Nineteenth-Century Germany: Politics, Culture and Society 1780–1918: SECOND Edition 9781474269469, 9781474269476, 9781474269506, 9781474269483

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NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY: POLITICS, CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780–1918

ii

NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY: POLITICS, CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780–1918 SECOND EDITION

Edited by John Breuilly

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © John Breuilly, 2020 John Breuilly has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Cover design: Catherine Wood Cover image: Germania, 1848 (oil on canvas), Veit, Philipp (1793–1877) (© Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (Nuernberg), Germany / Bridgeman Images) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The editor and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-6947-6 PB: 978-1-4742-6946-9 ePDF: 978-1-4742-6948-3 eBook: 978-1-4742-6949-0 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations Notes on contributors Preface (2nd Edition, 2020) Preface (1st Edition, 2001)

vii x xiii xiv

 1 Introduction John Breuilly 1   2 The German lands before 1815  Joachim Whaley 3   3 Germany 1815–48: Restoration or pre-March?  Christopher Clark 27   4 ‘Relative backwardness’ and long-run development: Economic, demographic and social change, 1780–1870  Robert Lee 49   5 Cultural and intellectual trends  Astrid Köhler 81   6 The revolutions of 1848–9 and the persistence of the old regime in Germany (1848–50)  Wolfram Siemann 101   7 Revolution to unification  John Breuilly 123   8 Bismarckian Germany: State structure and political culture  James M. Brophy 143   9 Demographic growth, industrialization and social change  Volker Berghahn 169   Appendix: Statistics for Germany, 1841–1922  Tables   Bibliographical references 10 A nervous age? Wilhelmine Germany before the First World War  Mark Hewitson 213 11 Imperial Germany: Cultural and intellectual trends  Matthew Jefferies 237 12 The First World War  Roger Chickering 255

Contents

13 Gender orders and disorders  Ute Frevert 279 14 Transnational perspectives on nineteenth-century Germany  Ulrike Lindner 305 15 Conclusion: Making connections in Germany in the long nineteenth century  John Breuilly 329 Appendix 1: German statistics, maps and documents Appendix 2: Chronology – Germany, 1780–1918 General reading suggestions Name index Subject index

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357 361 368 370 375

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 4.1

Krupp’s cast steel factory, Essen, in 1830

60

4.2

Bavaria 1844 built by J. A. Maffei, Munich

62

4.3

Children peddling at Berlin Christmas market, 1869

72

4.4

A German peasant woman at work from an 1866 engraving

73

5.1

Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Contemplating the Moon

84

5.2

Die Gartenlaube

88

5.3

Klose: Die Bauakademie von Schinkel

91

5.4 Turner’s Walhalla 98 6.1

Barricade-building in Vienna in May 1848: the revolution at the grass roots 105

6.2

‘Reich-sweeping-mill’: the political revolution for free press and parties

107

6.3

The German National Assembly

110

6.4

The Frankfurt parliament on a see-saw: the parliamentary revolution

111

6.5

‘Sir, finish your turn, while the ball is still rolling’: the governmental revolution 112

6.6

Panorama of Europe in August 1849: monarchy and counter-revolution

114

7.1

Bismarck and Louis Napoleon at Biarritz, October 1865

134

7.2

Battle of Sadowa

136

8.1

Proclamation of German Second Empire

144

8.2

The Three Emperors’ League

156

10.1

‘Wahrheitsgetreuer ‘Kientopp’: Cambon und Kiderlen-Wächter bei 40 Grad Celsius’, Kladderadatsch, 27 August 1911, vol. 64, no. 35

217

10.2 ‘Groβstadtleben’, Simplicissimus, 2 June 1903, vol. 8, no. 10, 80

222

10.3

‘Im Lande der Sozialreform’, Der wahre Jacob, 28 Jan. 1904, vol. 457, 4255 230

11.1

The ‘German House’ at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, modelled on the Baroque Charlottenburg Palace at the insistence of Kaiser Wilhelm II

242

11.2

A Viennese caricature of the composer Richard Wagner, whose influence was felt far beyond the world of music

244

Illustrations

11.3

A plate from Käthe Kollwitz’s 1897 print cycle ‘A Weavers’ Revolt’, inspired by Gerhart Hauptmann’s play The Weavers

246

11.4

Poster designed by Peter Behrens advertising the 1914 German Werkbund exhibition in Cologne

249

12.1

War enthusiasm

256

12.2

German agricultural production, 1912–1918

263

12.3

Weekly rations

264

12.4

Purchasing war bonds

268

13.1

‘Girls loved to play with dolls, while boys preferred toy soldiers’

280

13.2

The battle for the breeches

282

13.3

Meeting of a patriotic woman’s association

286

13.4

Robert Blum and his family

290

13.5

Men parade while women look on

293

13.6

Leading figures in the women’s movement

295

13.7

‘Women! Equal rights – Equal duties. Vote Social Democrat!’

298

14.1

Germans emigrate from Hamburg, 1874, ‘From the Old to the New World’ German emigrants boarding a steamer in Hamburg, Germany

309

14.2

Berlin Conference of 1884

315

14.3

A group of people from Southwest Africa at the Berlin exhibition

319

Maps 2.1

German Central Europe in 1792

5

2.2

Germany and the Austrian Empire, 1800–6

6

2.3

Germany and the Austrian Empire, 1812

15

3.1

The German Confederation in 1815

29

7.1

Germany in the event of Austrian victory in 1866

132

7.2

Germany and Austria–Hungary, 1867

135

7.3

Germany and Austria–Hungary, 1871

136

9.1

Agricultural and industrial production before 1914

176

12.1

Germany and the First World War in Europe

257

12.2

Germany in 1919

273

14.1

Map of the German colonial empire

316

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Illustrations

Tables 4.1

The development of agricultural production per unit of labour input (LI) in Germany, 1800–50, on the basis of grain values

51

4.2

Average annual net investment in Prussia, 1816–49 (millions of marks, 1913 prices)

53

4.3

Population growth in the German states, 1816–71

55

4.4

German overseas emigration, 1816–1934

57

4.5

Indicators of German railway expansion, 1850–70

68

8.1

Reichstag election results, 1871–1912 (000s)

162

14.1

Italian migration to Germany during the Kaiserreich, 1872–1915

310

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CONTRIBUTORS

Volker Berghahn is the Seth Low Emeritus Professor of History at Columbia University. He taught at the universities of East Anglia and Warwick in the United Kingdom before moving to Brown University in 1988 and to Columbia in 1998. He has published some twenty books on modern German history, European-American cultural and business relations and historiography, including America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (2001); American Big Business in Britain and Germany: A Comparative Analysis of Two ‘Special Relationships’ in the 20th Century (2014); Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer: From Inner Emigration to the Moral Reconstruction of West Germany (2018). John Breuilly is Emeritus Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics. Recent publications include: The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism (2013) as editor; ‘Modernisation and Nationalist Ideology’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte (2017); ‘Modern Empires and nation-states’, Thesis Eleven (2017); ‘Popular Nationalism, State Forms and Modernity’, in Nations, Identities and the First World War: Shifting Loyalties to the Fatherland, ed., Nico Wouters and Laurence van Ypersele (2018). He is working on a book about how nationalism ‘travelled’ the world. James M. Brophy is the Francis H. Squire Professor of History at the University of Delaware (USA). He has written Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830– 1870 (1998) and Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800–1850 (2007) as well as co-edited Perspectives from the Past: Sources in Western Civilization (6th ed., 2016). In addition, he has published over three dozen essays on nineteenth-century Germany and Europe. He is currently working on Publishers and Political Dissent in Central Europe, 1800–1870, a book that examines German publishers as cultural brokers, political actors and entrepreneurs of ideas. Roger Chickering taught from 1968 to 1993 at the University of Oregon. From 1993 to 2010, he was Professor of History in the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University. His publications include Imperial Germany and a World Without War (1975), We Men Who Feel Most German (1984), Karl Lamprecht (1993), Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (3d ed., 2014), and The Great War and Urban Life in Germany (2007). Christopher Clark is Regius Professor of History at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. His publications include The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941 (1995), Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (2006), and The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012).

Contributors

Ute Frevert is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and the head of its Center for the History of Emotions. Her publications include Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (1988); Men of Honour: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel (1995); ‘Mann und Weib, und Weib und Mann’: Geschlechter-Differenzen in der Moderne (1995); A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (2004); Emotions in History: Lost and Found (2011); Gefühlspolitik: Friedrich II. als Herr über die Herzen? (2012); Vertrauensfragen: Eine Obsession der Moderne (2013); and the co-authored volumes Emotional Lexicons: Continuity and Change in the Vocabulary of Feeling 1700–2000 and Learning How to Feel: Children’s Literature and Emotional Socialization, 1870–1970 (both 2014). Her latest book is Die Politik der Demütigung: Schauplätze von Macht und Ohnmacht (2017). Mark Hewitson is Professor of German History and Politics, and Director of European Social and Political Studies at University College London. His publications include Germany and the Modern World, 1880–1914 (2018), Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792–1820 (2017) and The People’s Wars: Histories of Violence in the German Lands, 1820–1888 (2017). He is the co-editor of What Is a Nation? Europe, 1789–1914 (2006), and of Europe in Crisis: Intellectuals and the European Idea, 1917–1957 (2012). Matthew Jefferies is Professor of German History at the University of Manchester. His books include Hamburg: A Cultural and Literary History (2010), Contesting the German Empire (2008), Imperial Culture in Germany, 1871–1918 (2003) and Politics and Culture in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Industrial Architecture (1995). He edited The Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany (2015). He is currently researching mass-market photobooks in twentieth-century Germany. Astrid Köhler is Reader in German at Queen Mary University of London. Her publications include Salonkultur im klassichen Weimar: Geselligkeit als Lebensform und literarisches Konzept (1996) and, as co-editor, Urban Microcosms 1789–1940 (2017). She is currently working on the history of nineteenth-century English and German spa towns. Robert Lee formerly Chaddock Professor of Economic and Social History, is now Honorary Research Professor at the University of Liverpool. Recent and forthcoming publications include Places of Health and Amusement: Liverpool’s Historic Parks and Gardens (2008) (with Katy Layton-Jones); Co-ed., Trade, Migration and Urban Networks in European Port Cities, 17th to 20th Centuries (2009); Ed., Commerce and Culture: Nineteenth-Century Business Elites (2011); The People’s Garden? A History of Crime and Policing in Birkenhead Park (2013); Co-ed., Port Cities and their Hinterlands: Migration, Trade and Cultural Exchange from the Early Seventeenth Century to 1939 (2019): Ed., Networks of Influence and Power: Business, Culture and Identity in Liverpool’s Merchant Community, c.1800–1914 (2020).

xi

Contributors

Ulrike Lindner is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cologne. Her research interests are in imperial, colonial and global history. She has worked on German colonialism and the comparative history of European empires, as well as postcolonial approaches, knowledge transfer between European empires and colonial labour. Her publication include Koloniale Begegnungen: Großbritannien und Deutschland als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914 (2011); Co-ed., Bonded Labour: Global and Comparative Perspectives (18th-21st Century) (2016); Co-ed., New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire: Comparative and Global Approaches (2018). Wolfram Siemann is Emeritus Professor at the Department of History, LudwigMaximilians-Universität Munich. His publications include Deutschlands Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung. Die Anfänge der politischen Polizei 1806–1866 (1985); Gesellschaft im Aufbruch. Deutschland 1849–1871 (1990, 5th ed., 2001); Vom Staatenbund zum Nationalstaat. Deutschland 1806–1871 (1995); The German Revolution of 1848–49 (1998); 1848/49 in Deutschland und Europa. Ereignis–Bewältigung–Erinnerung (2006); and Metternich. Stratege und Visionär. Eine Biografie (2nd ed., 2017), English translation of the Metternich biography (2019). Joachim Whaley is Professor of German History and Thought at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 1493–1806, 2 vols (2012) and of The Holy Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction (2018).

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PREFACE (2ND EDITION, 2020)

The first edition of this book was published in 2001. The book has been well received. Reviewers especially liked the combination of systematic coverage of major perspectives on nineteenth-century German history with the individual approaches of different historians. There is evidence of a demand for a revised edition of the book which not only updates but improves upon the original. With that in mind, new authors have been commissioned, the thematic range increased and such features as illustrations, maps and tables have been considerably enhanced. Eight of the original authors have revised their chapters. Astrid Köhler, James Brophy and Mark Hewitson have written completely new chapters in place of those which appeared in the first edition. In response to suggestions from various reviewers, it was decided to commission two additional chapters dealing with transnational and gender perspectives. These have been written by Ulrike Lindner and Ute Frevert, respectively. In place of my original, extensive introduction there is a shorter text which restricts itself to introducing the rest of the book. I have also written a Conclusion which reflects on changes in Germany during the long nineteenth century. The images, maps and tables which accompany chapters have been expanded and the quality of reproduction of these considerably enhanced. Improvements have also been made to appendices, the chronology and suggestions for further reading. John Breuilly

PREFACE (1ST EDITION, 2001)

In 1997, Arnold published German History since 1800, edited by Mary Fulbrook. I acted as advisory editor, taking especial responsibility for parts 1 and 2 of the book which covered the period 1800 to 1918. The book has been well received. However, it is a large volume containing many illustrations as well as maps and figures. This makes it rather bulkier and more expensive than is suitable for many readers, especially students with specific interests in either nineteenth- or twentieth-century German history but less so for the whole of that period. With this in mind, it has been decided to make the four chronologically organized sections of the book available as two smaller volumes covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, omitting the thematic section and many illustrations. The nineteenth-century volume of which I am editor differs in certain respects from the first two parts of the original book. A new introduction written by me replaces the general introduction by Mary Fulbrook. There is an additional chapter on Germany during the First World War written by Roger Chickering. The other contributors have made slight alterations to their chapters as and where this was considered beneficial. John Breuilly

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

John Breuilly

Introductory remarks At the end of the eighteenth century, Germany was an idea in the minds of some intellectuals and statesmen and a phrase in the title of a loose association of states: the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In 1918, Germany was a tightly organized state and society which had just lost a war of unprecedented scale and destruction against the other major world powers. In 1800, most Germans lived in the countryside and agriculture dominated the economy. By 1918, Germany was an urban society and industry had overtaken agriculture. In 1800, most people travelled by foot and communicated by word of mouth. By 1918, there was mass transportation by rail and road; telegraph, telephone, cinema, letter writing and a mass print media had transformed communication. It is difficult to provide a comprehensive description and interpretation of German history over this period. Emphasizing long-term transformations, as I have just done, can lead to neglect of the experiences of particular groups and individuals which do not fit into that pattern of change, a pattern which can consequently take on an air of inevitability. To switch attention to such experiences risks fragmentation, incoherence and the loss of any sense of large-scale change over several generations. To gain some hold on the range and diversity of experiences, actions and outcomes, historians must select particular topics and approaches which in turn exclude other topics and approaches. There can be no ‘total history’ and no definitive interpretation. This volume makes no such claims. The sheer scope of the subject makes it impossible for any one historian to do justice to different periods and themes. The range of expertise assembled in this collection is intended to provide the reader with a sense of the distinctive ways in which social, economic, political and cultural historians work, without privileging one period, theme or approach within this ‘long century’ over any other. Chapters 2 to 7 addresses the period from the end of the eighteenth century to 1871. Chapters 2, 3, 6, and 7 focus on politics, war and revolution. Whaley and Clark consider a range of mainly political and military topics between roughly 1780 and 1815, and 1815 and 1848, respectively, each questioning interpretations which viewed the period from the perspective of national unification under Prussian leadership. Siemann analyses the revolutions of 1848–9 in terms of different levels of action, critical of the one-dimensional view of the revolutions as a ‘failure’. In my chapter, I propose an argument about how the situation after the revolution created conditions for a chain of events culminating in the improbable success of Prussia in founding the German Second Empire.

Nineteenth-Century Germany

For the whole of this period, Köhler provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of its cultural and intellectual history, while Lee surveys critically influential interpretations of economic and social history. Chapters 8 to 12 moves on to the German Second Empire. Brophy analyses the political institutions and history of the Second Empire until Bismarck’s resignation in 1890. Hewitson takes up similar issues from 1890 until the outbreak of war in 1914. Chickering considers the history of the Second Empire from the outbreak of war until its defeat and collapse in late 1918. Two further chapters deal with the cultural and intellectual, and the social and economic history of this period. Jefferies surveys the cultural and intellectual history of this first German nation state, while Berghan looks at the social and economic transformations of the Second Empire. Chapters 13 and 14, we turn to two perspectives on German history for the whole of the ‘long nineteenth century’ which have become increasingly important for historians. Frevert, building on the considerable body of work on women’s history, writes on nineteenth-century Germany as gendered history. Lindner, drawing upon recent transnational perspectives on national history, looks at German mass emigration, the German pursuit of empire and the ways in which these impacted on Germany. Finally, in a new Conclusion, I draw on all these chapters to suggest a way of connecting together many of the changes which took place in the German lands between the late eighteenth century and the end of the First World War. These chapters are best described as essays. Each contributor offers a point of view, an argument, not a descriptive survey or an encyclopaedia entry. The essays are not hermetically sealed from each other. Instead, they overlap and disclose different, even conflicting, views of a subject. Given that there can be no ‘definitive’ or ‘total’ history, this should be considered an advantage, offering something distinct from either a textbook or a single-authored book.

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CHAPTER 2 THE GERMAN LANDS BEFORE 1815

Joachim Whaley

In the decades before 1815, the German lands underwent a process of revolutionary change, but there was no revolution as such, nothing to compare with events in France in 1789. Yet, contemporaries experienced this period as one of profound and rapid transformation. Most obviously, the map of Germany in 1815 looked very different from what it had been in, say, 1780. The Holy Roman Empire had ceased to exist after a thousand-year history; a bewildering patchwork of several hundred quasi-independent territories had been replaced by forty-one sovereign states in a loose confederation. This ‘territorial revolution’ was accompanied by other equally profound changes: the transformation of political and legal institutions; a new relationship between church, state and society in the Catholic regions; new social and economic structures resulting from the massive transfer of Catholic ecclesiastical property; new cultural attitudes and novel perceptions of what ‘Germany’ and the very identity of the Germans was or might be; a new political vocabulary and new concepts with which Germans described the world in which they lived. The sheer magnitude and pace of change struck many contemporaries as the major characteristic of their age. The Gotha bookseller and publisher Friedrich Perthes (1772–1843) expressed the sense of many when he reflected in 1818 that while previous periods in history had been characterized by gradual change over centuries, ‘in the three generations alive today our own age has, in fact, combined what cannot be combined. No sense of continuity informs the tremendous contrasts inherent in the years 1750, 1789 and 1815; to people alive now … they simply do not appear as a sequence of events.’1 Much of this complexity was lost in the classic accounts of this period by German historians of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They constructed a narrative which showed the inevitability of the emergence of a Prussian-dominated nation state in 1871. For Treitschke and others, German history was Prussian history. The Holy Roman Empire was portrayed as decayed and moribund, and the German territories as backward and corrupt. When challenged by the ideas and the armies of the French Revolution, German political institutions, both imperial and territorial, collapsed. Yet out of Napoleon’s humiliation of the Germans, according to the traditional view, a new sense of German destiny arose. Prussia, which had emerged as a great power under Frederick the Great, became the focus of a new national movement, while the Prussian reforms after 1806 supposedly embodied the German answer to 1789. Most leading historians, like Friedrich Meinecke (1862–1954), held that Stein and Hardenberg transformed Prussia into a bastion of the German national movement, the driving force in the Wars of Liberation which defeated Napoleon and finally expelled the French from Germany.

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Elements of the traditional view survive even in some modern surveys. Thomas Nipperdey’s account of Germany in the nineteenth century (published in 1983) opens with the words, ‘In the beginning was Napoleon’.2 Nipperdey cannot be accused of being an exponent of the kleindeutsch tradition of Prusso-centric history. Yet, his portrayal of Napoleon as the ‘creator’ echoes the teleological ideology of the nationalist historians. German nationalism is presented as a response to French domination characterized by a reaction against French ideas (the ‘ideas of 1789’), the problematic inception of modernity in Germany. Tradition dies hard, but in the last sixty years, virtually every aspect of the period before 1815 has been a subject of revision. Some scholars have explored the ‘modernization’ of Germany in this period. Others, working primarily from an early modern perspective, have found continuity as well as change. Above all, much recent research has sought to investigate alternatives to the Prusso-centric view of German history. The insistence that the emergence of the Prussian–German nation state in 1871 was not inevitable has focused attention on other options, such as a Holy Roman Empire or the Confederation of the Rhine. This has in turn shed new light on the history of nationalism and on the significance of reform movements outside Prussia, particularly in southern and western Germany. At the same time, a growing emphasis on lines of continuity, from the enlightened absolutist reform before 1789 to the bureaucratic reforms after 1800, has challenged the view that the modernization of the German states, including Prussia, was purely defensive. Furthermore, in the European context, it appears increasingly that revolutionary France rather than reforming Germany was the exception. Some aspects of this tendency to ‘normalize’ German history before 1815 may be as much a reflection of the Zeitgeist of the Federal Republic since the 1980s and 1990s as the Prusso-centric view was of the political ideology of Germany between 1871 and 1945. Yet, recent research has done much to undermine the view that German history between 1780 and 1815 represents a stage in a straightforward progression towards the nation state, still less a Sonderfall with disturbing implications for the history of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Holy Roman Empire in the eighteenth century The Prussian–German tradition viewed the Holy Roman Empire as inadequate because it failed to become a nation state. Modern scholars, by contrast, argue that the system worked effectively. Under the emperor as Schutz- und Schirmherr (protector and guardian), the Reich fulfilled a vital role after 1648 in the areas of law, defence and peace in Central Europe. As a Friedensordnung (a peace-preserving order), it both guaranteed the peace and stability of Europe as a whole and ensured the survival of the myriad small German territories, none of which, except Prussia, were capable of survival as independent units in the competitive world of European powers. As a Verteidigungsordnung (a system of defence), the Reich ensured protection from external threat. As a Rechtsordnung (a legal system), it provided mechanisms to secure the rights 4

Maint

Schönbrunn

BERD

Berlin

S

Olmutz

Posen

R.V istu la

I

POLAND

Warsaw

A

PRUSSIA

R. Danube

H U N G A RY

Buda Pécs

S

Danxig

EAST Konigsberg

OT TOMAN EMPIRE

Vienna

U

ANA

a ic Se Balt ER POM

AU S T R I A

tic ria Ad

Mediterranean Sea

TYROL

Munich

BAVARIA

Regensburg

Nurnberg

NY

Leipzig

R

SWEDISH POMERANIA

Hall XO

P

SA BAIREUTH ur R.m

ANSBACH

Freiberg

MARK

Cassel

Paderborn

SWITZERLAND

Liege

Munster

Coblenz

CLEVES

Landsberg Oldenburg Hambarg Bremen Verden HANOVER Celle

Duchy of Holstein Lubeck

Duchy of Schleswig

LUSATIA

a Se

0 0

100

100

200 miles 300 km

N

RU S SIA

200

Map 2.1  German Central Europe in 1792. Source: Brendan Simms, The impact of Napolean: Prussian High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Executive, 1797–1806 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

FRENCH REPUBLIC

Paris

Republic of the United Netherlands

Austrian Netherlands

North Sea

EAST FRISIA

BA DE N

GREAT BARTIN

Kingdom of Prussia French Republic and dependent States Austrian Dominions Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire

The German Lands before 1815

5

Map 2.2  Germany and the Austrian Empire, 1800–6.

Nineteenth-Century Germany

6

The German Lands before 1815

both of rulers and, more extraordinarily, of subjects against their rulers. Its institutions, such as the imperial courts in Wetzlar and Vienna, provided legal safeguards for many of the inhabitants of the German territories. Conditions varied enormously among the territories which made up the Reich. Some were characterized by corruption, mismanagement and stagnation. Many of the smaller south German imperial cities, the miniature territories of imperial knights or independent abbeys and the like, were incapable of significant innovation even if the will to change was there. In many territories, however, the decades after 1750 saw significant changes. Inspired by enlightened rationalism and driven by the need for revenue, particularly acute during the economic crisis which followed the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, many German princes embarked on ambitious reform programmes. Even in the ecclesiastical territories, commonly regarded as anachronisms by the end of the eighteenth century, wide-ranging reforms were introduced in education, poor relief and administration generally. Other territories made a start with the codification of law and the rationalization of fiscal administration. As the term ‘enlightened absolutism’ indicates, though the term should really be ‘enlightened government’ since no German prince wielded absolute power, the process was initiated by the princes, but it was driven and implemented by a growing army of educated officials. For many of them, the reforms represented the first stage of the emancipation of society that formed a central ideal of the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung). In the upheavals after 1800, the inherent contradiction between absolutism and emancipation became glaringly apparent. Yet, in this first phase, there was periodic tension but little conflict. The German educated classes were not composed of disaffected intellectuals, but of active and often enthusiastic participants in the reform process (see Map 2.2). There were, of course, limits to what could be achieved by even the most ambitious enlightened prince. The most significant constraint was the imperial system itself. The German princes were not sovereign rulers: their power was qualified by a feudal subordination to the Reich which guaranteed the status quo, especially the rights of estates and corporations which in many territories impeded the imposition of rationalized central control. This limitation was only seriously challenged in the Habsburg lands and in Prussia, with fundamental implications for the future of the Reich and for the subsequent history of German lands. From the early eighteenth century, Habsburg policy was characterized by a growing tension between dynastic interests and imperial duties. The succession crisis of 1740 underlined the need to consolidate the Habsburg inheritance, a collection of territories which straddled the southeastern frontier of the Reich. The creation of a Habsburg unitary state meant removing the western Habsburg lands from the Reich. In Austria, therefore, enlightened reform aimed to construct a closed unitary state, which under Joseph II from the late 1770s involved introducing policies hostile to the Reich, in particular a plan to exchange Bavaria for the Netherlands (with or without the consent of the Bavarian estates). Joseph only succeeded in uniting the Reich against him, but the idea of ‘rounding off ’ a consolidated Habsburg state in southeastern Europe, including Bavaria if possible, remained an idée fixe in the corridors of the Hofburg even after his death. 7

Nineteenth-Century Germany

A similar tension between the Reich and the territorial state characterized Brandenburg-Prussia. The construction of a formidable administrative and military machinery began before 1700 and reached a peak in the reign of Frederick William I (1713–40). The reform process was energetically promoted by Frederick II (1740–86) and shaped by his enlightened precepts. It culminated after his death in the publication of a general legal code in 1794 (Allgemeines Landrecht), significant for the way in which it, technically illegally, transcended imperial law to provide a unitary legal framework for the Prussian territories. At the same time, Prussia’s geopolitical position, straddling the Reich’s northeastern frontier, was similar to that of Austria. Her rulers were not, however, constrained by imperial obligations, and Frederick II in particular used this freedom to exploit every weakness in the Habsburg position. As significant as his military annexation of Silesia in 1740 was the virtuosity with which he manipulated the imperial constitution thereafter, becoming a kind of ‘anti-emperor’ in the Reich. It has often been argued that the power struggle between Austria and Prussia after 1740 doomed the Reich. It is, however, anachronistic to speak of Austria’s ‘departure’ from Germany in the eighteenth century or of Prussia’s extension of hegemony over it. Despite being torn in other directions, both states remained deeply wedded to the Reich. Their mutual antagonism was carried out through the mechanisms of the imperial constitution: not by outright confrontation but through a constant jockeying for position in the Reich’s representative institutions. Furthermore, the other territories were not merely pawns in the larger game. The response of what became known as the ‘third Germany’ (the smaller territories and ecclesiastical principalities of the south and west) was a series of initiatives to reform the Reich after the 1760s. It is true that this new Reichspatriotismus (imperial patriotism) failed to generate a renewal of the Reich. The League of Princes (Fürstenbund) of 1785, the one concrete result of this Reichspatriotismus, formed in opposition to Joseph II’s aggressive policies, was neither durable nor effective in promoting the interests of the smaller territories. It foundered in 1788 because it fell into the undertow of Prussian policy. Despite this, the reform initiatives demonstrate three important points: first, the continuing interest in the Reich of many of its members, for whom it fulfilled a vital function; second, the inability of either Austria or Prussia to subvert the Reich against the determined resistance of the other territories; and third, the inability of the Reich to reform itself. In the last resort its durability derived from the fact that it was securely bedded into the old European state system. It was only when that international system itself was plunged into crisis in the 1790s that the Reich was acutely threatened. Once the buttresses were removed, the ancient imperial edifice rapidly began to show the effects of the disintegrative tendencies that had so far been held in check.

The impact of the French Revolution on Germany The French Revolution of 1789 transformed the German political landscape. The revolutionary slogan of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ created a new context for German 8

The German Lands before 1815

politics, while the revolutionary wars after 1792 unleashed forces which led directly to the dissolution of the Reich in 1806 and to the emergence of a new constellation of reformed German states. There was no German revolution, but the way in which the German territories responded to the revolutionary challenge and adapted to the ideas of 1789 shaped the development of German politics and society into the twentieth century. The first response of most German commentators to the events of 1789 was overwhelmingly positive. Figures as diverse as Kant, Herder, Hegel and Fichte hailed the news from France as the dawn of a new age of freedom for mankind, a watershed of world historical significance. In many German towns in 1790, clubs were formed and liberty trees planted, while journals and newspapers carried enthusiastic reports of the progress of events in France. At the same time, however, there was a strong feeling that the Revolution had specifically French causes and a conviction that Germany did not need a revolution because conditions were better there. Some argued that the Reformation had brought about a kind of ‘pre-revolution’ in Germany, which the Aufklärung had built upon to bring about a society capable of peaceful change. Others argued that the French monarchy was simply more despotic and hopelessly corrupt than anything to be found in the Reich. The consensus was clear: Germany did not need to emulate the French Revolution because many of its ideals and objectives could be, indeed were being, achieved by evolutionary means. As the revolution became more radical, so the distinction made between France and Germany became more emphatic. After the execution of the king in January 1793 and the emergence of Robespierre’s reign of terror, the enthusiasm of the early years largely dissolved. Some held on to the ideals of 1789, explaining that the revolutionary regime had betrayed them. Others turned against both the Aufklärung and its reforming ideals and rediscovered the virtues of ‘German liberty’ in the world of the traditional estates, and by 1800 at the latest, the debate had been ‘internalized’ and revolved not around the French example but around variations on the ‘German way’. The reaction of intellectuals alone cannot explain the absence of a German revolution. More significant was the fact that the preconditions of the explosion in France were quite simply absent in Germany. The nobility, the educated classes and the lower clergy, all of whom played a key role in the French crisis, were in one way or another integrated into the machinery of the state in Germany. The middling classes in the imperial cities were deeply conservative. Rural conditions were either not so bad (west of the Elbe over 90 per cent of peasants owned some land, compared with 35 per cent in France) or rigidly under noble control (east of the Elbe). Lacking a powerful capital city, the decentralized Reich, with its legal conflict resolution mechanisms, was able to absorb more minor shocks than the unwieldy centralized French monarchy. These structural factors inhibited a serious revolutionary crisis. Widespread unrest in the Rhineland in 1789 and 1790, and uprisings of artisans in Hamburg and elsewhere in northern Germany, remained localized. Substantial peasant uprisings in Saxony in 1790 and in Silesia in 1792–3 were brutally put down by military force. The most colourful revolutionary episode, the attempt to establish a republic in Mainz after Custine’s occupation of the city in 1792, was a short-lived farce conducted by a small number 9

Nineteenth-Century Germany

of ‘Jacobins’ without popular support. If the Mainz radicals were leaders without a following, the problem elsewhere was the lack of real revolutionaries. Individuals such as the Liebstadt ropemaker Benjamin Geißler, who proclaimed a genuinely revolutionary programme inspired by French ideas in Saxony, remained the exception. Few of the German Jacobins were in fact committed to revolutionary change. The agitation of the 1790s had, however, two important results. First, among many rulers and thinkers the unrest, compounded by increasingly alarming news from France, provoked a fierce reaction. In Prussia (after 1793) and Austria (particularly after the discovery of a ‘Jacobin conspiracy’ in Vienna in 1794) this stifled the last impulses of the enlightened reform process. In many other areas, the unrest generated demands for participation often coupled with a growing criticism of princely absolutism. In many areas of southern and western Germany, this was manifest in the renewed vigour and stridency of the representatives of the estates in the territories. In other areas, enlightened officials and non-revolutionary Jacobins pressed more urgently than ever for reform before it was too late, echoing the maverick (and sometime alleged Jacobin) Freiherr von Knigge’s exhortation to the princes: ‘While there is yet time, O princes, lend your own helping hands for the improvement that is needed!’3

The French revolutionary wars and the end of the Holy Roman Empire Knigge was wrong: the German princes did not have time. After 1792, the Reich became embroiled in the revolutionary wars which led to its dissolution, to the dispossession of many princes and independent rulers, and to the reorganization of the territories that remained. The crisis revealed that the Reich lacked the capacity to defend itself against armed force. Austria’s resources were limited and Austrian politicians were constantly faced with the problem of balancing the needs of Austria itself against those of the German territories. Prussia had neither the resources nor the inclination to coordinate and lead a sustained defence of the Reich. Indeed both pursued policies which effectively undermined the very principles on which the Reich was founded and both contributed at least something to its dissolution in 1806, though Napoleon’s hostility was decisive. A divergence between the interests of the Reich on the one hand and the concerns of Austria and Prussia on the other became apparent as early as 1789–90. The abolition of feudal rights by the French revolutionaries and the confiscation of church property represented an attack both on German secular princes who held lands in Alsace and Lorraine and on those prince bishops whose dioceses extended into French territory. These actions struck at the very foundations of the Reich: the inviolability of feudal principles and the continued existence of the ecclesiastical states which formed its core. The radical implications of the French actions were immediately clear to the German rulers of the Rhineland and the southwest. Yet nothing was done. The smaller territories were incapable of acting alone. Neither Austria nor Prussia moved to support their cause, for each was motivated by other concerns and preoccupied with larger strategies. Both Vienna and Berlin initially viewed 10

The German Lands before 1815

the Revolution as a purely domestic problem. It was also felt that the French troubles might bring about a welcome absence of France from the European stage. The mutual distrust between Austria and Prussia persisted, but in 1790, pragmatic considerations dictated a reconciliation sealed by the Convention of Reichenbach. For the Reich, the new Austro-Prussian détente was ominous. First, in entering into an alliance with Prussia, the emperor had apparently abandoned his own imperial role as impartial mediator. Second, the reconciliation revived Austrian plans to exchange the Netherlands for Bavaria, this time potentially with Prussian consent. Third, as the tension with France escalated in 1791, it became clear that neither Austria nor Prussia would fight without territorial compensation. Hardly surprisingly, the smaller states viewed the situation with alarm. As the bishop of Würzburg told the Austrian envoy in December 1791, ‘If Austria and Prussia agree then the Reich will be finished.’4 In fact, the only immediate result of the new Austro-Prussian understanding was to bring them both into conflict with France. Their declaration of solidarity with Louis XVI inflamed the radicals in the National Convention and led directly to the French declaration of war in April 1792. Initially, the Reich remained neutral. The German princes only agreed to enter the war with an independent imperial army in March 1793 after the French had advanced to the Rhine and occupied Mainz. The decision was made with reluctance: it was rightly pointed out that Austria and Prussia alone were to blame for the war, and that it was not being fought to defend the interests of the Reich. The anxieties expressed in the Reichstag proved amply justified. In military terms, the princes gained nothing. The hopes raised by a successful campaign against the French in 1793 were dashed the following year when the revolutionary armies reoccupied the Rhineland, this time permanently. Nor did their entry into the war win them the gratitude of the two major protagonists, who remained wedded to their own objectives. In Vienna, grandiose but ultimately unrealistic schemes for a reorganization of the Reich proliferated. By contrast, Prussia rapidly lost even formal interest in developments in the west. The opportunity to acquire territory in Poland in 1793 diverted troops and money to the east, and the conflict with France became an unjustifiable expenditure with no prospect of reward. The failure of the 1794 campaign, undermined in part by the half-hearted participation of the Prussian military, generated a widespread desire for peace – even that was, however, frustrated by renewed antagonism between Austria and Prussia, by Austria’s determination not to give in to the French, and by a deepening mistrust on the part of many German princes of the motives of the imperial court. Prussia alone withdrew in 1795 after signing the Peace of Basel with France, which deferred all territorial issues until a future settlement between France and the Reich. In the meantime, Prussia agreed to cease hostilities and to recognize the legitimacy of the revolutionary government. In additional secret clauses, however, Prussia accepted French occupation of the left bank of the Rhine, in return for which she was to be compensated by territory on the right bank. Prussia also agreed to seek to secure the withdrawal from the war of all the north German territories, while the French undertook to respect the neutrality of the Prussian sphere of influence. 11

Nineteenth-Century Germany

The treaty effectively divided the Reich by removing most of Germany north of the Main from the war for the next ten years. Prussia’s ‘treachery’, rapidly emulated by her neighbours, forced the territories south of the Main to turn to Vienna. They needed the emperor’s protection more than ever, against the French armies and against the spectre of domestic revolution. Yet, Austrian protection had its price. The Austrians were not slow to present their bills to their protégés. Furthermore, the very proximity of Austrian troops both threatened the independence of the smaller territories and generated anxiety in Bavaria, whose estates remained acutely aware of Austria’s annexationist ambitions. The position was even more threatening now that Austria’s northern ally, so often the protector of the smaller territories in recent decades, basked in the safety of Frenchguaranteed neutrality. Attempts by Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria to hedge their bets only made matters worse. In 1796, fearing the renewed failure of the Austrian army, each territory concluded a secret agreement with France recognizing the loss of the left bank of the Rhine to France in return for compensation with secularized ecclesiastical property. When Archduke Charles then defeated the French at Amberg and Würzburg, the south Germans were treated like a defeated enemy. Austria’s behaviour towards those she was supposedly protecting ensured that the emperor gained no moral advantage from shouldering the full burden of the war against France. Furthermore, her own position was soon undermined by defeat at the hands of Napoleon in Italy. Forced to conclude peace at Campo Formio in 1797, Austria followed Prussia and the three larger south German territories by agreeing (in secret clauses) to French annexation of the left bank of the Rhine in return for compensation on the right bank. As a reward, Austria was promised the archbishopric of Salzburg and parts of eastern Bavaria. If the willingness of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria to abandon the Reich had been exposed by Austria, the intention of Prussia and Austria to do likewise was only revealed at the Rastatt conference convened in December 1797 to draw up terms for a general peace with France, though negotiations broke down in April 1799 once the secret clauses of Basel and Campo Formio became known. Perhaps the most significant outcome of Rastatt was a new French policy towards the German territories, for the conference exposed the potential isolation of Austria and Prussia. In November 1799, the directory clearly recognized that the German princes were more promising allies than German republicans: ideological aggression waned as the directory adopted the traditional Bourbon policy of dividing and ruling in southwestern Germany. Austria’s attempts to resume the war merely resulted in less favourable terms being dictated to her by Napoleon at Lunéville in 1801: she was obliged to accept all of the concessions of the Campo Formio settlement without any of the rewards. Now, however, the majority of the princes, who had latterly scarcely been able to conceal their lack of enthusiasm for the Austrian cause, agreed with alacrity to conclude peace. Indeed, several went further and concluded individual peace treaties with France, which guaranteed them territorial enlargement. Acutely aware of Austria’s isolation in Germany, the emperor refused to preside over a conference to reorganize the Reich: indeed, by now he and his advisers were simply concerned with securing sufficient compensation from France in 12

The German Lands before 1815

return for relinquishing the Imperial Crown. As a result, the Reichstag itself appointed a commission which in March 1803 produced the Reichsdeputationshauptschluß (final constitutional law). The Reichsdeputationshauptschluß redrew the map of Germany along lines dictated by France (with the agreement of Russia, the third guarantor power of the Reich). The changes were massive: the left bank of the Rhine was formally ceded to France; on the right bank, three electorates, nineteen bishoprics and forty-four abbeys disappeared; in all about 10,000 square kilometres of land and some three million people were incorporated into new territories. The major winners were Prussia (in the Rhineland), Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The disappearance of the ecclesiastical states gave the Protestant princes a majority for the first time, a further threat to the Habsburg position in the Reich. To compensate the loss of the ecclesiastical electorates, and also to further reward the leading beneficiaries of the process, four new electorates were created for the Duke of Württemberg, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel and the Duke of Salzburg. Further changes soon followed. In 1804, Francis II assumed the title of emperor of Austria, anticipating his abdication as Holy Roman Emperor in 1806 after another disastrous defeat and humiliating peace agreement at Pressburg in December 1805, which also recognized the full sovereignty of Bavaria and Württemberg as kingdoms and of Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt as grand duchies. Even before the final dissolution of the Reich on 6 August 1806, sixteen south and west German princes abandoned it by joining the Confederation of the Rhine. On 1 August 1806, Napoleon had sent a message to the Diet saying that he regarded the empire as defunct and threatened the emperor with another occupation of Austria if he did not relinquish the imperial throne. On 6 August 1806 Francis announced his abdication, releasing all German rulers from their obligations to him. Another wave of changes then began. Prussia’s fatal decision to resume hostilities with France after ten years of neutrality resulted in her crushing defeat at Jena and Auerstedt in October. Most of Prussia’s recent territorial acquisitions were incorporated into new Napoleonic satellites: the Kingdom of Westphalia and the grand duchies of Berg and Warsaw. In southern Germany, some seventy further minor territories were either secularized or ‘mediatized’, that is, imperial cities and the lands of imperial knights were incorporated into the new sovereign states. By the end of 1807, the territory of the former Reich was divided into three fairly distinct areas: the left bank of the Rhine under France; the states of the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) under French influence and control; Austria and Prussia, both diminished in size and ‘excluded’ from Germany. The main driving force in the dissolution process was clearly the success of the French armies. The eventual outcome was, however, shaped by the reactions of many of the German rulers. Since the early 1790s, both Austria and Prussia had aimed at aggrandizement, which could only succeed at the expense of the smaller territories. Military inferiority, but also vacillation, deceitfulness, blindness and woeful miscalculations ensured by 1807 that neither achieved anything. The same ambition pursued after 1795–6 by the three largest south German territories led to success because 13

Nineteenth-Century Germany

they worked with Napoleon rather than against him. Of course, they had little choice in that; even so, spectacular rewards fell into their tied hands. Nationalist historians reserved harsh judgements for those who swam vigorously with the French tide. Recent scholars have adopted a more balanced view. On the one hand, ambition and greed were clearly strong motives. The newly promoted rulers of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria were determined to survive as independent sovereigns. On the other hand, idealism and a desire to rescue something from the Reich also played a part in the third Germany. Some hoped that Napoleon might be persuaded to become head of a new reformed Reich. The driving force behind many of these ideas was Karl Theodor von Dalberg, elector of Mainz and imperial archchancellor. His self-interest is clear. While other ecclesiastical princes were dispossessed, Dalberg managed to have himself translated to Regensburg in 1803, made apostolic administrator of the whole Rhineland in 1805 with the title of prince-primate, made nominal head of the Rheinbund in 1806 and created Grand Duke of Frankfurt in 1810. Yet, he too was captivated for a time by the idea that a new Reich might be forged out of the old, with Napoleon as the new Charlemagne at its head (see Map 2.3). Dalberg was not an isolated visionary. His ideas were echoed in the lively periodical literature devoted to the Rheinbund and found support among leading constitutional theorists such as Joseph Görres. Indeed, in 1808 concrete proposals were made to transform the Rheinbund into a kind of national state of the Germans. It failed to become anything of the kind because of the opposition of Bavaria and Württemberg, and above all because Napoleon himself had no interest in anything other than a loose federation which might serve his own military ends. His position as ‘protector’ of the Rheinbund was stronger than it might have been as ruler of a coherent German state capable of turning against him. Though it ceased to exist in 1813, the Rheinbund was of exceptional importance. Its federal constitution looked both forwards and backwards. The central institutions envisaged in its constitution (though never in fact implemented) translated many of the representative mechanisms of the Reich into a modern idiom. At the same time, the sovereign status of its members marked a clear break with the past. It was, in fact, neither a reformed Reich nor a nation state. On the contrary it provided the framework for the creation of a new type of reformed sovereign territorial state in Germany.

Reform and renewal in the German states The nature and extent of the changes which took place in the so-called ‘German reform era’ have been the subject of intensive research in recent decades. Nationalist historians concentrated on the ‘German’ or ‘organic’ reforms in Prussia, as opposed to the allegedly superficial ‘rationalist’ reforms elsewhere, either imposed by Napoleon or at least derivative of French models. More recently, however, it has been recognized that the Rheinbund states made significant progress towards modernization in this period. At the same time, it is still debated whether the reforms represented a ‘defensive modernization’, 14

Map 2.3  Germany and the Austrian Empire, 1812.

