Erich Kästner’s satirical 1932 poem “Die Entwicklung der Menschheit” [The Development of Humanity], which appeared just as Germany was entering its third year of economic contraction, questioned the very notion of progress by suggesting that far less separated modern city dwellers from their simian ancestors than one might assume. The poem pointed to both the remarkable scientific and technological achievements that arose from the human mind and to the useless information and dubious ethical propositions that sprang from the same place. Kästner’s fame as an author today rests on his series of lively and light-hearted children's books, such as Emil and the Detectives, but he launched his writing career in the 1920s with sharp social criticism that appeared in some of the Weimar Republic’s most influential periodicals. Kästner exercised those same critical faculties in this poem, which first appeared in his October 1932 collection Gesang zwischen den Stühlen [Singing between the Stools], which also happened to be his last publication before the Nazis came to power in January 1933. The Nazi regime banned Kästner’s books almost immediately, and university students across Germany burned countless copies of his works in public bonfires across the country on May 10, 1933. The renowned actress Lotte Lenya, who rose to fame as an actress and singer in the Weimar Republic and then went into American exile after the Nazi seizure of power, recited the poem in this 1959 audio recording.