choice of Games website.

This is the one you want: http://www.amazon.com/Voluptuous-Panic-Erotic-Expanded-Edition/dp/0922915962

QuoteThis expanded edition includes "Sex Magic and the Occult," documenting German pagan cults and their often-bizarre erotic rituals, including instructions for entering into the "Sexual Fourth Dimension."

Great idea!

I'm rather distracted now, so I might call in later with more. The Weimar Republik is of particular interest to me.

Right now I'll jut shoot of some stuff that come to mind:

- First of all, you should really look into the "Lebensreform" movement, wikipedia will give you a decent start. These guys where just full of crazy ideas, where prone to found of the wall cults and had a lasting effect. Their influence can be found in ecologist movements, hippy culture, esoterics, the German 1968 students movement and particularly, the Nazis and modern day right wing extremism.

- Speaking of the elephant in the room, Nazis and Nazi occultism didn't just pop into existence in 1933, of course. So there will be a bunch of Proto-Nazis running around in the occult circles that are bound to figure into a CoC campaign. I'll just note that the actual early NSDAP as a whole, was not the well known SS and Gestapo Nazis in sleek black uniforms, but a crude bunch with a small army of brown clad SA thugs, looked down upon by the right wing elite and generally seen as bumbling uneducated buffoons, not unlike that cliches ascribed to modern day neo-nazis. So not exactly the types found in elitist and academic circles of sorcery. Many archetypal Nazis (especially those with a "von" in their name) weren't party supporters of the first hour, though nonetheless certainly raving racists and nationalists, in the Weimar Republik.

- Lovecraft is, to me, heavily associated with Xenophobia and Exoticism in relation to Colonial history. Germany was pretty much left without Colonies after WW1, but before, it pretty much was late to the game and mostly got leftover territories. One could invent all kinds of occult scify reasonings for no other empires wanting those territories and figure aftershocks into a Weimar republic game. Coming back to a changed and unfamiliar Germany with all kinds of strange Lore in their heads after the loss of the territories would make for a good PC or NPC backstory.

If you can read German:

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff have several episodes where Ken Hite goes over various pre-War German occultists and the various beliefs hopping about.  I highly recommend them in general, but especially for this.

I'm trying to remember if there's a Bernie Gunther mystery set in Weimar -- there's a lot of those books by Philip Kerr out there, and they may give you inspiration even if they're mostly set later.  I want to say If The Dead Rise Not was either Weimar or very early in Nazi Germany, but I can't recall.

Quote from: D-503;865387I'll second Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler (the Gambler). It's one of my favourite movies anyway, and you could easily file off the Dr Mabuse's serial numbers to create a great overarching foe for the PCs. It also gives a good feel for the look of the time.

Third on Mabuse.
There's also a silent called Asphalt that has a good bit of atmosphere of that era.

What a brilliant idea. Yeah, Expressionist cinema, and the heady brew of esoteric and occult thought that led to the Thule Society would be my safest bets. Not a lot to add, mostly posting to subscribe.

Quickly chiming in, one historical event I really recommend you look into is the assassination of the liberal politician Walther Rathenau and the reaction to it. Nothing occult about the whole situation, but it shows a lot about the conflicts and society of the Weimar Republik.

The Osprey book on the NAZI Occult written by Ken Hite provides a history concerning all the between the wars occultists and their careers with lots of background information to provide details for games in the period.

Quote from: Gold Roger;865614Quickly chiming in, one historical event I really recommend you look into is the assassination of the liberal politician Walther Rathenau and the reaction to it.

Reading up on that last night sent me down quite a rabbit hole. The various other 'Hitlers' and their gangs in competition with each other... assasinations of interesting characters like Paasche... then over to mystic scientists/artists like Rudolph Steiner... and backwards to the secret courts in Westphalia... and the history of various Germanic tribes... then off on a whole other tangent of comparitive religion and 'orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy'... and finishing up with reading about how Santeria works.

The O.T.O. was very active in Weimar Germany as well. At one point Steiner was its head.  At other points it had Heinrich Tranker, Eugene Grosche, and of course Karl Germer involved, and Aleister Crowley visited frequently.  Tobias Churton recently wrote an excellent book about this, The Beast in Berlin.