The German Lands before 1815

15

Nineteenth-Century Germany

a ‘revolution from above’ forced on the German states by Napoleon, or whether they represented the continuation of an indigenous reform process begun in the 1770s and 1780s. Despite regional differences, the reforms had many common features. The question of why the absolutist state collapsed in the face of the French armies was as acute in Baden and Bavaria as it was in Prussia. The answer, too, was broadly similar. Enlightened absolutist reform had created a gulf between state and society, the significance of which was driven home by the triumph of the new French nation of citoyens. This dictated that participation and representation, emancipation in the broadest sense, became a major theme of the reforms, though the remedies proposed ranged from traditional forms of representation based on estates to modern constitutional models. At the same time, the reform process was shaped by more practical necessities. The new sovereign states, enlarged by secularization and mediatization, had to integrate new territories and mould them into a coherent governable whole: the new duchy of Nassau, for example, was made up of no fewer than twenty-three previously independent entities. Secularization meant that the state had to take up the functions previously exercised by the churches, which ensured that educational reform, with particular emphasis on the universities, was as central in southern Germany as it was in Prussia. Confessionally uniform territories gave way to confessionally mixed states with complex legislation that guaranteed religious freedom and that tended to separate church and state. At the same time, long years of war and occupation financially exhausted many of the German territories, and the problems were exacerbated as the new states assumed the debts of the territories they took over. The result was a ‘financial revolution’ of the German states: the creation of state budgets, of centralized financial administration, and of a clear distinction between public and dynastic finances. The sheer scale of the task ensured that the post-1806 reforms were not carried out by enlightened princely dilettantes but by experts and bureaucrats. Württemberg was exceptional in that the reforms there were implemented, against vigorous opposition, in a fit of late absolutism by King Frederick I (1754–1816). In general, however, one of the most significant results of reform was the creation of the bureaucratic state, even in Württemberg. The problem of participation and representation was nowhere satisfactorily resolved before 1814–15, but everywhere the ‘enlightened reform state’ gave way to ‘bureaucratic state absolutism’. The leading reformers embodied continuity between the two forms. Montgelas (Bavaria), Reitzenstein (Baden), Marshall von Bieberstein (Hessen) Barckhausen and Du Thil (Nassau), Hardenberg (Prussia) and the like, for all their differences, were the intellectual heirs of the enlightened princes of the 1780s. In the 1790s, they had perceived the limitations of enlightened reform. The events of 1806 provided the opportunity to implement the remedies they had formulated in the light of the lessons taught by France since 1789. The scope and intensity of reform was varied. In many smaller middle and north German states the impact was minimal. In some, the nobility frustrated all attempts at change. In others, the territorial reorganization had less impact and there was consequently less incentive and less perceived need to change. Austria was another, 16

The German Lands before 1815

more important, exception, where the catastrophic political failure of Joseph II’s state absolutism, combined with the crises of the 1790s, revived the alliance between the Crown and the nobles, a reassertion of the traditional status quo. This reinvigorated ancien régime undermined efforts to reform the Austrian monarchy after the collapse of 1806. Neither Sinzendorff ’s French-inspired modernization plans nor the Stadion brothers’ conservative programme (inspired by Herder) for the revival of the traditional estates made any significant impact. Johann Philipp Stadion succeeded in introducing universal conscription and in forming a Landwehr (territorial militia) in 1808. But his programme collapsed with Austria’s renewed defeat by Napoleon in 1809. His successor, Metternich, saved the Austrian monarchy by accommodating himself with Napoleon and by restoring sound financial management. Survival for Austria in 1809 meant making the old status quo work. The significance of Austria’s failed reform, and the gulf that opened up between her and the other German states, becomes apparent when set beside the reforms elsewhere. Four areas and types of reform may be distinguished: the left bank of the Rhine; the Napoleonic satellites of Westphalia, Berg and Frankfurt; the south German states; and, finally, Prussia. In the first two areas, French influence was clearly paramount. The left bank of the Rhine was integrated into the French département system in 1802. After ten years of often brutal occupation, exploitation and military activity, the introduction of the Code Napoleon and the French administrative system brought a measure of relief. Furthermore, the sale of former church lands, often to prosperous town dwellers, seems to have loosened the social structure more effectively than it did elsewhere, while local industry profited from the continental blockade. As a whole, the changes in these areas – legal, institutional and social – were profound, and were recognized as such by the new governments after 1815, which ensured the Code Napoleon remained in force until 1900. Ironically, that was not the destiny of the reforms undertaken in the satellite states of Westphalia (under Napoleon’s brother Jerôme) and Berg (under Murat until 1808, then under Napoleon as regent for his nephew Napoleon Louis). Their ‘model’ status was undermined because they were ruthlessly exploited: their finances were milked and state demesne used to provide rewards for the new Napoleonic nobility. Thus the Westphalian constitution of November 1807 (the first German constitution ever) was never fully implemented and like most of the changes effected during the French period was swept away when the Kingdom of Westphalia was dissolved in 1815. The same fate befell the French reforms in the duchy of Frankfurt and grand duchy of Warsaw, and the occupied areas of northern Germany (e.g. Hamburg). The reforms in the new sovereign states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria together with Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau were more durable. In Bavaria, for example, Montgelas implemented a programme which he had outlined in his ‘Ansbach memorandum’ of 1796. Some measures were introduced as early as 1799, but the major reform drive began in 1806. Montgelas set about reforming the central administration, creating a new state bureaucracy, consolidating all state debts and setting state finances on a secure footing, 17

Nineteenth-Century Germany

marking out a distinction between state and dynasty. At the same time the secularization process required the state to take over the universities and schools, as well as other former ecclesiastical institutions. Montgelas’s vision of a state based on the equality of all before the law led to an assault on noble privileges and to the promulgation of a constitutional edict which envisaged a representative system. It is significant that Montgelas resisted French pressure to introduce the Code Napoleon. Where he borrowed from the French model, for example, in devising regional divisions based on the départements, it was for pragmatic reasons – in this case, the erosion of traditional loyalties and of local noble power bases. Equally important, however, were the limitations. First, most obvious was the enormous accumulated debt and Napoleon’s continuing financial demands: Bavaria was at war almost continuously throughout the reform period and was obliged by her French alliance to maintain an overlarge army. Second, noble resistance to the reforms was strong and thwarted the full implementation either of peasant emancipation (until 1848) or of a representative constitution (until 1818). Reform, on the one hand, had its limits. On the other hand, the fact that a constitutional movement did prevail in southern Germany (including Württemberg) after 1815 has prompted a re-evaluation of the Rheinbund reforms in recent years. They are now viewed as an extension of the Aufklärung (the Enlightenment)reforms of the 1780s, the more revolutionary for the fact that they were based on the idea of bürgerliche Freiheit (bourgeois freedom), with all that implied for the limitation of royal power and the participation and representation of the individual. If constitutionalism, or at least the introduction of a constitution soon after 1815, is taken as the ultimate criterion of successful modernization, then Prussia must be regarded as a failure. Some have argued that this reflected the complete triumph of the bureaucracy, which resisted constitutionalism because it regarded itself as a kind of representative body. Others emphasize the entrenched nature of the noble opposition to the reform process as a whole and argue that Hardenberg held back on the constitutional question for tactical reasons. The debate underlines the continuing importance of Prussia in German historiography: the question about Prussia’s ‘delayed’ constitutional history inevitably raises larger questions about later German history as a whole. Prussia experienced a different pattern of reform within a different institutional and social context and with some different motivations. Prussia, for one, already had a kind of constitutional law in the form of the Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794 (a framework of rights as well as a code of law). Second, many historians emphasize the theoretical and philosophical sophistication of the Prussian reform movement which contrasts strikingly with the pragmatic late-Enlightenment rationalism of south German reformers. In economic terms the reforms were characterized by a systematic and rigorous application of the principles of Adam Smith. The reformers aimed to liberate the economic potential of man. This involved both relaxing trade and craft restrictions and dismantling the constrictive feudal agrarian order. The emancipation of 1807 gave little to the peasant, though he now had the freedom to realize his potential if he could. The estate owners, by contrast, profited immediately 18

The German Lands before 1815

since it now became possible to intensify the agricultural production process. Other areas of activity (e.g. education and military reform) were also characterized by a distinctive philosophical inspiration. Thomas Nipperdey argued that Prussian reforms transcended the Aufklärung; they embodied the new post-Kantian philosophical idealism which aspired to enable man to achieve ultimate freedom. Certainly, the influence of Kant on the Prussian bureaucracy was profound, and the Prussian reform is characterized by the involvement in many different areas of individuals who were highly gifted theoreticians as well as practitioners. Humboldt in education, and Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Boyen in the army, are merely the best known of a whole phalanx of philosophically minded protagonists of change. Prussian reform was also the product of humiliating military defeat and, in many minds, was motivated by the desire for revenge. Nationalist historians believed this gave the movement a profound moral dimension and a higher ‘national’ purpose. They regarded Stein as the central figure: a conservative Romantic nationalist who aimed to make Prussia the foundation of a Germany capable of withstanding Napoleon. This myth obscures two important points. First, as elsewhere, the origins of reform ideas in Prussia lie in the 1780s and 1790s: defeat in 1806 provided the reformers with their opportunity but not with their agenda. Second, recent research has tended to emphasize the significance of Hardenberg. Stein’s period of office was short (he was dismissed in November 1808 after only fourteen months in office); Hardenberg was Staatskanzler (state chancellor) from 1810 until 1822. Their ideas also differed fundamentally. Stein was a nationalist who dreamt of an uprising of the Germans against French tyranny. He was also a conservative. In his view, the only conceivable form of representation was that based on property, that is, the traditional estates. The mobilization of society, Stein believed, meant the reinvigoration of historically grown forms of participation and representation. If Stein wished to ‘reorganize’ the Prussian state, Hardenberg aspired to ‘revolutionize’ it. Stein’s ‘Nassau memorandum’ (1806) concentrated exclusively on administration; Hardenberg’s ‘Riga memorandum’ (1807) spoke of ‘unleashing’ all abilities, of bringing about a ‘revolution’ which would lead to the ‘great end of the ennoblement of mankind, through wise government and not through violent force either from within or from outside’. The most appropriate form for the ‘current Zeitgeist’, he declared, was ‘democratic principles in a monarchical system’.5 Hardenberg’s emphasis on the Zeitgeist indicates that he saw no going back: 1789 marked the start of a new era in human history; the task of all wise politicians was to adapt to it successfully. Military reform played a central role in the programme. ‘All inhabitants of the state are born defenders of the same’, Scharnhorst wrote; ‘the government must enter into an alliance with the nation’ in order to bolster its independent spirit.6 Gneisenau declared that the state must be established on the ‘threefold foundation of arms, education and constitution’.7 There are many elements of similarity between the Prussian and the Bavarian reforms, but in Prussia the obstacles to success were much greater. Financial ruin in 1806 dictated that much of the reform process was driven by fiscal needs rather than by constitutional ideals. The resistance of the nobility to change was formidable. Military 19

Nineteenth-Century Germany

reformers were denounced as Jacobins because they wanted to arm the peasantry. Any hint of constitutional plans aroused intense opposition, even among many bureaucrats. Like Montgelas, Hardenberg was a virtuoso tactician and combined his philosophical convictions with wily pragmatism. The reformers succeeded in their fiscal, economic, administrative and educational measures. The military reform represented a compromise; the constitutional issue remained in suspension. The outcome was a bureaucratic absolutism serviced by a sophisticated educational system which presided over an economic system shaped by the spirit of Adam Smith and a traditional society still dominated by the nobility. The tensions inherent in that formula were only later revealed, in particular when the system was overtaken by the effects of the dramatic demographic explosion of the decades since 1740. It is tempting to see the diminution in the number of German territories from over ten thousand to around forty as part of a long-term progress of integration, another stage in the delayed progress of the Germans towards a nation state under Prussian leadership. The point is apparently reinforced by the similarities generated by the reform process between many of the new states and by Austria’s failure to reform. This ignores, however, one of the central characteristics of the thinking and language of most leading reformers. They were concerned with the nation, but primarily with the Bavarian or the Prussian nation, rather than the German nation. When Montgelas wrote that elementary schools must help shape the Nationalgeist, he was referring to the Bavarian national spirit.8 When Hardenberg wrote of ‘stamping a single “Nationalcharakter” upon the whole’, he meant a sense of national identity for the whole Prussian state.9 The similarities between the reforms cannot obscure the fact that they were explicitly intended to create differences between the new sovereign states. This immediately raises important questions about the origins of German nationalism in this period. If Nationalgeist pertained to the new sovereign states, what did die deutsche Nation mean at this time?

The Wars of Liberation and German nationalism In traditional historiography, the most important feature of the Napoleonic period was the birth of German nationalism. Napoleon’s defeat and humiliation of Prussia, it was argued, generated a sense of German national resentment against French tyranny: ideas developed in Prussia by men such as Fichte, Arndt and Jahn provided the inspiration for a national uprising of the Germans led by Prussia. In this view, the Wars of Liberation (1813–15) were interpreted as the first collective action of the German nation, its first violent rite of passage in an ordeal by fire. In fact, this ‘birth myth’ of the German nation was an artificial construct of nationalist ideology. Later Prussian nationalism wrote its own history and then declared it to be the history of Germany as a whole.10 From an eighteenth-century perspective, however, the development of German nationalism appears much more diffuse. It leads neither to a single coherent ideology nor to a firm political or state orientation by 1815. 20

The German Lands before 1815

Since the 1760s, there had been a growing preoccupation among many German intellectuals with questions of patriotism and German identity. There was no single movement, rather a variety of lines of development. One strand led to the Reichspatriotismus of the 1780s and then on to the debate over reform of the Reich around 1800. Another strand can be identified in the tradition of lyric poetry from Klopstock to Hölderlin, in which the quasi-religious identification with a German fatherland forms a persistent theme. Related to that was the so-called ‘German movement’ of the 1770s and 1780s: young Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) writers and their successors whose interest in Germany formed part of their rebellion against society in the name of freedom. The main emphasis was on the ‘cultural nation’, Germany defined by language and a common literary and philosophical culture. Yet, this ‘cultural nationalism’ was not unpolitical: its tendency was anti-absolutist and democratic. In the 1790s, Herder’s notion of the individuality of all peoples took on a new meaning in the context of the German response to the French Revolution. The argument that Germany did not need a revolution formed part of a world historical perspective in which the Germany, from medieval freedom through revolutionary Reformation to Aufklärung, emerged as a nation of true freedom as opposed to anarchic French liberty. The idea of the unique mission of the Germans was central to this view: as Schiller put it in 1797, their day had yet to come; it would be the last day, the final and highest stage in the development of human freedom. Parallel to this, some writers of the 1790s, often associated with early Romanticism, renewed older poses against French cultural imperialism in literature, once more emphasizing the gulf between Germany and France. A revived literary patriotism responded to the French threat. In areas such as the Rhineland, this also connected with the bitter experience of invasion and occupation, and a deep popular resentment against the exploitative and militantly secular French revolutionary authorities. In so far as any of these diverse preoccupations with Germany were anchored on a political system, they were focused on the Reich (even though constitutionally the ‘nation’ of the Reich only included the higher nobility). The Reich manifestly failed from the mid-1790s. Yet, the sense of the functions that it had served was still strong, and there was a wide sense of the need to find something that would replace it. The Reich’s dissolution in 1806 created a new situation since it left ‘the German nation’, however defined, without any institutional framework. Nationalist historians argued that the ‘nation state’ led by Prussia stepped into the breach. The reality is more complex. In southern and western Germany much ‘national’ thinking focused on the Rheinbund, sometimes with Napoleon envisaged as the new ‘Emperor of the Germans’. That vision soon lost credibility, but arguments for some form of polity equivalent to the Reich played an important part in discussions right up to 1815. The reaction against Napoleon elsewhere had no coherent political programme, no clear ideology, no clear preference for the leadership of the German nation. The anonymous pamphlet Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung (Germany in Her Deep Humiliation) (May 1806), generally regarded as the first blast of the anti-Napoleonic movement in Germany, was deeply critical of both Austria and Prussia, particularly for 21

Nineteenth-Century Germany

having abandoned the German people. Indeed, much of the patriotic literature after 1806 contains many echoes of the anti-absolutist rhetoric of the 1780s and 1790s. Inevitably, however, the German patriots gravitated towards Vienna, Dresden and Berlin outside the sphere of direct French control. Vienna attracted conservative patriots, Romantic political theorists of the reaction, Catholics or converts to Catholicism, and others who wanted to revive the old Reich (now idealized as an Arcadia of traditional politics and religion). After 1805, intellectuals such as Friedrich Schlegel, Adam Müller, Friedrich Gentz (the ‘German Burke’) and Heinrich von Kleist (significantly, a Brandenburg nobleman disillusioned by Prussian neutrality before 1806) provided the ideological foundations for Stadion’s conservative reform programme for the Austrian monarchy. In Berlin, the movement was more diffuse. Military reformers drew up plans for a levée en masse. Stein propagated the idea of a conservative estates-based nation state version of the old Reich. The literary patriotism of Arndt, Jahn and Theodor Körner drew on pietist traditions in propagating a religious identification with a German fatherland, calling for an uprising of the German Volk and a fight to the death against France. Fichte appealed for a new Nationalerziehung (national education), necessary because the princes had betrayed the Volk. Romantic conservatism combined with ‘national democratic’ tendencies in a broad church united only by a common desire to end the French tyranny. One should be wary of overestimating the contemporary significance of this flood of patriotic literature. The ‘national’ interests of Prussia and Austria were not submerged in the German cause, though both governments exploited the ambiguity of the ‘national’ idea. In Berlin, Stein, inflamed with hatred for ‘French filth’ and infuriated by the admiration for Napoleon among young Romantics such as Tieck, actively coordinated the activities of the patriotic writers, promoting journals and offering financial inducements. In Austria, too, Stadion coordinated a literary campaign which provided the ideological dimension to the Austrian rebellion against Napoleon in 1809. Inspired by the Spanish insurrection, the Stadion faction persuaded the emperor to appeal to all Germans to rise up against the French. The appeal failed, however, and after an initial triumph at Aspern in May 1809, the Austrian army was decisively crushed at Wagram in July. Indeed, the whole affair revealed a deeply ambivalent attitude to the whole concept of popular insurrection: when the Tyrolean peasants rebelled and triumphed over the French, under the charismatic Andreas Hofer the Austrians failed to support them. Austria under Metternich had no more truck with patriotic uprisings. The case of Prussia is more complex. Fundamentally, of course, Napoleon was brought down by the progressive collapse of his empire after 1810. The disastrous Russian campaign of 1812 was the final straw. Furthermore, when Prussia joined forces with Russia in December 1812, it was the result of the deeply conservative Yorck von Wartenburg’s rebellious defiance of the king’s orders: not a national patriotic uprising but an insurrection of the reactionary East Prussian nobility. None the less, Yorck forced the king’s hand and allowed the reformers in Berlin to implement their plans for a people’s army. The king’s call to arms ‘An Mein Volk’ (To My People; significantly directed at ‘Brandenburger, Preußen, Schlesier, Pommern, Litthauer!’, not Germans) unleashed a ferocious patriotic wave.11 22

The German Lands before 1815

Many did give ‘gold for iron’; the military reforms allowed the formation of an army of 280,000 with impressive speed; some 28,000 volunteers joined up. How decisive all this was is another matter. Soon after the Battle of Leipzig (16–19 October 1813), it became clear that the future of Germany would not be decided by German patriots but by the particularist interests of the sovereign states. Bavaria had left the Rheinbund just before Leipzig. Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel left just after. The plans of Stein and his secretary, Arndt, for a strong German national imperial state served only as a useful foil in the complex negotiations over the future of the German lands which were dominated by Hardenberg and Metternich, both at root sceptics on the national issue.

Conclusion Heinrich Heine later wrote that the Germans had become patriots and defied Napoleon because their princes ordered them to. That fails to do justice to the strength of antiNapoleonic sentiment in many parts of Germany by 1813–14. But there was no ‘national uprising’ or ‘national crusade’. There remained a world of difference between the nationalism of some intellectuals and the nation they aspired to lead. Heine’s commend also underestimates the ambivalence of contemporary governments towards the very idea of arming the peasantry for an uprising of the Volk, as envisaged by the likes of Arndt or Jahn. In the excitement of victory, the issues became confused, and later the veterans of 1813 constructed a myth of the Wars of Liberation that bore little relation to reality. That mythology, formed around the canon of patriotic writing of the period 1806–15, is an important legacy of the period. It provided the foundation for later nationalist ideology which increasingly drew on everything but the democratic tenor of the first phase: the image of the French Erbfeind (hereditary enemy); the glorification of the Volk; Germany as the nation which had defeated the ideas of 1789 and which had developed its own superior ‘idea’; and the myth of a strong Reich. Little of that could, however, have even been imagined in 1815. Far from celebrating the birth of the German nation, men such as Arndt and Jahn were bitterly disappointed. The Vienna settlement reflected not their ideas but the process of evolution and adaptation that had occurred since the late eighteenth century. Secularization, mediatization and the dissolution of the Reich had removed the obstacles to the emergence of fully sovereign states to replace the feudal patchwork of the past. What emerged at Vienna in 1815 was a confederation which placed the seal on the emergence of the German sovereign territorial states. Prussia was strengthened by the acquisition of the Rhineland; Austria was to an extent diverted by her position of strength in Italy; but both remained leading players in Germany. The settlement created a balance of power designed to maintain peace and stability, and led to the competition between Austria and Prussia ending in stalemate. More important than anything else in 1815 was the fact that many of the new sovereign states were in one way or another ‘reformed’. The path from the Reich to 23

Nineteenth-Century Germany

the German Confederation was characterized by a complex process of adaptation to the challenges posed by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic regime. Reformers reacted to what they perceived were the limitations of the enlightened state by reforming its structure and by aiming to overcome the gulf between the state and its subjects. Financial necessity, on the one hand, drove a reform process which created the bureaucratic state. On the other hand, ambivalence and noble opposition undermined first attempts to mobilize the population or to secure their representation. The result in many German states was a dissonant mixture: a strong, ‘modernized’ state grafted on to a traditional society. Nowhere did the reformers achieve complete success. Even so, their collective efforts brought about fundamental and irrevocable changes. They ensured that for the next generation at least most politically active Germans would be preoccupied not with the national issue but with the implications of the German ‘revolution from above’. Notes 1. Quoted by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Band 1: 1700–1815 (1987), p. 546. 2. Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866. Bürgerwelt und starker Staat (1983), p. 11. 3. Quoted by Horst Möller, Fürstenstaat oder Bürgernation. Deutschland 1763–1815 (1989), p. 531. 4. Quoted by Karl Otmar von Aretin, Vom Deutschen Reich zum Deutschen Bund, 2nd edn (1993), p. 61. 5. The memorandum is printed in Georg Winter, ed., Die Reorganisation des Preußischen Staates unter Stein und Hardenberg Teil 1. Band 1 (1931), pp. 302–63; quotation from pp. 305–6. 6. Quoted by Nipperdey, Geschichte, pp. 51, 53. 7. Ibid., p. 51. 8. Quoted in Max Spindler, ed., Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, 4 vols (1967–1975), vol. I, pt. I, p. 7. 9. Winter, Reorganisation, pp. 319–20, 325. 10. See Stefan Berger, ‘The German Tradition of Historiography, 1800–1995’, in Fulbrook, ed., German History since 1800 (1997). 11. Printed in Hans-Bernd Spies, ed., Die Erhebung gegen Napoleon 1806–1814/15 (1981), pp. 254–5.

Select bibliography Aris, R., History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815 (1936). Beiser, Frederick C., Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (1992). 24

The German Lands before 1815 Blanning, T. C. W., The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland, 1792–1802 (1983). Breuilly, John, The Formation of the First German Nation-State, 1800–1871 (1996). Gagliardo, John G., Reich and Nation: The Holy Roman Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763–1806 (1980). Gooch, G. P., Germany and the French Revolution (1920). Schroeder, Paul W., The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (1994). Sheehan, J. J., German History, 1770–1866 (1989). Vann, J. A. and Rowan, S., eds, The Old Reich: Essays on German Political Institutions 1495–1806 (1974). Walker, Mack, German Home Towns: Community, State, General Estate, 1648–1871 (1971). Whaley, Joachim, ‘Thinking about Germany, 1750–1815: The Birth of a Nation?’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, NS LXVI (1996), pp. 53–72. Whaley, Joachim, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. Volume II: from the Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648–1806 (Oxford, 2012). Wilson, Peter H., The Holy Roman Empire 1495–1806, 2nd edn (2011).

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CHAPTER 3 GERMANY 1815–48: RESTORATION OR PRE-MARCH?

Christopher Clark

The period discussed in this chapter fell between two great European upheavals: the Revolution of 1789 with its Napoleonic aftermath and the revolutions of 1848. Inevitably, this has influenced the way we think about the era. The term ‘Restoration’, often used for the years until 1830 or 1840 and sometimes for the period as a whole, evokes the struggle to reverse the effects of the French Revolution and underlines the reactionary, backwardlooking character of the age. The term ‘pre-March’, generally used for the years from 1830 or 1840, is forward-looking; it suggests a prelude to upheaval, specifically to the revolutionary unrest of the ‘March days’ of 1848. Both terms are problematic, since they encourage us to think of this era either as a reconstruction of the past or as a rehearsal for the future. ‘Should the half-dead forms of the old regime, which still contain so much of the beautiful life of the past, be maintained?’ Leopold von Gerlach asked himself in 1813. ‘Or should they be boldly destroyed to make way for the new?’1 As Gerlach himself was aware, the answers history gives to such questions are always composite and provisional, never absolute. There was no thoroughgoing ‘restoration’ of the old regime after 1815, nor were traditional structures and allegiances entirely destroyed ‘to make way for the new’. But the period covered by this chapter was one of heightened political and social conflict that often turned on the question Gerlach had asked. Guilds, corporate privilege, feudal tenure, dynastic particularism – all these not-so-dead forms inherited from the old regime had their defenders and detractors. It was conflict over these and related issues that made the years between 1815 and 1848 an ‘epoch of polarization’ across a broad range of fronts. The conflict between modernity and tradition in its various manifestations forms the central theme of this chapter. The chapter does not provide a chronological narrative but examines five areas in turn. The first subsection deals with that unloved institution, the German Confederation, which provided the outer framework for German political life throughout and beyond the period covered by this chapter. We then turn to the bureaucratic state, which has often been seen as the most important ‘modernizing’ force in early nineteenth-century German society. There follows a discussion of the various forms of political mobilization that were so characteristic of the period. A section on the mass poverty and economic dislocation of the 1830s and 1840s attempts to identify what was modern and what was not about the ‘social question’ that so preoccupied contemporaries. This is followed by a discussion of the religious revival of the 1820s

Nineteenth-Century Germany

and 1830s that did much to galvanize political debate, but was also a formidable social force in its own right. Each of these topics has been the subject of extensive recent debate in the historiography of the period, and each will help to bring us nearer to what was distinctive about the decades between 1815 and 1848.

The German Confederation In the eighteenth century, German Europe had been divided into some 300 territories. After the secularizations and territorial resettlements of the Napoleonic period and the readjustments made at the Congress of Vienna, only thirty-eight sovereign states (thirty-nine after 1817) remained. These were joined in a loose association of independent sovereign entities known as the ‘German Confederation’. The largest and most significant were the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, with 9.3 and 8.1 million Confederal subjects, respectively (Prussia’s easternmost provinces and Austria’s non-German lands were excluded from the Confederation, as they had been from the old Reich). The remaining member states ranged in size and significance from the most powerful middle states, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and Hanover, all of which had made substantial territorial gains since the dissolution of the Reich, to the little duchy of Liechtenstein, with a population of only 5,000. As in the old Reich, the small states outnumbered the large. In 1818, there were only 7 German states with populations in excess of one million; 21 had fewer than 100,000 inhabitants (see the chapter by Lee for more details on population; see also Map 3.1). The Confederation managed to get by on a minimum of institutions and personnel. It had only one statutory body, the Federal Diet (Bundesversammlung), which met in Frankfurt. The Diet was effectively a permanent congress of diplomatic representatives who were appointed and instructed by their respective governments. The supreme executive organ of the Confederation was the Inner Council (Engerer Rat); all the states were represented on this body, but only Austria, the kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, Saxony and Hanover, Electoral Hesse, the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, Denmark (on account of Holstein) and the Netherlands (on account of the grand duchy of Luxemburg) had the right to a full individual vote; the remaining states were organized by size in groups of between two and nine members, each of which had one vote. The Inner Council dealt with the regular administration of the Confederation; if matters arose that touched on the Confederal constitution or on the function and status of its institutions, these had to be dealt with by the Plenary Diet (Plenum), in which each state spoke and voted for itself. But even here, the primacy of the greater states was guaranteed by allocation of votes; with four votes each, Austria and the five kingdoms could combine to veto any unwelcome initiative from a smaller state. The Confederation does not enjoy a good reputation. It was a bitter disappointment to those federalists and nationalists who had hoped for a more cohesive organization of the German territories and it has been much criticized since. One historian has recently described it as ‘a prediluvian monster’ that had no place in the age of the emergent nation 28

Map 3.1  The German Confederation in 1815.

Germany 1815–48: Restoration or Pre-March?

29

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state, another as an ‘incarnation of illiberality and oppression’.2 These reproaches reflect two distinct, though related, lines of argument that have often been advanced against the Confederation. It is certainly true that the Confederation failed to create genuinely ‘national’ institutions. The Act of 1815 had left open a number of important issues, including joint defence policy, the creation of a unified economic area within the Confederation, the legal status of the Jews and constitutional reform. These were to be subject to subsequent debate and deliberation by the Confederal Diet. It was thus plausible, in 1815, to believe that the following years would see the gradual extension of the central powers and responsibilities of the Confederation, and perhaps even the emergence of a genuinely ‘federal’ German authority. In the event, these hopes were not fulfilled. Power remained firmly in the hands of the individual sovereigns. The promised Confederal regulation of the status of Jewish residents was not forthcoming. Instead, Jews remained subject to a bewildering variety of regional legal codes – thirty-three, for example, in the Kingdom of Prussia alone. The question of constitutional reform was likewise left to the discretion of the individual states. Attempts to reach an agreement on customs in the German states foundered on Austrian opposition. The failure of the Diet to take the lead in organizing a German Customs Union was to prove highly significant, since it enabled Prussia, which had already effected a union in its own territories, to seize and retain the initiative in this area. The German Customs Union that emerged in 1834 was not motivated by Prussian desire to found a small German nation state, nor did it represent an irreversible step towards the emergence of such a state. But to the Austrian government, which remained excluded from the Zollverein, its strategic significance as a means by which Prussia might exert influence on the lesser states was clear. (On the economic significance of the German Customs Union (Deutsche Zollverein), see the chapter by Lee.) National defence was one area in which the Confederation did have some limited success in establishing federal institutions. Under Article 2 of the ‘Final Act’ (Wiener Schlussakte) of 1820, a revised version of the earlier Federal Act of 1815, the Confederation was to exist as ‘a community of independent states’ in its domestic affairs but as a ‘politically unified, federated power in its external relations’. The ‘military constitution’ accepted in its final form after long debate in July 1822 provided for a single wartime army under unified command. In fact, however, the ‘federal army’ never became a cohesive body. Its various contingents rarely served together, there was very little common planning or policymaking, and the great royal armies, such as the Austrian and the Prussian ones, clung to their particularist traditions. The fact was that after 1815, the states of the Confederation had very diverse defence priorities. The small states were concerned above all to avoid any move that might subordinate their interests to those of a more powerful partner. In the event of conflict with France, the south German states were first in the line of fire; in times of crisis, they drew together and looked to Prussia for support. Austria, by contrast, saw the southwest German states as a buffer zone (and possible battlefield) between France and the Austrian heartland; it was more concerned to protect its vulnerable Italian possessions. The absence of a 30

Germany 1815–48: Restoration or Pre-March?

coordinated Confederal defence policy became painfully evident during the French war scares of 1830 and 1840–1. In marked contrast with its half-hearted efforts at reform was the vigour with which the Diet set about suppressing political dissent within the Confederation. In 1819, after the assassination of the publicist Kotzebue by the radical nationalist student Karl Sand, the Confederation began to acquire new powers of censorship and surveillance. The ‘Karlsbad Decrees’, initiated by Chancellor Metternich and passed by the Diet in September 1819, called for closer supervision of the universities throughout the Confederation, the dismissal of subversive teaching staff, as well as the establishment of a press commission for the enforcement of censorship throughout the German states and of a ‘Mainz Central Investigative Commission’ for dealing with persons involved in ‘revolutionary agitation’. These new federal responsibilities were enshrined in the ‘Final Act’ of 1820, Article 26 of which stipulated that the Confederation had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of a member state in order to suppress unrest and restore order, even if the government of that state was ‘rendered unable to request help’. In July 1832, shortly after the Hambach Festival (see p. 37 below), the Diet introduced new and stronger censorship regulations; forbade public assemblies and festivals, as well as the foundation of political clubs; organized new forms of surveillance over travellers and ‘conspicuous’ persons; and established procedures for the extradition of political suspects. In the aftermath of an attack by ex-student activists on the garrison buildings in Frankfurt in 1833, the Diet even founded a new political intelligence-gathering institute, the Frankfurt Investigation Authority. The new body was intended to collate information on political malefactors through informants, surveillance and interrogation, but like its predecessor in Mainz, it tended increasingly to act preventatively against those merely suspected of subversive activity. The most important Confederal powers involved the use of armed force on the territory of a member state. In October 1830, following the revolutionary unrest of that year, new laws were introduced by the Diet permitting armed intervention within member states with or without the prior request or permission of the relevant governments. This was more than a paper threat; a Confederal force intervened in revolutionary Luxembourg in 1830 and against the Free City of Frankfurt in 1833 (after the above-mentioned attack on the garrison buildings). There were also cases in which the mere threat of armed intervention was sufficient to coerce governments into following the line set out by the Diet. When Baden, for example, introduced liberal press laws and abolished internal censorship towards the end of 1831, the Diet successfully used the threat of ‘federal action’ (Bundesexekution) to reassert the validity for all territories of the Press Laws of 1819. That the Confederation was illiberal and oppressive is impossible to deny. That it was an anachronism, a ‘prediluvian monster’, is a more complex claim that may require some qualification. There is no doubt that the Diet was out of tune with nationalist aspirations. The war scare of 1840–1, when loose talk by the Thiers government in Paris prompted fears that France would push her borders forwards to her ‘natural frontier’ on the Rhine, generated a wave of nationalist ‘Rhine songs’ by poets and poetasters across the German states. But it is important not to overestimate the power or homogeneity 31

Nineteenth-Century Germany

of German nationalism as a political force during this period. German nationalism as a mass phenomenon tended to be reactive, erupting in response to perceived threats (especially from France) and then subsiding again. It is true that nationalist organizations such as the Gymnasts’ Movement (Turnbewegung) grew at an impressive rate in the mid-1840s – there were 90,000 gymnasts in 300 clubs by 1847 – but attachments to individual states and dynasties remained strong. And as the experiences of 1848 were to show, confessional allegiances divided Catholic enthusiasts for a German nation under Habsburg captaincy from Protestant ‘small-Germans’ who envisaged a narrower federation under Hohenzollern leadership. Recent studies have tended to reject the teleology implicit in the nationalist critique and to focus on the Confederation’s ‘forward-looking’ characteristics.3 It was an association of sovereign entities with a commitment to the maintenance of peace and the provision of justice through interstate arbitration; in these respects, it ‘anticipated’ modern supranational entities such as the United Nations and the European Union. It may not have produced a unified German citizenship law, but it did regulate the citizenship status of its inhabitants through a ‘web’ of federal deportation treaties.4 Moreover, the Confederation succeeded in reconciling a robust and peaceful solution of the ‘German question’ with the need to meet the security needs of the European great powers in the then-foreseeable future. Viewed from the perspective of our own day, this was a formidable achievement.

The modernizing state The major German states all emerged from the years of war and internal reform with larger, better organized and more powerful bureaucracies. Supreme executive power remained with the sovereign, but his authority was increasingly mediated through state officials. This can be seen in the changing balance of fiscal power. While revenues raised personally by the sovereign through loans or from royal domains – once staple sources of public finance – dwindled in significance, those collected by officials in taxes, tolls and tariffs accounted for an increasing portion of state income. For G. W. F. Hegel, professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1818 whose writings profoundly influenced the thinking of generations of Germans, these were developments of the most fundamental importance. Hegel saw the rationalized, bureaucratized state as the highest form of government. As a ‘universal caste’ distinct from civil society, the bureaucracy was uniquely capable of providing informed and disinterested administration for the good of all. Following in this tradition, a number of historians have seen in the emergent Beamtenstaat (civil service state) of the post-war decades the single most important motor of social and economic modernization. There is something to be said for this view. In Prussia, for example, one could cite the bureaucratic achievements of the era of reform discussed in the previous chapter. Bureaucrats played a crucial role in the establishment of a Prussian Customs Union in 1818, forerunner of the German Customs 32

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Union (Zollverein) negotiated in 1834. In Württemberg, Bavaria and Baden, bureaucrats helped to draw up ‘national’ constitutions (see below). One could find further evidence for the modernizing role of the state in the area of educational provision. Prussia was the first major German state to introduce compulsory primary schooling. By 1848, the state provided systematic teacher-training in forty-nine purpose-designed institutions. Rates of school attendance and general literacy far outstripped those in France and Britain. Important as these achievements are, the thesis of the modernizing state requires some qualification. A distinction has to be drawn between the political and the economic spheres. The state was not, generally speaking, a politically progressive institution. Even Hardenberg, one of the great modernizers of the Prussian bureaucracy, took an extremely illiberal line on political dissent. Indeed, one historian has described the Prussian bureaucracy in this period as an ‘agency of domination’ which acted to control and contain public and even domestic life through the routine administration of violence. This contrast between political reaction and economic modernity led Thomas Nipperdey to speak of the ‘Janus-head’ of the Prussian state after 1815.5 But even in the economic sphere, the state’s achievements were ambivalent. The most recent studies have tended to relativize the longer-term impact of the reform undertaken during the Napoleonic era. In Prussia, it has been argued that a resurgence of conservative forces resulted in the modification or disabling of key legislative initiatives and a ‘victory for traditional society’.6 And throughout the post-war decades, state bureaucracies did little to help and much to hinder economic development. The Prussian financial bureaucracy opposed the foundation of joint-stock companies and thus hindered the concentration of funds necessary to facilitate investment. Moreover, government credit policies tended to favour agriculture, with the result that money was drawn away from industrial and commercial investment. In this and many other areas, government policy reflected the still-formidable political power of the landed nobility. The government did attempt to promote industry by sponsoring various technical experiments and innovations, but its approach was haphazard and its successes were modest. Detailed studies of individual sectors of the economy have revealed a similarly negative picture. Mining entrepreneurs in the Ruhr valley region, for example, found their freedom of action constrained by the government’s insistence on managing the industry through its own bureaucratic ‘experts’. Mine owners frequently complained of overregulation and red tape. In 1842, a water pump had to be removed from the ‘Crown Prince’ mine in the Ruhr because the owner had not obtained a permit from the Bergamt before installation; while the machine was out of commission, the mine flooded and had to be abandoned. The state’s most significant contribution to the later industrialization of Prussia probably lay in the area of infrastructure (especially roads and waterways) and technical education. (For an evaluation of the economic impact of state policy, see the chapter by Lee.) State bureaucracies remained small by modern standards. It is true that after 1815 a growing percentage of government spending went into administrative costs and bureaucratically administered social services, but the lion’s share still went to the military, as in the eighteenth century. Many German states were heavily indebted by 33

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the end of the wars and large payments in debt service put pressure on bureaucratic budgets. As a consequence, the overall number of government officials remained low or gradually declined. In 1846, there were only 7.1 government employees in Prussia for every thousand subjects and only a very small proportion of these were administrative bureaucrats proper. Policemen were particularly thin on the ground, a fact which substantially qualified the state’s capacity to impose day-to-day control. Indeed, one historian has spoken of a ‘trickling away’ of the state’s power in rural areas, where the shortage of officials was most keenly felt.7 The situation was different in the south of Germany, where bureaucracies tended to be larger. In Württemberg, for example, the number of persons employed in ‘public service’ in 1821 stood at 53,849: about 1 in 3 adult males not working on the land was working for the government. In the south German states, the bureaucracy became the dominant political force, not only through its administrative functions but also through the involvement of officials in parliamentary politics. Bureaucrats had a vital role to play in homogenizing the diverse administrative districts of the recently expanded south German states. Their special status was recognized in the state constitutions, where the public standing and function of the civil servant were formally set down and guaranteed. However, greater size did not necessarily entail heightened effectiveness. There were practical limitations to the bureaucracy’s ability to impose reforms; in Bavaria, measures taken in support of industry and manufacture proved sporadic and ineffective. The laws introduced by the Bavarian government to raise agricultural productivity foundered on the inertia and conservatism of the agrarian sector. A comprehensive reform of Bavarian agriculture was not introduced until the 1850s. In Württemberg, despite the draconian penalties meted out to those who dared to impugn the civil service, there were frequent complaints of the wasteful ‘surfeit of scribbling’ (Vielschreiberei) that so burdened public finances, and recent economic surveys have tended to confirm that the diversion of public money into the large southern bureaucracies harmed, rather than helped, economic growth and development. Many contemporary observers were less concerned with the economic than with the social impact of bureaucratic reforms. In the south German states and to a lesser extent in Prussia, the nobility emerged from the era of wartime reforms with its privileges and political standing diminished. In this context, it is easy to understand why conservative noblemen railed in the immediate post-war years against the new ‘administrative despotism, which eats up everything like vermin’.8 But it is also important not to underestimate the continuing power and social dominance of the nobility, despite the upheavals of the reform era. In some areas, such as Bavaria and East-Elbian Prussia, nobles retained their traditional policing and judicial rights after well-organized campaigns against the modernizing bureaucrats. In Prussian Silesia, they even managed to cling on to their feudal rights until 1848. In the Kingdom of Saxony, likewise, the old feudal agrarian system remained intact, though this changed after 1830, when feudal tenure was abolished in the wake of widespread social unrest. Nobles continued to dominate the agrarian sector in their capacity as large landowners – in Prussia, many estate owners bought up the smallholdings of their emancipated peasants and 34

Germany 1815–48: Restoration or Pre-March?

became successful agrarian entrepreneurs. Moreover, throughout and beyond the period covered by this chapter, nobilities dominated the political, administrative and military institutions of most of the German states: the parliaments, provincial Diets, bureaucracies and armies.

Political mobilization There had been talk at the Congress of Vienna of harmonizing the various political systems within the new German Confederation: in fact, however, the individual states took matters into their own hands and the result was a diverse array of constitutional arrangements that makes any generalization problematic. Broadly speaking, one can distinguish between those states in which the old corporate representative bodies retained all or much of their power – the Free City of Lübeck, Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Prussia and other small north German states – and those which issued formal constitutions providing for the convocation of bicameral representative assemblies – Nassau, Württemberg, Bavaria, Baden and several of the small Thuringian states. The constitutions of the southern states created a completely new institutional context for political participation in Germany. For the first time, parliaments became partners in the legislative process. No law or budget could be passed without their approval. It is important, however, not to exaggerate the ‘modernity’ of these new political arrangements. Almost all of the constitutions were ‘issued’ by sovereigns; there was no prior negotiation with constituent assemblies. The monarch remained the supreme executive with decisive powers of veto and emergency decree. Moreover, governments did what they could to prevent parliaments from becoming a focus of partisan political activity. Deputies were forbidden, for example, to choose their seats in the chamber; instead, places were preassigned or drawn by lot in order to prevent the coalescence of like-minded factions. The German constitutions enshrined various ‘human rights’, such as equality before the law, freedom of confession and of conscience and the security of property, but political rights, such as freedom of association and assembly or freedom of the press, were either not granted at all or were hedged in by conditions permitting their curtailment by law or decree. Moreover, the upper chambers of the south German parliaments, whose agreement was also required for the passing of any law, were dominated by princes of the ruling family, members of the high nobility and appointed notables. Until 1848, elections for the lower chambers were subject to numerous restrictions. Suffrage was limited to males who met certain legal and economic qualifications and voting was indirect – enfranchised citizens voted for a college of electors drawn from the social elite, who then selected the deputies; these were themselves required to satisfy stringent economic criteria. In Baden, for example, often regarded as the most liberal of the south German polities, 17 per cent of the population was entitled both to vote and to stand for the college of electors, but only 0.5 per cent was entitled to become deputies if elected. In Bavaria and Württemberg, traces of the old corporate representation 35

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remained, even in the lower chambers, where people voted under separate franchise regimes according to occupation and social group. Despite these and other measures designed to limit the impact of the political process on the public, the parliaments of the south German states did manage to function as the focus for a political opposition of sorts. In 1823, for example, a narrow majority of deputies in the lower chamber of the Baden parliament succeeded in blocking the government’s new budget. In the early 1830s, a dispute raged between Duke William of Nassau and his parliament over the sovereign’s right to dispose of the ducal domains. When the government refused in 1832 to comply with the demands of the liberal parliamentary majority, the entire lower chamber, excluding five loyalist deputies, resigned en masse in a public gesture of disgust. The unequal distribution of constitutional and coercive power meant that governments generally had little difficulty overcoming such opposition. They could stock the upper chambers with loyalist appointees, shift the focus of decision making away from the legislature into government committees, dissolve uncooperative parliaments or employ intimidation in order to prevent the re-election of opposition deputies. One example is the Heidelberg bookseller Christian Friedrich Winter, who had led the anti-budget ‘faction’ in the Baden parliament in 1823. The college of electors in his Heidelberg constituency was informed by the government that if it re-elected Winter its beloved university would be moved to another town. The unevenness of the contest between sovereigns and elected deputies sometimes had the effect of moving the focus of political opposition out of the parliaments altogether. But in spite of these frustrations and setbacks, it is striking how significant the representative assemblies remained as forums of political dispute and argumentation. In Hesse-Darmstadt, a protracted struggle between the opposition and the reactionary Grand Duke Ludwig II during the early and mid-1830s resulted in the emergence of a liberal faction under the able leadership of Ludwig von Gagern; he and his movement were to win an impressive victory in the parliamentary elections of September 1847. In 1843, liberal deputies in the Baden parliament began to sit together, thereby declaring their willingness to work together under a single programme. The vote of no confidence passed by the lower chamber in the same year represented a further important milestone in the development of parliamentary politics in Germany. Even the very modest provincial assemblies of neo-absolutist Prussia, which were intended to function solely as advisory bodies, gradually became centres of liberal opposition to government policy. What did ‘liberal’ mean in the context of early nineteenth-century Germany? This question is less easy to answer than one might expect. Although the term was in widespread use by the early 1830s, its meaning remained imprecise. There was no single liberal ‘party’ or organization with a monopoly of liberal doctrine. Generally speaking, liberals were opponents of despotism and defenders of liberty. They demanded that the power of the state be bounded by laws and constitutions and they opposed privilege by birth. Their attitude to the state was ambivalent. Many opposed the incursions of state bureaucracies; the castigation of ‘paper government’ was one of the stock themes of south German liberalism. But many looked upon the strong constitutional state with favour as 36

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the chief guarantor of law and order, especially in periods of heightened social unrest. Many liberals favoured free trade, but some did not: ‘economic liberals’ called for the removal of constraints on the free operation of markets; ‘cameral liberals’ (the categories are those of the German historian Dieter Langewiesche9) sought the implementation of liberal policies through agencies of the state. Early nineteenth-century German liberals were far from being democrats in the modern sense. They saw themselves as representatives of ‘the people’, by which they generally meant the educated, property-owning elite. Liberals tended to distinguish between those whose education and economic standing justified their participation in the political process and the ‘mob’ (Pöbel), though there were widely diverging views on where exactly the line should be drawn. Their political preferences and cultural outlook were those of the emergent Bürgertum: professionals, academics, men involved in commerce and manufacture. But it would be a mistake to see liberalism as confined to the 5 per cent of the population who belonged to the commercial and educated bourgeoisie. Many distinguished liberals were noblemen, such as Heinrich von Gagern in Hesse-Darmstadt and Theodor von Schön in Prussia, and it is clear that liberalism also enjoyed considerable support among the self-employed in trade, manufacture and services. Thanks to economic restrictions on the franchise in the constitutional German states, the upper reaches of the Bürgertum tended to be overrepresented in the liberal parliamentary factions. But liberal political activity was not confined to representative institutions. There were liberal ‘factions’ in many of the German bureaucracies. This was certainly the case in Prussia, where it has been argued that senior officialdom functioned as a kind of ‘surrogate parliament’. Although historians no longer argue that the Prussian bureaucracy as a whole was liberal, it is clear that there were significant groups of liberal officials, though their influence on policy appears gradually to have waned after 1820. In Baden, liberal officials played an important role in mobilizing public opinion against the government after the reactionary ministry of Freiherr von Blittersdorf tried to prevent them from taking up seats in parliament by restricting civil service leave allowances in 1839; there were similar campaigns by civil servants in the other southern states. Political opposition in Restoration Germany was not, of course, limited to these forms of ‘institutional’ dissent. A variety of extra-parliamentary groups emerged in the immediate post-war years, of which the most important was a small but active student movement organized around university fraternities known as Burschenschaften. The Burschenschaftler were Romantic nationalists who hoped by the creation of a panGerman student movement to overcome the narrow confines of the dynastic polities. The political implications of the students’ nationalism remained unclear. Some saw their task in terms of education and culture; others were willing to contemplate a more activist political agenda. In October 1817, members of the movement congregated to hold a political festival on the Wartburg. Here, at the castle where Luther had produced his translation of the Bible, students gathered to hear speeches exhorting them to take up the cause of the nation. It is important not to exaggerate the impact of the student 37

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movement; there were fewer than 500 students on the Wartburg in 1817, and probably no more than 1,000 Burschenschaftler in all. The festival’s importance lies more in the emotional and theatrical character of its politics. In addition to hearing and giving speeches, the students burnt reactionary books and objects held to symbolize despotism, among them an officer’s cane and a French corset. They wore jackets and hats intended to evoke the traditional ‘German costume’; their colours (black, red and gold) were those of the patriotic volunteers who had fought in the Wars of Liberation. ‘Festivals’ of this kind, in which specific political appeals were blended with the emotive use of symbol and spectacle were henceforth to play an important role in the development of nationalist and radical movements in Germany. The Burschenschaft movement suffered a serious setback in 1819 when a student from its most radical wing stabbed to death a popular playwright rumoured to have been employed as a spy by the Russian legation in Mannheim. The assassination prompted a dramatic change in the political mood. The governments of the German states, egged on by the Austrian chancellor, Metternich, introduced a package of laws known as the ‘Karlsbad Decrees’ (see above, p. 29) to tighten controls on political activity throughout the Confederation. The student movement was banned, as was the ‘old German costume’, and fraternity members were hounded by the police. A censorship regime was introduced and the right to form voluntary associations was narrowly circumscribed. Despite these constraints, the decades of the Restoration era saw the emergence of a widespread and increasingly differentiated network of voluntary organizations whose tone was predominantly liberal. In the 1820s, for example, a wave of support for the Greek uprising against the Ottoman Empire led to the formation of a dense network of ‘Greek clubs’ concentrated especially in the southwest of Germany. The Griechenvereine attracted volunteers from an unprecedentedly broad social spectrum ranging from the Bürgertum to urban and rural labourers. The clubs were not overtly ‘political’ in their aims, but they developed innovative techniques of public mobilization such as the mass distribution of posters and pamphlets and used political festivals and monuments to encourage public ‘participation’ in the campaign. In an environment where nationalist sentiment was viewed as politically suspicious, this vicarious celebration of other countries’ emancipation struggles provided a covert means of advocating a national solution in Germany itself. In 1830, the July Revolution in Paris combined with widespread shortages and price rises caused by poor harvests to produce a political crisis in several German states. The main centres of civil unrest in the autumn of 1830 were Saxony, Braunschweig, Hesse-Darmstadt and Electoral Hesse. In Braunschweig, there was open rebellion; the ducal residence was set on fire on 7 September and the duke himself was forced to flee. Although the motivations for these episodes of unrest had little to do with high politics – more important was the failure of respective administrations to meet social needs – they had lasting political consequences. Constitutions were subsequently granted in all four states. Throughout the German Confederation and especially in the southwest, the events of 1830 raised the political temperature. Factional politics in the parliaments became more confrontational. There was an unprecedented flood of political pamphlets 38

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and a proliferation of new dissenting organizations. Among the best known of these was the Patriotic Club in Support of the Free Press (‘Press Club’), founded in 1832 to protest against the reactionary policies of the Bavarian government and specifically its restrictive press laws. Members were distributed across 116 auxiliary associations in Bavaria and neighbouring states. Whereas the printed propaganda of the Press Club tended to focus on constitutional issues and to reflect the world view of the commercial and academic Bürgertum, the speeches of individual agitators often focused on social issues and adopted a more radical tone. In this way, Press Club publicity reflected increasingly divergent standpoints within German liberalism. Press Club agitation culminated in a political festival at the ruined castle of Hambach near Neustadt. The Hambacher Fest attracted at least 20,000 participants and has rightly been described as ‘the first political demonstration in modern German history’.10 Once again the internal tensions within the opposition were manifest; the extremism of some of the speeches far exceeded the intentions of the organizers. This did not escape the attention of the watchful Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich: ‘Liberalism has given way to radicalism’, he commented in a letter to the Austrian ambassador in Berlin.11 In June and July 1832, new laws were issued under the authority of the German Confederation forbidding ‘festivals’ and large assemblies and tightening censorship controls. Those ‘radicals’ who stood to the left of liberalism placed more emphasis on social and economic reform as a precondition for the exercise of political liberties; they were likely to be republican, whereas most liberals were constitutional monarchists. They favoured a greatly enlarged or even universal male franchise. Voting for women was not on the agenda. The dividing line between radicals and liberals was only gradually clarified, but the widespread unrest of the early 1830s was a crucial milestone in the emergence of a distinctive radical milieu. Radicals distinguished themselves less by their political programmes than by their greater willingness to carry out or condone attacks upon authority. They directed their appeals above all to artisans, peasants and labourers. Radical agitation among these strata was not entirely without success. A network of activist cells and small associations emerged, most of them dominated by urban artisans, and radical factions began to crystallize in some of the parliaments, but in general there was little public sympathy for radical politics. In April 1833, for example, when a small gang of ex-student and artisan activists stormed the police station in Frankfurt am Main, the stolid burghers of the city looked on with interest but offered nothing in the way of support. Radical activism was marked by amateurishness and dilettantism – ‘professional revolutionaries’ of the legendary type were few and far between. Meanwhile, on the socialist and communist far left, there were attempts to establish a sound theoretical basis for a revolutionary agenda. By the late 1840s, Karl Marx was emerging as an influential figure. The brilliance – and savagery – of the polemical essays in which Marx defended his views and demolished the arguments of his various rivals were to ensure him a central place in the nascent labour movement. For the moment, however, Marx and the communist left played at best a marginal role in the political experience of most German labourers and artisans. 39

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By comparison with liberalism and radicalism, conservative politics have until recently attracted relatively little attention. Though it is clear that the states of the German Confederation often adopted reactionary policies, it is important not to conflate conservatism with the centres of government power. As often as not, conservatives found themselves in opposition to the state. In Prussia, for example, conservative political circles formed among sections of the nobility in opposition to the reforming measures of government bureaucrats. And within the bureaucracy itself, a conservative faction fought with considerable success to wrest control over policymaking from liberal senior officials. In Baden, conservative nobles rejected the constitution offered by the grand duke and boycotted the parliament, preferring instead to lobby the Confederal authorities in Frankfurt. The Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, founded in 1827 by the theologian Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg in Berlin, was the chief organ of north German conservative opinion in the late 1820s and 1830s, but it, too, opposed the Prussian government on various issues, especially in the area of church policy. The Berliner Politische Wochenblatt founded by ultraconservatives in 1831, conceived of itself as a loyalist organ directed against the subversive forces unleashed by the July Revolution, but even this newspaper was subject to constant obstruction from government censorship authorities. The public resonance of such journals was modest, but they bore witness to a growing willingness among conservatives to ‘organize’ for the purpose of influencing opinion. Generally speaking, conservative political theory used organic metaphors and religious argumentation to legitimate an idealized ‘traditional order’. Historically given, ‘natural’ social relations based on paternalistic and localized structures of authority were opposed to the levelling, homogenizing thrust of bureaucratic modernization. It was not until the late 1840s, with the rise to prominence of the legal theorist Friedrich Julius Stahl, that a middle road was found between modern constitutionalism and the provincial, nostalgic politics of the old conservatives. (On the realignments of conservatives during the revolutionary upheaval of 1848–1949, see the chapter by Siemann.) The opportunities for women to participate in the political public sphere remained narrowly circumscribed – indeed they may have been narrower than in the last decades of the previous century. In general, this era saw a polarization of gender roles that reflected the legacy of mass conscription during the Napoleonic era and the patriarchal attitudes of those middle-class activists who tended to dominate liberal and radical networks. Liberals cultivated a political imaginary organized around independent, male, taxpaying heads of household, and there was a macho edge to the high-risk activism favoured in radical circles. For politically engaged women, the effort to gain access to higher education, intervene in networks and earn the respect of male contemporaries was from the outset a struggle against long odds. But the activism and the impact of women such as the composer Johanna Kinkel, who co-edited the Bonner Zeitung; the radical feminist and abolitionist Ottilie Assing; the novelist Fanny Lewald or Malwida von Meysenbug, an active proponent of caritative institutes for the poor convey a sense of what brilliant and determined individuals could achieve. (For more on these issues, see the chapters by Köhler and Frevert.)

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The social question Public discussion and debate in Germany during the last decade before the revolutions of 1848 were characterized by a growing awareness of social issues. Books such as Lorenz Stein’s History of Social Movements in France from 1789 to Our Own Day (1842) and Friedrich Engels’ Condition of the Working Classes in England (1845) raised public awareness of the ‘social question’ by focusing on the plight of factory workers and artisans. In 1841, when Bettina von Arnim published her two-volume work This Book Is for the King in Berlin, readers were less interested in the book’s political arguments than in its long appendix documenting the appalling living conditions that prevailed among industrial and manufacturing workers in Berlin. The ‘social question’ embraced a complex of different issues: working conditions within factories, the problem of housing in densely populated areas, the dissolution of corporate entities (e.g. guilds and estates), the vicissitudes of a capitalist economy based on competition, the decline of religion and morals among the emergent ‘proletariat’ and the fear of revolutionary upheaval. In other words, the social question was also a political question, which turned on divergent evaluations of economic liberalism and its consequences. But the central and dominant issue was ‘pauperization’, the progressive impoverishment of the lower social strata. The ‘pauperism’ of the pre-March era differed from traditional forms of poverty in a number of important ways. It was a mass phenomenon, collective and structural, rather than dependent upon individual contingencies, such as sickness, injury or crop failures. It was permanent rather than seasonal. And it showed signs of engulfing social groups whose position had previously been relatively secure, such as artisans (especially apprentices and journeymen) and smallholding peasants. ‘Pauperism’, the Brockhaus Encyclopaedia noted in 1846, ‘occurs when a large class can subsist only as a result of the most intensive labour’. The key problem was a decline in the value of labour and its products. This affected not only unskilled labourers and those who worked in the craft trades but also the large and growing section of the rural population who lived from various forms of cottage industry. Inevitably, the causes of mass poverty were extremely complex; generalizations are difficult, since conditions varied according to occupation and locality. The older historical literature on this subject tended to focus on state-sponsored processes of modernization, particularly industrialization, arguing that more efficient modes of production had a drastic effect on older forms of manufacture. But, as we have seen, this view is founded on a misapprehension of the power and ambitions of the state. Industrialization had made only very modest advances in the German states by the time revolution broke out. German society remained overwhelmingly rural; in the 1840s, over 70 per cent of the population still worked on the land. There were a few sectors (such as cotton-printing, typesetting and nail-making) in which mechanized production posed a serious threat to manual labour by the late 1840s, but in the great majority of manufacturing trades, various kinds of skilled and unskilled manual labour still predominated. In 1846, for example, when there were at least 55,000 male workers in Berlin, the city could boast

41

Nineteenth-Century Germany

only 75 steam engines. In Prussia as a whole, industrial workers proper accounted for no more than 3.9 per cent of the population. The most fundamental cause of mass impoverishment was probably demographic growth. In 1816, the population of the German Confederation, including the three provinces of Prussia outside its borders, was about 32.7 million. By 1865, this figure had risen by 60 per cent to 52.2 million. The reasons for this rapid growth are still debated and they cannot be dealt with here (see further Chapter 4, pp. 52ff). However, it is important to remember that the impact of demographic growth was socially very uneven. It was above all a rural phenomenon. In Prussia, for example, the population increased by 56 per cent from 10.3 million in 1816 to 15.9 million in 1846, while the percentage of the population living in cities rose only from 26 per cent to 28 per cent. A few cities, particularly Berlin, did experience dramatic growth, but the overall picture was one of stasis. Both in the cities and on the land, moreover, the effects of population growth were most apparent among the least economically secure social groups. On the land the abolition (by liberal bureaucrats) of marriage restrictions and the extension of land under cultivation raised nuptiality and fertility among the ‘sub-peasant strata’ (unterbäuerlichen Schichten), especially families living on subsistence holdings and landless rural labourers. In Minden-Ravensberg, for example, the ratio of families living from the wages of hired labour to full-time peasants (Vollbauern) was 149/100 in 1800; by 1846, the ratio had risen to 310/100. Such families earned an increasingly marginal living from a combination of agrarian labour and various forms of domestic piecework for merchants who dealt with supra-regional markets. Rural labourers of this kind spent most of their income on food; they were vulnerable not only to rises in the cost of agrarian produce but also to fluctuations in the business cycle which could depress demand for the goods – especially textiles – they helped to manufacture. There was a similarly disproportionate growth in the number of artisans. This becomes clear if we consult figures for Prussia during the period 1816–46, when, as we have seen, the population as a whole rose by 56 per cent. The number of master artisans rose by 70 per cent during the same period. Much more dramatic was the rise (156 per cent) in the number of assistants and apprentices. A similarly dramatic growth in this sector can be observed for the same period in the German Confederation as a whole. In a buoyant, elastic economy, such changes may have been sustainable; in the stagnant conditions of the 1830s and 1840s, however, the growth in the labour supply was not matched by a corresponding demand for manufactured products. The result – leaving aside the dramatic differences between regions and sectors – was a continual net decline in the living standard of those involved in craft trades and rural protoindustrial manufacture. From the 1830s, the Poor Office in Cologne dedicated a special category of charity to master craftsmen who had fallen on hard times. A contemporary statistical survey suggested that between 50 and 60 per cent of the Prussian population were living on a subsistence minimum. The striking combination of rising population and mass poverty may lead us to suspect that the social crisis of this era was the result of a ‘Malthusian trap’, where the needs of the population exceeded the available supply of agricultural produce. However, it is important to remember that during the period 42

Germany 1815–48: Restoration or Pre-March?

covered by this chapter technical improvements (artificial fertilizers, modernized animal husbandry and the three-field rotation system) and an increase in land under cultivation had doubled the productivity of German agriculture. In other words, the food supply increased at about twice the rate of population growth in the German Confederation. The problem was not, therefore, chronic underproduction. But large agricultural surpluses could also have a harmful effect on manufacturing, since they depressed the prices of agricultural produce. The result was a collapse in agrarian incomes and a corresponding decline in the demand for goods from the overcrowded manufacturing sector. More importantly, food supplies remained vulnerable despite the impressive growth in total agricultural production, because natural catastrophes – poor harvests, cattle epidemics, crop diseases – could still turn the surplus into a drastic shortfall. This is what happened in the winter of 1846, when harvest failures sent food prices up to double and even triple the normal average. The crisis was compounded by a downturn in the business cycle and a crop disease that wiped out the potato harvests upon which many regions had become dependent. The rise in prices was accompanied by a heightened frequency of civic unrest. In Prussia alone, 158 food riots – marketplace riots, attacks on stores and shops and transportation blockades – took place during April/May 1847, when prices were at their highest. Interestingly enough, the geography of food riots did not coincide with that of the most acute shortage. Extremely hardhit areas like Upper Silesia, where some 50,000 people are thought to have died from diseases related to malnutrition, remained riot free. Riots were more likely to occur in areas which produced food for export, or in transit areas with high levels of food transportation. Such protests should certainly not be seen as ‘rehearsals’ for revolution; they were generally pragmatic attempts to control the food supply, or to ‘remind’ the authorities of their traditional obligations to provide for afflicted subjects. Rioters did not act as members of a ‘class’, but as representatives of a local community whose right to justice had been denied. The human targets of their wrath were likely to be ‘outsiders’: merchants who dealt with distant markets, customs officials, foreigners or Jews. We have seen that despite considerable improvements in the cultivation of land and livestock German societies remained vulnerable to sudden disruptions in the agrarian sector. This primacy of agriculture led Eric Hobsbawm to describe the European crisis of the late 1840s as ‘the last, and perhaps the worst, economic breakdown of the ancien régime’. This view requires some elaboration: harvest cycles and climate fluctuation remained crucial as they had been in traditional societies; in this sense, certainly, the German crisis of the 1840s was a crisis ‘of the old type’. But the dramatic growth and internal restructuring of the labour force in the manufacturing sector was new. It generated new social groups, who were exposed to poverty in different ways and through more complex mechanisms than the smallholding peasants and traditional artisans of the ancien régime. This helps to explain not only the heightened sensitivity of these groups to fluctuations in supply and demand but also the chronic character of mass poverty in pre-March society. 43

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Religion Throughout the period covered by this chapter, politics and religion were closely intertwined. We must be wary of applying anachronistic assumptions based on the relatively marginal and specialized role of religion in modern public life in western societies. Political views were often articulated in religious language and religious disputes and allegiances could easily take on political character. This was apparent, for example, in the case of those Prussian noble families – Gerlachs, Thaddens, Senfft von Pilsachs, Kleist-Retzows, Belows, Oertzens and others – whose conservatism drew upon religiously motivated opposition to government church policy. In Bavaria, likewise, conservative Catholics in Würzburg formed a ‘Literary Society’ whose aim was to oppose the secularizing reforms of the ministry under Montgelas. Some historians have seen this organization as a forerunner of the Centre Party (see the chapters by Brophy and Hewitson). Political and religious milieux tended to overlayer each other: in Prussia, for example, conservative political mobilization remained a largely Protestant domain. In the predominantly Catholic Rhineland, conservative newspapers were rarely read outside the Protestant ‘ghetto’. Even the political rhetoric of pre-March radicalism, with its evocations of brotherly love, justice, spiritual renewal and utopian prospects, was saturated with the language of the gospels. Religious allegiances also influenced contemporary responses to social problems. The efforts by Protestants to alleviate distress among the impoverished often focused on the need to reconcile the conditions of modern manufacture with the maintenance of a strict ethical code founded on providential religion and the sacralization of labour. Typical of this tendency were the ‘spinning houses’ established by Baron Kottwitz in Silesia and Berlin in the 1810s, or the orphanage complex built up by Count von der Recke near Düsseldorf in the 1820s, where prayer and elementary instruction were combined with work in a variety of manufacturies. By contrast, socially minded Catholics tended to be more fundamental in their criticism of economic liberalism and the modern industrial system. In their place, Catholic theorists offered corporatist solutions: the philosopher Franz von Baader – the first writer in Germany to use the term ‘proletarian’ (1835) – called for obligatory corporations of workers led by priests with the right to political representation in the parliaments. Others called for state controls on the ownership of property, protective tolls, laws against long working hours and child labour and marriage restrictions to prevent further overpopulation. The intention was to reverse the ‘decorporation’ and atomization characteristic of modern capitalist society. These responses doubtless reflected the fact that Catholics and Catholic regions were less involved in the modernization of manufactures and industry than their Protestant counterparts – Protestants were greatly overrepresented, for example, in the early industrial enterprises of the Catholic Rhineland. It is important, however, not to see religion merely as a fund of language and argumentation for various forms of political discourse, or as a passive ‘milieu’ that coloured the public life of German communities. The dynamism of religion as an autonomous social force was arguably greater during this era than at any time since the 44

Germany 1815–48: Restoration or Pre-March?

late seventeenth century. In the Protestant north of Germany, the early decades of the nineteenth century brought a widespread and socially differentiated Christian revival movement. ‘Awakened’ Christians emphasized the emotional, penitential character of faith in a language reminiscent of eighteenth-century pietism; their religious commitment often found expression outside the institutional confines of the church. Characteristic for this period was the proliferation of voluntary Christian societies with a variety of purposes: the distribution of charity, the housing and ‘betterment’ of ‘fallen women’, the moral improvement of prisoners, the care of orphans, the printing and distribution of bibles, the provision of subsistence labour for paupers and vagrants and the conversion of Jews and heathens. Most of these societies were supported by networks of auxiliaries throughout northern Germany. In Prussia, they generally enjoyed the patronage of ‘awakened’ nobles and, in many cases, of the sovereign and his family; the auxiliary groups in smaller communities were often dominated by pious master artisans. German Catholicism also entered a phase of revival during the period covered by this chapter. It is important to remember that the church had been the foremost victim of the secularizations carried out during the Napoleonic era. The ecclesiastical principalities of the old Reich had been dissolved and absorbed into new or enlarged secular states, some with a Protestant majority. The revival of religion among the mass of the Catholic faithful and the tightening of clerical control over popular religious life characteristic of the Restoration era have to be seen against this background. Catholic revival reflected a larger trend away from rationalism towards a greater emphasis on emotion, mystery and revelation – in this sense at least, Catholic and Protestant revival were cut from the same cloth. But it also offered a means of compensating for the church’s traumatic loss of resources and political autonomy. Whereas the Protestant awakening was dominated by lay initiatives, Catholic revivalism tended to be clerically led. In Bavaria from the 1820s, the clergy used liturgical innovations, pilgrimages and processions to encourage and deepen public participation and to replace the rationalist ethics of the Catholic Enlightenment with a respect for mystery and miracle. In the Rhineland, the 1840s saw the emergence of a new style of pilgrimage characterized by mass participation – 400,000 went to view the Holy Robe at Trier in 1844 – and a high level of clerical discipline. The untidy, festive mobs of the traditional pilgrimage were replaced by ordered groups under strict clerical supervision. Closely associated with the phenomenon of Catholic revival was the rise of ultramontanism. Ultramontanes were those who argued that the strict subordination of the church to papal authority was the best way of protecting it from state interference (the pope being south of the Alps and thus ultra montes or ‘beyond the mountains’). They perceived the church as a strictly centralized but international body. Until around 1830, Catholic conservatives were concerned above all with ‘inner’ religious renewal; thereafter, the focus of their activity shifted to strengthening the ties with Rome. Inevitably, the rise of ultramontanism led to increasing tension between church and state. In Bavaria, a dispute broke out in 1831 over the education of children in Catholic–Protestant mixed marriages. The ultramontanes moved on to the offensive and liberal publicists depicted the debate as a struggle between the forces of darkness and light. Six years later, a much 45

Nineteenth-Century Germany

more serious fight broke out over the same issue in Prussia, in the course of which the authorities arrested and imprisoned the ultramontane archbishop of Cologne. Such conflicts helped accelerate the emergence of an increasingly confident and aggressive ‘political Catholicism’. The Historisch-Politischen Blätter für das katholische Deutschland, founded by Joseph Görres in Munich in 1837, became the chief organ of this tendency. It favoured the political consolidation of the traditional corporate social bodies and the return to a Habsburg-led German Reich. In Protestant Germany, there was a similar shift away from the ‘awakening’ of the early decades, with its Romantic and ecumenical overtones, towards a more narrowly confessional revivalism. In 1830, the three-hundredth anniversary of the Confession of Augsburg, one of the founding texts of Lutheran Protestantism, was greeted with celebrations by Lutherans throughout northern Germany. In Saxony, it was the refusal of the Catholic sovereign to permit Lutheran celebrations that unleashed the first protest demonstrations of that troubled year. In Prussia, revived Lutheranism found itself in direct conflict with the government. Since 1817, King Frederick William III had been effecting a gradual union of the Calvinist and Lutheran Confessions in Prussia. But from 1830, an ‘Old Lutheran’ movement emerged in Silesia that openly rejected the Church of the ‘Prussian Union’. The government responded with fines, surveillance, arrests and imprisonment, in the hope that the beleaguered Lutherans would relinquish their separatism and return to the Union. Instead, the Old Lutheran movement steadily grew; by 1840, when Frederick William died, there were some 10,000 known active separatists in Prussia. A further 2,000 had emigrated to Australia and North America to escape persecution. The conflict was only defused when Frederick William IV offered a general amnesty and granted the Lutherans the right to establish themselves within Prussia as an autonomous ‘church society’. Both Protestant and Catholic revivalism were, as we have seen, closely affiliated with conservatism. But these movements did not remain unchallenged within the two confessional communities. The ‘German Catholic’ movement, founded in Leipzig in 1845, called for a severing of ties with Rome and a movement of enlightened spiritual renewal which would abandon the straitjacket of traditional dogma and create the foundation for a German, Catholic–Protestant, ‘national church’. Two years later, the movement had acquired 250 congregations with a total membership of some 60,000, of whom about 20,000 were converts from Protestantism. There were close ties with Germany’s leading political radicals. Among the foremost supporters was Robert Blum, who used his Vaterlandsblätter to combine anti-Roman polemic with attacks on bureaucracy, police and censorship. Another was the radical Gustav von Struve, who was to lead the ill-fated Baden uprising of 1849. The connection between religious critique and political radicalism was equally clear in the case of the Protestant movement known as the ‘Friends of Light’ (Lichtfreunde). Like the German Catholics, the Friends of Light combined rationalist theology with a presbyterial–democratic organizational culture in which authority was devolved on to the individual congregation and its elected elders. The movement was particularly successful in attracting poor urban and rural artisans, especially in Saxony, the most industrialized state in the German Confederation. Both the 46

Germany 1815–48: Restoration or Pre-March?

Friends of Light and the German Catholics were concentrated among social strata and in areas which later became centres of radical democratic activity: Silesia, Saxony, Electoral Hesse, Baden, Vienna. Located halfway between sect and party, these movements offer dramatic evidence of the intimate relationship between religion and politics in the preMarch era.

Conclusion The fascination of the period 1815–48 for students of German history lies partly in its transitional character. The bureaucratic state was larger and stronger than it had been before 1806, but not as strong as it would later become. Parliamentary factions, political ‘festivals’ and mass demonstrations coexisted with corporate noble-dominated estates – a reminder that modernity was born in Germany long before the old regime had died. The result of the overlap, as we have seen, was a heightened tension between restorative inertia and the progressive movement that was briefly to win the day in 1848. But ‘transition’ is in some ways an inadequate metaphor for the developments we have discussed. The mass poverty and social dislocation of the 1840s were not the consequences of a transition from a traditional agrarian to a modern industrial society. Not all movements were progressive and forward-looking, nor, as we have seen, were the forces of Restoration purely backward-looking. Revivalist religion generated a new and dynamic social force that was neither entirely reactionary, nor entirely modern. The political Catholicism that emerged in the 1830s was to play a decisive role in the public life of the Wilhelmine Empire, the Weimar Republic and, later, of the German Federal Republic. Rather than combing through the ‘pre-March’ for the first signs of 1848, we should remember that this era, like all eras, contained the seeds of many futures.

Notes 1. Diary of Leopold von Gerlach, Breslau, February 1813, Bundesarchiv Abteilungen (BA) Potsdam, NL von Gerlach 90 Ge 1 (transcript), B1.45. 2. Hagen Schulze, Der Weg zum Nationalstaat. Die deutsche Nationalbewegung vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Reichsgründung (1994), p. 74; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 2, Von der Reformära bis zur industriellen und politischen ‘deutschen Doppelrevolution’, 1815–1845/49 (2005), p. 368. 3. Jürgen Müller, Deutscher Bund und Deutsche Nation 1848–1866 (2005), pp. 22–3; Jürgen Angelow, Der Deutsche Bund (2003), esp. p. 159; Wolf D. Gruner, Der Deutsche Bund 1815–1866 (2012), esp. p. 32. 4. See Andreas Fahrmeir, Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States 1789–1870 (2000), pp. 31–2. 5. T. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866. Bürgerwelt und starker Staat (1983), p. 333. 6. Paul Nolte, Staatsbildung als Gesellschaftsreform. Politische Reformen in Preußen und den süddeutschen Staaten 1800–1820 (1990), p. 105. 47

Nineteenth-Century Germany 7. J. Kocka, ‘Preußischer Staat und Modernisierung im Vormärz’, in B. Vogel, ed., Preußische Reformen 1807–1820 (1980), pp. 49–65; here p. 58. 8. Leopold von Gerlach, 1 May 1816, BA Potsdam, NL von Gerlach, 90 Ge 2, Bl. 9. 9. D. Langewiesche, Liberalism in Germany (1998). 10. Theodor Heuss, cited in H. Schulze, Der Weg zum Nationalstaat. Die deutsche Nationalbewegung vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Reichsbründung (1985), p. 78. 11. Metternich quoted in J. J. Sheehan, German History 1770–1866 (1989), p. 613.

Select bibliography Anderson, M. L., ‘Piety and Politics: Recent Work on German Catholicism’, Journal of Modern History, 63 (1991), pp. 681–716. Beck, H., ‘The Social Policies of Prussian Officials: The Bureaucracy in a New Light’, Journal of Modern History, 64 (1992), pp. 263–98. Billinger, R. D., Metternich and the German Question: State Rights and Federal Duties 1820–1834 (1991). Botzenhart, M., Reform, Restauration, Krise. Deutschland 1789–1847 (1985). Brophy, J. M., Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830–1870 (1998). Brophy, J. M., Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800–1850 (2007). Brophy, J. M., ‘The Rhine Crisis of 1840 and German Nationalism: Chauvinism, Skepticism, and Regional Reception’, The Journal of Modern History, 85 (2013), pp. 1–35. Diefendorf, J., Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland, 1789–1834 (1980). Hagemann, K., Revisiting Prussia’s Wars Against Napoleon, History, Culture and Memory (2015), pp. 249–396. Hodenberg, C.v., ‘Weaving Survival in the Tapestry of Village Life’, in Jan Kok, ed., Rebellious Families: Household Strategies and Collective Action in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2002), pp. 39–58. Lee, L. E., The Politics of Harmony. Civil Service, Liberalism and Social Reform in Baden 1800–1850 (1980). Lee, W. R., ‘Economic Development and the State in Nineteenth-Century Germany, 1815–1870’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 41 (1988), pp. 346–67. Levinger, M., Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political Culture 1808–1848 (2000). Lüdtke, A., Police and State in Prussia 1815–1850 (1989). Lutz, H., Zwischen Habsburg und Preussen: Deutschland 1815–1866 (1985). Nipperdey, T., Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck 1800–1866, Eng. trs. (1996). Schulze, H., The Course of German Nationalism: From Frederick the Great to Bismarck, trans. S. Hanbury-Tenison (1990). Sheehan, J. J., German History 1770–1866 (1989). Simms, B., The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779–1850 (1998). Sperber, J., Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1984). Sperber, J., ‘State and Civil Society in Prussia: Some Thoughts on a New Edition of Reinhart Koselleck’s Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution’, Journal of Modern History, 57 (1985), pp. 278–96. Sperber, J., Revolutionary Europe, 1780–1850 (2000). Williamson, G. S., ‘What Killed August von Kotzebue? The Temptations of Virtue and the Political Theology of German Nationalism, 1789–1819’, Journal of Modern History, 72 (2000), pp. 890–943. 48

CHAPTER 4 ‘RELATIVE BACKWARDNESS’ AND LONG-RUN DEVELOPMENT: ECONOMIC, DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL CHANGE, 1780–1870

Robert Lee

Introduction Any discussion of Germany’s economic development during the period prior to political unification in 1871 is still influenced by a series of hypotheses stemming from Gerschenkron’s paradigm of ‘relative backwardness’. On the basis of this analysis, Germany’s apparent economic backwardness and the persistence of market imperfections enhanced the role of special institutional factors, such as banks and the state, and generated a more rapid rate of industrialization with a greater emphasis on producer goods, large plant size and up-to-date technology. The creation of a unified internal market with the establishment of the Customs Union (Zollverein) in 1834 and the elimination of internal tariffs and customs barriers was a ‘significant step forward’. The role of the state was also critical in a number of areas, including railway construction and extensive improvements in educational training.1 Recent research has questioned such an explanation and this is the focus of this chapter. It begins by assessing how backward Germany was in the late eighteenth century. Then it considers the rate of growth between 1800 and 1871, its regional configuration and its relationship to demographic change. It examines key components of development, especially the role of the state, banks, the Zollverein, transport improvements and the impact of educational reform on the quality of human capital. Finally, it explores how the intensification of agricultural production, industrialization and urbanization affected ordinary people.

The ‘relative backwardness’ of Germany in the late eighteenth century Was Germany ‘backward’ and, if so, to what extent? Interpretations of the relevant data vary considerably. On the one hand, although there were well-established manufacturing centres, output levels were low and development hindered by restricted markets, inadequate transport, urban guilds and political divisions. Sectors like iron and steel were slow to modernize. In Prussia, over 70 per cent of the population lived or worked in the countryside. Agriculture attracted the lion’s share of investment although apparently

Nineteenth-Century Germany

it was among the most backward in continental Europe. Capital accumulation and capital goods production were very limited. On the other hand, recent research suggests a more differentiated picture. The expansion of proto-industrial production in regions like Silesia, Saxony and the Rhineland promoted the regional division of labour and an increasing diversification in urban function. Minimal regulation in rural areas kept labour costs low and encouraged handicraft production. In mid-eighteenth-century Bavaria, over 50 per cent of all holdings depended on non-agricultural income and in the Kurmark Brandenburg more than half of all agricultural holdings in 1755 were held by day labourers or domestic craftsmen. By 1800, there were 40,000 workers in the duchy of Berg producing knives, scissors and swords, largely for export, while a small group of merchants in Chemnitz employed almost 15,000 rural spinners within four miles of the city. In regions like Lower Saxony, the expansion of rural handicrafts did not threaten urban production, but many city guilds opposed this and guild restrictions continued in states such as Mecklenburg until the 1860s. Nevertheless, substantial population growth from the mid-eighteenth century, price inflation and increased accessibility to markets, provided incentives for expanding industrial production, particularly in rural areas. Larger units of centralized production (Manufakturen) also developed, often as a result of state efforts to reduce unemployment. Between 1793 and 1800, 150 Manufakturen were registered in Saxony. Some states, like Baden, promoted high-quality porcelain manufacture although a number of enterprises failed. Many towns developed a more visible manufacturing and trading profile. In Krefeld, the proportion of households engaged in linen and silk production increased from one-third to almost one-half between 1750 and 1800. Early eighteenth-century Germany still had a low level of urbanization, but by 1800 significant changes had taken place: new industrial and commercial centres had emerged in the Rhine and Ruhr regions; Saxony was dominated increasingly by Dresden and Leipzig, and Silesia by Breslau and Lemberg. The spectacular expansion of administrative cities (Residenzstädte) reflected policies that encouraged immigration, in contrast to the restrictions retained by the older ‘home towns’.2 There is also evidence of significant agricultural growth with an expansion of plough land, a reduction in the extent of fallow and a wider dissemination of improved cultivation systems). New crops, including clover, esparto grass, potatoes and lucerne, were cultivated more widely; there was an increase in the division of common land (at the cost of the land-poor and the landless); and output, particularly in Prussia’s eastern provinces, was stimulated by buoyant export markets.3 By 1800, specialist areas of production had emerged. Almost 30 per cent of the cultivable area of Lower Saxony was devoted to flax. Such improvements were visible in other northern European countries, but their take-up in Germany was reinforced by the work of agricultural associations, individual agronomists and popular journals. The expansion of rural craft production had already stimulated regional specialization in agriculture. In various regions there were signs of increased prosperity: higher dowry values, a fall in enforced sales, and a more commercial approach by certain types of peasants. 50

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development

Economic growth and industrialization until 1871 It is often argued that this occurred in three distinct phases. From the 1780s onwards, there were signs of economic growth, but only in certain regions, and it was not maintained after 1815 when certain states reintroduced guild and other restrictions. A severe agricultural depression in the 1820s led to indebtedness and a fall in aggregate demand. The second phase between the 1840s and the 1870s saw a significant acceleration in industrialization associated with heavy industry and extensive railway construction. In Prussia, the 1840s are regarded as a watershed, marking the acceptance by the elite of the inevitability of industrial development and the realization that the private sector, not the state, should drive this. This was the beginning of Germany’s industrial revolution, in line with the Gerschenkronian model of a big discontinuity spurt in the growth rates of relatively backward national economies. This was followed by a third phase of industrialization with an emphasis on the chemical and electrical industries (see Chapter 9). However, this interpretation is not based on firm quantitative evidence and seriously underplays the extent and dynamic nature of earlier economic growth. First, estimates of agricultural output (arable and livestock) reveal a positive trend, particularly from the 1820s onwards, with a 65 per cent increase by 1846–50 (Table 4.1). The rise in output in Württemberg outpaced the increase in population, and in Bavaria, traditionally viewed as a backward region, grain output increased annually by 4.2 per cent between 1810 and 1864, compared to a population growth of rate of 0.6 per cent. The increase in the agricultural labour force between 1816 and 1849 matched that of the period Table 4.1  The development of agricultural production per unit of labour input (LI) in Germany, 1800–50, on the basis of grain values Period

Production in 1,000 tonnes Arable

Livestock

Total

Labour force (1,000)

Tonnes per LI

Index

1800–10

14,500

7,555

22,055

9,525

2.32

100

1811–20

15,660

7,332

22,992

9,530

2.41

104

1821–5

19,140

8,100

27,240

10,100

2.70

116

1826–30

20,010

8,787

28,797

10,300

2.80

120

1831–5

22,910

11,205

34,115

10,600

3.22

139

1836–40

24,795

12,262

37,057

11,057

3.35

144

1841–5

26,825

13,719

40,544

11,662

3.48

150

1846–50

29,000

14,874

43,874

11,425

3.84

165

Note: Index shows the relative growth in output (tonnes per LI) from the base line of 1800–10. Source: G. Franz, ‘Landwirtschaft, 1800–1850’, in H. Aubin and W. Zorn, eds, Handbuch der deutschen Wirrschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1976), p. 313.

51

Nineteenth-Century Germany

from1850  to  1883, while the estimated growth rate of agricultural output was higher between 1800 and 1860 than in the following three decades. One can cite various reasons for such improvements, including an expansion of cultivation of potatoes and root crops, the growing use of stall feeding and a selective shift to dairy production. However, the rise in arable output was achieved largely by expanding the cultivable area, particularly in the eastern provinces of Prussia, where it increased from 3.2 to 8.3 million hectares between 1815 and 1863. Labour productivity increased by up to 30 per cent following the gradual replacement of the traditional sickle by higher-working-capacity hand tools, such as the heavy hook and scythe. The estimated increase in annual agricultural output of 1.3 per cent and 2.5 per cent in the 1820s and 1830s, respectively, reflected a positive response to rising levels of aggregate demand and the buoyancy of export markets. With a revival in agricultural prices in the 1830s peasant production increased significantly, with the growth in rapeseed and sugar beet cultivation symptomatic of a stronger commercial approach. This trend was reinforced by the liberal agrarian reforms of the early nineteenth century which modified land distribution, farm organization and agricultural production, although in greatly varying ways. In Prussia, the reforms of 1807, 1811 and 1821 had a ‘considerable impact upon landownership patterns’, especially in East Prussia where up to 40,000 peasant farmsteads and approximately 80,000 smaller parcels of land were incorporated into larger properties. This led to increased output levels, but it pauperized segments of rural society and created a rural proletariat, although some small holders benefited from the division of common land. Some historians argue that the reforms revolutionized property rights, facilitating a more intensive use of available resources and a rise in land and labour productivity. However, such reforms were already underway in some states. In Saxony, agricultural property rights were secure before 1800 and the expansion of production was a long-run phenomenon. In Baden and Hanover, agricultural reforms were initiated comparatively early but completed quite late, while in Bavaria and Württemberg, the feudal order was not finally displaced until legislation in the mid-nineteenth century. New estimates of net national product indicate that economic activity by 1851 was 24 per cent higher than previously believed.4 The economy was therefore more dynamic in the first half of the nineteenth century, while growth rates during later ‘industrialization’ were correspondingly lower. Investment trends in Baden and Prussia (Table 4.2) indicate substantial growth after 1815. Net investment in Prussia rose by 67.8 per cent between 1816 and 1822 and between 1840 and 1849, despite a fall in the 1820s. The data also indicate significant structural change. Agriculture’s share of net investment fell from almost 70 per cent between 1816 and 1822 to 28.5 per cent by the 1840s, when it had been overtaken by transport (35.1 per cent) and non-agricultural construction (32.2 per cent) as a result of infrastructural improvements and urban expansion. Industry’s share of net investment was still low at 3.3 per cent but showed promising signs of development. The Prussian tariff of 1818, by treating pig iron imports as a raw material, stimulated the long-term development of the iron and steel industry. Industries in and around Berlin recorded substantial growth during the 1830s and early 1840s; Düsseldorf 52

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development

Table 4.2  Average annual net investment in Prussia, 1816–49 (millions of marks, 1913 prices) Agriculture

%

Non-agricultural buildings

%

Transport

1816–22

86.5

69.2

28.7

22.9

7.0

5.6

2.8*

2.2 125.0

1822–31

70.4

68.3

18.7

18.1

8.8

8.5

5.1*

4.9 103.0

109.6

57.7

52.0

27.4

25.5

11.8

5.6

2.9 189.7

59.9

28.5

69.2

32.2

73.7**

35.1

7.0

3.3 209.8

Year

1830/1–40 1840–9

%

Industry

%

Total

* Estimates based on the extrapolation of the capital product trend, 1830–40 to 1816, using value-of-product data. ** Railway investment in 1840 estimated at fifteen million marks. Source: Adapted from Pierenkemper and Tilly, The Germany Economy during the Nineteenth Century, Table 6, p. 43.

experienced ‘unprecedented growth’ in industrial production (1820–50); and the highest annual growth rate in textile production, especially cotton and woollen goods, was in the 1830s.5 As a result, changes in occupational structures in Prussia’s western provinces between 1816 and 1849 matched those of the later nineteenth century. The conventional periodization has also been undermined by a re-estimation of data on net domestic product. The overall performance of the economy during the 1840s, regarded as the starting point for Germany’s industrial revolution, now appears weaker, and a significant increase in growth rates only occurred from the 1850s onwards. On this basis, industrialization was not characterized by extensive discontinuities, and economic development was a cumulative process. In fact, agriculture continued to account for almost half of total employment in 1871, and, because of the widespread dependency on labour-intensive production, the agricultural labour force had increased by some two million since 1800. Nor should structural change in industry be exaggerated. In 1851, the clothing (24.05 per cent), textiles (23.06 per cent) and food (14.89 per cent) industries were the three most important sectors. Metal production (1.42 per cent), metal processing (0.88 per cent) and the chemical (0.77 per cent) industries were relatively insignificant. Textiles (including leather and clothing) remained the largest industrial sector.6 In 1875, around 37 per cent of the ‘industrial’ workforce in Germany was employed in textiles, compared to 14 per cent in the second largest sector – metal production and manufacture, and cotton spinning led the way in terms of factory organization and management. The general nature of industrial organization did not alter substantially. Leading sectors, such as the capital goods industries, were too small initially to have much impact on economic growth, and it was not until the 1850s that attempts were made to unify production and distribution. Artisan-led development was not outmoded. In Prussia, the number of craftsmen doubled between 1816 and 1861, well above the population growth, and the average workshop size increased from just 1.6 to 2.0 workers. Freedom of trade (Gewerbefreiheit) may have led to an initial decrease in the number of craftsmen, 53

Nineteenth-Century Germany

but the expansion of many trades in the 1820s and 1830s and increased competition gave rise to a growing concern over excess labour supply, the proliferation of unskilled and untrained workers, and declining income levels for master craftsmen. By the early 1840s, only 407 of the 2,812 registered shoemakers in Berlin earned enough income to be liable to the Gewerbesteuer (trade tax). However, the continuing increase in the number of bakers, tailors, shoemakers, joiners and masons reflected a long-term expansion of demand for goods which required skills little affected by new technologies. The construction industry in Prussia underwent an even more remarkable process of expansion, especially between 1831 and 1846. There was a fivefold increase in the number of journeymen and a threefold expansion in average enterprise size, reflecting significant concentration as this sector responded to favourable economic conditions. Increased urbanization in southwestern Germany, particularly in the dispersed towns of Baden, also stimulated demand for artisan production, including wooden clocks, toys and hats.7 By contrast, there were fewer than 400 joint-stock companies in Prussia in 1870. There is little reliable information on German foreign trade before 1834, except for Bavaria and the four Hanseatic ports, but what there is suggests long-term growth. Despite the depression of the early 1820s, evidenced by the contraction of the Hamburg and Bremen merchant fleets, other indicators reveal a different picture. The value of Saxony’s imports and exports grew by 8 per cent in the 1820s and grain exports from Prussia by 21 per cent between 1825 and 1831. The value of Zollverein imports and exports between 1837 and 1855 rose by about 4.5 per cent annually, while the estimated export surplus increased from 37.6 million taler in 1834 to 65 million in 1845 and over 101 million taler by 1860. Shipping capacity increased fourfold between 1830 and 1850, as German merchants established themselves in the Americas and other parts of the world. Further evidence of the absence of major discontinuities in Germany’s development can be derived from demographic data. Population growth in the late eighteenth century had been substantial, encouraging economic development and agricultural intensification. This trend continued between 1816 and 1864 with population growth rates not exceeded until around 1900 (Table 4.3). Debate continues as to the relative contribution of changes in nuptiality, fertility and age-specific mortality rates. In most states, crude birth rates remained high, easily exceeding mortality levels, except during the 1816–17 famine and the cholera epidemics of 1831–2, 1848–50 and 1852–5. It has even been claimed that there was a ‘baby boom’ between 1816 and 1825.8 The further fall in the death rate from 1850 has been attributed to a decline in the variability of mortality as years with an unduly high number of deaths became less common. However, health conditions in cities were far less favourable than in rural areas, and until the 1880s, mortality rates correlated positively with city size. In Prussia’s five largest cities – Berlin, Breslau, Cologne, Magdeburg and Königsberg – crude mortality rates rose from the early nineteenth century onwards. Urban population growth depended on in-migration, mainly from surrounding rural areas or neighbouring towns. Infant mortality remained a major component of total mortality. It continued to rise until the 1870s and was ‘shockingly high’ in the south German states of Bavaria and Württemberg.9 This was partly due to a failure to breastfeed infants at a time 54

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development

Table 4.3  Population growth in the German states, 1816–71 (in thousands) Region

1816

1825

1855

1871

1816–25 1825–55 1855–71 1816–71 %

%

%

%

Eastern Germany East and West Prussia

1457

1889

2637

3138

29.6

39.5

18.9

115.3

Posen

820

1032

1393

1584

25.8

34.9

13.7

93.1

Silesia

1942

2280

3182

3707

17.4

39.5

16.4

90.8

683

830

1289

1432

21.5

55.3

11.1

109.6

2.5

1.3

0.9

1.8

Pomerania Annual increase Berlin and Brandenburg Berlin Brandenburg

198

220

461

826

11.1

109.5

79.1

317.1

1086

1233

1793

2037

13.5

45.4

13.6

87.5

1.4

1.8

1.6

2.2

Annual increase Northern Germany Mecklenburg (Strelitz and Schwerin)

380

497

640

655

38.7

28.7

2.3

72.3

Schleswig-Holstein

689

764

968

1045

10.8

26.7

7.9

51.6

36

38

43

52

5.5

13.1

20.9

44.4

154

171

244

339

11.0

42.6

38.9

120.1

Lübeck Hamburg Bremen Oldenburg Lippe-Detmold Hanover

50

56

89

122

12.0

58.9

37.0

144.0

222

243

287

316

9.4

18.1

10.1

42.3

79

87

105

111

10.1

20.6

5.2

39.2

1328

1595

1824

1961

20.1

14.3

7.5

47.6

2.1

2.9

0.6

1.0

Annual increase Central Germany Saxony (Prussian province)

1197

1362

1862

2102

13.7

36.7

12.8

75.6

Brunswick

225

238

269

312

5.7

13.0

15.9

38.6

Anhalt

120

132

168

203

10.0

27.2

20.8

69.1

Saxony (Kingdom)

1193

1334

2039

2556

11.8

52.8

25.3

114.2

Hesse (Kassel and Darmstadt)

1225

1331

1562

1616

8.6

17.3

22.4

31.9

302 (1817)

332

428

633

9.9

34.9

47.8

109. 6

47

53

76

91

12.7

43.3

19.7

93.6

1.1

1.1

1.1

1.3

Hesse-Nassau Frankfurt-am-Main Annual increase

(Continued) 55

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 4.3  (Continued) Region

1816

1825

1855

1871

1816–25 1825–55 1855–71 1816–71 %

%

%

%

Western Germany Westphalia

1066

1184

1527

1775

11.0

28.9

16.2

66.5

Rhineland

1870

2117

2993

3579

13.2

41.3

19.5

91.3

1.3

1.2

1.1

1.4

Southern Germany Bavaria

3261 (1818)

3467

3954

4236

6.3

14.0

7.1

29.8

Palatinate

446 (1818)

500

587

615

12.1

17.4

4.7

37.8

Baden

1006

1132

1319

1461

12.5

16.5

10.7

45.2

Württemberg

1410

1517

1670

1818

7.5

10.1

8.8

29.6

Hohenzollern

50

53+

63

65

0.6+

0.6+

3.1

0.5

0.8

0.4

0.5

0.5

Annual increase Prussia (total)

10349 12256

17202

24639

18.4

40.3

43.2

138.0

Germany (total)

20531 28111

34580

39478

36.9

23.0

14.1

92.2

Note: + estimated; some states, such as Württemberg, had minimal territorial changes during this period, but following the Seven Week’s War when Prussia defeated Austria and its allies at the battle of Königgrätz (3 July 1866) Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau and Frankfurt-am-Main were annexed outright. The net loss of population in the case of the Grand-Duchy of Hesse was around 36,300. Sources: Antje Kraus, Quellen zur Bevölkerungsstatistik Deutschland 1815-1875 (1980); Michel Hubert, L’Allemagne en Mutation Histoire de la population allemande depuis 1815 (1995), p.58.

when poverty and environmental factors heightened the risks associated with artificial feeding. It also reflected cultural conditioning in predominantly Catholic states which reinforced the belief that young children went straight to heaven (himmeln lassen). In towns with Protestant and Catholic inhabitants, Catholic families had higher infant and child mortality rates and higher fertility levels. Child mortality, at least in Prussia, had fallen by the 1860s, perhaps due to the earlier introduction of smallpox inoculation and the reduced virulence of specific childhood diseases, but gains in life expectancy for older age groups were more limited. Population density increased significantly between 1816 and 1871, from 45.9 to 75.9 inhabitants per square kilometre. One response was the imposition by some states, including Baden, Bavaria and Württemberg, of legal restrictions on marriage which resulted in high rates of illegitimacy. The Bavarian legislation was not repealed until the 1860s. Another reaction was increased emigration, largely to North America (Table 4.4). In the first wave of mass migration between 1845 and 1858, approximately 1.3 million individuals emigrated overseas, and between 1864 and 1873 a further million followed in their footsteps. During 56

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development

Table 4.4  German overseas emigration, 1816–1934 Period

Emigrants (000s)

Immigrants to the United States (000s)

%

Annual average emigration ratea

1816–19

25.0

2.7

1820–4

9.8

1.9

19.4

1.0

1825–9

12.7

3.8

29.9

1.2

1830–4

51.1

39.3

76.9

2.2

1835–9

94.0

85.5

91.0

2.6

1840–4

110.6

100.5

90.9

2.4

1845–9

308.2

284.9

92.4

4.5

1850–4

728.3

654.3

89.8

9.0

1855–9

372.0

321.8

86.5

4.3

1860–4

225.9

204.1

90.4

2.5

1865–9

542.7

519.6

95.7

3.6

1870–4

484.6

450.5

93.0

2.3

1875–9

143.3

120.0

83.7

0.7

1880–4

864.3

797.9

92.3

3.8

1885–9

498.2

452.6

90.9

2.1

1890–4

462.2

428.8

92.8

1.8

1895–9

142.4

120.2

84.4

0.5

1900–4

140.8

128.6

91.3

0.5

1905–9

135.7

123.5

91.0

0.4

1910–14

104.3

84.1

80.6

0.3

1915–19

4.1

1.0

24.4

0.0

1920–4

242.3

150.4

62.1

0.8

1925–9

295.3

230.1

77.8

0.9

1930–4

88.1

62.1

70.6

0.3

Note: aBased on the population of the areas affected by emigration. Source: W. Köllmann and P. Marschalck, German Emigration to the United States: Perspectives in American History, 7 (1974), p. 518; F. Burgdörfer, ‘Die Wanderungen über die deutschen Reichsgrenzen im letzten Jahrhundert’, Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv 20 (1930), p. 189 et seq.; W. Mönckmeier, Die deutsche überseeische Auswanderung (1912), p. 14.

57

Nineteenth-Century Germany

the 1830s and 1840s, overseas migration was largely a direct result of relative overpopulation, as measured by employment opportunities, rising prices and harvest failure. For some years after the failure of the 1848–9 Revolutions, political activists were deported or fled abroad. Annual fluctuations in the number of emigrants were often linked to changes in wage and unemployment rates, both in Germany and abroad. Particularly in the southwest, the custom of partible inheritance, whereby land and other assets were divided equally among heirs, was traditionally viewed as a reason for rising rates of emigration, but even here other factors mattered such as the impact of agrarian reforms and the demise of rural industries.10 The mass exodus of the 1840s and 1850s from around Minden and Osnabrück was a direct result of the decline of the local handloom industry while the opening of new factories in Hanover was followed by a reduction in emigration. Regional variations in development Recent research has highlighted the unevenness of development. By 1800, iron and steel production was concentrated on both sides of the Rhine, in the Siegerland and Hesse, in the Eiffel and Silesia, and some other regional centres. Industrial production was concentrated in Berlin, Saxony, Silesia and the Ruhr. The grand duchy of Berg was one of the most advanced areas on the continent, and towns such as Krefeld had become important manufacturing and trading centres. By contrast, the increasing emphasis on export-orientated grain monoculture in Prussia’s eastern provinces hindered economic diversification. There was a growing divergence between Prussia’s eastern and western provinces as indicated by per capita income, selective income proxies (e.g. registered doctors per 1,000 population) and levels of urbanization. There were relatively more craftsmen (Handwerker) in the south than the north, which, in turn, had more than in the east. * * * How far economic development modified or aggravated pre-industrial levels of regional divergence is a subject of debate, but the period from 1815 to 1873 witnessed an accentuation of regional divergence. The regional concentration of industrial production in west, southwest, northwest and central Germany was accompanied by a greater emphasis on agriculture in the eastern provinces of Prussia, Baden, Bavaria and Württemberg. Within agriculture, there was increasing regional divergence. The eastern provinces of Prussia engaged increasingly in extensive cereal production, primarily for export, accompanied by a continuing reliance on traditional cultivation methods. In western regions, there was a shift towards intensive cultivation, especially commercial crops and dairy livestock. In regions where domestic linen production responded to growing export opportunities, flax cultivation became widespread. The Magdeburger Börde concentrated on sugar beet production as a result of tax incentives, while regional specialization was increasingly evident in viticulture and livestock-dairy farming. The ability of the landed elite to resist agrarian reforms meant that these affected more backward regions later or not at all, thereby reinforcing existing regional differentials.11 58

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development

Urbanization increased regional divergence by the 1850s as it spread from Saxony and Berlin to the industrializing areas of the Rhineland, Westphalia and Silesia. In some towns, urban growth was encouraged by the demolition of city walls between 1789 and 1815, either to avoid structural damage if the French invaded or because they were seen as obsolete and a constraint on commercial expansion.12 There was only a slight increase in the overall level of urbanization in Prussia between 1816 and 1871 (from 27.9 to 32.5 per cent of total population), but differences in average town size, already greater in the western provinces, became more pronounced. In the west, urban centres expanded through a combination of in-migration and natural increase, while eastern towns remained almost solely dependent on in-migration. In general, age at marriage and the proportion remaining single were higher in towns, while fertility was lower. Housing conditions for urban workers were poor. Building ordinances designed to ensure that new houses had ‘adequate light and air, be dry and not dangerous to health’ were only adopted in Prussia in the 1850s.13 Hamburg was the first city to install a central water supply in 1842 and only in the late 1860s and 1870s did other municipal authorities follow suit. In terms of their death rates, most towns and cities suffered from an urban penalty. During the final period of rising urban mortality in the 1860s and 1870s, it was primarily cities in eastern Germany, such as Elbing, Frankfurt (Oder), Stralsund and Görlitz, that registered a disproportionate rise in both male and female mortality because of the continued absence of an adequate public health infrastructure. Lower mortality rates in western German towns reflected higher wage levels and rising inmigration, particularly by relatively healthy young men and women from economically productive age groups. Contrary to earlier opinion, mobility rates were ‘high’ even before 1800. In towns like Durlach in Baden extensive levels of out-migration meant its population was in a constant state of flux.14 Regional migratory systems, including chain and circular migration, developed early; seasonal migration supplemented rural incomes; and return migration was an established practice for resource transfer. By 1850, internal migration had reached ‘considerable dimensions’, despite some towns retaining a tax (Einzugsgeld) on new migrants. In Barmen, less than one-third of the population in the 1840s had been born to parents who had been resident in the town, while in Bremen in-migrants accounted for 56 per cent of its workforce by 1862. The Prussian census in 1871 showed that almost as many men and women (43 and 44 per cent, respectively) lived outside their place (Gemeinde) of birth, with younger adults (15–40) the most prominent age group in migratory streams. Women were largely short-distance migrants who sought employment in domestic service, while men tended to move further. By the 1850s, some industrial cities in the Ruhr, such as Mönchen-Gladbach, had a higher rate of in- and out-migration than Berlin and drew migrants from a widening geographical area. The population of Essen expanded from 4,000 in 1811 to 54,790 by 1875, following the establishment of the Krupp iron and steel works (Figure 4.1). From the 1850s, the Ruhr valley witnessed ‘one of the greatest population movements in German history’.15 Nevertheless, in 1871 almost 83 per cent of the population of the former German Confederation still lived in communities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.16 59

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Figure 4.1  Krupp’s cast steel factory, Essen, in 1830. Postcard produced by Kramer’s Kunstanstalt, Dortmund, c.1914. Source: Universal Images Group/Getty.

Further evidence of the ‘profoundly regional nature of German experience’ can be obtained from demographic data.17 (See also Table 4.3.) Between 1816 and 1864, there were high rates of population growth in Prussia’s eastern agricultural provinces and slightly lower rates in the developing industrial centres of Saxony, the Rhineland and Westphalia. However, population increase in the southern states of Baden, Bavaria and Württemberg was far more limited. The high regional variance in infant mortality became even more accentuated towards the end of the nineteenth century and was still visible, although to a lesser extent, in the age group 1 to 15. Regional differences were not so prominent in relation to adult death rates, but tuberculosis mortality displayed a pronounced east–west gradient because of differential levels of nutrition and work intensity. As far as fertility indices are concerned, regional differentials remained clearly visible in the nineteenth century in relation to the birth rate and the practice of family limitation.

The role of the state It is generally accepted that the state was heavily involved in German industrialization. It provided the preconditions for industrialization by abolishing the feudal agrarian regime, dismantling guild controls, introducing liberal trade policies and providing an appropriate legal framework. Even if political reform was strenuously avoided the state sought to promote economic development through financial and administrative reforms. Fiscal policy sometimes favoured industrial interests and capital formation, 60

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development

while direct government action created social overhead capital, especially with railway construction. Furthermore, the state provided direct subsidies to sectors such as sugar beet production, steam-engine construction and branches of the textile industry. By the early 1820s, the Prussian Seehandlung (Overseas Trading Corporation) was running its own enterprises (flour and paper mills, chemical works, and river steamers) and providing capital investment to the private sector, while state loans and the funding of foreign visits, primarily to Britain, contributed to significant improvements in machine construction. In Upper Silesia, the retention until 1864 of the mercantilist principle of state direction (Direktionsprinzip) contributed to the efficiency of the mining and metallurgical industries and their expansion was largely state induced. State support for education was even more important with tangible benefits in technology transfer, technical training and the disciplining of German workers. Many leading entrepreneurs of the early nineteenth century, such as Friedrich Harkort, the ‘Father of the Ruhr’, and Gustav Mevissen, a pioneer of the credit and insurance industry, advocated government action to correct the abuses of industrialization. Even during the liberal era of the 1860s and early 1870s, state intervention remained durably persistent. The idea of state intervention, whether in the form of subsidies, monopoly grants, tariff concessions or special treatment, was always congenial. Recently, however, these arguments have been questioned. Removing economic restrictions was not a prerequisite for industrial expansion. Prussia had done this by 1807–11, but the absence of trade liberalization in Saxony until 1861 did not adversely affect its economic dynamism. State priorities were often inappropriate and inconsistent, partly because there was general opposition to factories, as was the case in Württemberg, while internal divisions in Prussia meant that economic policy was rarely optimal. The trade policy (Gewerbepolitik) of south German states attempted to maintain small-scale handicraft production based on a traditional concessionary system, thereby restricting large-scale industrialization, while in Schleswig-Holstein it was designed to maintain existing privileges. There are also doubts over the efficiency of the state administration in coordinating economic policy, as well as the net contribution of government intervention in individual sectors. Certain historians, therefore, view the role of the state in promoting industrialization as circumscribed, seeing economic growth primarily as a function of growing intra-German and international competition, indigenous resource endowment and the expansion of foreign trade.

Redefining the state One reason why the role of the state has not been rigorously explored is the persistence of a national consensus in German economic history and the tendency to view Prussia as the paradigm of the modern German state. By 1815, the complex territorial configuration of the Holy Roman Empire had been substantially transformed, but there remained thirty-six federal states, ranging from the five kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, Württemberg and Saxony, to eighteen grand duchies and duchies, to 61

Nineteenth-Century Germany

ten minor principalities, and the free cities of Bremen, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg and Lübeck. This federal arrangement was generally supported and territorial states remained ‘webs of privilege’.18 Federalism was the dominant concept in the failed constitution of 1848–9 and those of the North German Confederation (1867) and the Second Empire (1871). Unfortunately, there are few modern economic histories of individual states, let alone comparisons between them. To explore further the role of federal in economic development, three points need to be emphasized. First, political fragmentation affected the role of the state. Many post-Napoleonic states were ‘modern’ in that a central authority exerted control throughout the entire kingdom, but after 1815 they pursued what has been termed a ‘narrow particularism’ (see the chapter by Clark). Individual states emphasized their uniqueness: school books were rewritten to create a separate sense of ‘national’ identity, whether Bavarian or Saxon, even steam locomotives were named after specific states (Figure 4.2). Most state banks had a conservative policy with a responsibility to promote local infrastructural improvements or to cater for ‘national’ needs and many firms operated within a narrowly defined local institutional framework. Even in terms of money supply, policy differences persisted. Most states permitted the use of a wide variety of currencies (including foreign banknotes), but Württemberg only issued silver coins. In some policy areas, including the gradual introduction of protective employment legislation and the establishment of local craftsmen’s associations, federal states tended to follow a common strategy. There was widespread knowledge of the policies of other German states, reinforced at local and municipal levels by the publication of journals intended to disseminate a wide range of information on public institutions,

Figure 4.2  Bavaria 1844 built by J. A. Maffei, Munich. Source: Postcard produced by Kruger, West Germany.

62

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development

legal issues, local decision making and welfare provision. Such convergence reflected common processes of change and increasing economic integration but also an element of competition and a need to emulate policy initiatives by other states. Federal states fought for their own interests and pursued different approaches to issues such as railway development, freedom of trade, tariffs and the maintenance of handicraft production. In relation to tax policy which remained a federal state responsibility, reforms were widely implemented but varied greatly. Baden, because of its substantial territorial expansion, was confronted after 1815 by a multiplicity of tax regimes and opted for a simple tax system based on land values that could be applied without additional administrative costs. Württemberg consolidated its existing land tax based on net yield, whereas Bavaria retained until 1855 an assessment system based on gross production. Indirect taxes provided a significant proportion of government revenue in most states, but the balance between direct and indirect taxation varied considerably. Prussia failed to develop a uniform tax system: urban communities remained subject to indirect taxation, whereas direct taxes were levied in rural areas, leading to noticeable differences in the distribution of the tax burden. In Baden, the retention of an unmodified trade or occupation tax (Gewerbesteuer) between 1815 and 1854, together with the introduction of a more flexible system of tax liability assessment in 1848, may have encouraged increased capital investment in industry, while some historians claim that Württemberg’s taxation system promoted economic growth by providing explicit benefits for rural manufacturing, housing construction and high income earners, and by encouraging the replacement of labour by machinery. The development of postal systems also reflected local federal interests. In most cases, state policy was a ‘territorialization mechanism’. It facilitated state integration in Saxony, but at the cost of neglecting the economic importance of international links, while Baden had a ‘decidedly non-German vision’, preferring to consolidate existing trade links with France and Switzerland. Bavaria established an integrated postal system, but the lack of administrative reform in Hanover meant that communication between the state’s various centres was stultified and business connectivity reduced.19 Second, the existence of numerous federal states with well-defined administrative structures made lobbying on economic issues easier than in a large nation state. The initiative to develop corporate industrial structures, including chambers of commerce, was often undertaken by the state and they played an increasingly active role lobbying on local issues, while small-town elites and members of the nobility consolidated their networks at a municipal or regional level. In state parliaments, deputies often pursued narrow interests with the result that economic policy at the federal state level reflected primarily local needs. The fragmentation of political power and a strong tradition of provincial representation allowed the traditional elites in relatively backward regions to maintain their position by blocking reforms and maintaining unresponsive economic institutions. This was particularly the case with the agrarian reforms of the early nineteenth century. In most cases, peasant emancipation was only achieved through extensive compromises with the local aristocracy and other estate holders whose preferential treatment influenced directly the level of compensation payments and the extent of land redistribution. 63

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Traditionally, a clear distinction is made between western areas of Germany characterized by peasant cultivation and hereditary tenure (Grundherrschaft) and eastern territories dominated by extensive seigneurial estates with a dependent and largely servile peasantry (Gutsherrschaft). Although this needs qualifying, the impact of the reforms basically reflected this distinction, as well as the relative power of the provincial nobility who regarded legislation as ‘damaging or burdensome’.20 Within Prussia, reforms reinforced the role of the Junker estate owners and large-scale peasant cultivators in the east, with their increasing dependency on an export-orientated grain monoculture, whereas land compensation in many western territories benefited a wider spectrum of peasants and encouraged agricultural diversification. Serfdom was finally abolished in Mecklenburg in 1820, but the continued influence of the landed aristocracy in Baden meant that feudal rights were only terminated when revolution was imminent in 1848. Third, it is important to establish how state power was constituted. State economic policy was often determined by the bureaucracy (see Chapter 3). The expansion of the bureaucratic apparatus was a precondition for the growth of state power and most states witnessed a significant increase in administrative personnel. In Prussia, the number of civil servants rose annually by 1.4 per cent between 1846 and 1880, which is higher than the rise in total population. Bureaucracies mattered more than parliaments. In Baden, officials sharing a common educational and social background assumed leadership and by the early 1840s had developed a ‘liberal mental horizon’. In Prussia, civil servants felt superior to the emerging entrepreneurial class, and in Bavaria there were growing complaints against what was perceived as civil service absolutism. When modern representative bodies were subsequently created, they tended to be dominated by civil servants. They constituted approximately 50 per cent of the Baden parliament (Landtag) in the early nineteenth century and almost 64 per cent of the north German parliament in 1867. State bureaucracies were therefore uniquely placed to influence economic policy, and traditionally it has been accepted that their impact was positive. Liberal-minded bureaucrats in Saxony helped reshape the institutions of an industrializing society; civil servants in Baden during the 1830s were committed to liberal objectives, such as free trade, transport improvements and wider education facilities, while state officials in Prussia pursued policies conducive to industrial development. However, the potential impact of federal state policy on economic development was undermined by a number of factors. Aristocratic influence remained persistent, whether in Prussia or Bavaria, where a majority of ministers had titles prior to 1848. In northern Germany, the continuing recruitment of higher civil servants from the landed aristocracy encouraged a conservative approach to economic policy; state bureaucrats were sometimes unsupportive of new ideas; and the fusing of the old social order with the new service hierarchy in the form of the Prussian Landrat (rural administrative officer) had a negative impact on policymaking, particularly in the eastern provinces. Although Prussian civil servants, in general, supported the ‘common good’, they were poorly skilled because of inadequate training and the state bureaucracy was ‘badly overworked’.21 64

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The role of the banks Gerschenkron also argued that Germany, more than advanced economies like Britain, depended on banks for investible funds and entrepreneurial initiative. However, in the early nineteenth century, the development of a banking infrastructure was constrained by insufficient demand and the absence of commercial concentration. It was not concerned primarily with supporting economic growth. The Prussian cooperative mortgage associations (Landschaften) helped the landed nobility, and the Royal Württemberg Court Bank sought to meet the capital requirements of the Crown. The more prominent private banks, such as Rothschilds, Bethmanns, Bleichröder and Mendelsohn, were concerned largely with government loans and state bonds. Smaller private banks supporting industrial enterprises were the exception rather than the rule with most averse to engaging in industry financing. Businessmen seeking external capital remained dependent on local suppliers willing to offer advances on current account or fixed term loans. At the same time, there were few stock exchanges and they dealt largely in government securities. The activity of savings banks (except in Bremen, Hamburg and Saxony) was limited, while the creation of Sparkassen (savings banks) in Bavaria and Württemberg was intended to enable domestic servants and day labourers to achieve a degree of economic independence. Moreover, by the mid-1830s, there were just 281 savings banks in Germany and only after the Prussian legislation in 1838 did their number increase significantly. In Saxony, the number of account holders rose gradually between 1855 and 1870 accompanied by a modest growth in average investment per depositor from 167 to 243 marks. Not until the foundation of the first credit banks, including the Schaafhausen Bankverein (1848) and the Diskonto-Gesellschaft (1851), was an effective basis laid for the direct promotion of industrial investment and development.22 Many historians have argued that Kreditbanken (or universal banks) financed risky investments, facilitated mergers and the formation of cartels, and stabilized the business cycle. Joint-stock banks supported the expansion of heavy industry, railway construction and textile production. The Bank für Handel und Industrie in Darmstadt (1853) served as a prototype: a joint-stock enterprise, it provided current account facilities to several industrial firms and promoted small-scale industry. Yet, capital supply was not a major problem in the early nineteenth century: capital costs, including those for technical innovation, were low; interest rates were falling; and entrepreneurs devised strategies to limit short-term capital requirements. The capital market had a pronounced regional character that was sometimes responsive to local needs. Even before 1800, Cologne merchants financed the mining industry in the Siegerland, and by 1830, the number of banks with links to industrial enterprises was already considerable. Increasingly capital was transferred from one state to another, with the engineering industry in Karlsruhe owned by Rhenish and Ruhr businessmen, while before 1848 the Schaaffhausen Bank was the mainstay of at least 170 factory enterprises with 40,000 workers. 65

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Moreover, there is scepticism over the role of Kreditbanken because of their geographical and sectoral concentration. Their marked involvement in heavy industry was counterbalanced by a limited, even minimal, role in the chemical, machine construction and electrical engineering industries. Studies of specific enterprises confirm the continued predominance of self-financing. Thus, even after 1850, the banking system arguably played a ‘permissive’ rather than a ‘causative’ role in industrial development.

The Zollverein As an example of enlightened state policy, the foundation of the Zollverein in 1834 is frequently accorded a major role in German economic development. Friedrich List, the author of The National System of Political Economy (1841), even argued that the Zollverein and the railway system were ‘Siamese twins’, contributing to Germany’s emergence as the focal point for intra-European trade.23 In 1800, there were 1,800 customs frontiers in Germany, while Prussian trade was crippled by over 60 different of customs and excise rates which encouraged smuggling. Only between 1807 and 1812 did Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden eliminate internal customs dues. It was thought that the impact of the Zollverein was hard to measure, but using employment data, Ploeckl argued that it had a ‘far-reaching impact’ for states like Baden that only had ‘quite a small level of manufacturing activity’ and was ‘the most important institutional development of Germany’s economic unification during the middle of the nineteenth century’.24 Another author concluded that it had a positive impact ‘on the constant expansion of Germany’s markets’.25 The Zollverein demolished internal trade barriers; intensified inner-German economic links; provided protection for infant industries; and contributed to the formation of a ‘national’ market. It laid the basis for the unification of commercial law; facilitated railway construction; enabled smaller states to enjoy legally regulated trade conditions with distant countries; and fostered increased optimism. However, this positive view has been subject to reappraisal. Dumke has shown that the immediate and longer-term welfare gains of the Zollverein were relatively small and the elimination of tariffs gradual. Other authors have concluded that it did little to boost economic performance and failed to strengthen Prussia economically by the 1860s.26 Although membership improved the terms of trade for the south German states, it only accounted for a 1.5 per cent increase in national income. In Kurhessen, HesseDarmstadt and Nassau, membership generated benefits through increased competition, but failed to promote rapid industrialization or prevent the socio-economic dislocations of the 1840s. The German rye market was substantially integrated by 1820 while further market integration in Westphalia occurred only after 1850. For Bavaria, price data suggest that trend towards market integration was greater between 1815 and 1823 than in the two decades after 1834. Poor data on trade flows precludes a more rigorous analysis. But the economic impact of membership was highly differentiated and both trade creation and diversion, according to Shiue, were temporary phenomena.27 The 66

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motives for establishing the Zollverein were fiscal rather than economic, as states sought to maximize revenue from a more efficient customs system and to minimize budgetary control by representative assemblies. Bavaria’s customs receipts virtually doubled in 1834. Furthermore, the Zollverein post-dated significant developments in the economy (see above). Factors such as rising British demand for primary produce and increased demand within Germany due to high rates of population growth may have been more important. And economic unification was only completed when the empire’s two premier ports, Hamburg and Bremen, finally joined the Customs Union in 1881 and 1888, respectively.

Road and railway development Railway construction has conventionally been regarded as the ‘chief cycle maker’ of the economy and ‘the central motor of national economic growth’.28 From the 1840s to the late 1860s, it generated massive demand for coal, iron, steel, brick and wood, as well as labour and machines and accounted for one-third of net investment. It also encouraged significant import substitution, so that by the late 1840s, Germany was virtually selfsufficient in locomotive construction following the foundation of firms such as Maffei (1836), Borsig (1840) and Henschel and Son (1848). According to the traditional interpretation, substantially reduced transport costs and the improved speed and regularity of communications facilitated market integration and industrial concentration, the supply areas for perishable goods was extended and long-distance migration encouraged. As Gerschenkron argued, German states played a key role in railway development. Although the first railway line in Nuremberg (1835) was private, Bavaria and Württemberg quickly established state-owned railways, and by 1838 Baden was committed to the construction of a ‘national’ network. Prussia initially encouraged private railways but took companies into ownership after they encountered financial difficulties. From 1852 to 1874, railway construction was the most important sector in the economy in terms of relative growth rates (13.6 per cent per annum), inter-sectoral linkages and its contribution to unbalanced growth. Table 4.5 shows that German railways almost doubled in length during the 1850s. Initially, passenger traffic was most important but it was soon overtaken by freight, which grew at a phenomenal annual rate of 87.5 per cent between 1850 and 1870. Construction was undertaken almost entirely by day labourers who still made up 57.7 per cent of the workforce in 1870. However, recent research has led to a reappraisal. Price data for Prussian rye reveal noticeable market integration by the early 1820s and little further improvement before 1865, because market integration was primarily the result of road construction.29 An analysis of Prussian price data for rye and wheat concluded that paved roads ‘mattered economically and statistically’, while in Westphalia what has been described as a ‘transport revolution’ in turnpikes and state roads was a ‘contributing factor’ to economic growth with ‘a statistically significant effect’ in the 1820s.30 Also significant were some additional 1,400 kilometres of canals built between 1816 and 1870. 67

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Table 4.5  Indicators of German railway expansion, 1850–70  

Indicator

1850

1

German Confederation Prussia

5,875 2,967

2

Casual workers (Confederation) Permanent (Confederation) Permanent (Prussia)

1855

1860

1865

1870

+ % p.a.

7,862 3,822

11,157 5,762

14,034 6,895

18,810 11,460

10.4 13.6

78,700

112,800

171,300

189,100

220,400

8.5

26,084 13,706

51,480 27,380

85,608 44,852

113,570 62,294

161,014 106,542

24.6 32.2

3

Passengers per kilometre Freight per kilometre

783 303

1,090 1,095

1,733 1,675

2,676 3,672

4,447 5,876

22.2 87.5

4

Capital stock

891

1,329

2,152

2,772

3,945

16.3

5

Net investments

41

85

241

153

320

32.4

6

Net domestic product Confederation Prussia

48.2 28.9

102.4 56.9

173.2 96.1

275.9 157.0

397.8 274.5

34.5 40.4

Notes 1. Length of railway network in the German Confederation and Prussia in kilometre. 2. Workers employed (casual and permanent) by the German and Prussian railway companies. 3. Passengers and freight transported by German railways in passengers per kilometre and freight per kilometre. 4. Capital stock of German railway companies at purchase prices (in million marks). 5. Net investments by German railway companies at market prices (in million marks). 6. Net domestic product of German and Prussian railways at market prices (in million marks). Source: Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte Vol.3, Von der ‘Deutschen Doppelrevolution’ bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges 1849-1914 (1995), Table 63, pp. 69–70; James Retallack, ed., Forging an Empire: Bismarckian Germany (1866-1890), German History in Documents and Images, Vol. 4, Documents – Demographic and Economic Development, 7.

So, although railways had a marked benefit for certain cities (e.g. Chemnitz, which lacked water transport) and regions (e.g. mining in the remote Westerwald), this is less evident for most places. Furthermore, state involvement could be counterproductive, as when Baden opted for a non-standard gauge which soon required replacement or Prussia held back railway construction for budgetary reasons. Even by the turn of the nineteenth century, the estimated social savings generated by the railway system constituted no more than 5 per cent of GNP.

Education and human capital State support for education increased throughout Germany and it is generally assumed that it facilitated economic development by raising the value of human capital. Many 68

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states showed an early commitment to compulsory primary education, and Prussia was heralded as ‘a pioneer’ following legislation in 1763–5.31 By 1800, perhaps 50 per cent of all children between five and fourteen were attending elementary schools (Volksschulen), rising to 60 per cent by 1816. After 1815, territorially reconfigured states saw education as a means to create a distinct ‘national’ identity, but the need to widen secondary education beyond the grammar school (Gymnasium) was also accepted as a necessity to satisfy the more practical needs of emergent commercial and industrial classes. This led to more Realschulen (technical schools) and Bürgerschulen (grammar schools) with greater emphasis on science and languages, and also specialized town schools. Vocational education was expanded considerably, including the establishment of industry schools (Industrieschulen) for girls in Baden (1836), continuation schools for various trades and businesses, as well as agricultural high schools and weaving schools. Improved literacy rates, particularly in Protestant areas, led to faster economic development and ‘innovative activities’, while the number of teacher-training seminaries in Prussia increased from 15 (1811) to 45 (1840) in an attempt to raise the overall quality of teaching.32 Technical education and training have been singled out as evidence of the positive state contribution to economic development. Technical education was meant for application: it was symptomatic of a close connection between education and business and may have contributed to technological innovation. There was a marked expansion in state funding for higher education. Initially, university enrolment increased markedly, although student numbers slumped during the 1830s and did not rise again until after 1870. There was also the creation of specialized institutions concerned with the application of science for practical and technological purposes, such as a new Technical Institute in Berlin (1821) and the Karlsruhe Polytechnic School (1825). By the 1860s, many states had arguably succeeded in creating a more ‘modern’ education system well placed to respond to the demands of a growing economy. But again, such an interpretation is misleading, particularly because there were variations in the level of state support for education and serious weaknesses in its delivery. By the early 1860s, school and university state funding was already relatively high in Bavaria and Prussia (18 per cent of total government expenditure), but throughout the 1850s and 1860s, Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria spent more on higher education, science and technology than either Saxony or Prussia despite their leading role in the industrialization process.33 Differences were also evident in primary education. Bavaria, in particular, underperformed, as the secularizing reform movement of Count Montgelas was emasculated by a conservative reaction fuelled by hostility to any change in the confessional framework for both primary and secondary education. Baden and HesseDarmstadt succeeded in introducing non-confessional schools, but the promotion of secular education supported by ‘rigorous teacher training’ lost impetus throughout Germany in the 1830s and 1840s (see Chapter 5) and the response to the revolution of 1848–9 was to blame ‘over-education’, leading to the closure of teachers’ seminaries and the dismissal of senior staff for their progressive views. 69

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The cumulative impact of greater educational provision at every level may have helped to improve the quality of human capital, but some historians remain sceptical about its economic significance. Literacy rates varied greatly in the 1840s from 98 per cent in Saxony to less than 60 per cent in some eastern districts of Prussia. They were marginally higher in Protestant than in Catholic communities, but social class remained the key determinant. The establishment of over 597 reading societies between 1770 and 1820 reinforced the demand for new books and periodical literature. Their membership, however, was largely urban middle and upper class, and rural areas were devoid of institutions that promoted education and literacy. Elementary education was provided mainly in large, single classes with an emphasis on religious instruction and morality rather than practical training. Many children below the age of fourteen were only taught in half-day or holiday schools. Secondary education was rigidly compartmentalized with a continuing conflict between classicism and modernism. There were no significant changes to the curriculum between the 1830s and 1880, and despite the expansion of provision for girls from middle- and upper-class families, they failed to offer the qualifications needed for higher education at a time when there was an increasing emphasis on housework as a vocation. Science training in grammar schools remained deficient, failing to meet the ‘demands of the present’. Pupil recruitment was class based, limiting opportunities for social mobility while private funding continued to play an important role. There was no significant correlation between technical high school enrolment and industrial production and certain aspects of technical training were subject to ‘continuous academization’. Higher education expenditure only increased from the 1860s. Overall, the contribution of educational improvements to economic development was more limited than claimed and a recent estimate suggests that quality improvements in labour as a factor of production in Prussia between 1864 and 1911 contributed only 2 per cent to the recorded growth rate in total output between 1864 and 1911.

Social changes The period between the Napoleonic Wars and 1848 saw significant social change, despite a conventional view to the contrary, but even by 1871 this had not led to a ‘new class structure’ dominated by a powerful bourgeoisie and pronounced differences persisted in the social structure of individual regions.34 Already by the late eighteenth century, a distinct consumer culture had developed orientated to middle-class tastes for books, paintings, travel, interior decoration and fashion, and fairs and markets continued to flourish.35 The consumption of colonial goods such as coffee, tea, chocolate and sugar increased, spreading from the main trading centres to provincial towns and the countryside. These trends accelerated after 1800 with economic and urban growth. By the 1850s, one can observe in some regions shop purchases in rural areas and a declining use of traditional peasant dress (Tracht), but the process was slow and wooden shoes were still common in 1900. 70

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German society remained hierarchical and income inequality, as reflected by social differences in demographic indicators, including infant mortality and life expectancy, were accentuated, especially by the growth of a rural proletariat. Urbanization and industrialization exacerbated inequality as shown by tax data for individual cities. Many towns were dominated by relatively small, interconnected elites and the Hansa ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Rostock, continued to be run by quasi-oligarchies who were often resistant to new forms of ‘capitalist commercial enterprise’.36 City administration remained ‘exclusive’ and restrictive conditions on the acquisition of citizenship were seldom lifted before the 1860s. Many towns witnessed a growth of associational culture that underpinned the formation of an active middle class concerned with education, the arts, science and public service. This was part of a longer process of business networking and class formation which strengthened bourgeois power while marginalizing workers. Clubs and societies became more segregated along class lines, and an increasingly affluent urban elite ostentatiously used its leisure time to distance itself from workers.37 There is no evidence of increased upward social mobility: if anything, the risk of dropping out of the middle and upper classes increased. Data from various towns suggests a 30 per cent reduction in real wages in the second half of the eighteenth century, followed by a significant increase between 1815 and 1825 but then a decade of falling real wages for the lower classes. There was a slight increase in the mid-1830s and a further decline by the end of the 1840s. A general increase in urban wages was evident in the 1860s, although even then it was modest or non-existent for many occupations. Some urban working-class families remained dependent on what their children could earn by peddling (Figure 4.3) because they suffered from increasing hardship, particularly during the 1840s. However, the trend in rural wages was even less favourable. The available anthropometric evidence on trends in average height paints a similar picture. Data for Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg reveal a noticeable reduction in average height between the birth cohorts of the late eighteenth century and those who were born after 1810, and craftsmen were shorter than military recruits. In Bavaria, an analysis of 19,562 military medical records from 1813 and 1842 revealed a decline in average stature especially in the case of urban dwellers, while the tallest recruits came from the Alpine region where the availability of milk products ensured a higher level of protein consumption. Moreover, there were no gains in average height in later decades. In Württemberg, the 1852–7 birth cohort still had a comparatively low height of 164.1 centimetres and in some regions there was no improvement in the height of males until far into the nineteenth century. Various explanations have been offered for why economic development during this period, in particular agricultural commercialization and early industrialization, had such negative effects. First, food prices rose after the 1820s, aggravated by periodic agricultural crises (1816–9, 1830, 1847–8, mid-1850s). Württemberg was faced by a ‘latent nutritional crisis’; Saxony had low nutritional standards; and poverty, malnutrition and poor health were ‘widespread’ in Bavaria.38 Agricultural reforms and transport improvements rendered rural and urban workers more susceptible to price fluctuations. 71

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Figure 4.3  Children peddling at Berlin Christmas market, 1869. Source: Theodore Hosemann.

The price of low-quality foodstuffs may have fallen but that of protein-rich nutrients increased. A growing dependency on the potato also had adverse health consequences as the nutritional value was lower than its grain equivalent.39 Second, economic growth, particularly in rural areas, depended on an increase in work intensity and hours worked. In the late eighteenth century some thirty to fifty feast days were phased out. By 1870, most men were working between seventy-two and seventy-five hours over a six-day week, while industrial workers were employed for about fifteen hours each day. Prussia first intervened in the labour market in 1839, banning the employment of children under fourteen, but enforcement was difficult, further progress was slow and the focus was almost entirely on urban workers. Women were increasingly employed outside the home, particularly as domestic servants and cotton workers, but with little readjustment of domestic responsibilities.40 Labourintensive grain production required women to undertake additional tasks (Figure 4.4), often preventing breastfeeding, which had negative implications for infant survival. Some historians have claimed that capitalist development in Germany during this period was ‘a liberating force’, undermining the extended household (Das Ganze Haus or ‘whole house’) and redistributing marital duties with a separation of domestic responsibilities from working life. It encouraged romantic love with marriages no longer based on family interests; had ‘far-reaching consequences for the lives of women and men’; and resulted in a ‘sexual revolution’ reflected in rising illegitimacy rates.41 However, 72

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Figure 4.4  A German peasant woman at work from an 1866 engraving. (Image in the public domain).

evidence to support these claims is weak. The concept of the ‘whole house’ was an idealized, sometimes misleading, portrayal of harmony between the master and his servants. Most families continued with arranged marriages that reflected business and class interests, while in rural communities, such as Neckarhausen, marriage fitted into a network of reciprocal relationships. Domestic violence and female exploitation remained common, while marital conflicts were aggravated by the growing importance of a cash nexus for the peasant household, economic instability and poverty.42 The highest rates of illegitimacy, assumed to be evidence for the existence of a ‘sexual revolution’, were in Catholic territories, such as Bavaria, that remained relatively backward economically and less affected by industrialization and the disruptive impact of market forces than other regions. Many women, particularly in rural areas, were confronted by a double burden.43 Labour-intensive farming methods increased female labour force participation, while the downward trend in real wages for men forced women to seek new ways of supplementing family income. Class differences remained all-pervasive. The practice of family limitation within the middle class may have diminished maternal mortality, but female workers in cotton factories were confronted by a gender hierarchy and paid markedly lower wages than men, while Prussian legislation sought to limit the legal rights of illegitimate children and their mothers. 73

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There were significant cultural changes, particularly in state capitals and larger towns, that arguably represented a ‘transformation of the institutional and commercial circumstances of artistic culture’ (see Chapter 5), but they were orientated to the middle classes and operated on the principle of ‘social separation’.44 There were exceptions: in the Rhineland, there was a gradual convergence of popular and middle-class culture; longestablished traditions such as carnival (Fasching) were celebrated by all social classes; and members of the working class began to appear on the political stage even before 1848. Yet, rural traditions, including charivari and Heimgarten (home garden), remained resilient. Traditional costumes, particularly on festive occasions, signified age, gender and marital status. Despite the claim that the public image of the peasant had been transformed by 1840 from a ‘sub-human being’ to ‘a paragon of German national virtue’, much rural life remained unchanged.45 There was continued reliance on a rigorous enforcement of the Gesindeordnung (the Servants’ Law), increased use of work books to control wage levels and deliberate use of Servant Improvement Societies (Dienstbotenverbesserungsvereine), founded towards the end of the 1830s, to discipline labourers. One could also argue that the traditional social order was reinforced by the resurgence of popular religion. Overshadowing the emergence of secularist groups, such as the Free Thought Movement, Monist associations and Humanist societies, and a growing number of non-denominational congregations, there was an ‘epochal expansion in confessional commitment’, an unprecedented surge in popular pilgrimages and a substantial increase in the number of monks and nuns. According to one English traveller, in Catholic states there was ‘scarcely a high hill in any pleasant country on which some cunning saint has not perched his shrine’. This increased tension between Protestants and Catholics, however, reinforced the traditional social and moral framework of many Germans along confessional lines.46

Conclusion A major problem confronting economic, demographic and social historians of early nineteenth-century Germany is the absence of reliable data. It is difficult to derive accurate national income figures and the continued fragmentation of state power makes measuring rates of growth problematic.47 The first statistical office was established in Prussia in 1805, but other states only followed suit much later (Bremen, 1850; Baden, 1852; and Hessen, 1861) and their practices varied considerably. This makes it difficult to construct economic time series for the whole of Germany. There are no data on work intensity and unemployment and improvements in the quality of labour are hard to define. Processes of change were evident both before 1780 and after political unification (see Chapter 9), but as far as the intervening period is concerned, it is necessary to rethink conventional accounts. Economic growth was largely a regional phenomenon and the nature of development and its costs must be analysed in that context, as well as within a political framework. If the state was heavily involved in industrialization and promoting economic growth, then its role must be examined within a federal 74

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framework that includes the impact of local lobbyist groups and the contribution of different state bureaucracies. Such an approach places in doubt the continued applicability of the Gerschenkronian paradigm. In 1800, Germany was not uniformly backward, even in a relative sense. Economic growth was more continuous, particularly in the early nineteenth century, and the impact of key factors, such as banks, the Zollverein, railways and education, was less important than Gerschenkron thought. Economic development was more in line with a Smithian growth model where ‘good government’ encouraged market integration, a greater geographical division of labour, regional specialization and higher incomes. Population growth, particularly after 1815, increased market size and reinforced regional specialization, while higher levels of output were dependent on an increased input of land, labour and capital, rather than significant gains in efficiency.48 This reappraisal has broader implications. Much recent research on nineteenthcentury European economic development has focused on regions and the unevenness of growth. This approach is especially relevant in the case of Germany, as long-run development was affected directly by political forces and social institutions that operated at the level of the federal state. Indeed, after 1871 (see Chapter 9), regional economic divergence was accentuated and political power remained largely fragmented within the federal framework of the Bismarckian constitution.

Notes 1. On the basis of a detailed analysis of a number of European states in the nineteenth century, Alexander Gerschenkron put forward a number of hypotheses to explain the overall pattern of industrialization. According to his paradigm, the relative backwardness of a country affected not only the rate of growth of industrial production but the emphasis on producer rather than consumer industries. The more backward the country, the more active was the role of institutional factors, such as the banks or the state, and the greater the pressure on consumption levels in order to facilitate capital formation. For a fuller discussion of these issues, see Richard Sylla and Gianni Toniolo, eds, Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century (1991), pp. 1–28. 2. Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871 (Ithaca, 1971). 3. S. A. Eddie, Freedom’s Price: Serfdom, Subjection, and Reform in Prussia, 1648–1848 (Oxford, 2013); Jonathan Osmond, ‘Land, Peasant and Lord in German Agriculture since 1800’, in Sheilagh Ogilvie and Overy Richard, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History Volume 3 since 1800 (2003), p. 81. 4. Carsten Burhop and Guntram B. Wolff, ‘A Compromise Estimate of German Net National Product, 1851–1913, And Its Implications for Growth and Business Cycles’, Journal of Economic History, 65/3 (2005), pp. 613–57. 5. Steve Hochstadt, Mobility and Modernity Migration in Germany 1820–1989 (1999), p. 65. 6. James M. Brophy, ‘The End of the Economic Old Order: The Great Transition, 1750–1860’, in Helmut Walser Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (2011), p. 169; Rolf Banken and Christian Marx, ‘Knowledge Transfer in the Industrial Age: The 75

Nineteenth-Century Germany Case of Gutehoffnungshütte, 1810–1945’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 56/1 (2015), p. 198. 7. Hal Hansen, ‘Rethinking the Role of Artisans in Modern German Development’, Central European History, 42/1 (2009), p. 42. 8. Toni Pierenkemper and Richard Tilly, The German Economy during the Nineteenth Century (2004), p. 58. 9. Sophia Twarog, ‘Heights and Living Standards in Germany, 1850–1939: The Case of Württemberg’, in Richard H. Steckel and Roderick Floud, eds, Health and Welfare during Industrialization (1997), p. 306. 10. Simone Wegge, ‘To Part or Not to Part: Emigration and Inheritance Institutions in Mid-19th Century Germany’, Explorations in Economic History, 36 (1999), pp. 30–55. 11. Heide Wunder, ‘Agriculture and Agrarian Society’, in Sheilagh Ogilivie, ed., Germany A New Social and Economic History, Vol.2 1630–1900 (1996), p. 87. 12. Yair Mintzker, The Defortification of the German City, 1689–1866 (2012). 13. Brian Ladd, Urban Planning and Civic Order in Germany, 1860–1914 (1990), p. 45. 14. Hochstadt, Mobility and Modernity, p. 35. 15. James H. Jackson, Jr, ‘Migration in Duisburg, 1821–1914’, in Dirk Hoerder and Jörg Nagler, eds, People in Transit German Migrations in Comparative Perspective, 1820–1930 (1995), p. 159. 16. Timothy W. Guinnane, ‘Population and the Economy in Germany, 1800–1990’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 35. Ernest Benz, ‘Population Change and the Economy’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 56. 17. Timothy W. Guinnane, ‘Population and the Economy in Germany, 1800–1990’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds., Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 35. 18. John Breuilly, ‘The National idea of German History’, in John Breuilly, ed., The State of Germany: The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of A Modern German State (1992), p. 24. 19. Zef Segal, ‘Communication and State Construction: The Postal Service in German States, 1815–1866’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 44/4 (2014), p. 457. 20. John Breuilly, ‘Urbanization and Social Transformation, 1800–1914’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 201. 21. Alf Lüdtke, Police and State in Prussia, 1815–1850 (1989). 22. Volker Wellhöner and Harald Wixforth, ‘Finance and Industry’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 153. 23. William O. Henderson, Friedrich List: Economist and Visionary (1983); William O. Henderson, The Zollverein, 3rd enlarged edn (1984). 24. Florian Ploeckl, ‘The Internal Impact of a Customs Union: Baden and the Zollverein’, Explorations in Economic History, 50 (2013), p. 402. 25. Wolfhard Weber, ‘Science, Technology, and Society in Germany from 1800 to the Present’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 325; Brodie A. Ashton, The Kingdom of Württemberg and the Making of Germany, 1815–1871 (2017), p. 105. 26. Rolf Dumke, ‘Tariffs and Market Structure: The German Zollverein as a Model for Economic Integration’, in W. R. Lee, ed., German Industry and German Industrialization: Essays in 76

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development German Economic and Business History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1991), pp. 77–115; Hans-Joachim Voth, ‘The Prussian Zollverein and the Bid for Economic Superiority’, in Philip Dwyer, ed., Modern Prussian History 1830–1947 (2001), pp. 109–24. 27. Carol H. Shiue, ‘From Political Fragmentation Towards a Customs Union: Border Effects of the German Zollverein, 1815 to 1855’, European Review of Economic History, 9/2 (2005), p. 158. 28. Brophy, ‘The End of the Economic Old Order’, p. 186. 29. Ulrich Pfister, Jana Riedel and Martin Uebele, ‘Real Wages and the Origins of Modern Economic Growth in Germany, 16th to 19th Centuries’, European Historical Economics Society, Working Papers in Economic History, No. 17 (4/2012), p. 22. 30. Michael Kopsidis and Heinrich Hockmann, ‘Technical Change in Westphalian Peasant Agriculture and the Rise of the Ruhr, circa 1830–1880’, European Review of Economic History, 24/2 (2010), p. 224; Uebele and Gallardo-Albarrán, ‘Paving the Way to Modernity’, p. 88. 31. Ralph Hippe and Joerg Baten, ‘Regional Inequality in Human Capital Formation in Europe, 1790–1880’, Scandinavian Journal of Economic History, 60/1 (2012), p. 257. 32. Sascha O. Becker and Ludiger Woessmann, ‘Was Weber Right? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124 (2009), pp. 531–96; Francesco Cinnirella and Jochen Streb, ‘The Role of Human Capital and Innovation in Prussia Economic Development’, CESifo Working Paper, 318 (2013). 33. Wolfhard Weber, ‘Science, Technology, and Society in Germany from 1800 to the Present’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany a New Social and Economic History, p. 324. 34. David Blackbourn, Fontana History of Germany 1780–1918 The Long Nineteenth Century (1997), pp. 207–8. 35. Michael North, ‘Material Delight and the Joy of Living’ Cultural Consumption in the Age of Enlightenment in Germany (2008); Matt Erlin, Necessary Luxuries: Books, Literature and the Culture of Consumption in Germany (2014); Tatlock, Lynne, ed., Publishing Culture and the ‘Reading Nation’: German Book History in the Long Nineteenth Century (2010). See also Chapter 5. 36. Lars Maischak, ‘The Rise and Fall of Friedrich Wilhelm Keutgen, Bremen’s Consul in New York’, in Robert Lee, ed., Commerce and Culture Nineteenth-Century Business Elites (2011), p. 197. 37. Jonathan Sperber, ‘Bürger, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft’: Studies of the German (Upper) Middle Class and its Sociocultural World’, Journal of Modern History, 69/2 (1997), pp. 280, 286. 38. Ulf Christian Ewert, ‘The Biological Standard of Living on the Decline: Episodes from Germany during Early Industrialisation’, European Review of Economic History, 10/1 (2006), p. 73; Jörg Baten, ‘Anthropometrics, Consumption, and Leisure: The Standard of Living’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 390; Halvor Mehlun, Edward Miguel and Ragnar Torvik, ‘Poverty and Crime in 19th Century Germany’, Journal of Urban Economics, 59/3 (2006), p. 373. 39. Ulf Christian Ewert, ‘The Biological Standard of Living on the Decline: Episodes from Germany during Early Industrialisation’, European Review of Economic History, 10/1 (2006), p. 73; Jörg Baten, ‘Anthropometrics, Consumption, and Leisure: The Standard of Living’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 390; Halvor Mehlun, Edward Miguel and Ragnar Torvik, ‘Poverty and Crime in 19th Century Germany’, Journal of Urban Economics, 59/3 (2006), p. 373.

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Nineteenth-Century Germany 40. William Howitt, The Rural and Domestic Life of Germany: With Characteristic Sketches of Its Cities and Scenery, Collected in a General Tour, and during a Residence in the Country in the Years 1840 41 and 42 (1842), p. 45. 41. Anna Goldberg, ‘Women and Men: 1760–1960’, in Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook, p. 74. 42. Lynn Abrams, ‘Companionship and Conflict: The Negotiation of Marriage Relations in the Nineteenth Century’, in Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey, eds, Gender Relations in German History Power, Agency and Experience from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (1997), pp. 101–20. 43. Lisa Pine, ‘Women and the Family’, in Ogilvie and Overy, eds., Germany A New Social and Economic History, p. 356. 44. Celia Applegate, ‘Culture and the Arts’, in Sperber, ed., Germany 1800–1870, p. 115; Ayako Sakurai, Science and Societies in Frankfurt am Main (2013). 45. John G. Gagliardo, From Pariah to Patriot The Changing Image of the German Peasant 1770–1840 (1969), p. x. 46. Helmut Walser Smith, ‘Introduction’, in Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook, pp. 27–8; Todd H. Christopher Weir, Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession (2014); Clark, ‘Religion’, in Sperber, ed., Germany 1800–1870, p. 162; Howitt, The Rural and Domestic Life of Germany, p. 103. 47. Rainer Fremdling, ‘German National Accounts for the 19th and Early 20th Centuries’, in Wolfram Fischer, ed., The Economic Development of Germany since 1870 (1997), pp. 63–87. 48. The Smithian growth model is named after Adam Smith (1723–90), author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London, 1776).

Select bibliography Brophy, James M., Capitalism, Politics and Railroads in Prussia, 1830–1870 (1998). Brophy, James M., Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland 1800–1850 (2007). Brose, E. D., The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia (1993). Dwyer, Philip G., ed., Modern Prussian History, 1830–1947 (2001). See, in particular the contributions by Hans-Joachim Voth and Marjorie Lamberti. Eddie, Scott M., Freedom’s Price: Serfdom, Subjection, and Reform in Prussia, 1648–1848 (2013). Ewert, Ulf Christian, ‘The Biological Standard of Living on the Decline: Episodes from Germany during Early Industrialisation’, European Review of Economic History, 10/1 (2006), pp. 51–88. Henderson, W. O., The Rise of German Industrial Power, 1834–1914 (1975). Kriedte, Peter, Medick, Hans and Schlumbohm, Jürgen, Industrialization before Industrialization (1981). Lee, W. R., ‘Economic Development and the State in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, Economic History Review, 41/3 (1988), pp. 346–67. Lee, W. R., ed., German Industry and German Industrialisation Essays in German Economic and Business History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1991). See, in particular, the chapters by Rainer Fremdling, R. H. Dumke, Wilfried Feldenkirchen and Richard Tilly. Ogilvie, Sheilagh and Overy, Richard, eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History Volume 3 Since 1800 (2003). The chapters by Frank B. Tipton, Timothy W. Guinnane, John Breuilly, and Jörg Baten are of particular relevance. Pfister, Ulrich and Fertig, Georg, ‘The Population History of Germany: Research Strategy and Preliminary Results’, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Working Papers, 201035 (December 2010). 78

‘Relative Backwardness’ and Long-Run Development Pierenkemper, Toni and Tilly, Richard, The German Economy during the Nineteenth Century (2004). Smith, Helmut Walser, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (2011). See, in particular, the Introduction and the chapters by Anna Goldberg, Franz Leander Fillafer and Jürgen Osterhammel, and James M. Brophy. Sperber, Jonathan, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1984). Sperber, Jonathan, ed., Germany 1800–1870 (2004). The chapters by Friedrich Lenger, Andreas W. Daum, Celia Applegate, Christopher Clark, Jonathan M. Brophy and Eve Rosenhaft are recommended. Tilly, R., ‘Germany’, in R. Sylla and G. Toniolo, eds, Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century (1991), pp. 175–96. Tipton, Frank B., Jr, Regional Variations in the Economic Development of Germany During the Nineteenth Century (1976).

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CHAPTER 5 CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRENDS

Astrid Köhler

German cultural and intellectual history between 1780 and 1871 is usually – and for good reason – broken into distinct periods that are treated separately. These are broadly the periods considered in terms of social and political history in Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 7 of this book. The point made in these chapters about the diversity of the German lands applies equally to cultural and intellectual history. For much of this era, there was not even a fully unified language. German existed in numerous variations and its speakers could understand each other only with difficulty. It was as late as the 1830s that the founding fathers of German philology, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1785–1863 and 1786–1859), started to collect these linguistic variants and systematized them in their German dictionary, the first volume of which appeared in 1852. And it was not until 1880 that the Duden, the first authoritative dictionary to impose a unified spelling system on the German language, was published. Nevertheless, the notion that language and culture were the main elements unifying the diverse German lands grew increasingly strong in the last decades of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. This notion would later be given the name Kulturnation (cultural nation). This notion of ‘culture’ transcends the social and political developments of the time. This chapter will therefore be structured according to the dominant cultural and intellectual trends of the entire period rather than respecting the caesuras of standard historiography.

Defining concepts for German literature, culture and thought ‘It is a cultural commonplace that the period of roughly one generation either side of 1800 was crucial for the definition of modern German identity. During this period unprecedented intellectual and literary creativity generated a cultural canon that retained its status for a long time: the literary, critical and theoretical works of what is traditionally known as Sturm und Drang, Klassik, Romantik, and the philosophical systems of German Idealism.’1 While in a European context all three movements tend to be subsumed under ‘Romanticism’, they are regarded as distinct phases of the Goethezeit (Goethe era) in the German one. All three, however, were deeply rooted in the Enlightenment and can to varying degrees be regarded as internal critiques located within Enlightenment thought. What further unifies them is the tendency to regard literature, art and thought

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as indivisible. Following Friedrich Engels, historians write of a trinity of revolutions in Europe around 1800: the industrial one in Britain, the political one in France, and the intellectual revolution in Germany.2 A dominant concern from the 1770s onwards had to do with the question of what a literature or an art might look like that would be capable of adequately expressing German thinking and feeling. (For more than a century, French language and art had dominated the aristocratic culture in the German lands.) Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) focused on Volkspoesie (folk poetry), insisting on the ‘natural’ and ‘original’ sources of poetry as opposed to artificial poetics. He drew on folk songs and, looking abroad, regarded Shakespeare and the Ossian cycle of old Gaelic poems (subsequently exposed as having been forged by James McPherson, 1736–96) as prime examples of nature-induced poetic originality or Originalgenie. In Germany, the young Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832), with his poem Prometheus (1772/4) and his novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774), was seen to embody Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), a young countermovement to the prescriptive aesthetics of the dominant culture. The dramas of Goethe and others like Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–92) and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (1752–1831) questioned intellectual and social authority and set values such as personal autonomy, friendship and love against the stifling rules of the ancien regime. This new movement was socially grounded in and promoted by the emerging middle classes. According to Gustav Frank, Sturm und Drang is ‘the first example of an intellectual experiment with revolt’, but also of the ‘concurrent rejection of that revolt’s social, moral, and theoretical implications’.3 This rejection was triggered mainly by the events in France once the revolution entered the phase of terreur (terror) in the 1790s, followed by the treatment of those German lands occupied by the French revolutionary army. It was Goethe and Schiller who again became the main proponents of Klassik (German classicism), which held up as their ideal ancient Greek and Roman models. While retaining the notions of the autonomous subject and of literature as a playground for intellectual and social innovation, they regarded self-restraint of individual passions and harmonious interaction within society as equally important. In this respect, the Klassik is closely related to German Enlightenment thinking as embodied by Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) essay Was ist Aufklärung? (What is Enlightenment?, 1784), which was equally concerned with promoting social progress without the upheavals of revolution. While Schiller in his Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind, 1793) proposed the theatre as a place where aesthetic activity could playfully work on improving human social organization, Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795/6) was to become the model of the Bildungsroman, combining, through the narrative of a young bourgeois man’s life, the project of self-cultivation with the cultivation of social discipline, enabling a fruitful integration into society. Bildung, a crucial term in German culture from the Klassik period onwards, is a concept difficult to translate into English. It combines education in its specifically 82

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English meaning with personal development and a broader sense of what it means to be a well-rounded, cultured and worldly human being. The work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) might be regarded as a philosophical version of this, in that he proposed a way of philosophical thinking that strove to bring together the various and heterogeneous phenomena of reality, inclusive of their histories, and to understand them in their relatedness. An artistic development not dissimilar to that of Goethe, that is the move from Sturm und Drang to Klassik, can be seen in the composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Having started off as a ‘Promethean revolutionary’,4 he was soon regarded as constituting, together with his teacher, Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) the Wiener Klassik (Viennese classicism), which would be the musical pendant to the Weimarer Klassik (Weimar classicism) of literature as epitomized by Goethe and Schiller. Beethoven’s contribution to classicism was distinctly more radical than Goethe’s, particularly as regards the treatment of form. All three composers mentioned had a decisive influence on the development of the symphony as a genre as well as of several genres of chamber music. Romanticism, like Sturm und Drang and Klassik, made no distinction between the cultural, intellectual and social concerns of the time. Originally conceived in Jena (only a few miles east of Weimar), the Frühromantik (early Romanticism), revolved around a group of poets (Ludwig Tieck, 1773–1853; Novalis, 1772–1801; Friedrich Schlegel, 1772–1829), critics (Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, 1767–1845), philosophers (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, 1775–1854) and theologians (Friedrich Schleiermacher, 1768–1834) who regularly met and partly lived together between about 1798 and 1804. It is best exemplified by Friedrich Schlegel’s critical notes Athenäums-Fragmente (Athenaeum Fragments, 1798) and novel Lucinde (1799). Going further than Sturm und Drang and Klassik in viewing the arts and philosophy as activities in their own rights, rather than as serving social purposes, and insisting on the importance of genius rather than rule, Schlegel coined the terms progressive Universalpoesie and Symphilosophie to denote the fusion of poetry, art and philosophy and their superior ability to understand life. The main representative of Romanticism in the realm of fine art was Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840, Figure 5.1.). Breaking with a number of painting conventions, his compositions displayed symbolically laden landscapes, often centred around a solitary person or small group. In later years, Friedrich was increasingly concerned with religious motifs and the topic of death. This increasing preoccupation with religion, sometimes taking the form of conversion to Catholicism, and an interest in medieval culture were features of various other late Romantic artists and schools in places like Heidelberg, Berlin and Dresden. An important member of the Dresden circle was the composer Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826), who had considerable influence on the development of German music in the nineteenth century. Not only did he establish the Romantic opera, but he had also among his vocal works Lieder (songs); for example, his cycle Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten (Temperaments on the Loss of a Lover, 1815/16), which would develop into an important genre in the coming decades, especially in the works 83

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Figure 5.1  Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Contemplating the Moon. Source: Heritage Images / Getty.

of Franz Schubert (1797–1828) and Robert Schumann (1810–56). Schubert’s song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (The Fair Miller-Maid, 1823) and Winterreise (Winter’s Journey, 1827), which set to music twenty-four poems by Wilhelm Müller (1794–1827), were to become two of the best-known romantic compositions. Felix Mendelsohn-Bartholdy (1809–47) successfully merged classical and Romantic influences in his compositions and rediscovered and cultivated the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). While Sturm und Drang and Klassik can be seen as firmly rooted in the Enlightenment heritage, attempting to revise and re-express it in the light of their own historical experiences, Romantik – and in particular its late manifestations – developed the strongest tension with the Enlightenment, particularly with its rationalist philosophy as personified by Immanuel Kant with whom virtually all early Romantics had engaged.

Culture, society and the public sphere Two central terms in Kant’s essay What is Enlightenment? refer to the private and public use of reason, respectively. While private reason was to be used in one’s professional capacity (as army officer, clerk, clergyman and so on), one can also, as citizen and thinker, participate in public discourse on how to improve state and society. So, while as a member of, for instance, the army, the church or the state administration I have to obey the rules given to me. I can use the public sphere to discuss these rules and even reason against them. In the process of this rational–critical discourse, something like a public opinion emerges which will, according to Kant, be considered by the enlightened monarch and might result in changes to the laws. 84

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In historical terms, this public sphere was a distinctly bourgeois phenomenon which, as Jürgen Habermas has argued, developed in the German lands during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its original site was what Habermas calls the ‘literary public sphere’. It gave the middle classes the opportunity to reflect on their own role in a society that was still governed by feudal laws. Already in the 1770s, the German literacy rate of about 15 per cent was relatively high by European standards. This increased along with state support for education across the German lands (see Chapter 4). There was also a relatively high concentration of universities, including some very old and reputable institutions such as Tübingen, Heidelberg, Jena, Leipzig, Göttingen and Munich. Prussia’s state university opened in 1810. A considerable number of German middle-class men saw their education culminate in university or vocational training. Jürgen Kocka differentiates between the Wirtschaftbürgertum (economic bourgeoisie), consisting of merchants, manufacturers (even before the onset of industrialization), bankers and others and the Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle classes) such as the traditional professions, teachers, university professors and higher civil servants. (In the German lands, the proportion of the latter was larger than in England.) What united both groups was their lack of political influence in a system they increasingly perceived as obsolete, their high regard for, and possession of, education (which received stronger emphasis than religion) and their shared moral values. The family was held in high regard as the essential community that provided individual emotional strength and social support. The value of individual achievement was set against aristocratic privilege. ‘By stressing the principles of achievement and education, work, thrift, self-reliance, many members of the middle-class supported the emerging vision of a modern, secularized, post-corporate, self-regulating, enlightened order that would eventually become reality and be distinguished from the privileges and autocracy of the ancient regime.’5 In the course of expressing this vision, bourgeois Germans developed their own culture, extending from conventions of politeness, customs, dress codes, domesticity, table manners, interior and exterior design, to the pursuit of arts, music, literature and thought. One central concept was that of sociability. This was distinguished from the occupational and family spheres and practised in a variety of ways. It had its site in learned and reading societies, lodges, clubs, friendship circles, salons, correspondence networks, etc. All of these institutions were not only open to the middle classes but also frequented by some members of the aristocracy and the educated lower middle classes. Sociability meant mutual education and polite, cultivated exchange on a large variety of cultural as well as social and political topics. It might include recitals of literary and other texts, and even amateur collaborations on plays, concerts and written texts. Sociability was rooted in the urban world and had at its centre the spoken and written word. The theatre, too, became a distinctly bourgeois institution, with a growing number of city repertory companies replacing touring theatres. The proverbial Lesehunger (appetite for books) among the middle classes went hand in hand with significant developments in the technology of printing. In the 1770s, about 35,000 German-language books were produced annually. This changed with the 85

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introduction of the all-metal press around 1800, which had double the printing capacity of the wooden press. It was soon superseded by the high speed press, and in the 1830s, by the high speed press driven by steam engines. (The rotary press, which then dominated the printing industry well into the twentieth century, was first used by German printers in the 1860s.) The printing of images and bookbinding, too, were revolutionized in the first half of the nineteenth century. From 1826 for the rest of the century, the number of titles roughly doubled every twenty-five years. The literary market was remarkably diverse, comprising in addition to religious and academic publications educational books for a wider audience, an increasing number of novels and belle lettres and periodicals. The decades from about 1780 onwards were often called the era of the Romanenwut (novel-reading craze). Swayed, perhaps, by the success of English sentimental novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1749) and Clarissa (1748) or Laurence Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy (1759–67) and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768), German authors engaged increasingly in this new literary genre. Sophie von LaRoche’s epistolary novel Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim, 1771) had considerable success, albeit far exceeded by Goethe’s revolutionary Sorrows of Young Werther (1774, see above). So popular was the latter that it caused not only a number of real re-enactments of Werther’s suicide but a flood of literary imitations, known as the ‘Werther mania’. Many subsequent novels had either the search for adventure or domestic topics such as romance, marriage and family at their core and were thus belittled by contemporary and later literary criticism. However, Todd Kontje rightly points out that within their domestic frame, they addressed matters of wider concern: ‘Romantic entanglements almost invariably turn on questions of class and money, while depictions of the family address relations between rulers and the people at the level of the state. The novels … are thus both reflections on private life and commentaries on public politics.’6 The publication of novels grew continuously in the nineteenth century. Another new genre which served an emerging market was the ConversationsLexikon (conversation dictionary), an encyclopaedia in instalments, designed for a wide audience. Influenced by the Enlightenment enterprise of the French Encyclopaedia, this project envisioned a non-scholarly but educated readership that would be able to keep up with the latest information about a rapidly changing world while also using it in polite conversation in society. The publisher, Brockhaus, started the first edition of his Conversations-Lexikon in 1809 with 2,000 copies, expanding rapidly to a print run of 32,000 for its fifth edition in 1818–20. He produced a varying quality of publications at a range of prices to cater to readers at different income levels, and by the 1820s had almost doubled the number of his employees. By 1870, the publishing house had published 300,000 copies of its Lexikon. In 1839, Meyer’s Konversationslexikon entered the competition against Brockhaus. (The two remained market leaders for a remarkably long time and eventually merged in 1984.) Also catering for the needs of a growing and increasingly diverse readership was a large variety of periodicals, from the annual Taschenbuch (pocket book) to the newspaper. Their production and circulation expanded even faster than that of books. 86

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Cotta’s Taschenbuch für Damen (Pocket Book for Ladies, 1799–1831) and Fouqué’s Frauentaschenbuch (Women’s Pocket Book, 1815–31) were perhaps the best known, offering their female readers literary texts and criticism, as well as information about public events and cultural affairs. Much larger was the number of weekly and monthly papers, such the Journal des Luxus und der Moden (Journal of Luxuries and Fashion, 1786–1827) or the Zeitung für die Elegante Welt (Paper for the Beau Monde, 1801–59). They, too, offered to a mixed readership a combination of literature, criticism, information on cultural affairs at home and abroad, as well as fashions in clothing, interior design, gardening, coaches and so on. They thus combined knowledge transfer and models of cultural consumption, making them early proponents of the concept of lifestyle among the (upper-) middle classes. London und Paris (1798–1815) and Das belletristische Ausland (Belles Lettres from Abroad, 1843–65) emphasized foreign affairs, culture and literature. The latter listed more than 3,500 book translations for German readers. Other, slightly later, and less internationally inclined periodicals were Westermann’s Illustrirte Monatshefte (Westermann’s Illustrated Monthly, founded 1856) and Daheim (At Home, founded 1864), both of which continued until well into the twentieth century. Most books and periodicals were still too expensive for the entire literate and interested population. However, such people could access them for a small fee in reading rooms and lending libraries to be found in the larger cities. The number of actual readers thus exceeded the print run of each book and periodical by perhaps a multiple of five. The first periodical to reach what we might call a mass audience was the PfennigMagazin der Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung gemeinnütziger Kenntnisse (Penny Magazine of the Society for the Distribution of Useful Knowledge, 1833–55), an illustrated weekly newspaper, modelled on the English Penny-Magazine and designed to publicize general knowledge in the fields of history, religion and natural sciences. It had a circulation of 35,000 copies in its first year of publication and at its peak reached 100,000. However, by far the most successful periodical was Gartenlaube (Garden Bower), a weekly family magazine that started in 1853 with a circulation of between 5,000 and 6,000 copies, and reached 70,000 within five years and a peak of 382,000 in 1875. It was meant to be read in the family circle, offering the tried and tested mix of education and entertainment, including literary texts and essays on historical subjects as well as helpful advice for the running of the household (Figure 5.2). Here as elsewhere, women participated in the literary sphere, both as readers and writers. While they had long done so to a limited extent, it was around 1800 that women entered the literary market on a scale where they could no longer be overlooked (see Chapter 14). Educated bourgeois women had the time and means to appreciate various kinds of reading matter and hence represented a potential readership that warranted a host of publications specially addressed to them. Women were also active as writers and translators and able to make their names as authors of journal articles, stories and novels, often – but not always – with their own sex as the intended readership. Writers like Sophie von LaRoche (1730–1807), Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859), Annette von Droste-Hülsoff (1797–1848) or Fanny Lewald (1811–89) were well known in their time 87

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Figure 5.2  Die Gartenlaube. (Image in the public domain).

and have entered the literary canon, while many others have been more or less forgotten. Johanna Schopenhauer (1766–1838) is regarded as the first German woman to be able to support herself by writing, and Eugenie Marlitt (1825–87) was one of the best-known and best-paid German authors of her time. Marlitt helped turn the Gartenlaube into a mass medium. In September 1865, her first story was printed in the magazine, and from 88

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1866 onwards, her novels appeared in the same magazine in serialized form. Marlitt managed to address a remarkably heterogeneous readership, encompassing all ages, both genders, all strata of the middle classes, but also members of the aristocracy and the lower classes. Todd Kontje stresses the considerable share women writers had in shaping the public sphere in that they introduced women’s voices into a patriarchal society and helped redraw the boundaries between the domestic and the political. In 1842, the first meeting of German women writers was held in Weimar. In their capacity as salon hostesses, women also formed a central part of bourgeois sociability, operating at the borderline between private and public and enabling encounters and discourse between representatives from very different parts of society. The Berlin salons of Rahel Levin-Varnhagen (1771–1833) and Henriette Herz (1764– 1847), and later Bettina von Arnim and Fanny Lewald, facilitated gatherings in which Jews and Gentiles, men and women, aristocrats and artists met as equals. Salons and similar sociable institutions in the cities also served as introduction to civil society for bourgeois newcomers. With the improvement of roads, introduction of steamships on the rivers and the creation of the railway network from the 1840s onwards, bourgeois mobility throughout the German lands and beyond increased massively. Travelling had always been an important part of bourgeois existence, be it for business, education or leisure. In 1793, the first German seaside resort opened in Heiligendamm near Doberan, followed by Swinemünde, Norderney, Sylt and others. Seaside resorts mushroomed throughout the nineteenth century, most of them decidedly middle-class establishments. Already from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, members of the bourgeoisie had frequented the many German and Austrian mineral spas such as Pyrmont, Baden-Baden and Carlsbad, not just for medicinal purposes but increasingly for recreation and sociability. By the mid-nineteenth century, the annual visit to a spa had become an integral part of the calendars of members of the European aristocracy and much of the higher bourgeoisie. These trips and institutions can be seen as paving the way for modern day tourism. It was in this context that the hotel in the modern sense developed. Such places and establishments, in their capacity for heightened communication, were instrumental in promoting the interconnectedness of bourgeois civil society across the German lands and beyond. When the German Confederation participated in the 1851 Great Exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace, British reports were generally not very impressed by the German exhibition rooms. They found them untidy, ill-organized and lacking an overarching concept. They did, however, single out some high-quality furniture, textiles, stained glass, porcelain and smaller machinery. Not only does this confirm the fragmentation of Germany and that industrialization was in its infancy, but also that there was a welldeveloped light manufacturing sector, fitting out the bourgeois home. Domestic ideals of luxury and taste were generally borrowed from aristocratic culture and adapted to the needs and scale of the middle classes. The term Biedermeier came to denote the results of this process of adaptation. Biedermeier design borrowed eclectically from several stylistic influences, trying to display taste, love of the arts and education but 89

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also to combine décor with functionality. Biedermeier furniture, for instance, borrowed decorative elements mainly from classicism, but did so relatively sparingly and by using native and hence less expensive types of wood. It also introduced items like the writing desk and the sewing cabinet into the bourgeois living room. Interior design and exterior architecture displayed similar characteristics. Nineteenthcentury architecture Europe wide resurrected and adapted a variety of historical epochs and styles. In the German lands, we see a prevalence of different influences in different territories. In Prussia and other northern states, classicism was the dominant pattern. The best-known representative of Prussian classicism was Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) whose Neue Wache (New Guardhouse, 1818), Schauspielhaus (State Theatre, 1818–21) and Altes Museum (Old Museum, 1822–3) are still landmarks of today’s Berlin. Schinkel adapted Greek and Roman models to the functionality of contemporary buildings. To achieve this, he changed proportions to create interior structures that accommodated the building’s purpose, used economically viable building materials and proposed an extensive set of shapes and patterns inspired by classical ones, but which could be produced serially by the growing building industry. In his insistence on the unity of beauty and usefulness, Schinkel can be regarded as one of the forefathers of industrial architecture and European modernity that developed towards the end of the nineteenth century. Schinkel’s functional style, use of iron as a building material and proto-industrial building methods are best exemplified in his Bauakademie (School of Architecture, 1832–5, see Figure 5.3). Elsewhere, classicism was combined with and superseded by Renaissance and Baroque influences. In Bavaria, Leo von Klenze (1784–1864) combined classical Greek and Roman with French influences in his Glyptothek (sculpture gallery, 1816–30) in Munich, while his Pinakothek (picture gallery, 1826–36) and inner city residential streets betray a strong influence of Renaissance models. In Dresden (Saxony), Gottfried Semper (1803–79) preferred Renaissance styles when designing the Opera House (1837–41), the Königliche Gemäldegalerie (Royal Picture Gallery, 1845–8) and the Oppenheim Palace (1845). He was also known for the polychrome decoration of his buildings. As nationalist discourse strengthened throughout Germany (see below), Gothic architectural forms were increasingly favoured as they were seen to represent a genuine Nordic achievement in a history that was being (re-)constructed. Architecture, like many other cultural manifestations of this time, was usually marked by eclecticism and, as critics often remarked, the absence of any distinctive style, indeed even by aesthetic chaos. Such ‘chaos’ suggests a search for a bourgeois identity and culture which drew upon earlier cultural patterns. Matthew Jefferies considers how this search would culminate in the spectrum of modernist styles developed around 1900 (see Chapter 11). In the long process of Verbürgerlichung7 which had started in the eighteenth and continued throughout the nineteenth century, bourgeois civil society proved to be exclusive and inclusive at the same time. In making its values, culture and lifestyles increasingly coherent, it distinguished itself from the aristocracy and the lower classes, but was open to those who had the means and were willing to share in its culture. In this way, Verbürgerlichung also promoted other, equally emancipatory processes such 90

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Figure 5.3  Klose: Die Bauakademie von Schinkel. Source: ullstein bild Dtl. / Getty.

as that of the Jewish population. As Kocka expresses it, ‘The project of civil society was actively supported and beneficial for minorities. However, given its universal claims, it was a promise not fully kept.’8

Literature, thought, fine art and music As is often the case, the overwhelming influence of literary giants meant that only works that conformed to their aesthetic principles and predilections had much chance of success. By the time Goethe died (1832), he had outlived writers like Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) and was a contemporary of Georg Büchner (1813–37). Although Goethe was far less widely read than many other writers, his authority regarding literary quality went unchallenged throughout his lifetime. Some authors (who are today a firm part of the German literary canon) tried in vain to get his backing in the literary market. One of them was Heinrich von Kleist. What distinguished him from the big names of his time was that his writings were permeated by an existential irritation – caused by his understanding of Kant – about the dilemma which confronts human beings: we have no way of proving that what we hold to be the truth is, in fact, true; our perception and knowledge of the world are inherently fallible. If that is so, how can we know anything about ourselves? Today regarded as ‘one of the most innovative, colourful and enigmatic authors’9 of the early nineteenth century, Kleist transgressed the conventions of contemporary literature and thought. Not only did he include shocking scenes and episodes in his plays and stories (such as in Penthesilea where the eponymous heroine succumbs to a rage which leads her to kill her lover and eat his flesh), but he created 91

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protagonists who were deeply unsure of their identity, their feelings and ability to reason and hence their ability to interact meaningfully with their environment. Born two years after Kleist’s suicide, Georg Büchner revolutionized literature in a different way. In Woyzeck (1836), a drama consisting of twenty-seven scenes which can be arranged in different sequences, he makes a man from the lower classes the tragic hero and explores mechanisms of physical and mental exploitation. In Dantons Tod (Danton’s Death, 1835), he analyses the failures of the French Revolution, referring to and incorporating a wealth of documentary material. Leonce und Lena (1836) is a satirical comedy that foreshadows the absurdist drama of the twentieth century. All of these plays were not premiered until around 1900, long after Büchner’s death. In very different ways, Kleist and Büchner, followed perhaps by E. T. A Hoffmann (1776–1822) and Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), anticipated a modernity in German literature that only took off at the end of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 11). Büchner and Heine, together with writers like Louise Aston (1814–71), Ludwig Börne (1786–1837), Karl Gutzkow (1811–78), Ida Hahn-Hahn (1805–80), Heinrich Laube (1806–84), Fanny Lewald (1811–89), Theodor Mundt (1808–61) and others, formed the so-called Junges Deutschland (Young Germany), a movement that saw art as an engine for political change and was instrumental in bringing about the 1848 revolution (see Chapter 6). Büchner’s Hessischer Landbote (The Hessian Courier, 1834) which he co-authored with Pastor Wilhelm Weidling, describes grave social injustice in Hessia and famously opens with the phrase: ‘Peace to the cottages! War on the palaces!’ Following its publication, Büchner had to flee across the French border to Strasbourg. Heine, too, due to spiralling problems with censorship, moved to Paris in 1831 where he spent the rest of his life. In Deutschland ein Wintermärchen (Germany, a Winter’s Tale, 1844) he settled his account with his homeland, detailing both its political and social injustices and the growing nationalism of the 1840s (see below). His poem ‘Die schlesischen Weber’ (The Silesian Weavers, 1844) gives a powerful voice to exploited textile workers, something which is echoed in other work such as Louise Aston’s ‘Lied einer schlesischen Weberin’ (Song of a Silesian Woman Weaver, 1846) and Bettina von Arnim’s novel Dieses Buch gehört dem König (This Book Belongs to the King, 1843). The third part of the latter is a compilation of documentary material testifying to the terrible living and working conditions of the poor in a place just outside Berlin. Karl Gutzkow’s novel Wally die Zweiflerin (Wally the Doubter, 1835) was one of the works cited by the Bundestag of the German Confederation to justify a ban on publications by members of the Junges Deutschland movement, claiming that such work damaged the social fabric and threatened Christian values. Gutzkow was imprisoned. Junges Deutschland was to an extent influenced by the works of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95). Based on Hegel’s (1770–1831) model of dialectical thinking, but rejecting his idealist philosophy, Marx and Engels developed their ‘historical materialism’ which saw the material conditions of life, in particular the modes of production, as determining the organization of society and the individual’s conception of the world and his or her role in it. They distinguished between the economic base and its superstructure, in which they included art, law, 92

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politics and religion. Marx was forced to leave Germany and relocated to London in 1848, where he and his family received financial support from Friedrich Engels, whose father was a textile manufacturer with one of his factories in Manchester. Marx did much of the research and writing of his magnum opus, Das Kapital (1867ff.), in the reading room of the British Library. Of more immediate impact was the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848) which Marx and Engels wrote together at the request of the Communist League and which set out their theory that history is essentially a ‘history of class struggles’ which, by the mid-nineteenth century, had brought about a large proletariat across much of Europe whose mission was to challenge the power of the bourgeoisie. Marx’s and Engels’s work can be seen as both a practical and a philosophical response to preoccupations of German philosophers since Kant. In his three Critiques: Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason, 1781/7), Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason, 1788), and Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement, 1790), Kant had outlined his critical philosophy. He sought to show that subjective intuitions, categories and concepts play an active role in shaping our perception of the world. Responding to both the rationalism of René Descartes (1596–1659) and the empiricism of David Hume (1711–76), Kant argued that humans have access only to their subjective representations of the world, rather than to the world ‘in itself ’. The point of his critical philosophy was to show the conditions of human knowledge and consequently the limits of reason. However, in doing this, Kant also presented the human being as essentially divided. Humans are subject to natural inclinations (Neigungen) associated with their physical natures, yet through their use of reason (Vernunft) they have access to rational ideas – such as the idea of morality, the notion of nature as an organic system with inherent ends and the concept of God – which extend beyond the bounds of human experience. German philosophers after Kant attempted to bridge the gap that he seemed to have opened up between human subjectivity or reason (often termed Geist or ‘spirit’) and nature. An early attempt at this can be found in Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus (The Earliest System-Programme of German Idealism, 1796–7) – thought to have been drafted by Hegel, Schelling and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) when they were students in Tübingen, and widely regarded as the manifesto of German idealism. Responding to what they saw as the political ineffectiveness of Kant’s notion of ‘pure reason’, these authors called for a ‘mythology of reason’ that could translate abstract normative ideas into vivid and concrete images that could inspire ‘the people’. For Fichte in the Wissenschaftslehre (Science of Knowledge, 1794–5), human subjectivity posits the external world as its ‘other’, thus resolving the Kantian dualism of subjectivity and nature. Writing against Fichte, the early Schelling, in his Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature, 1797), argued that human subjectivity is shaped by nature. The reason why our thoughts about the world seem to accord with external nature is because human subjectivity is the prime example of nature thinking about itself. Arguing in a similar vein to the early Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788–1860) Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (World as Will and Representation, 1819 and 1844) proposes that the real ‘thing in itself ’, the driver of 93

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both human subjectivity and of the phenomenal world of nature, is the ‘will’, the blind and unconscious natural striving for existence and reproduction. This notion of an unconscious will, originating in nature and manifesting itself in the darker and more irrational, especially the sexual aspects of human subjectivity, would go on to influence Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas about the ‘will to power’ (‘Wille zur Macht’). According to Nietzsche, even ‘God’ is simply an interpretation, created by humans and capable of being ‘killed’ by them. This pessimistic strain in German philosophy functioned during the nineteenth century as a radical corrective to Kant’s optimism in texts such as ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (Was ist Aufklärung?, see above). It suggested that before human beings could know the world objectively, they must look deep into themselves to understand the motivations behind their quest for knowledge. This strain of pessimism laid the foundations for twentieth-century discourses on the unconscious and sexuality we find in Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis more generally. The Kantian project, and the fate of German idealism generally, suffered another blow with the publication of Charles Darwin’s (1809–82) Origin of Species in 1859. Crucially, Darwin’s theory of natural selection was able to show that natural and possibly also historical change do not need to be explained by way of teleology or the dialectical development of Geist or ‘spirit’ in history, as Hegel had proposed in the Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807). For Darwin, the primary driver of natural selection is random mutation rather than a goal-directed nature or spirit. The success of Darwinism and the concomitant rise in prestige of the empirical sciences were championed by important and popular German scientists-cum-philosophers such as Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94) and Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), and led to the ‘great collapse’ of German idealism. Yet idealism continued to live on by other means. In Haeckel’s highly popular adaptation of Darwin, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Natural History of Creation, 1868), and Die Welträtsel (The Riddles of the World, 1899), the importance of natural selection was downplayed.10 The failure of the 1848 revolutions in the German lands (see Chapter 6) largely silenced the liberal voices in society, especially in the public sphere of literature and journalism. With very few exceptions such as Louise Aston’s novel Revolution und Contrerevolution (1849), literature withdrew into the realms of nature and of private live. The term Biedermeier, already considered in relation to interior architecture, painting and fashion, now referred to precisely this withdrawal and an accompanying atmosphere of resignation. Having coexisted with politically engaged literature during the Vormärz period, it now had the field largely to itself. Its main representatives in literature were Karl Immermann (1796–1840), Annette von Droste Hülshoff (1797– 1848) Eduard Mörike (1804–75) and the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter (1805–68). Stifter’s Bunte Steine (Coloured Stones, 1853) is a collection of stories often labelled the manifesto of Biedermeier ethic. It devotes attention to the small things in life and nature instead of major events. Stifter’s novel Nachsommer (Indian Summer, 1857) follows Goethe’s model of the Bildungsroman but the Bildung of the protagonist is no longer twinned with his successful integration into society; rather, it is curiously distant from it. 94

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Some contemporary critics bemoaned the absence of the social novels in Germany, such as those produced by Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) or Charles Dickens (1812–70) in France and England. These authors painted a complex and realistic picture of the emerging society of their time and were also entertaining and widely read. Their German counterparts in terms of sales figures (such as Eugenie Marlitt, see above) did not show nearly as much awareness of the social and political tensions which surrounded them and their readers. Among the rare exceptions were the Dorfgeschichten (village stories) by Bertold Auerbach (1812–82), something one can link to the delayed onset of industrialization and large-scale urbanization in the German lands (see Chapter 4). With his Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (Village Stories from the Black Forest, 1843), Auerbach constructed a new genre in German literature which paved the way for the realist novels of Theodor Fontane and contemporaries (see Chapter 11). In the 1850s, Gottfried Keller (1819–90), Theodor Storm (1817–88) and others started to develop ‘Poetic Realism’ which mixed an awareness of the social tensions in society with poeticizing elements such as fairy tale motifs and characters. Keller’s famous novella Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe (A Village Romeo and Juliet, 1856) describes the destructive force of greed within the most idyllic of rural settings. Literary historians write of the ‘absence of drama’ in nineteenth-century Germany which only took centre stage towards the end of the century. This overlooks, among others, Friedrich Hebbel (1813–63), who spent his career in Vienna, and Austrian playwrights such as Ferdinand Jakob Raimund (1790–1836), Franz Grillparzer (1791– 1872), Johann Nestroy (1801–62) and Ludwig Anzengruber (1839–89). Hebbel and Grillparzer attempted to update the tradition of Schiller’s classical theatre to their time and circumstances. Raimund, Nestroy and Anzengruber are the best-known practitioners of the tradition of Wiener Volkstheater (Viennese popular theatre) which used elements of Baroque theatre, Shakespeare and Commedia dell arte to create comedy flexible enough to accommodate everything from broad farce to biting satire. Elsewhere in the German lands, theatre also thrived as a place for popular entertainment, which, however, was not taken seriously by the cultural elite and subsequent literary historians. Gustav Freytag’s (1816–95) political comedy Die Journalisten (The Journalists, 1852) was popular on the German stage, and Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer’s (1800–68) Jane Eyre-adaptation Die Waise von Lockwood (The Orphan of Lookwood, 1853) enjoyed extraordinary success, making its author possibly the most frequently performed German playwright of the mid-nineteenth century. That authors and works like these were quickly forgotten is bound up with a distinction between entertainment and serious art, or ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture which increasingly pervades nineteenth-century German culture. This can be related to the rise of the lower middle classes with their material influence on the literary and cultural market, and hence their emergence as the main influence on taste. A consequent reaction was the drive by the upper middle class to distinguish themselves from these less learned and cultivated members of the bourgeoisie. For many, Richard Wagner (1813–83) with his Gesamtkunstwerk (an aesthetic whole combining several different art forms) is the apogee of serious art (and revered as 95

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such to this day). Wagner’s early works are influenced by the aims and ideas of Junges Deutschland, and he participated in the 1849 revolt in Dresden. Sought by the police, he fled to Zürich and settled there for a decade, followed by several years of travel. Having engaged with Nordic mythology and medieval legends for at least a decade, he fully cultivated this interest after settling in Bavaria at the invitation of the young King Ludwig II. With Tristan und Isolde, premiered in 1865 with the financial backing of Ludwig II, Wagner established his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, combining drama, music and fine art, and secured his lasting fame. Wagner’s preferred themes, combined with his antiSemitic utterances, made him one of the favourite artists of the nationalist movement in Germany as it grew over the decades. Yet a strong and arguably less nationalistic musical tradition also persisted. Johannes Brahms (1833–97), in particular, was regarded as a counterweight to Wagner in that he was indebted to the tradition of Mendelssohn and Schumann and developed it further.

The national question According to Maike Oergel, the idea of the Kulturnation was originally conceived by Herder and others, and its ‘conception of culturally and historically conditioned humanity was compatible with the contemporary notions of the Weltbürger [world citizen] and Weltliteratur [world literature]’.11 The framework of thinking was Europe, of which German culture and identity was seen to be an integral part. This, however, changed in the course of the nineteenth century, triggered in particular by the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813–15). Todd Kontje and others pointed out that ‘one of the most significant – if least intended – contributions of Napoleon to Germany was to inspire a new militant nationalism that began to reach out to the masses’.12 Even though the French had brought progress, such as constitutionalism, to the German lands they had occupied, and though the creation of the Rheinbund – a confederation of German states apart from Austria and Prussia – was a decisive step in the direction of a unified German nation, Napoleon came to be seen principally as an oppressor. The opposition against him unified people from a wide political spectrum and all strata of society, from aristocrat to poor labourer. In this broad consensus, even the division between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture seemed to dissolve. Much of the literature promoting the national goal originated in the Wars of Liberation. Theodor Körner (1791–1813), for instance, a poet who died in battle as an adjutant in the ‘Lützow Corps’, left a collection of songs, posthumously published as Leier und Schwert (lyre and sword) which celebrated the fighters for liberty and their aims. Originally sung by Körner’s comrades, they were taken up by countless choirs throughout the German lands. Körner was turned into a hero and figurehead, and the colours of his corps became the German tricolour. In the words of Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810– 76), the three colours were hypostasized as ‘Pulver ist schwarz, / Blut ist roth, / Golden flackert die Flamme’ (gunpowder is black, blood is red, golden flickers the flame). Not only choirs but a wide range of societies such as historical associations and sharp shooter 96

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clubs which promoted the idea of a nation resisting its oppressors mushroomed in this period. The Deutsche Turnbewegung (German Gymnasts’ Movement) was founded by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852) in 1811 with the aim of preparing German youth for the fight against Napoleon. Another significant movement was that of the Burschenschaften (student associations), the first of which was founded in 1815 in Jena by veterans of the Lützow Corps. After the defeat of Napoleon, they aimed to create a unified, liberal, constitutional German state. The Wartburgfest (festival on the Wartburg castle) of 1817, commemorating Martin Luther’s three-hundredth birthday, was the first ever all-German festival. However, the Burschenschaften were then dissolved. The official reason given was the assassination of the writer and diplomat August von Kotzebue (1761–1819) by a member of the Jena Burschenschaft. The Carlsbad Decrees issued by the Deutscher Bund introduced strict policing of universities and enforced censorship, clearly serving the interest of the conservative German rulers, especially the governments of Prussia and the AustroHungarian Empire which ‘sought to turn back the clock to the prerevolutionary era’.13 Liberal and democratic aims were suppressed and increasingly dissociated from the national idea, which in turn took a more nationalist (völkisch) direction, including Franco-phobia and anti-Semitism. Culturally, this development was accompanied by an increasing concentration on history, and notably the elaboration of specifically German narrative.14 This involved revisiting and reinterpreting certain historical events and figures. The choices were eclectic. There was some predilection for the catholic Middle Ages as thematized by late Romanticism, as, for instance, in the project Monumenta Germaniae Historica, which was started in 1819 and intended to publish an annotated edition of all German sources from the Middle Ages. A broader historical range was exhibited by Gustav Freytag’s Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (Images from the German Past, 1859–67) which provided folksy historical narratives for different epochs. The year 1852 saw the foundation of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. The historical figures rediscovered and celebrated throughout the German lands included Johannes Gutenberg (1398–1468), the inventor of the printing press, the great religious reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546), and Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), one of the most influential renaissance artists. More recent figures such as Friedrich Schiller and Heinrich von Kleist were also invoked. In 1859, on the hundredth anniversary of Schiller’s birth, he was celebrated in many towns, both in and beyond the German lands, and by hundreds of thousands of people as a spiritual founding father of the German nation. His dramas were scanned for lines suitable to promote the national agenda and in the process deprived of their complexity. Kleist’s drama Hermannschlacht (The Battle of Arminius; written in 1808, it celebrated the victory of the German Arminius/Hermann against the Roman legions in 9 AD as a model for the German fight against Napoleon) was published posthumously in 1821. The eclecticism in the construction of a national German past was also apparent in architecture. Between 1830 and 1842, the Walhalla (Figure 5.4) was built near Regensburg. Designed by Leo von Klenze, it combined classical Greek and Roman 97

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architecture with Nordic myth and included a pantheon of the busts of important German figures. It was followed by the Ruhmeshalle (Hall of Fame, 1843) in Munich to celebrate the heroes of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), the Hermannsdenkmal (Hermann Monument), built between 1841 and 1875 near Detmold on the alleged site of the battle, and the Befreiungshalle (Hall of Liberation, 1842–56) in Kelheim (Bavaria), celebrating the victorious Wars of Liberation against Napoleon between 1813 and 1815. All these monuments have in common a disproportionately large size and a combination of different stylistic influences seeking to celebrate German greatness. Churches built in these decades (such as Friedrich Schinkel’s Friedrichswerdersche Kirche, 1824–31) tend to draw on Gothic models. However, this is not the whole story, or rather these trends did not automatically and always involve the marginalization of other cultural manifestations. Matters still varied from one German state to another. Other important buildings, for instance, date back to these same decades, such as the great synagogues in Dresden (1840, designed by Gottfried Semper) and Berlin (1866, designed by Eduard Knoblauch). Their consecrations were attended not only by the Jewish communities but by high-ranking Saxon and Prussian state officials, respectively. Likewise, and particularly before the 1848 revolution, some large folk festivals took place which still combined national and liberal ideas. The best known of these was the Hambacher Fest, a national festival held in and around Hambach castle in 1832, which was attended by up to 30,000 people. Its main speakers demanded the unification of Germany as part of a federal, republican Europe. They combined this with demands for the equality for women, freedom of association and freedom of the press. The press did indeed play a decisive role in the processes in that it created a network of publications which crossed the borders of the fragmented German lands.15 However,

Figure 5.4 Turner’s Walhalla. Source: Tate Britain Gallery, London.

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as the case of Junges Deutschland shows, its freedom was strictly limited, even before the counter-revolution which followed 1848. This is best exemplified in the endeavours of Ernst Keil (1816–78), the founder of the Gartenlaube (Garden Bower). The young Keil shared the aims of the Junges Deutschland movement. He edited the magazines Unser Planet (Our Planet) from 1838 and Leuchtturm (Lighthouse) from 1845 onwards. Due to its political stance, Leuchtturm had to change its place of publication several times – different German states practised different degrees of censorship. It was openly on the side of the 1848 revolutionaries, banned after the revolution, and Keil served a political prison sentence. Released from prison, he started his new project Gartenlaube under someone else’s name and as a supplement to a different magazine and only revealed his own name in the second issue. To start with, the Gartenlaube cautiously promoted his liberal ideas, but it quickly adapted to the repressive political climate of the 1850s and established a reputation as a decidedly unpolitical family paper. However, by virtue of being sold and read across all the German lands, the magazine contributed to promoting the national idea. It also displayed a longing for national unity, though without insisting on the original ideal of a liberal, constitutional Germany. This longing did – at least to an extent – find its fulfilment in the unification of Germany under Prussian dominance in 1871.

Notes 1. Maike Oergel, Culture and Identity: Historicity in German Literature and Thought 1770–1815 (2006), p. 1. 2. See Friedrich Engels, ‘Die Lage Englands’, in Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels. Werke, Vol. 1 (1976), pp. 550–68, esp. p. 550. 3. Gustav Frank, ‘Sturm und Drang: Towards a New Logic of Passion’, in Steve Giles and Maike Oergel, eds, Counter-Cultures in Germany and Central Europe (2003), pp. 25–42, here: p. 37. 4. Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music (Engl. Transl. by J. Bradford Robinson), (1989), p. 75. 5. Jürgen Kocka, Civil Society and Dictatorship in Modern German History (2010), p. 12. 6. Todd Kontje, Women, the Novel, and the German Nation 1771–1871: Domestic Fiction in the Fatherland (1998), p. 1. 7. The term was coined by Leo Balet and E. Gerhard, Die Verbürgerlichung der deutschen Kunst, Literatur und Musik im 18. Jahrhundert (1936). It Refers to the Process of ‘Making Bourgeois’ or ‘Bourgeoisification’. 8. Kocka, Civil Society and Dictatorship in Modern German History, p. 22. 9. Bernd Fischer, ‘Introduction’, in Fischer, ed., A Companion to the Works of Heinrich von Kleist (2003), p. 1. 10. I am grateful to Angus Nicholls for sharing his knowledge of this field with me. 11. Oergel, Culture and Identity, p. 288. 12. Kontje, Women, the Novel, and the German Nation 1771–1871, p. 95. See also Chapter 2 by Joachim Whaley.

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Nineteenth-Century Germany 13. Todd Kontje, The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre (1993), p. 13. 14. Eric Hobsbawm famously labelled processes of this kind ‘inventing traditions’. See Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds, The Invention of Traditions (1983), pp. 1–14. See also Chapter 3 by Christopher Clark. 15. For the role the printing press in the formation of national cultures see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (1983).

Select bibliography Belgum, Kirsten, Popularizing the Nation: Audience, Representation, and the Production of Identity in ‘Die Gartenlaube’, 1853–1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998). Berger, Stefan, Germany: Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold, 2004). Downing, Eric and Koelb, Clayton, eds, German Literature of the Nineteenth Century 1832–1899 (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2005). Garratt, James, Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Giles, Steve and Oergel, Maike, eds, Counter-Cultures in Germany and Central Europe (Bern/ Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003). Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1962, trans. 1989). Kocka, Jürgen, Civil Society and Dictatorship in Modern German History (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2010) (Chapter II: Bourgeois Culture and Civil Society: The German Case in a European Context, pp. 9–31). Kontje, Todd, Women, the Novel, and the German Nation 1771–1871: Domestic Fiction in the Fatherland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Liebscher, Martin and Nicholls, Angus, eds, Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Middleton, R. and Watkin, D., History of World Architecture: Architecture of the 19th Century (London: Academy Editions, 1980). Nipperdey, Thomas, German History from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Oergel, Maike, Culture and Identity: Historicity in German Literature and Thought 1770–1815 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006). Perkins, Mary Anne and Liebscher, Martin, eds, Nationalism vs. Cosmopolitanism in German Thought and Culture, 1789–1914. Essays on the Emergence of Europe (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2006). Tatlock, Lynne, ed., Publishing Culture and the ‘Reading Nation’: German Book History in the long 19th Century (Rochester: Camden House, 2010).

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CHAPTER 6 THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 AND THE PERSISTENCE OF THE OLD REGIME IN GERMANY (1848–50)

Wolfram Siemann

There is an anecdote about the Austrian emperor Ferdinand I that penetrates right to the heart of Germany’s problems in 1848. Ferdinand was not gifted with a brilliant mind, but at least Metternich had succeeded in instilling in him an immense revulsion towards any kind of representative body of the people. Even if it was only mentioned in conversation, Ferdinand felt threatened. This happened very frequently after the revolutionary unrest of 1848 had spread from France to Austria. His court physician was confronted with this sensitivity one day when the doctor told him innocently that he had an excellent constitution. The emperor snapped, ‘Why do you talk about constitution? Say nature, if you please!’ This little story reflects a fundamental problem of the revolutionary era: the lack of readiness and maturity among the reigning elites to tolerate the achievements and changes the revolution brought in its wake. At the beginning, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV did not react as brusquely as his Austrian colleague: he promised, in March 1848, that Prussia would forthwith be one with the rest of Germany; he put on the black, red and gold national colours, ordered the troops to retreat from Berlin and seemed to accept national unification on a democratic basis. However, in November 1848 he confessed to the Bavarian ambassador, ‘Now I can be honest again’; he had democratic newspapers and organizations banned and declared a state of siege in Berlin. A second question therefore arises: how far could monarchs, in so far as they were unwilling to bow to the revolution, still rely on the traditional pillars of their power: the police, the civil service and the army? This question addresses the issue of the persistence of the old regime. This set limits to a democratic development from the very beginning. Another anecdote illustrates the contrasting levels of action. The speeches of the members of the Frankfurt parliament, meeting in the Paulskirche, were taken down in shorthand and published in the local press as soon as possible. This enabled constituents to see whether their deputy was doing a good job in Frankfurt. One member was asked during a stay in his home town why, in contrast to most of the other deputies, he was never mentioned in the papers. He answered, ‘My good fellows, this isn’t true. How often do you read “general murmur”! I’m always part of that.’ To sum it up more precisely, politics became, for the first time in Germany, the subject of free public debate; but the question remains whether the populace was mature enough for practical democracy. There still exists the idea of the impractical

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‘professors’ parliament’ at Frankfurt, the idealist liberal dreamers of 1848 with no sense for Realpolitik. However, the German problems of 1848 cannot be properly judged without taking into account the European context. Recent research on the revolution emphasizes this, as the revolutions of 1848–9 were pan-European phenomena. This trend was reinforced by work published on the occasion of the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the revolution in 1998. In trying to view the deeper motives of all those revolutionary movements, four basic conditions have everywhere to be taken into account. First, there were similar kinds of constitutional demands and there were several models to which people could appeal. One was the French charte constitutionnelle of 1814, which became exemplary for constitutions in several German states, and then the Deutsche Bundesakte of 1815, the constitutional charter of Germany, which laid down that all the member states of the Confederation should proclaim a constitution which included consultative assemblies organized on the principle of the social estates (nobles, burghers, peasants). This constitutional principle derived its impact from the unfulfilled demands of the middle classes for sufficient political participation in states that drew their legitimation from monarchy, following the ‘reconstruction’ of 1815. Political conflict developed into struggle for a new order based on a written constitutional charter. Revolutions across Europe sought rule of law and constitutions; they were struggles for civil and political rights. This was the case in the July revolution of 1830; it was even more so in the initial phase of the 1848 revolution, which drew its first impulse not from France at all but from Switzerland and Italy. The revision or the institution of a new constitution was always the issue precipitating unrest. After the Sonderbundskrieg (War of the Confederation of Seven Catholic Cantons) in November 1847, Switzerland, formerly a loose federation of separate states, constituted itself as a federal state with central powers and a capital in Bern. A further victory for the revolution was gained on 16 February 1848, at Palermo, when King Ferdinand II of Naples and Sicily issued a constitution. The breakdown of the July monarchy in France started with demonstrations in favour of electoral reform on 22 February 1848 and ended with the abdication of the king and the proclamation of a republic. In Germany, the so-called Märzforderungen (March demands) that were circulating at the beginning of the revolution, centred on constitutional demands: (1) arming the people under elected officers; (2) civil rights, especially unconditional freedom of the press and of assembly; (3) trial by jury, following the English (and French) examples; and (4) immediate institution of a national German parliament. In other words, a common denominator of all the European revolutions of 1848 was that they were simultaneously constitutional movements. They ended with the proclamation of a constitution, first in the Swiss Confederation, Naples, Florence and Piedmont, later in Rome, Venice, Berlin and Vienna, and of course in Frankfurt. The second basic condition was the European undercurrent of nationalism. The pursuit of national self-determination and independence was embodied in the German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Italian national movements. Among many nationalities, the myth of the (unredeemed) nation grew and flourished during the first half of the nineteenth century, especially among the Greeks, Belgians, Italians, Hungarians and 102

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Poles. Much of the oppositional propaganda in pre-1848 Germany included Germany as one of these nations. The roots of this nationalism could be found with the French Revolution of 1789, which constituted the primary example for a nation state with common national symbols. During the ‘pre-March’ period, the myth of the Völkerfrühling (spring of the peoples) developed within the framework of the order set up at Vienna in 1815. In the 1820s, it took the shape of philhellenism throughout Europe; in the 1830s, after the failure of the Warsaw uprising in November 1830, it manifested itself in a proPolish attitude. These pre-revolutionary utopias had a considerable impact on the revolution in the spring of 1848; they soon faltered, however, when the possibility of integrating the nation into a common state began to manifest itself. The term ‘eine Art Nationsanwärter’ (a kind of aspirant nation) was appropriately applied by Hans Rothfels to characterize the nationalities of the nineteenth century: ethnic groups striving for more autonomy and struggling for political unity. Subsequently, whenever territorial sovereignty and the drawing of borders came into dispute, modern nationalism showed its destructive and belligerent power. The new nationality conflicts of 1848 and the following years were marked by the novel characteristic that both sides were convinced that they were in the right, trying to mobilize the entire nation: in Denmark for Schleswig, in Poland for Posen, in Italy for Southern Tyrol. Revolution and war combined to form a dangerous compound, and the struggle for national unity grew into discord among the nations. The third basic condition was the socio-economic crisis of pre-industrial crafts; this stemmed from the effects of overpopulation and the beginnings of proletarianization in the cities and wide areas of the countryside (see Chapters 3 and 4). The common European factor was the final collapse of the old estate system, which had been the basis of the legal and social order governing everyday life. Pauperism, industrialization and the orientation of crafts and professions of all classes towards a market economy marked the long-term crisis of the traditional crafts. Importantly, with respect to these issues, the crisis of 1848–9 seemed to hark backwards: with Luddite unrest, anti-Semitism or the demand for guild protection of the craft, all opposing the principle of freedom to practise a trade. This element especially reveals the ambiguous character of the 1848–9 movement, contradicting the interpretation of those events as an early stage of a history of progressive emancipation. A fourth European dimension is manifested in the crop failures and subsequent famine and inflation of 1845 and 1846, culminating in 1847. Responses before the revolution grew to European dimensions: local unrest caused by famine spread in waves across countries, on the one hand, and a growing tide of emigration in the second half of the 1840s, which have been called ‘the hungry forties’, on the other. Suffering was worst in Ireland; but episodes of famine in many German regions – especially in Silesia – found much public resonance (see Chapter 5 for the impact of the Silesian famine on literature). Demands for democracy, nationalist movements and the accumulated socio-economic conflicts, combined to form a more general crisis, suddenly accelerating all political processes. Demands were speedily met that would have been punished as treason only a short time before. The escalating popular movement seemed so outrageous to some 103

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of its contemporary observers, ‘crazy’ even, that soon it was called ‘the mad year’ (das tolle Jahr). Recent and current research on the revolution explores the manifold strivings and movements on a local, regional and broader level. To guard against glib interpretations of the aims and driving forces in the revolution, its chances of success, and its reasons for final failure, historians have drawn attention to the ‘complexity of 1848’. In hindsight, they find themselves faced with a revolution that failed because of the very diversity of the demands made of it. To the contemporary observer, it might have appeared like this: the many-faceted combination of pent-up conflicts caused a gigantic surge of hope the moment it was unleashed. People believed that with fundamental reforms, new men and modern institutions, and a politics more sensitive to the popular mood, all the ills of the times could be cured at once.1 When hopes for the future are this high, disappointment must soon follow. Honeymoon and hangover were never far from each other. Questions about the ‘complexity of 1848’ cannot be answered by generalization. It is much more useful to get an overall view of the dynamics the revolution developed by distinguishing several levels of political action. What seemed like a single revolutionary process to contemporary observers can, by scientific analysis, be broken down to five separate levels. This makes it much easier to explore the scope and the dynamics of democratic politics as well as the counter-revolutionary politics this in turn generated. Caricatures may help to illustrate these levels of action. It is the nature of caricatures to distort reality, so these cartoons, at the same time, document the public dispute that started to evolve in Germany in the year of the revolution.

Revolution at the grass roots The first level of action – the revolution at the grass roots – and its violent character is illustrated in Figure 6.1 showing the Vienna revolution in May 1848. The revolution at the grass roots gave vent to spontaneous movements of the people. This happened on the barricades and at protest meetings in front of town halls and royal palaces. Whole villages marched to the castles of their princes in southwestern Germany. One could see all social strata of the population there; one could even hear social revolutionary voices; the lower classes venting their pent-up rage. The population was fundamentally concerned with politics as never before. Even contemporary observers were astonished at this process, like the Breslauer Zeitung which reported on 23 March 1848 that it was ‘quite common to hear men from the lowest classes, even women, uttering clear and sensible opinions about political and social questions; just as if they had studied them for years’. More recent research on the revolution has discovered, following the examples of E. P. Thompson and George Rudé, social protest as a special driving force of revolution. The importance of peasant uprisings and actions has become clear. Usually, the 1848–9 revolution is represented as a middle-class democratic revolution 104

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Figure 6.1  Barricade-building in Vienna in May 1848: the revolution at the grass roots. Source: ullstein bild Dtl. / Getty.

(bürgerlich-demokratische Revolution) but in fact, in its early phases around onethird of uprisings were agrarian in character. However, the farmers seldom pursued the same goals as the middle classes. They aimed to be free of their landlords but recognized the authority of the princes. Some understood freedom of the press not as freedom of the printed word, but as freedom from oppression by their landlords. Another third of those participating in the revolution from below consisted of members of the urban lower classes: labourers, apprentices, journeymen, impoverished tradesmen, railroad and factory workers all took part in the events. In April 1848, the public was agitated by a series of strikes, especially in factories and railroad construction sites. In conclusion, one can note that peasants, tradesmen and workers, some two-thirds of those involved in the popular movements of early 1848, had been directly affected by social and economic crisis. In other words: those who carried the revolution from below belonged mostly to the lower orders and were sharply distinct from the nobility and the middle classes. If we take a look at the victims of the street fighting in Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna, at those injured and killed, we see that most of them were also small tradesmen, journeymen and apprentices. They were simple people, townsfolk. The crisis of the traditional trades that had lasted for decades – a structural crisis – found its visible outlet on the barricades. This crisis had already become evident in the early summer of 1847, when several uprisings caused by hunger had broken out throughout Germany. At this time, a Württemberg newspaper article had called the people mainly concerned ‘in all places not at all those who really suffered hunger ... the people acting throughout Germany are on the contrary run-down tradesmen, journeymen, apprentices, women of the big cities [this because of the disturbances at the weekly markets] and so on’. 105

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The role of women in the revolution had been much underestimated until recently. On the right-hand side of Figure 6.1, we see a woman building a barricade. However, one must look beyond barricades to appreciate the role of women in the revolution. When investigating the space for political action for women which opened up with the revolution, we can be sure that we will not find it in the work of deputies in the national or state parliaments. However, women were very much present in the audience and actively tried to influence parliamentary decisions. They wrote press articles, letters to members of parliament or newspapers, took part in general assemblies, even spoke there in rare cases, and showed their political sympathies by wearing ribbons in the national colours or even by organizing petitions. The most women could do within the institutional revolution was to form their own associations. These women’s societies, especially in Württemberg and in the Rhine-Main area, did not focus exclusively on women’s issues but were an active part of the broad political and national movement. Women donated jewellery and money for the German fleet, promoted ‘ancient German’ fashion in contrast to French fashion, which they now shunned, organized lotteries to equip the citizens’ militias and helped revolutionaries fleeing from Baden in the summer of 1849. Women did much of the work in German Catholic and Free Church communities, in which opposition to the orthodoxy of the two great denominations had brought together 150,000 people since 1845. These independent religious communities were an active part of political opposition and women had equal rights here: they participated in their work at all levels, founded their own women’s societies within the religious communities, and took part in educational and social work. Democratic and Free Church movements were closely connected in 1848–9. So the people taking part in the revolution had many different goals, not just the ‘unity and freedom’ associated with the liberal and democratic middle classes, the principal concern of general textbooks. The lower classes that carried the revolution reflected the decay of pre-industrial society; they often aimed to restore past social conditions: opposing free professions and freedom of movement, advocating the expulsion of strangers from town and state. A pioneer work about social protest in the German states with the fitting title Straße und Brot (‘Street and Bread’) considers areas of life far removed from the parliaments.2 However, in the second wave of the revolution in September 1848, and even more so in the revolution of May 1849, the former unity of the opposition was lost when the differences of interest within the grass-roots revolution came to light. This considerably weakened the revolutionary movement.

The political revolution The grass-roots revolution opened the way for the second level of action: for a free press and a public organized into political parties. Everywhere the governments of the princes had to concede freedom of the press and the free formation of political societies, the first time this occurred in German history. 106

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Rapidly, a non-parliamentary political public developed. Rightly, it has emerged from the shadows into the light of research in recent years. The artist of Figure 6.2 clearly has a problem in depicting a society on its way to becoming an argumentative democracy. The picture shows the ‘Reich-sweeping-mill’. It symbolizes public opinion, as is written on the funnel (öffentliche Meinung). The handle is operated by the Deutsche Michel as a personification of the whole German people. The picture deals with the call for new elections under the impact of the September revolution. Michel works the mill as a sweeper. Below, with election returns, liberal and constitutional members emerge in an orderly and civilized manner. Above, on the left, republicans and democrats fly away; on the right conservatives and royalists are blown out. In 1848, we stand at the very beginning of organized political parties in Germany. What criteria characterized these parties? They were freely formed organizations; they formed their opinions internally by majority votes; they submitted to a common programme and were open to anybody of the same views. They aimed for votes in the coming elections, which they achieved quite effectively. It was not only the parliaments which proved their political competence in 1848; large parts of the urban population showed their own political maturity. It is amazing how quickly people became used to dealing with party rules. As a new and special trait these parties were no longer just appendages of parliamentary factions or the result of state protection. They developed their own life and the variety of this party life has so far not been adequately assessed. Roughly, five political lines

Figure 6.2  ‘Reich-sweeping-mill’: the political revolution for free press and parties. Source: Stadtmuseum Ludwigshafen, Germany.

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of thought can be distinguished: the conservatives, the constitutional liberals, the democrats, the political Catholics (Pius–Vereine) and the Arbeitervereine (workers’ societies), organized nationally in the Arbeiterverbrüderung (workers’ brotherhood). So there was by no means just one homogenous mass of the socially discontented. Political life in the larger cities – especially in the southwest – had already been structured before the revolution. At Mannheim, for example, a reading society named ‘Harmonie’ was a focal point where the opposition gathered. Public life came to the revolution already prepared; it is not surprising that the earliest publicly expressed ‘March demands’ (Märzforderungen) came from Mannheim at the end of February. Carola Lipp and Wolfgang Kaschuba have described the life experience of the middleclass political elite in a typical profile of a citizen from Württemberg. This interested and active citizen would have a high social status, be a member of a craft association (Handwerkerverein) which represented his economic interests, sing in the Liederkranz (song circle), join a political society in 1848, maintain public order as a member of the militia, go to general assemblies and festivals, be informed about the hopes and dangers of the time from newspapers, might perhaps serve as an honorary member of the FeuerRettungs-Compagnie (a kind of early fire brigade) while most probably not joining the failed march of the Gymnasts Associations, which sought to save the Reich constitution against the Prussian troops in Baden and the Palatinate. His wife would be a member of a society that educated neglected children, while his daughter would participate in embroidering the citizenship flag in the Jungfrauenverein (maidens’ society), and he himself would join a society to support out-of-work labourers. In 1849, he would win a seat in the local council.3 This shows that the revolution was deeply rooted in regional life through these societies and the city became the centre of the revolution wherever the historical traditions of local self-government persisted. The political societies found their voices in their own newspapers. The hitherto moderate tone of the press, enforced by censorship, was replaced by forceful polemics. The local newspaper of every town, city or region was suddenly dealing with national politics and the work of the Frankfurt National Assembly. It is an extremely arduous, yet necessary task to explore the jungle of the provincial press.4 The change in the local press shows especially well how deep political interest began to reach in the year of the revolution. The newspapers show how the nobility, the clergy and the magistrates reacted, how active the local voters were and the variety of political parties. In addition, there were leaflets, placards, caricatures, handouts and organized petitions: the printed media were ubiquitous and so reached down to the grass-roots level of the revolution. The hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the revolution in 1998 stimulated a great deal of research into the local roots of the revolution. The local press was intensely investigated. The focus widened from the towns to the countryside, demonstrating how much the population were politicized. One can show the surprising extent of rural participation in associations, the holding of meetings and the writing of petitions. This leads one to doubt the appropriateness of the description of 1848 as a ‘bourgeois 108

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revolution’. Particularly in early 1849 one sees how bourgeois forms of action had spread well beyond the bourgeoisie. Until now, it had been thought that the rural population had only taken part in the revolution in its early phases in March and April 1848, dropping out after this in disillusionment. Recent archival and press research in Baden, Württemberg and especially Bavaria show this is not so. The rural population learnt how to engage in politics. That had a significant consequence, as has been especially shown for Bavaria. By contrast with Prussia, the key political activists in the countryside were not soldiers or nobles but socially threatened craftsmen and small businessmen, as well as clergy and loyal state officials. From this developed a popular conservatism which imitated the revolutionary ways of articulating its views. This movement reached parts of ‘old Bavaria’, and thus regions and groups, which had been inaccessible to democrats and liberals. For the first time in Germany, there was freedom to express one’s opinion publicly in the press and in political parties. Of course such expression was controversial and in no way consensual. One could claim that this practical freedom was detrimental to the impetus of the revolution, just as was the split between the liberals and the democrats. This was a component of revolution which worked against the revolution; it did indeed weaken the revolution. But was not the articulation of different interests necessary and unavoidable? However, there did exist a central coordinating body for the democratic parties: the Zentrale Märzverein. It channelled the countless activities of regional revolutionary societies into what was called the ‘campaign for the Imperial Constitution’ towards the end of the revolution. For a while, it strengthened the revolution. All movements of the popular revolution, the press and the parties aimed for political influence; this came to be concentrated on the regional parliaments and the Frankfurt National Assembly.

The parliamentary revolution So, we reach the third level of action: the elected bodies. It is frequently overlooked that in the year of the revolution, there were elections not only for the assemblies in Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna but also in Munich, Stuttgart, Oldenburg, Bremen, Altenburg and so on – that is, everywhere where there were constitutions that had to be revised and made democratic (see Figure 6.3). Much political energy was spent on this. It both multiplied and scattered political activities. At a local level, the old magistrates and mayors were sometimes driven out and a new local constitution was fought for, as well as a reduction of police power and an extension of voting rights. Political energy was released and at the same time absorbed by German federalism. This level – the elected bodies – was very much dominated by civil servants and the educated middle classes. Parliamentary parties developed whose deputies maintained close contact with their constituencies. The three levels of revolution at the grass roots, 109

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Figure 6.3  The German National Assembly. Source: INTERFOTO / Alamy.

in the press and associations, and in the parliaments were closely interconnected. A situation typical of new representative systems soon developed: the voters and those they had elected soon found themselves involved in an increasingly dangerous conflict. This conflict erupted in September when a revolutionary uproar threatened the continuation of the National Assembly. Not only later critics but also some contemporary observers were highly critical of the practices of the parliamentary system. Figure 6.4 shows the members of the Frankfurt parliament on a see-saw. Heinrich von Gagern, president of the parliament, tries to hold this balance on top. To the left, the left-wing members are quarrelling; Arnold Ruge is already falling backwards over a precipice. On the right, the right-wing members are fighting. The caricaturist’s sympathies are with the moderate middle. Nowadays the negative judgements about the reputedly impractical ‘parliament of professors’ have been revised. We have learnt to take the proceedings of the parliament and its parties seriously, and are able to appreciate the enormous and unusual achievements of the Frankfurt National Assembly and the parliaments of the separate regions. The state parliaments could at least build upon the estate assemblies that had previously existed. However, those elected to the Frankfurt parliament were faced with the task of constructing out of nothing a mode of parliamentary proceedings. The 1848 parliaments, especially the Frankfurt Assembly, had to act in the face of immense outside threats and pressures, yet they arrived at results and compromises in the same way as many other parliaments. It is easy to imagine the parliaments breaking 110

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Figure 6.4  The Frankfurt parliament on a see-saw: the parliamentary revolution. Source: Stadtmuseum Ludwigshafen, Germany.

down due to external pressure and internal fragmentation, yet they did not. Most of the members were not experienced in parliamentary proceedings; only a few had been members of former state assemblies, yet they were able to work democratically even under the most extreme conditions. Past research has tended to criticize the conflicts and fragmentation; to acknowledge these as an integral part of a representative and democratic system is easier for us today than for observers at the time used to an authoritarian system. Everything that shapes modern parliamentary life was in evidence then: the influence of small but decisive minorities, politics working with changing majorities, with obstructive negative coalitions, tension between party discipline and the freedom of individual deputies, influences from lobbies and interest groups outside parliament. Even if nationalist feeling ran high in the German National Assembly, one could argue that a reasonable answer to the national question was proposed by the Assembly. The aim of establishing a constitutional state within ‘national’ borders offered protection to national minorities and respected their languages and religions (Article 188 of the Imperial Constitution of 1849).5 A similar solution was proposed in the draft constitution drawn up by the Austrian parliament in Vienna for dealing with the problems of a multinational state. Neither of these constitutions were implemented but they suggested a way of achieving peaceful coexistence between several nationalities within a single state. 111

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In 1848–9, the Frankfurt Assembly not only worked out a constitution for a unified Germany (which finally failed) but also engaged in concrete parliamentary politics. But how did democracy actually work in 1848? Recently, this question has been extensively pursued. As the parliament achieved astonishing results, there is no reason to deny its astonishing political maturity. But that raises the question as to why the constitutional project failed if all was indeed so excellent. In this context, we must consider the fact that the fate of the revolution as a whole was not exclusively, perhaps not even decisively‚ determined by voting in the Frankfurt Assembly. The governmental revolution There were many more dimensions to the revolutionary process. We now direct our attention to the fourth level of action: the ministries. During the events of March, the princes were for a time disorientated and at a loss what to do. In Figure 6.5, the caricaturist likens their actions to the random character of a game of roulette. The representatives of the European powers are shown waiting eagerly for the outcome. Where will the ‘globe’ come to rest – at progress, republic, equality, constitutional monarchy, anarchy, freedom or reform? On the left, we see the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, on the right Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria. In the

Figure 6.5  ‘Sir, finish your turn, while the ball is still rolling’: the governmental revolution. Source: Stadtmuseum Ludwigshafen, Germany.

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background, on the right the French king Louis Philippe is already leaving the game, having lost after the February Revolution. In fact, the revolution almost everywhere stopped short of toppling the reigning monarchs. Parallel to the revolutionary events of March, the reigning monarchs brought commoners and liberal noblemen from opposition factions into their governments. These were the so-called March ministries, by means of which the monarchs seemingly gave power to the pre-March opposition. These reshuffles within governments seemed to provide evidence of the long-awaited breakthrough of the middle classes. A collective biography of 133 men who held ministerial positions in German states in March 1848 shows that these key political figures constituted a very heterogeneous group.6 They mainly hailed from the locality. Many had few qualifications for their position but were public figures. Many had political experience – as deputies in state assemblies, as oppositional figures in associations and the press. By no means did they form a ‘counter-elite’ (Werner) to authoritarian monarchy. For the most part, they acted defensively, hesitantly, responding to others rather than taking the initiative, and ended up failing to satisfy anyone. They did not represent a common view and, in a painful contrast to Paris, made plain the absence of a political centre which could act nationally. The German National Assembly and the provisional central authority it set up was unable to establish itself as a central political power, however much it tried to do so. It is necessary to view the events not only in the light of their outcome but also from the perspective of contemporary expectations. For the majority of the middle classes, the institution of these March ministries must have had a calming effect, as they interpreted it as a promise from the monarchs for future parliamentary politics. The achievements appeared to be so vast that it was time to ‘close down the revolution’, as people put it. In fact, the new governments concentrated their executive powers on achieving ‘law and order’ in the face of the continuing revolutionary uprisings. With this, they played exactly the part the monarchs had cast them in: to make the revolution lose its force. This was certainly evident in Baden after the failure of the Hecker revolution in April 1848. Friedrich Hecker (later as a political exile he served as an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War) attempted the first violent insurrection with volunteer soldiers, arming the populace and aiming to overthrow the monarchical system. The government of Baden had Gustav Struve and Karl Blind tried by jury as leaders of the revolution. The Württemberg government accused revolutionaries of treason and tightened the criminal law concerning political offences. Even in the early stages of the revolution, counter-revolutionary politics began in the separate states. As they did against individuals, so governments also took measures against political societies. As early as 12 July 1848, the Württemberg government banned a democratic society in Stuttgart (the Kreisverein). Bavaria prohibited democratic associations on 12 August 1848; the government of Hesse-Darmstadt suppressed local unrest by means of the army and police. Even the provisional central government established by the Frankfurt National Assembly had the same aims. It has constantly been claimed that this central authority was nothing but a powerless phantom. After the September uprisings, on 3 October 1848, this alleged phantom addressed a decree to all German states ordering 113

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the setting up of a political police. The regional governments were ordered to investigate existing political societies: their tendencies, programmes, major decisions, number of members and influence among the people. The provisional government also asked about their connections with societies in other German states. This state security decree demanded no less than the general surveillance of all political societies by the police. The central power instituted by the revolution thus undermined its own roots. The March ministries of many separate states did likewise. Already in autumn 1848 Hanover, Bavaria and Prussia began recording their surveillance of political activities. The persecuting authorities of counter-revolution later used these to eradicate the remnants of the political societies. Monarchy and counter-revolution The provisional central authority even used troops to achieve law and order. It had been given the central command over the armed forces of the former Deutsche Bund. This leads to the fifth level of action: the pillars of traditional monarchical power. Figure 6.6, taken from the Düsseldorfer Monatshefte, is entitled ‘Panorama of Europe in August 1849’. One could call it a pictorial image of reactionary politics. We see the map of Europe, on which three large figures are shown. Two of them hold brooms, symbolizing reaction. The figure on the left, pointing to ships leaving full of refugees, is Napoleon III who has almost entirely finished cleaning his country. The one in the

Figure 6.6  Panorama of Europe in August 1849: monarchy and counter-revolution. Source: Düsseldorfer Monatshefte, 1849.

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middle with the spiked helmet is the Prussian king, still sweeping. His broom points to southwest Germany, from where the revolutionaries are being swept away. They are gathering under a big hat resembling a liberty cap with ‘Helvetia’ inscribed on it. Just at the edge of that cap, we can see a gallows with a hanged man, reminiscent of the court martials in Baden. In Frankfurt, nothing is left but a scarecrow which may be interpreted as the remnants of the imperial administrator (a rough translation of Reichsverweser) and parliament. Small figures scurry between the feet of the Prussian king; they are German princes. Two of them stand a little apart from the teeming mass of the very small ones: one at Stuttgart with the Württemberg antlers, one near Munich dressed in a beer stein (mug). In the east, we see the Austrians still fighting the Hungarians. Near Warsaw only a burnt-out candle remains from the failure of the Polish revolution. In Denmark, the Dane dances, obviously triumphant because of Schleswig and Holstein. One can also see the German navy, but in letters only, on the water of the Baltic Sea – there is no trace of ships. And on the other side of the English channel, there is Queen Victoria in a carriage, looking without much interest through her glasses at the European spring cleaning. The revolution had ‘stopped short of the thrones’, as the contemporary saying put it. That meant that executive power remained with the monarchs. The noble officers, the common soldiers of the professional armies and the civil servants in the administration and the police force stood ready in the hour of counter-revolution. The part local officials, magistrates and militias played in this context is a subject of its own. The army especially was used against the revolution: first in April in Baden; then on a smaller scale in several places; in September 1848 at Frankfurt; again in the summer of 1849. The last phase of revolutionary uprisings, after Friedrich Wilhelm IV had declined the Imperial Crown, erupted in parts of Prussia, Saxony, the Palatinate and Baden, threatening to spread to Bavarian territory on the right bank of the Rhine and to Württemberg. However, accounts of the role of soldiers in the revolution have become very differentiated, undermining a simple counterposing of progressive revolution against military repression. Soldiers were as diverse as the population generally and reacted in different ways to revolutionary events, demonstrating political views which were not simply subordinate to existing authority.7 Many of them came from handicraft and day labourer backgrounds which they shared with those who made the grass-roots revolution through agrarian revolts, popular assemblies, militias and barricade fighting. Armies acted not only against violent social and political protest such as peasant unrest, Katzenmusik (rough music) as it was called in England, charivari in France and scampanate in Italy8 and insurrections led by armed republican volunteers but also against civilian militias and parliamentarians who acted in pursuit of reform. Officers contrived new methods of discipline and political indoctrination designed to insulate the rank and file from revolutionary influences. The everyday interests and sense of justice of soldiers made them receptive to political ideas. They engaged in protests which indicated participation in the revolutionary movement as well as in counter-revolutionary actions. 115

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The German National Assembly tried to deprive the monarchs of their control over armies, as was made clear by the central authority it established. Its minister of war issued a decree on 16 July 1848 demanding that the armies of all the German states, in parades to be held on 6 August, swear allegiance to the new imperial administrator and carry the German colours. Only the smaller states followed suit while the larger ones, notably Prussia and Austria, refused to do so. Not only did these governments refuse to show solidarity with the revolution, so did soldiers with very few exceptions. The example of Baden shows that the revolution was successful when it was taken up by the troops. This happened temporarily in Vienna, during the militia uprisings in the Rhineland and Westphalia, but completely and effectively only in Baden after the grand duke had been driven out. The Baden revolutionaries succeeded when they were able to institute a state assembly to work out a constitution, and a provisional republican government. They had won the support of the population and at least some of the pillars of power: officers, state officials and judges. The counter-revolution approached from beyond the borders. The grand duke from his exile in Mainz asked for the help of Prussian and Reich troops. By order of the provisional central government at Frankfurt, its minister of war directed contingents from Hesse, Württemberg and Nassau to Baden. Troops from Bavaria, Württemberg and Austria also stood ready to intervene from the east and the south. Recent research has helped us know far more about this campaign for an imperial (Reich) constitution, this last wave of the revolution. New cultural approaches have abandoned the one-dimensional ideas of ‘top down’ and ‘bottom-up’. These no longer contrast a ‘good’ revolution (violent revolutionary struggle for a national constitution) against a ‘bad’ reaction (military repression). Historians have discovered the ‘lawful revolution’, that is the constitutional movement which took shape after the promulgation of the imperial constitution on 28 March 1849 and which lasted until the end of 1849. Their supporters considered their cause as legitimized by the constitution which had prescribed new elections for a national parliament. The imperial administrator (Reichsverweser) was seen as a guarantor for the continuing and legitimate imperial authority. The campaigners, believing their cause was legitimate, consciously refrained from using revolutionary violence. They built on the ‘communications revolution’ which had evolved after the first wave of revolution in 1848. This involved circulating petitions and addresses for and against the imperial constitution. This often took place at some distance from the organized associations. This linked to a social basis of a counterrevolution which has often been overlooked. There were fewer unpolitical ‘silent zones’ than was once thought to be the case. On the contrary, there was a struggle to control the public sphere, especially to use the town hall as the focus for gathering mass signatures. We know in the case of Bavaria that in early 1849 countless popular meetings took place in small towns and villages. These brought together bourgeois–democratic, plebeian and peasant public opinion. It has been estimated that around 350,000 people just in early 1849 were politicized by the question of the imperial constitution. Such a movement created a substitute for parliamentary opinion. It was a modern media campaign. It was not, however, a political campaign (Feldzug), the term coined by Friedrich Engels to 116

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characterize the ‘campaign for the Imperial Constitution’ (Reichsverfassungskampagne). This media campaign brought together both those who supported and who opposed the imperial constitution. Why did this movement not become violent? They wanted to act ‘lawfully’, meaning non-violently. Only that united the opposing parties. That was an important consideration for governments. In comparison with early 1848, by early 1849 they had learnt a lesson: in order to come to terms with new forms of political action they must recognize that the great majority of those involved wanted a ‘lawful revolution’ (Seidl). They realized that most of the politically active population would operate in the new framework of associations and meetings but also limit their actions within this framework. Compared to March 1848, the public were more politically socialized and practised the rituals of ‘assembly democracy’ (Versammlungsdemokratie). Furthermore, conservative movements supportive of the old governments achieved significance within this framework, not just those with liberal and democratic aims. Governments took all this into account when they decided to proceed in a military way against the lawful revolution. Such military action brought the revolution to a sad end at the fortress in Rastatt on 23 July 1849. On the day some 5,600 revolutionary fighters who had not been prepared to confine themselves to a non-violent and lawful revolution, finding themselves encircled by soldiers, formally surrendered. In contrast to events in Saxony and the Palatinate, in Baden court martials run by the Prussian authorities bloodily liquidated the revolution. In addition, military courts and civil judges sentenced another 1,000 revolutionaries. The decisive battle was not fought in Baden, but earlier and elsewhere; the standing armies with their monarchs won. It was especially striking how seldom the professional armies took up the cause of the revolution. I surmise that they did not yet identify sufficiently with nationalist (in the positive sense) ideas. When Prussian soldiers shot Saxon guerrillas or Baden soldiers, they did not see themselves as confronting fellow Germans. During the revolution, soldiers only threatened to revolt when they were conscious of facing compatriots, but in 1848 that meant, in the eyes of the soldiers, Prussians, Saxons, Bavarians and so on, not Germans. The moment that the army started to side with the revolutionaries and protesters was vital in ensuring that there was virtually no bloodshed during the uprisings of 1989 in Dresden or in August 1991 in Moscow. Generals Windischgrätz and Radetzky, or Banus Jellacic, were successful in their fight for the Habsburg monarchy because they could use troops of different nationalities (Czechs and Croats) against Germans in Prague or Vienna, against Hungarians in the east and against Italians in Upper Italy. With all these factors, we also have to consider the fact that the revolution of 1848–9 was part of a European movement that failed everywhere with the exception of Switzerland and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia with its Statuto Albertino. The turning point in the European revolution was reached in other places much earlier than in Germany. In the summer and autumn of 1848, monarchist troops suppressed revolutions in many European states: in Cracow, Posen, Prague, Paris and Upper Italy. In summer, 1849 revolutionaries from other countries reached the German scene: 117

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the Russian officer Bakunin came in via Dresden; a Polish general led the insurgents in the Palatinate, supported by a Hungarian colonel; a Polish general commanded troops in Baden; legionaries came from France and Switzerland; Frenchmen, Swiss and Hungarians formed their own legions during the fight for the establishment of the Reich constitution. The traditional armies of the monarchies for the most part did not succumb to the challenge of the revolution, other than in Baden, in Vienna or among the Prussian militia in the Rhineland and Westphalia. The regular troops were not ready to take up the cause of the revolution. In battles, they always showed their superiority, supported by modern equipment. To put it more drastically, in the final analysis, the Prussian Zündnadelgewehr (Dreyse’s needle gun rifle), used for the first time in 1848–9, destroyed the national myth of the barricades. The caricature in Figure 6.5 interprets the German revolution as but one part of the events which were happening throughout Europe. So the question as to what might have happened if Friedrich Wilhelm IV had accepted the Imperial Crown is completely futile. He would never have done this, as he was not a Romantic, but a coolly calculating monarch very much conscious of his power, and to whom military force meant more than any constitution.

Conclusion In the light of the demise of east German socialism there is nowadays much emphasis on the fact that it was only a minority that effected the revolution. The same question may be asked concerning the events of 1848, pointing to a problem that could, on all five levels, be termed the ‘locations of non-action’, the calm zones of the revolution. Arguably their significance has been exaggerated. Instead, some historians now draw attention to a growing loyalty to the monarchs, a disaffection from revolution, even a ‘protest against protest’. The communications revolution strengthened the old order as well as the revolution and started to do so before the revolution faltered at the other levels of action. For example, when in October 1848 there were open uprisings on the streets of Vienna, Emperor Ferdinand I took flight and found a warm welcome at Innsbruck. In general, the most recent research on the revolution has shown that from the summer of 1848 onwards, conservative and soldiers’ associations (Kriegervereine) began to organize in order to fight the revolution; this was the case especially in Prussia and Austria but – as has been shown – also in Bavaria. All in all, no single simple interpretation of the 1848–9 revolutions in Germany is adequate. Four central facts support this claim most emphatically. First, those active in the revolution of 1848 were on all five levels unable to grasp the dynamics of the revolution as a whole. Their powers of judgement and decision were not up to it. There was no decisive centre of action. Second, those active in the events of 1848–9 did not have one single, clearly decided aim which they failed to achieve. The Reich constitution was one aim but the revolution was about more than that. 118

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Third, the roots of the revolution were ambiguous. On the one hand, it manifested a crisis of pre-industrial society, an answer to overpopulation, hunger, inflation and distress among the trades. It stimulated dreams of old times, of guilds, of a closed-in burgher mentality and work without machines. It awakened fear of class conflict which had hitherto been concealed through the restrictions on movement from one occupation to another. The revolution revealed that opposition to change lay deep within society; indeed, the revolution actually aroused such opposition to active resistance. On the other hand, the revolution was a crisis of political emancipation, which meant that new forms matured within society that were suitable for solving the problems of the future. Political parties, the press, the parliaments and the political societies were the new media of political emancipation. Under the domination of the pre-revolutionary elites, they could only partially develop their potential. The bureaucratic–military bodies of the state and the old loyalties turned out to be stronger in the end. We should term the process a tentative and broken attempt at emancipation. The monarchist elites among the nobility did not see – in contrast to much earlier events in England – the chance that change within society offered them. Not one among the ruling monarchs of the larger German states was amenable to a constitutional compromise on the basis of 1848, for example in the way Karl Albert of Sardinia-Piedmont was. This was amply demonstrated during the bitter decade of reactionary politics that followed. The monarchs had been successful in deceiving their March ministers. They used them in the hour of their need; they dismissed them in the hour of reaction. A final factor helps explain revolutionary failure. For too long, not sufficient notice has been taken of how much the national and the international interacted in shaping the politics of the revolution. Recently research has focused on the German Confederation (Deutsche Bund) which has long been treated dismissively. This enables us to understand better the view from Vienna. The Habsburg government was not prepared to sacrifice the unity of its state. That is why it stood firm on the continued existence of the Confederation. This was the only organization which brought together Austria and the rest of ‘Germany’ into a common state framework. The Confederation was the model to oppose to the vision of a national revolution of the peoples of Central Europe. Thus the claim, ‘The key to the path towards German unity lay in Vienna, not Berlin or Frankfurt’ (Manfred Botzenhart). Recent research has shown just how much the Habsburg monarchy was affected in every corner of every province by the events of 1848–9.9 The revolution embraced and generated associations, parties, interest groups and the press. It stimulated action within urban, rural and confessional milieus throughout the empire. This sparked off movements for political self-determination within many nationalities. The social conflicts of other parts of Germany were expressed as national conflicts in the Habsburg Empire, with Hungary leading the way. The Pandora’s Box (Rumpler) opened by these national movements created problems which could not be solved, even if the aims of nation-state formation raised in 1848 had succeeded. In Central Europe, the desire to unify the nation created conflicts between the nationalities. Already in 1848–9, German soldiers marched against Danes, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and Italians, sometimes at the behest of the Frankfurt central authority acting in the name of the German national 119

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interest, sometimes on the orders of the government in Vienna in order to preserve the unity of the empire. Only during the 1860s did the realization dawn among the governing elites that controversies in the sphere of public opinion and political parties did not endanger the state; on the contrary, press and parties could be seen and used as welcome allies of one’s own politics. This, at least, was the approach taken by Bismarck. When he came to power in 1862, the memory of 1848–9 was still very much alive, much more so than is generally appreciated today. From this point of view, the revolution had not (yet) failed. The Prussian constitutional conflict, when an attempt to implant the parliamentary system into the largest German monarchy failed, can be seen as its late heritage (see Chapter 7). The more we contemplate all those dimensions which are revealed when we view the different levels of action, the less able we are simply to state that the revolution failed utterly. The revolution gave the impetus to a long-term wave of modernization. National unity remained a real prospect, both experienced and recalled. The peasants remained victorious in any case: they were finally and irrevocably freed from their dependence on their landlords. The legal system was changed fundamentally at all levels. Political participation was established despite the subsequent reactionary restoration. Prussia had become a constitutional state. The Frankfurt constitution remained exemplary for a hundred years, up to the time of the Parliamentary Council in 1948–9. The national revolution also had the effect of altering relations between the various German states in ways which are important for a study of Germany as a federal political system.10 In the long run, failure hid within itself a kind of success. The revolution appeared across Europe not just as a history of failure because it offered to the next generation a ‘reservoir of ideals, political models and constitutional sketches’ (Andreas Fahrmeir). That affected many who engaged in an ‘inner emigration’. After a decade of reaction, many of the left-wing members of the German National Assembly returned to the public debate over German unity, many of them in state parliaments. This applies even more to the political emigration ‘as a pan-European phenomenon with a global dimension’ (Heléna Thót). Refugees from Germany, Austria and Hungary found asylum in a wide range of places – from Switzerland, Belgium and England to the United States, Latin America and the Ottoman Empire to where they exported their revolutionary experiences. To see the revolution simply as a failure would mean understating its meaning and importance in German history. Notes 1. One can compare this to Chancellor Kohl’s vision of a prospering land (‘blühenden Landschaften’) following the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989. 2. Manfred Gailus, Straße und Brot. Sozialer Protest in den deutschen Staaten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Preußens 1847–1849 (Göttingen 1990). 3. Wolfgang Kaschuba and Carola Lipp, 1848 – Provinz und Revolution. Kultureller Wandel und soziale Bewegung im Königreich Württemberg (Tübingen, 1979). 120

The Revolutions of 1848–9 4. For Bavaria see Klaus Seidl, ‘Gesetzliche Revolution’ im Schatten der Gewalt. Die politische Kultur der Reichsverfassungskampagne in Bayern 1849 (Schöningh: Paderborn, 2014). 5. For English translations of the national constitutions of 1849 and 1871 see The Democratic Tradition: Four German Constitutions, edited and introduced by Elmar M. Hucko (1987). 6. Eva Maria Werner, Die Märzministerien. Regierungen der Revolution von 1848/49 in den Staaten des Deutschen Bundes (Göttingen, 2009). 7. Sabrina Müller, Soldaten in der deutschen Revolution von 1848/49 (Paderborn, 1999). 8. See W. Siemann, The German Revolution of 1848–49 (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 172ff. 9. This is shown in volumes 7 to 9 on constitution, press, public opinion and social structures edited by Helmut Rumpler und Peter Urbanitsch, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918 (Vienna, 2000–10). Most recently, drawing on that multivolume work, is the brilliant study by Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, 2016). 10. The way to showing this has been prepared through the Quellen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundes edited by the Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften as well as by Jürgen Müller, Deutscher Bund und deutsche Nation 1848–1866 (Göttingen, 2005).

Select bibliography Barclay, David E., Frederick William IV and the Prussian Monarchy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Breuilly, J., ‘1848: Connected or Comparable Revolutions?’, in A. Körner, ed., 1848 – A European Revolution: International Ideas and National Memories of 1848 (London: Macmillan Press LTD, 2000), pp. 31–49. Dowe, D., Haupt, H.-G., Langewiesche, D. and Sperber, J., eds, Europe in 1848. Revolution and Reform (New York: Berghahn, 2001). A superb collection which covers virtually all aspects on a Europe-wide level, first published in German in 1998. Fahrmeir, A., ‘Chapter 5: Die Revolutionen von 1848’, in A. Fahrmeir, Europa zwischen Restauration, Reform und Revolution 1815–1850 (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2012). A focused and precise overview of the most recent research, 82–101, 207–13. Hachtmann, R., Berlin 1848. Eine Politik- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Revolution (Bonn: Dietz Verlag, 1997). Hachtmann, R., Epochenschwelle zur Moderne. Einführung in die Revolution von 1848/49 (Tübingen: edition discord, 2002). A critical general overview of research on the revolution, also excellent on some specialist topics. Judson, Pieter M., The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, 2016). Körner, A., ed., 1848 – A European Revolution: International Ideas and National Memories of 1848 (London: Macmillan Press LTD, 2000). Sheehan, J., German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Siemann, W., Vom Staatenbund zum Nationalstaat. Deutschland 1806–1871 (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1995). Siemann, W., The German Revolution of 1848–49 (London: Macmillan, 1998). Sperber, J., Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). Sperber, J., The European Revolutions, 1848–1851 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Revised edition, 2005, with an annotated bibliography, 284–98. Thót, H., An Exiled Generation: German and Hungarian Refugees of Revolution, 1848–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 121

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CHAPTER 7 REVOLUTION TO UNIFICATION

John Breuilly

The story of German unification has usually been told from the perspective of Bismarck and Prussia.1 Other views were marginalized or dismissed as impractical. Even when the focus has widened beyond ‘great men’ conducting foreign policy and leading armies, for example, to take in economic history, the result has often strengthened rather than challenged the accompanying sense of the inevitable success of dynamic and successful Prussian leadership. For example, when John Maynard Keynes wrote in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), his critique of the settlement imposed on Germany after the First World War, that Germany was built on ‘coal and iron’ rather than ‘blood and iron’, this made Prussia’s rise to power appear even more irreversible than in older, politically orientated historical writing. Yet, there have always been alternative views as well as views of alternatives, even if often ignored. Historians realized in 1945 that the German nation state could be unmade; in 1989–90 that it could be remade. This sense that things could have been different needs to be projected into our understanding of the first unification. I will argue that Bismarck was an ‘outsider’ and that the views on Prussia and the national question he propounded in the 1850s were unrealistic. However, the world rather than Bismarck’s view of it changed rapidly between then and the mid-1860s. Now his realism became one of substance as well as tone. Under these changed conditions, Bismarck’s methods and objectives could be successfully put into practice, although the risk of failure remained high. This chapter presents an argument. Not all historians would agree with this argument and I will try to indicate where that is the case. It focuses on explaining unification rather than providing a general political survey of the period from 1850 until 1871. It is primarily military and political history insofar as it attempts to understand the decisive events leading to the formation of a German nation state in 1871, but I try to take account of other kinds of events and processes well beyond the influence or even the awareness of the leading statesmen and generals involved.

Bismarck the outsider Bismarck came to political prominence in 1847 when Frederick William IV summoned a United Diet. There was conflict over whether the Crown should concede a written constitution. This was related to the previous king’s promise of a constitution during the war against Napoleon. Royalists insisted Prussians had been animated by monarchical and religious loyalties; the liberal majority stressed the prospect of a constitution.

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Bismarck shocked both sides by declaring that Prussians did not care about such things but were preoccupied with material issues. His cynicism about principles – liberal or conservative – was already clear. However, he was a monarchist, indeed in 1848, an outspoken reactionary. For him, the revolution was the work of urban mobs and intellectuals, enjoying success only because of the failure of nerve on the part of the king and his advisers. The rural population had no interest in the revolution. A recovery of nerve, a whiff of grapeshot and mobilizing the conservative majority would suffice to restore order. The revolution was swiftly defeated, if not as Bismarck advocated. His reward for vigorous royalism was appointment as Prussian ambassador to the restored Diet of the German Confederation in 1851. This was a remarkable decision. Bismarck had attended university with a view to a career in the civil service but had soon abandoned that and retired to the life of a provincial squire. The constitutional and revolutionary politics of 1847–50 plucked him from obscurity. He became an ambassador without working his passage as bureaucrat or courtier. He was an outsider and remained suspicious of court and bureaucracy all his life. In the Diet, Bismarck confronted Habsburg supremacy. In 1850, Austria had compelled Prussia to abandon a forward policy in northern and central Germany, in turn relinquishing her ambition of integrating her own non-German territories with the Confederation. This stalemate led to the restoration of the Confederation established at the Congress of Vienna. Austria intended to dominate the Confederation as she had from its foundation. Bismarck wanted to end Austrian primacy and regarded the Confederation as an absurdity. In his view, the remaining states had no independence and survived only by balancing Prussia against Austria. The most sensible arrangement would be two territorial spheres of influence dominated by Prussia and Austria, respectively. Quite where the boundary would be drawn, how Austria was to be persuaded to accept this ‘solution’, how the accompanying international complications were to be handled: these were matters to be settled according to circumstances. Bismarck’s fixity of purpose was accompanied by flexibility of method. Some of these dismayed conservatives, such as coming to agreements with the ‘illegitimate’ Louis Napoleon or with nationalists opposed to the ‘legitimate’ Habsburg dynasty.

The improbability of Prussian success, 1851–62 No matter how flexible Bismarck’s methods, they had no chance of success through the 1850s as a brief look at the underlying strengths of Prussia compared to the Habsburg Empire demonstrates. Population The population of Prussia in 1850 was about sixteen million; that of the western half of the Habsburg Empire seventeen million (excluding Lombardy-Venetia), the eastern 124

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half sixteen million, and the remaining German states about sixteen million. Prussia’s population was increasing more quickly than that of the Habsburg Empire but remained far less until well after 1871. She lagged far behind Russia (seventy million) and France (thirty-five million), although in the latter case she had massively improved upon the 3:1 ratio of 1820. Population is not a direct indication of state power, but it is the base on which that power rests (see chapters by Lee and Berghahn for more details on demography). Economy Prussian economic growth was rapid in the 1850s and 1860s, involving the emergence of new industries associated with coal, and iron and steel production. Prussia’s growth outstripped that of Austria, France and Russia, but this should not be exaggerated. An attempt at calculating shares of world manufacturing output in 1860 yields the following results: 20 per cent in Britain, 8 per cent in France, 7 per cent in Russia, 5 per cent in Prussia, 4 per cent in Austria. These are very rough but, if anything, exaggerate Prussia’s share by equating her with the subsequent Second Empire. (This is a constant irritation with pre-1871 ‘German’ statistics.) Prussia in 1860 had about the same proportion of her labour force (20 per cent) in manufacturing industry as France. Austria and France were not economically stagnant; rather, they were not as dynamic as Prussia after mid-century. This dynamism enabled Prussia to dominate the German Customs Union (Zollverein). After 1848, the Zollverein was used in conflicts between Prussia and Austria, with struggles over the entry of Hanover and the terms of a twelve-year renewal of the Zollverein treaty. Prussia used her predominance to prevent Austria from joining. Struggle over control of the Zollverein flared up again in the early 1860s. Prussian triumph indicated the growing economic as well as fiscal dependence of the other German states upon membership of the Zollverein. However, it is not clear how this might be translated into political domination, especially as most of those states politically supported Austria precisely to counterbalance that economic subordination. A second advantage lay in qualitative features of Prussian growth. By 1860, Prussia produced more steel than France, Russia or Austria. Prussia in 1850 had a more extensive railway network than France, Russia or Austria, and this continued to increase in relation to Austria. Given the importance of new methods of transportation and the mass production of rifles and artillery in the wars of unification, these were significant indicators of Prussian superiority. Prussian military leadership proved capable of exploiting these advantages over their opponents. Yet, such advantages had not translated themselves into political and military power by 1860. Government expenditure was a lower proportion of GDP than in Britain or Austria and about the same as France. In 1860, Prussian expenditure on her army (36 per cent) was a lower proportion of state expenditure than in France (39 per cent) or Austria (51 per cent). That is reflected in army sizes: 306,000 in Austria; 608,000 in France; 201,000 in Prussia. 125

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Diplomacy and war After 1848–9, it appeared that the settlement of 1814–15 had been restored. Russia had played her part as ‘policeman’ of Europe, helping Austria repress the Hungarian rebellion. Britain pursued a policy of maintaining a peaceful status quo in Europe, though not prepared to intervene directly. The German Confederation was restored under Austrian leadership. The one significant difference was that France was now ruled by a Bonaparte who declared that he did not accept the 1814–15 settlement. The Crimean War (1854–6) destroyed the old alliance against France. She fought with Britain against Russia. The result was to push Russia temporarily out of European affairs and cause a breakdown in Austro-Russian relations. Austria had adopted a policy of armed neutrality, but one biased against Russia because of concerns about southeast Europe. The war revealed the importance of steam-powered transport. In 1813–15, Russia marched troops across Europe as quickly as any other state. In the mid-1850s she could not send soldiers or equipment to Crimea as quickly as Britain and France with their steamships. One consequence of Austria’s diplomatic isolation was the war of 1859–60 against France and Piedmont. France now pursued a forward policy in Europe, presenting herself as the champion of national movements against the dynastic status quo. The rapid transport of soldiers to Northern Italy and deployment of new weapons produced devastating results. Austria sued rapidly for peace at the cost of Lombardy, sparking off a process that was to lead to an Italian kingdom by the end of 1860. Bismarck, as ambassador to the Confederation, urged Berlin to exploit Austrian weakness during the Crimean War. He did the same – now in his new position as ambassador to Russia – with respect to the 1859 war. The Prussian government, for conservative and pragmatic reasons, declined to act as he suggested. Neutrality was adopted during the Crimean War as Prussia had no wish to alienate the other powers. In 1859, it was considered impossible to ally with Bonapartist France against a fellow German dynasty. As the war took on a national character in Italy, it inspired thoughts of exploiting similar sentiments in Germany, but nothing as drastic as direct action against Austria. Instead Prussia demanded parity with Austria as the price of support, in particular command of the Confederal Army on the border with France. Austria refused such demands and Prussia remained neutral. Objectively, Austria’s position was weakened but she remained more populous and powerful than Prussia in 1860. Indeed Bismarck had been transferred to Russia by a government anxious to take him away from the sensitive post in Frankfurt. Culture The failure of the German National Assembly in 1848–9 demonstrated support for national unity but also how limited and divided that was and how formidable the obstacles were.2 People were more concerned with other issues and did not see the relevance of a nation state to these. Catholics looked to Austria; Protestants to Prussia. Inhabitants of smaller states feared domination from either Vienna or Berlin. Democrats opposed an

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authoritarian nation state. Liberals wanted to preserve state powers but to harmonize arrangements so that people could enjoy common rights throughout Germany. Each viewpoint commanded minority support but was regarded with indifference or hostility by many more. Those who wanted unity were compelled by failure to be more realistic. Given the lack of popular support and the hostility of the Habsburg dynasty to strengthening national institutions, they increasingly looked to Prussia. There was little scope for a national movement during the 1850s. Counter-revolution made open politics impossible. Governments restricted the scope for cultural activities such as publishing which might have promoted a sense of national identity. Economic growth brought increased migration, urban growth and better communications which one might think would promote national identity. However, most migration was shortdistance and within state boundaries. The emigration of many political activists to the United States depleted the ranks of a national movement.3 Among elites, people were more drawn together at state than national level – for example, through the parliament established following the Prussian constitution of December 1848. Towards the end of the 1850s, a relaxation of controls increased communications across state boundaries. A national press took shape, dominated by liberals. Associations with explicit national values such as choral societies, sharpshooting clubs, gymnastic and workers’ educational associations grew in membership and geographical spread. The extent of national feeling was vividly expressed at the centenary of Schiller’s birth in November 1859. Many people participated throughout Germany and in German settlements in Europe and overseas to celebrate someone who, both in his life and art, was taken to embody the idea of cultural nationality as something transcendent, even religious. Yet, this involved at most a few hundred thousand people. It is difficult to know how many were inspired by the message propagated by the educated nationalists who organized the celebrations. In any case, these nationalists had little idea of how to turn their ideas to political account. Nevertheless, the centre of gravity of this movement was in Protestant regions, concentrated in northern and central Germany, which could be regarded as favourable to Prussia. So there was no massive national sentiment in favour of a Prussian forward policy in Germany in 1860. The war in Italy and the liberalization of domestic politics in Prussia (known as the ‘New Era’) with the accession of William to power (Regent 1858; King 1861) encouraged a national movement which looked to Prussia for leadership, expressed in the formation of the National Association (Nationalverein) in 1859. But the Nationalverein never exceeded 25,000 members and was politically divided. Admittedly, it appealed to the expanding cluster of associations and operated through a network of elite organizations and liberal parties in various states. Nevertheless, this does not suggest huge support. Outside Prussia, even nationalists who looked to Prussia regarded the liberalization of the state as a condition for accepting her leadership. Crisis in Prussia The optimism associated with the ‘New Era’ soon faded. William was acutely aware of Prussian military weakness which precluded any ambitious foreign policy. He had been 127

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alarmed by the decrepit nature of the army revealed by partial mobilization in 1859. He was determined to increase its size and the length of service. Prussia’s army was, uniquely among the major powers, a conscript army based on short-term service (two and a half years), followed by two years in the line reserves and fourteen in the reserve army (Landwehr). Prussia did not call up all those liable to service. William wanted to increase the call-up rate, extend line service to three years, line reserve service to five years, followed by eleven years in the Landwehr which would be reduced to garrison and rear-line duties. The reforms would more than double the size of the regular army, greatly increase that of the reserves, involve a massive expansion of the officer corps, the formation of many new infantry and cavalry regiments and vastly increased expenditure. The liberal majority of the Prussian lower house (the Landtag) could not accept this. Liberals recognized the need for a stronger army but objected to the thrust of the reforms, for example, marginalizing the Landwehr (a militia regarded as embodying civic rather than militarist qualities), especially if the army remained firmly under royal control without parliamentary influence. William refused to compromise. Parliament refused to approve budgets. A series of elections produced ever larger and more determined liberal majorities. By the autumn of 1862, William was contemplating abdication. Bismarck had recently been transferred from St Petersburg to Paris where he remained in close contact with conservative circles in Berlin which were determined that the king ride out the storm. The minister of war, Albert von Roon, advised William that one man had the nerve and ability to enable this for him, a man who had vigorously, even recklessly, defended royal prerogatives against parliamentary presumption. Bismarck was called to Berlin and appointed ministerpresident in September. The odds against success, in either solving the domestic crisis or realizing his expansionist dreams, were huge. Public and parliamentary opinion, much of it shaped by wealthy groups with access to major newspapers and periodicals, opposed his appointment. Without military reform Prussia remained the weakest of the major powers. National sentiment, itself weak and divided, rebuffed overtures from a man known only for his defence of Prussian dynasticism. Austria, after setbacks in 1859– 60, had embarked on constitutional reform and was proposing changes in the German Confederation designed to enlist national support.

The process of unification Bismarck was appointed to solve the domestic crisis. He withdrew the pending budget but collected revenues, arguing that in the event of a stand-off between the Crown and the parliament, the executive must continue to run the country on the basis of laws already passed. Parliament rejected this novel theory (‘the constitutional gap’) but, as it also rejected extra-parliamentary resistance such as a tax boycott, Bismarck overrode that opposition. He tried to interfere with parliamentary immunity and to bribe or bully journalists to undermine liberal opponents. Bismarck probably wanted 128

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some compromise to end the crisis but the king and many conservatives would not countenance this. The domestic crisis overshadowed all else. When Bismarck, addressing a parliamentary committee, made the speech notorious for its assertion that an effective German policy would have to be based on ‘iron and blood’ rather than parliamentary resolutions, he saw himself offering the liberals a realistic solution to the national question. However, liberals saw it as a threat to them and, given Bismarck’s weak position, an empty one. His one major foreign policy move, support for Russian suppression of a Polish uprising in 1863, alienated liberal opinion. In 1863, Bismarck was confronted by an assertive German policy on Austria’s part and had great difficulty persuading William not to attend a congress of German princes. Only the Schleswig-Holstein issue enabled Bismarck to escape from this unpromising situation. The war against Denmark Schleswig and Holstein were duchies ruled in personal union by the Danish Crown. Holstein was German speaking and a member of the Confederation. Schleswig had German and Danish speakers and was not in the Confederation. Danish nationalists claimed Schleswig as part of Denmark; German nationalists insisted on the indivisibility of the duchies. The succession of Christian IX to the Danish throne on the death of Frederick VII on 15 November 1863 did not automatically confer his succession to rule over the duchies as well. Christian IX signed a charter incorporating Schleswig into Denmark. German nationalists responded by demanding the title of Duke of SchleswigHolstein be granted to Frederick, Duke of Augustenburg, who would bring both duchies into the Confederation. The matter had been subject to international treaty since 1850, following an earlier attempt by Prussia and the German national movement to take over the duchies. The major powers (Britain, France and Russia) wanted the terms of the Treaty of London observed and were relieved when Austria and Prussia signalled this as their aim. The Danish government, under nationalist pressure, refused to comply with the treaty and in late 1863 the Confederation sent troops into Holstein. Denmark hoped for international support, if only because of concern about sea routes. British policy was undecided and unprepared for unilateral action. Napoleon was happy to let a crisis brew which he might exploit. Russia, though broadly pro-Danish, was unhappy with her nationalist intransigence and concerned to maintain good relations with Austria and Prussia as she suppressed the Polish insurrection. Consequently, there was no concerted international resistance when Prussian and Austrian soldiers replaced the Confederal contingent and invaded Schleswig at the end of January 1864, especially as their avowed aim was to enforce the terms of the Treaty of London, and they did not dispute Danish rights in Schleswig and Holstein or support the Augustenburg claim. No diplomatic advances were achieved during an armistice between April and June, the war was resumed and Denmark, after military defeat, was compelled to hand over the duchies to Austria and Prussia in October. 129

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German national sentiment was marginalized once Austria and Prussia took control in January 1864. German nationalists were appalled at how Berlin and Vienna disavowed Augustenburg and treated the issue as a diplomatic rather than national one. Occasionally, Austria or Prussia appealed to nationalism but in a cynical and self-serving way. For Austria the main advantage of sacrificing the good opinion of the national movement was that Prussia did so too. Vienna was content to pursue a policy of ‘dualism’ with Prussia which fitted with Confederal traditions and ensured dynastic control. Unfortunately for Austria, Schleswig-Holstein was geographically remote and of no direct interest. Once the area was under joint Austro-Prussian control, it was impossible for Austria to shape events. Austria sought support from Prussia on issues such as entry into the Zollverein and in Italy in exchange for giving Prussia a freer hand in SchleswigHolstein. When that failed, the leader of the dualist policy in Vienna, Rechberg, resigned in October 1864. Austria became more assertive and bid for nationalist support by taking up the Augustenburg cause. Opposition from Prussia made war appear likely but this was postponed with the Gastein Convention of August 1865. This established separate military governments: Austria in Holstein, Prussia in Schleswig. At home, Austria abandoned her constitutional experiment and the government made concessions to Hungarian demands for greater autonomy. Austria was clearing the decks for action in Germany. It is doubtful whether Bismarck had any clear objective in November 1863. He could not afford to alienate the major powers and could only take an active position in defence of international treaty obligations in alliance with Austria. However, following military success, Bismarck could contemplate annexation of the duchies. War had superseded treaty obligations. By keeping conditions for settlement vague or unacceptable to Denmark, he ensured the continuation of military occupation. When forced to go along with the Augustenburg option once it was clear Danish authority would not be restored, he hedged it about with conditions which made it impossible for Frederick to accept. The result was de facto military occupation. The principal issue now was whether Bismarck was prepared to confront Austria and take direct control in the duchies. This appeared to be the case in early 1865 as Austria took up the Augustenburg cause. However, there was a powerful peace party in Berlin, including the Crown prince. The king was proving difficult to persuade into war against a fellow German prince. There were problems raising war finance, especially given the constitutional crisis. Above all, it was not clear that the diplomatic and military balance of power favoured war. Prussia had secured no allies against Austria. The war against Denmark had proved a useful testing ground for the military reforms and brought the chief of the general staff, Moltke, to the top. But many observers had been impressed with Austrian military effort. Moltke, though desirous of war with Austria, was realistic about the risks involved. In 1860, he had assumed a good chance of Habsburg success, the destruction of the defeated dynasty and major concessions to France and Russia by the victor. He was not as sanguine by 1865. All this can explain the retreat from war signalled by the Gastein Convention. Nevertheless, for Bismarck, a confrontation with Austria to settle issues in Germany was inevitable. The war against Denmark, Prussia’s first military success since 1815, 130

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stimulated Prussian rather than German patriotism. Even some liberal nationalists began to see in a greater-Prussia policy a way forward as an alternative to ‘little-Germany’, by which they meant a liberal nation state which excluded Austrian Germany, somewhat along the lines outlined by the German National Assembly in early 1849. Bismarck had learnt from the war with Denmark that Britain and Russia were reluctant to interfere in crises in Central Europe. He now had to ensure Austria’s diplomatic isolation, secure alliances for Prussia and make the necessary financial and military preparations. The war of 1866 The diplomatic key was France. After success in Europe in the 1850s, Louis Napoleon had suffered setbacks in Mexico in the 1860s and his health was failing. The renewal of domestic opposition made success abroad important. His German policy was shaped by ideology and interest. Ideologically, he supported national movements, especially if he could tie them to France. This made it difficult to cooperate with the Habsburg Empire. His interests would be served by a breakdown of Austro-Prussian dualism which should provide opportunities for diplomatic and territorial profit. Bismarck met with Napoleon at Biarritz in October 1865. Napoleon was difficult to pin down. He favoured some extension of Prussian influence in northern Germany. A weakening of Austria might help bring his Italian policy to completion. However, he had no wish to see Prussia become too powerful and pursued ideas of balancing this by the enlargement of some of the medium states. He was not averse himself to territorial gains; Belgium and the Rhinelands were vaguely mentioned. The policy was Bismarckian: no fixed plan but a determination to create and exploit favourable opportunities. It took little genius on Bismarck’s part to secure Napoleon’s good wishes. Napoleon could help matters forward. Italian unification would only be complete with the removal of papal authority in Rome and the recovery of Venetia. France backed the papacy with soldiers, and Catholic opinion in France made it impossible to abandon that policy. Venetia therefore became the principal objective. Prussia wanted Italian leverage against Austria, and Italy had the same use for Prussia. In March 1866, with tensions mounting in Schleswig-Holstein, General Govone came to Berlin to secure an alliance against Austria. Both sides were suspicious that each would use the other to obtain concessions from Austria at their own expense. With Napoleon’s support, an agreement limited to three months stipulated that Italy would go to war with Austria if Prussia did. Prussia did not make the same commitment but agreed that, in the event of war, neither side would make peace until both had made territorial gains. This was to be Venetia for Italy and some unspecified equivalent for Prussia. Napoleon’s calculation was made clear by a remark he made at the time: In this way [by means of the Prussian–Italian agreement] Italy will get Venice, and France will benefit by the conflict of the two powers whose alliance hems her in. Once the struggle has begun France can throw her weight into the balance and must obviously become the arbitrator and master of the situation.4 131

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Napoleon also engaged in discussions with Austria and vaguely indicated the support he could offer in the event of war with Prussia. On 12 July 1866, France and Austria came to a secret agreement. The territorial aspects of this are indicated in Map 7.1.5 There were three key points so far as the German lands were concerned. First, Austria would finally undo the loss of Silesia inflicted on her by Frederick the Great. Second, some of the medium-sized German states such as Saxony, Württemberg and possibly Bavaria would make territorial gains in western Germany. Third, much of Prussia’s western provinces would be turned into a separate state. The agreement made clear there would be no territorial gains for Austria in the German lands. Beyond the German lands, Austria agreed to Venetia being ceded to France, with the expectation that France would pass this territory on to Italy. Italy was in the fortunate position that both Prussia and Austria had promised her Venetia, but only after a war. However, unlike the Italian agreement with Prussia, there were further points about

PRUSSIA HANOVER Beriln

Hanover

N

PRUSSIA RHENISH STATE

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W SILESIA (to Austria)

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BAVARIA Karlsruhe Stuttgart BAVARIA WÜRTTEMBERG München

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Legend German Confederation

Map 7.1  Germany in the event of Austrian victory in 1866. 132

E S

Breslau

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protecting the status of the papal states, understandable for two Catholic powers, and limiting Italian policy in Venetia which could be deemed threatening to Austria. This agreement indicates that Austria regarded maintenance of her position in Germany as the first priority.6 She was not prepared to negotiate division into territorial spheres of influence. Her preferred policy, as demonstrated in SchleswigHolstein, had been dualism with Prussia. Although she flirted with more radical policies – support for Confederal reform, a direct imposition of Habsburg hegemony – these are best understood as departures from normal policy or ways of pressurizing Prussia into returning to dualism. Accordingly, Austrian war aims in 1866 were less clear-cut than those of Prussia. Indeed, some in Austria regarded war as the most extreme method of compelling Prussia to return to dualism rather than as providing an alternative solution. This helps explain why all the medium German states (with the exception of Baden which abstained) voted in the Federal Diet in support of Austria in June 1866. Meanwhile, the national movement was paralysed as German civil war approached. Many contemporaries conversant with military affairs assumed an Austrian victory but even then only after a bloody war which would greatly weaken both states. Indeed, those were the assumptions which underpinned Napoleon III’s policy. The shift of power towards Prussia was taking place rapidly and was hardly appreciated, even by the most astute of contemporaries. While Prussian military expenditure had doubled since 1860, Austria’s had halved. The Italian alliance compelled Austria to divide her armies, sending 100,000 to the south, leaving 175,000 Austrian soldiers and 32,000 Saxons facing 250,000 Prussians in the north. The rapid collapse of the Hanoverian and Bavarian armies removed them from the equation. Moltke was only appointed as commander of the Prussian army on 2 June 1866 but with unprecedented power as he was not required to consult with the king before making major decisions. The ‘armchair general’ who had pioneered elaborate planning and the exploitation of the most modern technologies (first made clear in the devastating use of modern artillery against Denmark) had early realized the new capacities of mass mobilization. Nearly half a million soldiers were transported to the battlefields of northern Bohemia, more than were present at the greatest of the Napoleonic battles fought at Leipzig in October 1813. The speed with which this was done was unprecedented. Prussia achieved this much more effectively than Austria. One single-track railway ran north from Vienna into Bohemia; by contrast, Prussia used five lines to bring her troops southwards. Moltke adopted the novel and risky strategy of keeping his forces separate for faster movement, only concentrating them on the eve of battle. Consequently the Austrian commander, Benedek, was always on the defensive, reacting to situations created by Prussia. Even if there were moments when he might have counter-attacked successfully, this defensive posture made it improbable that he would. Although Austrian artillery and cavalry matched that of Prussia, the new breech-loading rifle recently adopted by Prussia gave the infantry a decisive advantage against the Austrian doctrine of ‘cold steel’. It was only possible to make and supply such a weapon with the new manufacturing technology now available and only Prussia 133

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with her well-educated, purely German-speaking and short-term conscript army could contemplate handling the problems of retraining and discipline involved. Germany after Königgrätz The Habsburg dynasty had no stomach for prolonged war after the first heavy defeats in Bohemia. Bismarck was anxious to accommodate this preference although he had to persuade William and Moltke not to continue the war, arguing that this would force the Habsburgs into renewed resistance and open up possibilities of international interference. Austria suffered no territorial losses in Germany, only in Italy, although an indemnity was imposed. Hanover, the electorate of Hesse and the duchy of Nassau were less fortunate; they were annexed to Prussia, their princes deposed and, along with Schleswig and Holstein, transformed into Prussian provinces. The Free and Imperial City of Frankfurt am Main was also seized. A more extended territorial sphere of influence was established in the form of the North German Confederation comprising all the other German states north of the river Main. Bismarck brought the south German states into a secret military alliance. These states were also members of the Zollverein. Bismarck recognized there was a limit to how much Prussia could absorb, even without diplomatic obstacles. In a memorandum written during the crisis of 1859 he had declared that Prussia should ‘march southwards with our entire army carrying frontier posts in our big packs. We can plant them either on the Bodensee or as far south

Figure 7.1  Bismarck and Louis Napoleon at Biarritz, October 1865. Source: ullstein bild Dtl. / Getty.

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as Protestantism is the dominant faith.’7 The sense that Catholic populations would be difficult to absorb, whatever the common nationality, is clear. He even argued against taking part of Protestant Franconia from Bavaria because of the state loyalty that had been developed. This sensitivity to opinion expressed itself in two striking innovations in relation to Prussia and the North German Confederation. In Prussia on the same day as the Battle of Königgrätz (3 July), whose outcome was yet unknown, new Landtag elections were held. The liberal opposition was defeated by a surge of Prussian patriotism. Bismarck, basking in military triumph, returned to Berlin and a more compliant parliament. Surely royal prerogative would be asserted and parliament put in its place. Instead Bismarck introduced an Indemnity Bill. By its terms the government would submit measures to parliament for approval in the normal way and parliament would not seek retribution for its treatment since 1862. It remained open to the government to resume non-parliamentary rule under the terms of the ‘constitutional gap’ doctrine. Nevertheless, this was a symbolic concession to liberalism which angered conservatives. However, Bismarck believed that strong, stable government rested on the support of major social forces. These were never precisely defined but bourgeois liberals were clearly included. In retrospect, one can interpret Bismarck’s anti-liberal measures not as attempts to destroy liberalism but to force it into cooperation with him. After all, he was a product of revolution and constitutional politics; a return to royal absolutism might

Map 7.2  Germany and Austria–Hungary, 1867. 135

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Figure 7.2  Battle of Sadowa. Source: ullstein bild Dtl. / Getty.

Map 7.3  Germany and Austria–Hungary, 1871. 136

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well remove the need for a politician with his skills. Most liberal deputies accepted the olive branch, forming the National Liberal Party and leaving the oppositional minority in the Progressive Party. Bismarck also regarded constitutionalism as the best way of integrating the new provinces. Hanoverians were not asked to exchange a Guelph for a Hohenzollern but to abandon a feeble and antiquated monarchy in favour of becoming citizens in a powerful nation state on the same constitutional lines as the old provinces. Although some (e.g. Hanover’s Catholic minority) rejected the offer, the new provinces developed into powerful strongholds of national liberalism. Similar considerations informed Bismarck’s policy in the North German Confederation. With war approaching in 1866, Bismarck had declared that Prussia supported reform of the Confederation, including a popularly elected parliament. This seemed unlikely from a man ruling in defiance of his own parliament. Bismarck was, however, perfectly serious and the constitution drawn up for the North German Confederation included this provision. His intentions are not clear. Analysis of elections to the Landtag had suggested that liberals were not genuinely popular. The Prussian electorate was divided into three unequal classes based on wealth. Liberals fared best in the highest class and worst in the lowest one, especially in country districts. Bismarck had long argued that this showed that the monarchy could be popular. The new parliament, the Reichstag, would be elected on the basis of equal, direct and adult manhood suffrage. It might also be used as a counterbalance to the Prussian Landtag. Anyway, Bismarck did not appear to be risking much. The Reichstag had limited powers. The legislative initiative was in the hands of the upper chamber, the Bundesrat, whose president was the king of Prussia and which consisted of state delegations with sufficient Prussian votes to veto unwelcome measures. The military component of the budget – over 90 per cent of Confederal expenditure – was exempt from parliamentary control. Much of the remaining business of government was in the hands of the states which did not have such democratic parliamentary franchises. Nevertheless this was a bold move and laid the basis for the development of legitimate mass politics in Germany. From North German Confederation to war with France Bismarck had to integrate new Prussia into old Prussia, consolidate the North German Confederation and bring the south German states into his orbit. He also had to block revanchism in Austria and deal with French reactions to the unexpected outcome of 1866. Agreement with the National Liberals was the key to the first two tasks. This party emerged as the largest in the Reichstag. An ambitious legislative programme was carried through including unifying measures in such matters as currency, weights and measures, commercial and labour relations law and common citizenship rights. Many constraints on a market economy were removed.

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This was part of a burgeoning national movement which was predominantly Protestant, liberal and optimistic. The National Liberals believed history was on their side and that Bismarck was helping construct the modern state and society which would eventually sweep aside his kind of rule and values. Bismarck himself emphasized the national and constitutional character of the Confederation to appeal to opinion in southern Germany and resist French claims to ‘German’ territory. The bid for south German support included the formation of a customs parliament in which members of the Reichstag would be joined by popularly elected deputies from the south. The plan backfired. The elections provided Catholics, state loyalists and democrats with the opportunity to mobilize anti-Prussian sentiment. This unlikely alliance won a majority of seats. Strong anti-Prussian feeling continued to be expressed in south Germany up to 1870. In Austria, a new chancellor, formerly prime minister of Saxony, Count Beust, aimed to regain influence in Germany. Under a new constitution of 1867, the Hungarian half of the empire was granted a large measure of autonomy on terms which benefited the Magyar majority. The Magyars opposed any ambitious German policy, which, coupled with financial crisis and the growing influence of Czechs in the western half of the empire and a renewed concern with affairs in southeastern Europe, constrained Beust. He encouraged France in anti-Prussian policies but could offer little in return, especially if this might appear anti-German. As long as Prussian relations with Russia remained good, there was no help to be had there. This left France isolated, especially as Britain regarded France as the major threat to European stability, a view strengthened by Napoleon’s efforts to make territorial gains from the new German arrangements. His government was unpopular at home and there was anxiety about the creation of a new power whose territories extended to the left bank of the Rhine. Ambitions about Belgium and the Rhinelands were set aside. By 1867, Napoleon was concentrating on Luxembourg which was bound in personal union with the Netherlands. The king of the Netherlands was prepared to sell Luxembourg to France but only with Prussian agreement. Once the matter became public, Bismarck used the storm of protest in Germany to insist that he could not give way. Napoleon liberalized at home. The new, popular ministers who came into government in 1869–70 were more anti-Prussian than their predecessors. Military reforms expanded and improved the army. By 1870, France felt confident. Even if she began war alone, she envisaged that Austria and Denmark, seeking to reverse their defeats, could be drawn in. Preparedness for war and sensitivity to further national affronts from Prussia were sparked off by news on 2 July 1870 that Prince Leopold, a member of the House of Hohenzollern, had been offered the Spanish Crown. The French were sure this was another Prussian plot and demanded not only the withdrawal of the candidacy but a clear undertaking that Prussia would never again engage in such a policy. The former was secured; the latter was used by Bismarck to justify a war in which France appeared the aggressor. Did Bismarck plan for war with France? One cannot give definite answers about motives but can simply note various points. Bismarck’s national policy in southern Germany was in disarray by early 1870. The idea of reviving the imperial title had foundered, partly 138

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on objections from the kings of Bavaria and Württemberg. Those governments faced crises over the issue of introducing Prussian-style military reforms. Moltke advised that the military balance of power would worsen. Prussia had further modernized her army after 1867. The extension of Prussia, the creation of the North German Confederation and the military alliance with the south German states meant Bismarck could call upon demographic resources roughly equal to those of France and the backing of a stronger economy. However, the French were making military progress, had popular support for war against Prussia and might secure alliances. There were good reasons, therefore, for settling issues through an early war with France. The Hohenzollern candidacy must be seen in this context. Bismarck denied knowing of the candidacy until just before it was made public. For many years, historians were denied access to relevant documents. Once these were seen, after 1945, it was clear that Bismarck had lied. He had known of the matter from the outset and advised support for the candidacy. It is going too far to say he did this to bring about war. As Bismarck pointed out, the French overreacted both in their judgement of the significance of a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne and in demanding Prussian undertakings for the future. More likely is that Bismarck wanted another iron in the fire to be used if expedient and dropped if necessary. In July 1870, he decided to use it. Concern about continued French pressure, reversing slippage in the south German states and cutting the ground from under Austrian revanchism all led Bismarck to this policy. The response of public opinion in Germany to the outbreak of war was gratifying. Strong anti-French sentiments were expressed. South German and Catholic soldiers fought as bravely as Protestants from the north. Yet, we should not exaggerate. We know little about popular opinion which should not be confused with public opinion, in a press dominated by National Liberals. Common anti-French sentiment which led many hostile to Prussia and Bismarck to rally behind the national cause masked conflicting views about how Germany should be organized after the war. The war began as in 1866, though on a more massive scale. German mobilization was more rapid than that of France. In under three weeks, over one million soldiers had reported for duty and nearly half a million had been moved to the French frontier, whereas the French had fewer than 250,000 soldiers in the army on the Rhine. France never recovered and was always on the back foot, reacting to German moves. There were moments when action against divided German forces might have turned the tide but in the confusion of war it was expecting too much for such high-risk decisions to be taken. By early September, the French had lost decisive battles and many soldiers. Although France continued to raise armies, they lacked the weapons, officers and experienced cadres lost in that first phase. War was no longer a matter of improvization, with chances of recovering from early setbacks, as in the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. War was about the capacity to send huge numbers of men with highly destructive firepower quickly into the territory of the enemy and to smash that enemy before he was ready. Where the war diverged from 1866 was in length and bitterness. This was a national, not a dynastic, war. Bismarck was not concerned to save the Bonapartist state as he had been the Habsburg Crown. He mistrusted French undertakings and thought only 139

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superior power would prevent a reversal of German triumph. Achieving that superiority included annexing Alsace-Lorraine and imposing a large indemnity. These objectives could be pursued at leisure as no other power was prepared to intervene. Nevertheless, Bismarck did not seek the total military destruction of France as advocated by Moltke. He was always acutely suspicious of military solutions which would only create new kinds of instability and marginalize civilian politicians like himself.

The new German state Once victory was secured, Bismarck could turn his attention to the entry of the south German states into a national state. There was no question of annexation as in 1867. The constitution was founded upon treaties made separately with each of the states. State rights and differences were respected.8 The imperial title was assumed by the king of Prussia. However, whatever may have been proclaimed aloud in Versailles on 18 January 1871, in the written constitution, Wilhelm is not described either as Emperor of Germany (his preferred title) or as Emperor of the Germans (favoured by his son, Crown Prince Friedrich). Instead the constitution is enacted by ‘Wilhelm, by the grace of God, German Emperor, King of Prussia’. The adjective ‘German’ is used, not the nouns Germans or Germany. No one could dispute that Wilhelm was German, whereas the words Germans or Germany called into question identities such as Bavarian/Bavaria or Saxon/Saxony, and above all Prussian/Prussia. This was all of a piece with the dynastic, rather than national emphasis at this founding moment. The emperor was surrounded by fellow German princes, army officers and high state officials. The nation, including its parliamentary representatives, watched from outside as the dynasties constructed a ‘nation’ state which forcibly excluded Austrian Germans and included Danish, Polish and French speakers. The imperial state was a thin layer of government superimposed on the states and heavily dependent on Prussia. The new state refused to adopt popular national symbols such as the black-red-gold flag.9 . Manipulating the complexity of conflicting institutions to secure his own power was Bismarck, the loner, the outsider, now surrounded with a nimbus of genius which raised him above the level of any other leader in continental Europe between 1815 and 1917. This state has to be understood in terms of its sudden and violent creation. It was not the product of a steady convergence between power and culture, state institutions and national sentiments. As late as 1860, Prussia was in no position to challenge for dominance in Germany. Rapid changes in international relations, economic and technological performance and the nature of war opened up a brief window of opportunity for Prussia in the mid-1860s. It seems likely that Prussia would have soon lost these advantages, barely discerned at the time, once other states came to appreciate their significance. The sentiment of nationality would have continued to grow in importance as this was a panEuropean phenomenon and a central feature of modern society.10 However, there was no dominant political expression of that sentiment, neither territorial nor institutional. National feelings were ignored rather than exploited up to 1867 as a political genius, 140

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brought to leadership in Prussia through a domestic crisis, pursued with great flexibility objectives he had fixed upon a decade earlier. What had been impracticable then, now had become possible. Once the possible is made actual, the temptation is to make it appear inevitable. But there were always other possibilities. Certainly nothing like what happened seemed inevitable to contemporaries, although many both craved and anticipated national unification by the early 1860s.11 Germany was becoming more national but there was nothing preordained about the formation of a nation state, let alone the particular form taken by that nation state

Notes 1. See Stefan Berger, ‘The German Tradition of Historiography, 1800–1995’, in Mary Fulbrook, ed., German History since 1800 (1997). 2. See chapters by Siemann and Köhler as well as my essay, ‘The National Idea in Modern German History’, in Fulbrook, ed., German History since 1800, pp. 556–84. 3. For the transnational significance of emigration and emigrants in relation to the history of Germany in this period see the chapter by Lindner. 4. Quoted in Heinrich Friedjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859–1866 (1935; re-issued 1966), pp. 113–14. 5. My thanks to Helmut Smith, who constructed this map on the basis of the secret agreement and has given me permission to use it here. 6. Pro-Prussian historians subsequently condemned this policy as anti-German, on the basis that the western German changes in particular would effectively bring that region under French domination. Subsequently, pro-Austrian historians have tried to defend her policy. See Heinrich Ritter von Srbik, ‘Der Geheimvertrag Österreichs und Frankreichs vom 12 Juni 1866’, Hisorisches Jahrbuch, 57 (1937), pp. 454–507. How far such agreements are proof of a particular policy for the future as opposed to a way of engineering a favourable situation when what was now seen as inevitable war with Prussia is a matter of debate. 7. Bismarck, Gesammelte Werke (1924–35), vol. XIV, document 724, Bismarck to Gustav von Alvensleben, 23 April/5 May 1859. 8. For further details, see the chapter by Hewitson. For an English translation of the constitution of 1871, see G. Hucko (ed.), The Democratic Tradition: Four German Constitutions (1987). 9. This only became the national flag with the formation of the Weimar Republic in 1919. 10. See ‘Conclusion’ for a more extended argument supporting this point. 11. See R. Speirs and J. Breuilly (eds), Germany’s Two Unifications: Anticipations, Experiences, Responses (2005).

Select bibliography Bridge, F. R., The Habsburg Monarchy among the Great Powers 1815–1918 (1990). Bucholz, A., Moltke and the German Wars, 1864–1871 (2001). Carr, W., The Wars of German Unification (1991).

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Nineteenth-Century Germany Düding, D., ‘The Nineteenth-Century German Nationalist Movement as a Movement of Societies’, in H. Schulze (ed.), Nation-Building in Central Europe (1987), pp. 19–49. Gall, L., Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, 2 vols (1986, 1990). Howard, M., The Franco-Prussian War: The German invasion of France, 1870–1871 (1961). Mosse, W. E., The European Great Powers and the German Question 1848–1871 (1958). Pflanze, O., Bismarck and the Development of Germany, 3  vols (1990). Ross, Anna, Beyond the Barricades: Government and State-Building in Post-Revolutionary Prussia, 1848–1858 (2019). Showalter, D., Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology and the Unification of Germany (1986). Steinberg, J., Bismarck: A Life (2011). Wawro, G., The Austro-Prussian War: Austria’s War with Prussia and Italy in 1866 (1996).

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CHAPTER 8 BISMARCKIAN GERMANY: STATE STRUCTURE AND POLITICAL CULTURE

James M. Brophy

On 18 January 1871, the princes of Germany, surrounded by a phalanx of military officers and diplomats, offered the Imperial Crown to King Wilhelm I of Prussia in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles Palace. Proclaiming the German Empire on the soil of a defeated France signalled a new political epoch for Europe and its state system, whose fulcrum now rested in Central Europe with a unified nation state of some forty million souls. Attending this ceremony was Anton von Werner, the well-known painter, who captured the crowning in a now-famous canvas of shimmering pomp (see also Chapter 11). The painting focuses on Wilhelm and other royals accepting the acclamation of officers, whose raised swords respond to Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden’s tribute, ‘Long live his imperial and royal majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm.’ Otto von Bismarck, falsely depicted in a white cuirassier uniform at the foot of the throne, looks on with the solemn mien of an impresario. The painting’s meticulously constructed mise en scene, however, is secondary to the painting’s emotional subtext: the aspiration for national unity had been achieved by princes and generals. If Werner’s canvas captures the proclamation as one of united will and political concord, historians offer a more prosaic account of the doubts and divisions that attended the making of the German nation. The new emperor, for example, harboured grave reservations about his dual roles as emperor and king and fumed over Bismarck’s fait accompli of assigning him the title of ‘German Emperor’ and not ‘Emperor of Germany’. The designation smacked of ‘pseudo-emperorship’ to Wilhelm, but Bismarck insisted the emperor was merely primus inter pares and shared sovereignty with his fellow princes. Immediately following the ceremony, the new Kaiser demonstratively avoided the handshake of his minister. Prussian generals, too, bore grudges against Bismarck, who had adamantly demanded civilian control over military prerogative in Prussia’s last two wars. Following the Prussian victory over Austria at Königgrätz in July 1866, Bismarck had countermanded the generals’ plan to occupy Vienna, demanding instead that Prussia win the peace and forego the humiliating gesture of total victory. During the French campaign, government– military relations remained strained. Count Helmut von Moltke and his staff went to great lengths to keep the chancellor out of all deliberations. On yet another front, south German dynasts and diplomats continued to exhibit ambivalence towards the new imperial union; in the contest for hegemony of Central Europe, they had sided with Austria and only grudgingly acquiesced in the realities of state security to sign military treaties with Prussia. Bavaria proved particularly difficult to win over to the imperial union, requiring extra

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Figure 8.1  Proclamation of German Second Empire. Source: INTERFOTO / Alamy.

concessions for its military independence. Perhaps Bismarck’s secret annual payments of 300,000 marks to King Ludwig, whose castles and palaces put him in deep debt, helped coax the king to join the Reich. All told, the written record stands in stark contrast to Werner’s dramatic composition of radiant splendour and political harmony. As Prince Otto, the heir to the Bavarian throne, noted about the ceremony, ‘Everything was so cold, so proud, so glittering, so showy and swaggering and heartless and empty’ (Figure 8.1).1 Such accounts support the previous chapter’s central argument that unification under the aegis of Prussia was hardly predestined. Neither organic institutional development nor popular will foreordained the deed, just as the deep ambivalence of contemporary elites stifles any self-evident determinism. With contingency playing a far greater role than historical continuity in erecting the German Empire, Bismarck’s achievement of unification was nothing less than a virtuoso diplomatic coup, hence the task of forging social and political unity after 1871 proved far more difficult than usually assumed. The fortuitous outcome of three lightning wars did not mitigate the central problem of building political institutions that could accommodate a dynamic and diverse German society. As a Prussian aristocrat seeking to maintain the privileges of royalty and nobility in an era of mass politics and industrial change, Bismarck’s balancing act was fraught with obstacles. For many historians, especially those of an earlier generation, Bismarck’s institutions and its monarchical political order proved too inflexible and too authoritarian to accommodate the needs of modern Germany. Following the Second World War, a passel of books and college courses adhered to a Bismarck-to-Hitler thesis, drawing a tight arc between Prussia’s semi-parliamentary rule 144

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and the National Socialist dictatorship. This line of thought deftly probed authoritarian governance and the illiberal elements of army, bureaucracy and court. For many historians, from Hajo Holborn to Gordon Craig to Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Germany’s preindustrial elites – Prussian aristocrats in particular – blocked the path towards political modernization in numerous ways. Whether centring on socio-economic interests, political tactics or cultural attitudes, historians glossed Imperial Germany as an anomaly to Western development, stressing its anti-democratic militarism, cultural pessimism, compromised political economy and an imperial court antipathetic towards popular sovereignty and democratic politics. This interpretation (der deutsche Sonderweg) still informs scholarship. Jonathan Steinberg’s recent biography of Bismarck, for example, singles out the iron chancellor for his irreparable damage on German political culture. Other recent studies reject the Sonderweg thesis and its predetermined path to National Socialism but nonetheless investigate how anti-democratic ideas and attitudes grew out of the contingencies and circumstances of nineteenth-century politics. James Retallack’s exacting study on Saxon conservatism shows how the habitual disparagement of liberals, Jews and socialists became an ingrained outlook that transformed the franchise into an undemocratic practice. Helmut Walser Smith has also revisited the longer continuities that shaped the nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism of the nineteenth century. With these research designs, the historicity and uncertain development of exclusionary politics come into sharper focus. More typically, however, scholars in the last decades have swung the pendulum to the other side, focusing less on pathologies than on Germany’s status as a mature Western nation driven by a vigorous civil society. Beginning with the landmark essays from David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley in 1980, they probed the capacity for growth and sociopolitical development in Germany over the long nineteenth century. With a new scepticism about modernization theory, especially its assumed norms, scholars situated Germany’s political culture in broader analytical fields that recognized the ‘peculiarities’ found in all national paths of development. Seen thus, Bismarck and pre-industrial elites were but one voice, albeit a powerful one, in a crowded chorus shaping the course of modern German history. Discarding the interpretive template of blocked reform, research stressed instead the bourgeoisie as tastemakers, successful representatives of their political interests and leaders of a robust civil society. Their political interests found voice in a developed party system; they transformed Germany into an industrial powerhouse; they became the patrons, consumers and critics of art movements that launched modernism (see Chapter 11). Such viewpoints differ widely on long-term legacies. By showing the zeal and political unruliness with which ordinary Germans embraced elections after 1870, Margaret L. Anderson portrays them as seasoned democrats prepared for the Weimar Republic. Cornelius Torp places Germany’s move towards protectionism and the alliance between the Junkers and the industrialists in 1878–9 in a global context. Less a political power play by Bismarck than a set of economic responses to expanding world markets, the tariffs typified a larger pattern of nation states adjusting to new transnational challenges. Geoff Eley, critiquing interpretations of German exceptionalism that focus on the baleful persistence of the old order, emphasizes 145

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how bourgeois bloc politics spawned radical right-wing nationalist movements that prefigured fascist mass mobilization. Turning the kaleidoscope of the German Empire to view new patterns and consequences of politics and social attitudes is not a mere academic game. On the contrary, the sustained debate over Bismarck’s Germany attests its enduring importance for analysing the pressure points of an emerging modern society. In this spirit, this chapter examines the Bismarckian Reich, assessing not only the problems that inhered in its political structures but also the opportunities that it offered for further development.

Political foundations Both contemporaries and subsequent historians have generally assigned poor grades to the German Empire’s political structures. In his later years, Theodore Mommsen, the liberal historian and parliamentary deputy, deemed Bismarck’s creation a ‘pseudoconstitutional absolutism’ and Wilhelm Liebknecht, the leader of the Social Democratic Party, stated that the Reichstag had ‘absolutely no power’. Its ‘advisory capacity’, Liebknecht averred, ‘cannot serve democracy as a battle ground to attain power’.2 Such negative judgements point to a flawed mixed-powers government, whose checks and balances do not stand up to close scrutiny. Indeed, Bismarck’s semi-parliamentary structures were not grounded in principles of consistency and balance. Rather, they served a shrewd Realpolitik to fortify monarchical rule in an age of popular representation. Towards this end, the executive branch, the Hohenzollern dynasty, held the trump cards to control the legislative machinery of the federated empire, now composed of twenty-five states of various sizes, along with the administrative territory of newly annexed Alsace-Lorraine. Unlike Britain, the United States or the French Republic, Germany’s executive branch initiated legislation through the chancellor and the Bundesrat. The emperor appointed the imperial chancellor and his cabinet, all of whom served at his pleasure. Foreign policy, declarations of war and wartime command of military belonged to the Kaiser’s remit, just as he held the privilege of summoning and closing parliament. As commander-in-chief of the army, the Hohenzollern also presided over the ‘military cabinet’, a shadow privy council of military aides and officers from the war ministry which advised the emperor independent of the civil cabinet, and outside the supervision of parliament, thereby undermining constitutional rule. After 1861, Wilhelm signed military orders without the co-signature of the war minister, enabling the army to circumvent the oversight of civil government. After 1871, the power of the military cabinet grew. The elected national parliament, the Reichstag, authorized budgets and laws, thus possessing two critical counterweights to executive authority that breathed legitimacy into the legislative branch. Bismarck’s introduction of universal manhood suffrage for the North German Confederation surprised many. First used in 1867, this democratic feature became an electoral law in 1869 and remained in place during the German Empire. All men over the age of twenty-five, whether propertied or not, possessed the right to elect Reichstag deputies with a secret ballot, a measure that integrated millions into the 146

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imperial political system. A simple majority elected a deputy to one of the Reichstag’s 382 single-member constituencies (expanded later to 397), and run-off elections were frequent because of multiparty candidacies. In the 1860s, Bismarck gambled correctly that ordinary voters in a predominantly rural Germany would choose king and country, thereby using the ballot to bolster conservatism and outflank liberal claims to popular leadership. In the subsequent decades, the Empire’s socio-economic landscape changed considerably, and working-class urban enclaves challenged the ready-made conservative consensus. Although the lack of salaries for deputies produced few working-class political careers, a vibrant and raucous electoral culture nonetheless emerged in the ensuing decades. Envisioned as a centripetal force to unify the federal structure and check dynastic particularism, Bismarck assigned the Reichstag the principal tasks of enacting laws on taxes and tariffs, communication and transportation, banking and finance, weights and measures, and other pragmatic matters of constructing a nation state. What he denied the Reichstag was the right to call the chancellor and his ministers to account, thus posing a fundamental barrier to parliamentary development. Consequently, what was a transitional phase in most western parliamentary systems in Germany crystallized into a defining feature of its state character. And even with the legislature’s critical budgetary power, Bismarck found a way to reduce its influence. The military budget, which had plunged Prussia into the constitutional conflict in the previous decade, was removed from annual debates on budgets, thus stabilizing one of the key pillars of the Prussian–German conservative order. When the fixed rates of military expenditure lapsed in 1871, quotas known as the ‘iron budget’, the parliament was supposed to assume annual control of the military budget. The executive branch contested this right, producing protracted debate and, eventually, reached the compromise of the Septennat in 1874, whereby the Reichstag approved the military budget every seven years. The twotiered system of budgetary review speaks volumes about Bismarck’s career-long strategy of tinkering and modifying governmental rules at the expense of principle. If the Reichstag represented popular will and ostensibly unified the political nation, the Federal Council, the Bundesrat, tokened the federal sovereignty of the twenty-five states. Bismarck constituted this Council as a Fürstenbund, a league of princes, whose twenty dynastic houses and five city governments embodied imperial sovereignty. This upper house paid homage to Germany’s long history of particularism, a concept of federated dynastic rule that grafted the old order onto the new, which in turn sanctioned the rhetoric of corporate hierarchy – estates or Stände – in a modern class society. This chamber technically possessed wide-ranging powers of interpreting the constitution and amending it, but in practice it did the bidding of Bismarck, thus serving as a conservative counterweight to any attempts by the Reichstag to strengthen its parliamentary powers. Made up of fifty-eight delegates chosen by state governments according to proportion and size, the Federal Council was dominated by the seventeen delegates of Prussia, a territory that encompassed two-thirds of the Empire. Because the constitution stipulated that the Council needed just fourteen votes to block any constitutional amendment, Prussia called the tune. The imperial chancellor also functioned as president of the Council, providing yet another opportunity for Bismarck to exercise influence. With 147

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the Prussian king doubling as emperor, the Prussian minister-president serving as imperial chancellor, and the Federal Council under the sway of Berlin’s influence, the Hohenzollern dynasty had erected a formidable political apparatus to determine the overlapping futures of Prussia and Germany. While some Prussian nobles mourned the loss of their state’s identity as an autonomous kingdom with a distinct ethos, for Bismarck and others, the imperial structure ensured Prussia’s survival into modern times. The political cultures of southern and western German states gradually diluted Prussia’s political and administrative character over the course of the nineteenth century, but the conservative imprint of Prussia’s civil service, military and court life on public affairs remained a prominent feature. Moreover, the dualism between Prussian and imperial legislatures and chancelleries persisted as a constitutional problem into the Weimar Republic. Bismarck mostly used the dualistic structure to his advantage, but it also shows – to paraphrase Otto Pflanze – indecision on Bismarck’s part to resolve and coordinate the relationship between Prussia and the Reich.3 Was Bismarck’s personality also an integral component of political culture, an indispensable element to explain the political system? His contemporaries characterized his behaviour at court, in parliament and in the corridors of ministerial power in mostly unflattering terms. Towards his king, he used various tactics, from tears to threats of resignation, to get his way and cultivated a deep-seated animus towards Queen Augusta, Wilhelm’s wife, and her coterie, in whom he saw only conspiracy. Although he could charm diplomats and dignitaries when it pleased him, it was his wont to treat legislators and officials with derision and contempt. In his parliamentary speeches and with his coalition tactics, he regularly insulted his opponents, indulging in excessive rhetoric that vilified them as Reichsfeinde and worse. In his ministries, he was no less the bully, insisting on complete control of legislative and administrative affairs, rebuking and denigrating those who got in his way. Because this outsized personality suffered from insomnia and illness, he also spent weeks on end at spas and his own estates to recuperate, which could grind executive machinery to a halt. While some of these absences may be ascribed to both psychosomatic illness and political manoeuvre, real health concerns are plausible. He claimed to have smoked 100,000 cigars in his life and consumed over 10,000 bottles of champagne, and his six-course dinners and midnight suppers couldn’t have helped his maladies. Observing all of these habits, Disraeli wrote in 1878, ‘He is a complete despot here, and from the highest to the lowest of the Prussians and all the permanent foreign diplomacy, tremble at his frown and court most sedulously his smile.’4 A thumbnail sketch should also point to the chancellor’s unreliable moral compass, especially his indifference to inequity. Anti-Semitism serves as a central example. Although he was not personally hostile to Jews, he tolerated anti-Semitic influence and even financed its journalism when it fit his needs. One case in point is his protection of Adolf Stöcker, the court chaplain and anti-Semitic agitator whose social prominence and extensive influence lent respectability to the prejudice. Another is Moritz Busch, the editor of Die Grenzboten and a pronounced racial anti-Semite, whom Bismarck used frequently to air government views. But whether Bismarck’s many questionable tactics and numerous spheres of authority made him an all-powerful ‘dictator’ is another matter. For it is 148

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equally clear that his political opponents – Eugene Richter, Ferdinand Lasalle, Ludwig Windthorst, Max von Forckenbeck and others – were up to his game and did not cower at Bismarck’s tyrannical performances. On the contrary, as we shall see below, organized and personal opposition to Bismarck only grew over time, thus rendering theories of charismatic authority to explain Bismarck’s political system wholly unpersuasive.5 In surveying political structures, one should not ignore the governments of the individual states, which presided over education, culture, health, direct taxation, post and telegraph services, and peacetime control over the military. Given the absence of a bill of rights in the imperial constitution, state legislatures also ensured civil liberties, endowing these regional governments with far-reaching importance for the daily lives of German citizens. Given the varied franchise systems of the separate states, the political complexion varied greatly. While all men over twenty-five voted equally in Baden for their second chamber, Prussia’s three-class system continued its plutocratic arrangement that ensured the dominance of landed, commercial and industrial interests for the remainder of the century. By dividing votes for electors into three categories, this indirect system apportioned more political influence to those who paid higher taxes. Hence a voter in the third category had roughly 1/17 the influence of a voter in the first class, usually a noble landholder or a business elite. The practice of the open ballot – the public display of one’s choice – led to all forms of chicanery, with both flagrant and subtle forms of coercion exerted by employers, influential landholders, religious leaders and other notables. A mindset of resignation and rejection set in among ordinary Prussians; indeed, by 1892, only 15.2 per cent of the third class voted. In 1896, Saxony also introduced the three-class system of voting, thus confounding any simple linear argument about democratization. If such a voting procedure benefited the shrinking constituency of noble landed elites, one should note that Rhenish merchants, bankers and manufacturers first devised the system for municipal elections in the 1840s. As classic nineteenth-century liberals, they saw property and education as necessary criteria for political citizenship. They and other urban elites advocated voting restrictions and erected municipal franchise systems that were frequently weighted according to socio-economic status, which ensured the liberal leadership of the well-heeled bourgeoisie. This electoral culture of deference in municipal governance, however, brought diminishing returns when applied to broader forums. During the constitutional crisis (1862–6) and thereafter, liberals demonstrated a persistent reluctance to move beyond urban enclaves and win rural constituencies, where conservatives and Catholics fared better. Secure in their role as urban leaders, liberals and their habitus of hierarchy and privilege provided enough common ground to work with Bismarck’s political coalitions. The point is not unimportant. In the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, businessmen, civil servants and professionals sought reforms within a monarchical system and not outside it, just as they sought to preserve the social distinctions that separated them from the growing numbers of rural and urban wage labourers. Hence, Johann Jacoby, a leader of the Progressive Party, and his advocacy of popular sovereignty was very much an exception. More typically, his fellow liberals encased their principles of law and constitutional rule 149

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in political structures that upheld status and class distinctions. Within this world view, liberals should be viewed less as ‘junior partners’ to a Junker political establishment than as dynamic social elites who successfully reformed commercial and civil codes to fit their needs. Similarly, on the economic front, the business class brokered key legislation with the state to facilitate commercial and industrial expansion in the period 1850–80. The accommodation of new and old wealth and their divergent political interests is indeed a multifaceted phenomenon that resists such facile phrases ‘embourgeoisement’ or, conversely, ‘feudalization’. State and municipal political structures illuminate the polycentric character of imperial politics. Looking away from the commanding heights and Bismarck’s aims and achievements, a rich and important literature emphasizes the Empire’s mid-sized states and their urban communities, which do not run on the same tracks of Prussian–German national politics. Such studies have provided sight lines to think about a range of political communities at state, regional and municipal levels that confronted the challenges of a modernizing world, which overcame broader confessional and class divisions with creativity and ingenuity.6 The ‘silent victories’ of law and civil society, argues David Blackbourn, provided the foundation not only for the iconic markers of industrialization – railroads, blast furnaces, stock markets – but also for the vibrant associational life that housed the philanthropic, cultural and political energies of the bourgeoisie.7 Whether soliciting funds for poor relief or orphanages, raising subscriptions for theatres or city monuments, organizing the economic interests of craftsmen or shopkeepers, or providing the reading and dining clubs for elite liberal sociability, voluntary associations organized an array of reform movements. These subnational political communities furthermore illuminate a diverse range of participatory politics that explain how liberal, democratic, social-democratic and Catholic constitutional movements took root in German political culture, all of which tempered the authoritarian style of the Reich’s executive branch. These constituencies, mindsets, ideological hybridities and their sociocultural spaces are critical for explaining the reformist energies of the Reich, and they are furthermore significant for understanding the liberal-democratic foundations of today’s Federal Republic. The ethnic and linguistic complexion of Germany also merits attention. If the German Empire was first and foremost a nation state with borders that overlapped with German language and German customs, it nonetheless possessed a multi-ethnic character, especially in Prussia, whose census in 1861 included 2.5 million non-Germans, or 14 per cent of the 18.5 million population. The eastern provinces of Prussia retained not only a sizeable Polish minority but also Lithuanians, Wends, Czechs and Masurians. In the province of Posen, Poles made up 55 per cent of the population. In the northern province of Schleswig, 36 per cent of its 402,000 inhabitants spoke Danish, just as Walloons in the Prussia’s western Eupen-Malmedy region spoke French. For the latter’s region, civil courts operated in French. In the newly acquired regions of Alsace and Lorraine, which were incorporated as an imperial administrative territory (Reichsland), Francophone speakers numbered around 200,000 of the 1.5 million annexed population, and their Alsatian dialect differed considerably from standard German. The Slavic, Danish and 150

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French-speaking minorities further compromised any assertion of the Empire’s organic national character. Polish nationalist agitation particularly worried Bismarck, a nagging fear that played a major role in his laws against Catholicism. This fear of Polish nationalism (with memories of Polish insurgencies in 1831 and 1863), spurred him to enact royal rescripts in 1872–3 that stipulated German as the language of all school subjects save religious instruction; another Prussian law in 1876 required that all government business be conducted in German. Assimilation, so ran the logic, would engender respect for German culture and for political loyalty. Although this vision of Germanization lacked the racialized complexions of later decades, the revival of such policies (first introduced in the 1830s) struck an exclusionary chord in the imperial body politic. For certain counties in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, where the majority of Poles were monolingual, the government condoned the use of Polish in matters of municipal self-administration. In 1886, however, that practice came to an end. The Prussian state cabinet turned a deaf ear to pleas for continuing the exemption, stating that Poles must be ‘assimilated into German life and into the Prussian organism of state’.8 In turn, the state deported 32,000 non-citizen Poles from Prussia in 1885–6, the largest mass expulsion in Imperial Germany.9 Both the laws and their implementation reeked of colonial administration, which in turn spurred the growth of a Polish national party in Prussia’s eastern provinces. The role of minorities only grew over time and buttressed the growth of oppositional voices. In 1890, the popular vote for parties that Bismarck labelled as ‘enemies of the Reich’ – Catholics, socialists and national minorities – stood at 45 per cent. The acquisition of overseas colonies in 1883–5 added yet another meaning to the nation’s imperial status. The colonies of Togo, the Cameroons, German East Africa and German Southwest Africa constituted territories five times the size of the fatherland, unleashing the energies of missionaries, traders, administrators, academics and colonial officers, which gave concrete expression to a new wave of global trade, underway since the 1850s (see Chapter 13). Such economic, political and cultural enterprises reconfigured the German metropole in manifold ways, just as the imperial imaginary reconstituted national identities and national movements. Interest groups such as the German Colonial League (1887), Pan-German League (1891) and the Navy League (1898) attested the power of extra-parliamentary associations to harness imperial politics to mobilize mass publics. The advance of ‘scientific’ racial thought in universities and museums as well as the march of social Darwinism through the popular press further tinged Bismarck’s empire with darker hues of racism and domination. Finally, any discussion of political structures is incomplete without an assessment of political journalism and its ability to report and critique public affairs. Historians of the press invidiously compare German newspapers with those of England and France, but the political press in Central Europe was not backward. In the Vormärz era, hundreds of newspapers mushroomed in the small, fragmented markets of the German Confederation, with such newspapers as J. F. Cotta’s Allgemeine Zeitung, Joseph DuMont’s Kölnische Zeitung and Heinrich Brockhaus’s Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung surfacing as the period’s leading critical voices (see Chapter 5). Because censorship stood in the way 151

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of a full-throated critical journalism, German publishers produced an array of journals, lexica, brochures, broadsides, literary almanacs, feuilleton supplements and seemingly innocuous family magazines to circulate satire and political criticism – a strategy that continued into the 1870s. The philosophical journalism of the 1840s set the table for the ‘information revolution’ of 1848–9, when over 1,300 newspapers celebrated the press freedom that unfolded in most German states (see Chapter 6). In spite of the political reaction of the 1850s, journalism quickly reasserted its role in the public sphere. Prussia and other states substituted the prepublication censorship of the neo-absolutist era with post-publication review, a new form of cultural regulation. In matters of lèse-majesté or libel against officials, governments could inflict steep fines on publishers or revoke their licences to print. And when government officials could not demonstrate actual libel, Bismarck and others cynically sued journalists and publishers for defamation of a civil servant’s personal honour, a spongy legal category that could intimidate critical-minded journalists.10 But governments mostly strove to guide public discussion instead of throttling it. This practice of Lenkung started earlier in the century, but Prussia’s expansion of its press bureau, its subvention of semi-official newspapers (especially the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung), and its stable of freelance journalists (among them the novelist Theodore Fontane) raised the tactic to a new level, which blurred the definition of a free press. Hannover, Saxony and Württemberg followed suit in propagating direct and indirect forms of putting across their views.11 Austria, long practised in such arts of persuasion, also employed the former radical Julius Fröbel in the 1860s to steer readers towards a grossdeutsch solution. Bismarck groomed particular journalists as his proxy pens, and Moritz Busch, the editor of the NationalLiberal Grenzboten and a favourite of Bismarck, managed press liaison for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ever concerned about public opinion, Bismarck also extended government influence over rural gazettes, weeklies that heretofore played little or no role in political matters. His press office, for example, issued ‘correspondence for the provinces’ (1863–84), which strove to strengthen rural support for the Prussian Crown. Finally, the concentrated power of Wolff ’s telegraph bureau (1865), the German wire service whose telegraph monopoly formed the great triumvirate with Reuters in Britain and Havas in France, also served governmental needs. It is doubtful, however, whether German governments won the battle for the public mind, for they did not control the principal circuits of political information. As Hewitson (2010) and others demonstrate for the unification era, a rich array of constitutional viewpoints informed readers. Outweighing the official and semi-official newspapers that touted pro-Prussian and pro-Austrian viewpoints stood a passel of liberal, radical, Catholic, independent and conservative dailies throughout Germany. In spite of postrevolutionary press laws that menaced independent publishing, oppositional viewpoints flourished, enabling readers to sharpen their positions on Austrian federalism, the German Customs Union, Prussian constitutionalism and much more. In the 1860s, some 210 liberal dailies appeared in Prussia, with Berlin producing 32 dailies and 52 weeklies. The era’s civic nationalism built upon the tenets of 1848–9, and this journalism framed the oppositional liberalism in the years of 1862–6, which contested the Crown’s prerogative 152

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to determine the size and character of the army. It was such information networks that sustained the National Association in 1859 which, with its 5,000 members, revived the national question in the small-Germany format of the 1848 Revolution, which excluded Austria from the German nation. The liberal-radical strains further lent popular support to the Progressive Party, formed in 1861, which championed parliamentary rule in Prussia. As shown in the previous chapter, Bismarck appropriated this imagined political nation when injecting democratic civic rights into the constitutions of the North German Confederation and the German Empire. Interpreting the victory of Bismarck in 1866 as a ‘coup’ only makes sense when acknowledging the dominance of liberal nationalism and its widespread currency in newspapers and the hundreds of journals that streamed from Stuttgart, Leipzig, Frankfurt and other cities. (By 1868, the postal system delivered over 150 million newspaper and journal subscriptions.) Because domestic constituencies were not yet prepared to embrace Prussia’s authoritarian rule without the moral idealism that infused constitutional nationalism, Bismarck’s recourse to a ‘defensive’ war against a foreign foe became imperative. By mobilizing the sentiment of chauvinism to defend the fatherland against France’s aggression, Bismarck successfully neutralized the liberal public sphere. The dominance of the liberal press after 1866 would never again be so great, but the power of newsprint to articulate and organize opposition to government policies only grew. In spite of Bismarck’s ‘reptile funds’, monies appropriated from the Guelph dynasty in 1868 to bribe journalists, or the Reich Press Law of 1874, which made it easier for the government to prosecute editors, the government constantly worried about the mood of the press. It was, Thomas Nipperdey notes, ‘a political priority of the first order’.12 The press pilloried Bismarck for his ill-conceived war scare with France in 1875, and the press scrutinized and critiqued domestic issues with unfailing consistency. The failure of Bismarck to implement a number of policies – for example, raising indirect taxes, securing a tobacco monopoly, nationalizing hail and fire insurance – as well as the innumerable protracted negotiations that diluted the Anti-Socialist Law, the social insurance programme and the many tariffs after 1879 all underscore the contestatory character of legislative politics and the role the press played in this dialogue. In the 1870s, a dense print landscape emerged that offered dailies for virtually every political affiliation, evincing a marked maturity and sophistication. Leopold Sonnemann’s liberal Frankfurter Zeitung (1866), Josef Bachem’s Catholic Kölnische Volkszeitung (1868), the Social Democratic Party’s Vorwärts (1876) and the ultraconservative Neue Preussische Zeitung (1848) were just four of dozens of prominent dailies that mark the fine-grained fissures in the era’s partisan press. After 1866, with denser networks of rail lines, falling prices for papers and advertisements demanding larger markets, the era of mass print and yellow journalism arrived, once again changing the character of political journalism. The malicious print campaigns against Catholics and Jews adumbrated a new era of exclusionary invective, which could incite violence. In the summer of 1869, for example, following months of scabrous attacks on monks and nuns in the popular press, a crowd of three thousand assembled in Berlin’s Moabit quarter and wrecked a Franciscan orphanage, which the 153

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press had portrayed as a ‘monastery’ pursuing nefarious immoral activities. This mob execrated fleeing priests and used axes and threshes to break into the grounds, smash windows and destroy property. Eighty mounted police eventually restored order.13 Print animated prejudice against Jews, too. Wilhelm Marr’s enormously popular The Path to Victory of Germandom over Judaism, which went through twelve printings in 1879, demonstrated wide readership for intolerance. This author, a radical democrat in the 1830s, coined the term ‘anti-Semitism’ and became the founding father to a new era of hate-mongers who shifted traditional religious bigotry towards an evolving racial doctrine that rejected assimilation or coexistence with Jews. Marr also founded the League of Antisemites in 1879, which not only depicted Jews as a threat to German culture but also advocated their forced removal. A ‘politics in a new key’ had arrived.

Bismarck’s foreign policy Although historians routinely handle Bismarck’s foreign and domestic policies as separate subjects, Bismarck never perceived his craft as consisting of two discrete spheres. The politics of unification entangled the domestic and foreign affairs in complex ways, and we should note well that the ‘refounding of the empire’ in 1878 blended considerations of both domestic and foreign diplomatic concerns. Surrounded by three other great powers, Germany’s geographical position invited the viewpoint that the European state system impinged on all public matters. And because France was the only republic among the great powers, the remaining powers shared Germany’s aim to preserve monarchical order. Bismarck particularly stressed this affinity with Austria and Russia, portraying the three conservative empires, all of which were connected through marriage, as anchors of stability in a changing world. This political kinship was the basis of the Three Emperors’ League in 1872 and remained Bismarck’s lodestar when mitigating the geopolitical friction that arose between Russia and Austria in the 1870s over control of the Balkans. Following unification, Bismarck’s initial task was to convince Europe that a unified and powerful state in Central Europe posed no threat to the peace and security of the continent. Using Metternich’s phrase, Bismarck avowed that Germany was a ‘satiated state’ and had no claims for expansion on the continent or overseas. He undermined this claim in 1875 by issuing vague war threats to France. Although his motives are not fully clear, he probably aimed to discourage the republic from pursuing its plans of military expansion. This démarche did not work; Britain and Russia came to the support of France, and the German press roundly criticized Bismarck’s dangerous tactic. Alarmed by Germany’s apparent isolation during this ‘war-in-sight crisis’, Bismarck grasped the need to build firm alliances to avoid his recurring nightmare of military encirclement. As is always the case in diplomacy, contingencies compounded the difficulties of constructing alliances. Given France’s enmity towards Germany, Russia was pivotal for Bismarck’s diplomatic scheme, yet Russia felt grossly mishandled at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which reconstructed the Balkans after a series of local wars fought over the territorial opportunities 154

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offered by a contracting Ottoman Empire. Adjudicating as an ‘honest broker’, Bismarck faced the difficult task of acknowledging British control of the Dardanelle Straits, recognizing Austria’s imperial mission in southeastern Europe, satisfying the regional interests of Romanians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Montenegrins, and, not least, appeasing Russia’s territorial role in the lower Danube as well as its abiding pan-Slavic pretensions. Although the congress generally received plaudits from its participants, Russia came away with little and blamed Bismarck. It was all the more incensed that Britain, with no military effort, reasserted its control of the Straits and furthermore received Cyprus. Tsar Alexander condemned Bismarck for using the congress to design a European coalition against Russia. On the heels of this diplomatic convention, Bismarck redoubled his efforts to conclude formal alliances to prevent a Russian rapprochement with France. In 1879, he concluded the Dual Alliance with Austria, a pivotal treaty for Germany’s foreign policy for the remainder of the century. By stipulating mutual assistance if either power were attacked by Russia, this secret treaty, which only became public in 1886 during the Bulgarian crisis, united the two great powers in Central Europe.14 Perhaps the most difficult element of this treaty was Bismarck’s months-long struggle to convince his emperor to sign a treaty that potentially opposed Russia. Equally crucial, Bismarck effected the renewal of the Three Emperors’ League in 1881, in which the three signatories pledged neutrality in the event of a war between one of them and a fourth power and furthermore agreed on mutual consultation in all Balkan affairs (Figure 8.2). With these two alliances, Bismarck had avoided a two-front war, mended Austro-Russian relations and essentially isolated France in continental alliances. (Britain’s ‘splendid isolation’ and Italy’s wariness of France’s empire in North Africa and France’s recent move on Tunis in 1881 neutralized the other two powers.) Bismarck reinforced this position of strength in 1882 with the Triple Alliance between Austria, Italy and Germany, which promised military aid to Italy in the event of a French attack. All the while, he studiously avoided conflict with Great Britain, playing the naval power off against Russia in the Balkans. An abbreviated account cannot properly recognize the diplomatic finesse exerted by Bismarck and his diplomats to establish Germany as the pivot upon which European states turned. After 1878, the great powers largely followed Bismarck’s recommendations for dividing up the Balkans and establishing spheres of influence in the Mediterranean. Both at home and abroad, contemporaries recognized him as a critical arbiter of international affairs, whose alliances and alignments in the last third of the nineteenth century promoted peace on the continent. As host of the Berlin Conference in 1884–5, which deliberated over the status of the Congo basin and redrew colonial borders in Africa and Asia, Bismarck reasserted diplomatic leadership again, using the broad approval of Germany’s middle classes to undermine liberal opposition to colonies. His ability to keep peace and his rejection of German territorial expansion in Europe after 1871 is noteworthy. That said, maximizing the opportunities presented by diplomacy’s many contingencies is not tantamount to ‘mastery’ or control of the European state system. By his own admission, Bismarck’s strategy was mostly reactive and offered no guarantee for the future of conservative dynasties in a rapidly changing world. 155

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Figure 8.2  The Three Emperors’ League. Source: Universal Images Group / Getty.

For Bismarck, the Bulgarian crisis of 1885–7 was his greatest diplomatic triumph. Touching off the crisis was the decision of King Alexander of Bulgaria to forsake Russia and choose instead Austria as the preferred power to modernize his country. Russia had supported Bulgaria’s independence in 1878, assisted the new state financially and militarily, and viewed it as part of Russia’s sphere of influence. In vain Russia tried to block further Habsburg influence, but the popular Alexander stayed his Austrian course. 156

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In response, Russia backed a conspiracy in the Bulgarian army, which forced Alexander into exile. The coup d’état thus produced a major diplomatic crisis that undermined the solidarity of the three eastern empires. Acutely aware of the danger at hand, Bismarck instituted a series of diplomatic moves that deployed no fewer than five alliances that he had brokered since the 1870s, all of which placed the great powers in a synchronized orbit around Germany’s interests, save France which remained isolated. Crucial to this scheme was the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia of June 1887. The two empires pledged benevolent neutrality in the event of hostilities with a third power, with the exception of a war with Austria or France. Germany recognized Russian influence in Bulgaria, and both agreed upon consultation with one another before making any modifications in the Balkans. With this treaty, Bismarck pre-empted a Franco-Russian rapprochement, and, in spite of broken relations between Russia and Austria–Hungary, elicited support from both states. By narrowly interpreting the Dual Alliance (a secret treaty that became public in 1886), Bismarck rejected a direct German role in defending the Balkans, thus folding Britain into the mix, whose interests in the Straits compelled engagement. With this complex system of alignments, Russia desisted and dropped its claims against Bulgaria. Famously, Bismarck’s successors let the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia lapse, thereby opening the door for a Franco-Russian alignment in 1890, which fixed the alliance system that carried the continental powers into the First World War. Leo Count von Caprivi, the new Reich chancellor, and Friedrich von Holstein, the minister most influential for setting the new direction in foreign policy, disliked the ambiguities and contradictions of Bismarck’s alliances. For the new Kaiser, too, Bismarck’s reliance on stability, equilibrium and a policy of non-expansion neither appealed to his mercurial mind nor his imperial gaze. Whether Germany could have thwarted France’s growing financial and military relationship with Russia is a question worth posing, but certainly Caprivi’s aspiration for a strong, enduring Anglo-German alliance did not materialize, even after a lopsided exchange of colonial territory in 1890, very much in Britain’s favour. Commenting on the transaction, Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister, noted, ‘I do not like to disregard the plain anxiety of my German friends. But it is not wise to be guided too much by their advice now.’ Referring to the wise adviser in Dryden’s Absolum and Achitophel, he continued, ‘Their Achitophel is gone. They are much pleasanter and easier to deal with; but one misses the extraordinary penetration of the old man.’15

Domestic politics Wearing various hats in the executive branch, Bismarck exercised enormous influence, both in the German Empire and in the wider arena of diplomacy. But Bismarck himself cautioned against excessive reliance on individual agency. ‘Man can neither create nor direct the stream of time,’ he wrote. ‘He can only travel upon it and steer with more or less skill and experience.’16 In striving to navigate the economic, political and sociocultural currents of his time, Bismarck evinced equal elements of mastery and maladroitness; and, in doing so, he demonstrated that his times loomed far larger than himself. In place 157

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of an indomitable iron chancellor, then, recent biographers have portrayed a brilliant but vulnerable and flawed political mind. Rather than invoke the commanding legacy of the ‘iron chancellor’, recent literature is more apt to characterize Bismarck’s achievements as a negotiated settlement that became increasing fragile and perishable over time. A survey of his domestic political record bears this out. Bismarck’s domestic political career is conventionally divided up into two eras: his liberal era in 1866–78 and his conservative alliances thereafter. The first revolves around his cooperation with National Liberals, a marriage of convenience that lasted until 1878. Intoxicated with military victory and national resurgence in 1866, Eduard Lasker, Hans Victor von Unruh and other liberals abandoned the principles of the German Progressive Party, which had clashed with Bismarck over the parliament’s budgetary power in 1862–6, and formed the National Liberal Party in 1867. Stressing the positive features of Prussia’s military victories over Austria and France, the National Liberals entered into a coalition with Bismarck to cast the nation state with the liberal principles. They advocated low tariffs, fewer restraints on industrial capitalism and greater centralized power. Under the tutelage of such liberal state secretaries as Rudolf Delbrück, the National Liberals erected institutions of justice, finance, banking and commercial codes at the federal level. Bismarck’s use of nationalism as a ‘moral force’ to harness popular will and, of course, his willingness to work with liberals, prompted conservatives to denounce him as a turncoat. But others viewed him more accurately as a ‘white revolutionary’: a conservative willing to deploy constitutionalism, universal suffrage and nationalism to serve conservative ends.17 Amid these laissez-faire policies lurked a darker political motive. Bismarck’s ‘liberal years’ intersected with a series of laws that strove to root out Catholic influence in the new nation. Rudolf Virchow, a liberal from the Progressive Party, coined the term Kulturkampf, or ‘cultural struggle’, to endorse the laws and mobilize support for them. Enacted between 1871 and 1875, these laws forbade political commentary from the pulpit, expelled the Jesuit order from Germany, stripped bishops of their disciplinary powers, placed Catholic schools under state supervision, introduced mandatory civil marriage and abolished the Catholic department in the Prussian Ministry of Culture. Such measures eroded the church’s right of self-governance and marked Catholics as pariahs. Bismarck’s motives for such discriminatory laws were many. Raised as a Lutheran and ‘reawakened’ in adulthood as a pietist, Bismarck had little direct contact with Catholicism, which he perceived as an international force that threatened the nation’s social cohesion. More concretely, Polish Catholicism in Silesia, Posen and East Prussia alarmed him, and he linked language and ethnicity with this religious– political question. The formation of the Catholic Center Party in 1870 further worried the chancellor, who envisioned future dangerous alliances between Catholics, Guelph particularists, Alsatians, Poles and socialists. Since the 1830s, socially conservative Catholics had advocated constitutional rights for religious freedom, and political Catholicism accordingly displayed ideological flexibility. Bismarck easily found support from liberals, whose anticlericalism ran deep. For both National Liberal and Progressive Party members, Catholicism had long acted as a 158

Bismarckian Germany

pronounced ideological foe: an obscurantist faith that was out of step with the material and cultural progress of the new nation. Pope Pius’s encyclical of 1864, which attacked liberalism and its secular hubris, buttressed this viewpoint; and a subsequent papal brief on papal infallibility in 1870 only reinforced the liberal criticism. The papal decrees confirmed the liberal stance that Catholic allegiance to the Holy See undercut national loyalty. In the mouths of liberals, ultramontanism (‘beyond the mountains’, referring to the papacy in Rome) became a pronounced epithet in the 1860s, which helped frame the liberal claim that the German Empire was a Protestant achievement. Rudolf Virchow, a famed scientist and pioneer of modern pathology, staunchly opposed Bismarck on numerous issues as a deputy for the Progressive Party, but he nonetheless lionized the anti-Catholic laws as having ‘the character of a great struggle in the interest of humanity’. Liberals embraced the programme with a deep-seated ideological fervour, averring that their enmity of Catholicism and their belief in progress were two sides of the same coin. But, as Michael Gross has argued, the pronounced strains of misogyny, prurient slander and xenophobia found in the philippics, caricatures and scabrous cartoons of liberal print matter reveal a darker side to the liberal imagination. The laws had far-reaching consequences. At the height of the Kulturkampf, the government had imprisoned 241 priests, 136 editors and 210 laymen. The state had confiscated 20 newspapers, closed 55 clubs, expelled 103 persons and arrested 8 bishops. In 1881, 25 per cent of Prussian parishes still had no priests and only three of the state’s twelve bishops presided. Yet the state’s ham-fisted assault on Catholics backfired in spectacular fashion. It not only aroused opposition among conservative Protestants, who saw it as an attack on all organized religion, but also strengthened the resolve of Catholics throughout the empire to rally around their church, many of them adamantly voting for the Center Party, which by 1878 became the largest party in the Reichstag. Ludwig von Windthorst, the party’s leader and co-founder, became a celebrated figure among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The state’s repressive actions spurred Catholics to join religious-oriented clubs and associations, and the laws reinforced a revival in popular piety, already underway since the 1850s, which became a vehicle for expressing political solidarity with the Catholic cause. As David Blackbourn has astutely demonstrated, the Marian vision in the Saarland village of Marpingen in July 1876 became a cause célèbre for German Catholics, especially when the Prussian government ineptly occupied the town with police and soldiers who brusquely treated its residents as liars and refractory subjects.18 The growth of convents, monasteries, missionary societies and numerous cultural associations stimulated in turn the efflorescence of pilgrimages, processions and festivals, and it is the sum of these parts that formed a Catholic milieu during this critical era of nation building. The cultural boundaries between Protestants and Catholics, alternately firm and porous, remained an evolving feature of nineteenth-century politics and shaped how the two confessions constructed national identities. By the mid-1870s, Bismarck sought a new parliamentary alliance. The reasons were many. First and foremost, the economic crash of 1873 had tarnished the popular appeal of liberalism. Brought about by an overheated economy following unification in conjunction with irresponsible use of the joint-stock principle, the radical devaluation 159

Nineteenth-Century Germany

of Germany’s stock markets ruined first-time investors, from aristocrats to craftsmen. The fallout spawned a wave of anti-Semitic agitation, infusing the new imperial political culture with yet another strain of exclusionary politics, but it also encouraged protectionist sentiment, which rendered liberal free-traders vulnerable as long-term coalition partners. The ardour for duties and tariffs would only grow over time. The crash dramatically ended the robust conjuncture of growth between 1850 and 1873; in its place came slackened production and growth, which persisted until 1896, an era that became known as the Great Depression (see Chapter 9). No less important in Bismarck’s eyes was his scheme to find revenue streams that could weaken the budgetary influence of parliaments and the states’ annual contributions to the imperial state’s fiscus. Indirect tax was one solution; nationalizing the railways was another. Liberals vehemently opposed both. Equally nettling for the chancellor, the National Liberals pined for greater influence at the executive level and requested the right to review and approve government bills before their introduction to the Reichstag. Above all, world markets threatened the long-term material basis of the conservative order. The agricultural capitalism of Prussian Junkers had fared well in open, international markets in the 1860s but could no longer compete with the cheap grain from Argentina and America, efficiently delivered by steam and rail. Similarly, Germany’s coal, iron, steel and textile industries complained about Britain’s unfair trading practices and called for duties and tariffs to thwart the practice of selling surplus goods under cost. Channelling the rising surge of economic nationalism, Bismarck turned towards interventionist principles to protect both agriculture and industry, an ‘alliance of rye and iron’ that forged a union of new and old wealth. The protectionist legislation for heavy industry, manufacturing interests, commercial banking and large-scale agricultural producers promised the sociopolitical salvation of the Prussian–German conservative social order. After 1878, Bismarck’s political system turned towards centre and right-wing parties to support a new era of political conservatism that encompassed both domestic and foreign policy. The ideological glue to this ‘second founding of the Reich’ was anti-socialism. Since 1873, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was an ascendant political force that offered powerful expression to the ‘social question’ of wages, work conditions, salubrious housing and, more generally, the hope for a better future. In its first statement of 1875, the Gotha Program, the SPD espoused principles of constitutional democracy, thus holding open the prospect of reforming a parliamentary system to serve the working classes. With Germany’s rapidly expanded industrial base, the ranks of industrial workers grew dramatically and found a natural home in the new party, in spite of the best attempts of Catholic and left-liberal unions to win the loyalty of wage earners. Alarmed by the Paris communards in 1871 and the International Workingman’s Association (the First International), Bismarck worried about subversion and agitation. Such electoral potential threatened Bismarck’s conservative political order, and he moved to block it. Two attempted assassinations on the emperor in May and June of 1878 provided Bismarck with the pretext to vilify and isolate the workers’ party. He dissolved parliament, ginned up a vehement press campaign against the SPD, and held new elections. It returned a parliament with a rightward shift, chastening the liberals, and thereby softened their 160

Bismarckian Germany

resistance to any special law against the socialists. Although neither assassin had any credible connection to the SPD, the shock and moral panic of the assassinations galvanized support for the Anti-Socialist Law of October 1878, which Bismarck had tried to pass in various iterations since 1875. The legislation banned socialists, communists and social democrats from holding public meetings, forbade their newspapers, authorized the arrest of party leaders, and further fined and imprisoned agitators and even sympathetic landlords who offered rooms to socialists. The law allowed the government to invoke minor states of siege in Berlin, Leipzig, Stettin, Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main, which also involved expelling leading SPD members and their families from these cities. The law stopped short of legally dissolving the party’s parliamentary function, which the Center and liberal parties refused to authorize, thereby allowing workers to continue to vote for the party. Attending this political démarche was the government’s desire to draw the Kulturkampf to a close. Overtures were put out as early as 1875, but it was the death of Pius in February 1878 and the ascendancy of Pope Leo XIII, who sought conciliation, which provided the opportunity. By 1880, the state enacted the first of several laws to mitigate the harshest measures, allowing for the reinstatement of bishops, the pardoning of expelled priests and the resumption of diplomatic relations between Germany and the Vatican. Although this state-organized campaign of intimidation and humiliation was never forgotten, Catholics ceased to be the Reichsfeind. With surprising alacrity, the Center Party welcomed its new role as a government-supporting party and relished its part as dealmaker in parliamentary coalitions. The Anti-Socialist Law was yet another miscalculation by Bismarck. Between 1878 and 1890, the year of its repeal, the German state had imprisoned over 1,500 people with sentences that amounted to over 800 years in prison. The unintended consequence of such repression was perhaps not surprising: workers formed a firm allegiance to the party that grasped the grinding social inequality of the Kaiserreich. Workers donated money to support expelled persons, smuggled in newspapers and journals, and agitated for electoral success. More than a party, it became a subculture that used hundreds of clubs and societies to inculcate a cradle-to-grave loyalty among hundreds of thousands of workers. Notwithstanding the bans against its public presence, SPD’s Reichstag faction enjoyed steady growth. In the national elections of 1878, 1884 and 1887, the party’s garnered electoral percentages of 7.6, 9.7 and 10.1 per cent, respectively. Following the repeal of the law in 1890, the SPD nearly doubled its base with 19.7 per cent, or 1,427,000 votes. This tally made it the leading party in the Reichstag, with the liberals (1.1 million) and the conservatives (895,000) trailing them (Table 8.1). To mitigate the punitive sting of the Anti-Socialist Law, Bismarck introduced pathbreaking social insurance laws in 1883, 1884 and 1889, which provided entitlements to workers for sickness, accident, old age and disability. By offering such welfare measures, Bismarck hoped to win industrial workers over to the state, which now addressed their material concerns as a national priority. Although the laws would be hailed as innovative, studied throughout the world and generally praised as pioneering, they failed to fulfil their political function. The long delay in preparing and introducing the bills, the acrimonious parliamentary debates to pass them, the limited scope of the entitlements 161

162

c

Sp. P.

Minorities

a

b

–

6.6

2.0

255

76

14.1

8.9

37.2

9.3

18.6

3.2

–

549

Conservat.

RWSp.

346

Free Cons.

361

Left Lib.

1,453

742

Center

Nat. Lib/Lib.

124

SPD

50.7

% voting

%

3,888

Turnout

Votes

7,656

Eligible

1871

–

21

–

57

37

155

47

63

2

Seats

46

462

–

360

376

1,597

470

1,446

352

Votes

Table 8.1  Reichstag election results, 1871–1912 (000s)

0.9

10.5

–

6.9

7.2

30.7

9.0

27.8

6.8

%

60.8

5,190

8,523

1874

–

34

–

22

33

158

50

91

9

Seats

28

519

–

526

427

1,605

463

1,341

493

Votes

0.5

9.6

–

9.7

8.0

29.7

8.5

24.8

9.1

%

60.3

5,401

8,943

1877

–

34

–

40

38

141

39

93

12

Seats

17

505

–

750

786

1,487

451

1,328

437

Votes

0.3

8.7

–

13.0

13.6

28.5

7.8

23.1

7.5

%

63.1

5,761

9,124

1878

–

40

–

59

57

109

29

94

9

Seats

Nineteenth-Century Germany

56.1

% voting

0.3

747

379

831

–

449

15

Nat. Lib.

Free Cons.

Conservat.

RWSp.a

Minoritiesb

c

Sp. P.

8.8

1,181

Left Lib.

–

16.3

7.4

14.6

23.1

23.2

1,183

Center

6.1

312

SPD

%

5,097

Turnout

Votes

9,090

Eligible

1881

–

35

–

50

28

47

115

100

12

Seats

13

479

–

861

388

997

1,093

1,282

550

Votes

0.2

8.5

–

15.2

6.8

17.6

19.3

22.6

9.7

%

60.3

5,663

9,383

1884

–

43

–

78

28

51

74

99

24

Seats

48

579

12

1,147

736

1,678

1,062

1,516

763

Votes

0.6

7.6

0.2

15.2

9.8

22.3

14.1

22.1

7.1

%

77.2

7,540

9,769

1887

2

33

1

80

41

99

32

98

11

Seats

75

475

48

895

482

1,178

1,308

1,342

1,427

Votes

1.0

6.6

0.7

12.4

6.7

16.3

18.0

18.6

19.7

%

71.2

7,228

10,145

1890

2

38

5

73

20

42

76

106

35

129

461

264

1,038

438

997

1,092

1,469

1,787

Seats Votes

1.7

6.0

3.4

13.5

5.7

13.0

14.8

19.0

23.3

%

72.2

7,674

5

35

16

72

28

53

48

96

44

Seats

(Continued)

10,628

1893

Bismarckian Germany

163

164

13

971

344

859

284

Nat. Lib.

Free Cons.

Conservat.

Poles, Danes, Guelphs, Alsatians

Other splinter parties

b

Source: Tormin, 283ff.

c

18

34

23

46

49

Right-wing splinter groups, for example, Christlich-Soziale

397

Sp. P.c

a

471

Minoritiesb

a

RWSp.

56

863

Left. Lib.

102

1,455

Centre

56

Seats

2,107

67.7

% voting

SPD

7,752

Turnout

Votes

11,441

1898

Eligible

Table 8.1  (Continued)

334

559

245

949

333

1,317

872

1,875

3,011

Votes

75.8

9,495

12,531

1903

11

32

11

54

21

51

26

100

81

Seats

528

651

249

1,060

472

1,631

1,234

2,180

3,259

Votes

84.3

11,262

13,352

1907

17

29

16

60

24

54

49

105

43

Seats

550

706

52

1,126

367

1,663

1,497

1,997

4,250

Votes

84.5

12,207

14,442

1912

16

33

3

43

14

45

42

91

110

Seats

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Bismarckian Germany

and the failure to address the pressing issue of work conditions did not help their cause. The prospect of a meagre pension at the age of sixty-five, when average life expectancy fell twenty years short of that figure, hardly impressed workers, who also suspected that the accident insurance law undermined the right of workers to sue for liability. Consequently, the laws failed to attain the desired social consensus. Their paternalistic and patronizing gestures not only condoned unjust repression but also underestimated the moral idealism of the social-democratic movement. In the end, the stick was greater than the carrot. Many contemporaries viewed the Reich election of 1884 as a referendum on the social health insurance law; hence, the SPD’s rise in votes confirmed the continued scepticism of workers towards the state. The wave of strikes in 1889–90, which numbered 715, especially the coalminers’ strikes in the spring of 1889, which left forty-five dead, confirmed a familiar story of industrial relations and the state’s role in sustaining unfair conditions. Upon coming to power in 1888, Wilhelm II’s desire to reign as a popular leader motivated him to let the Anti-Socialist Law lapse. Yet the bid to set a new tone in 1890 was too late. The years of repression had convinced SPD leaders that social and political reform through legal means within the Reichstag was futile. Many of their constituents, suffering under the persistent problems in housing, worker safety and generally abysmal living standards were inclined to agree. Consequently, following the repeal of the law, the party decided to move outside the parameters of parliamentary rule. In 1891, the Erfurt Program adopted Marxism as a guiding programme, embracing its tenets of the impending collapse of capitalism and the idea of political revolution, though this did not necessarily mean engaging in such action. The radicalization of the party’s principles sat well neither with trade unionists, who had achieved some success with winning piecemeal concessions over wages and work conditions, nor with members from southwestern Germany whose state governments proved more receptive to workingclass issues. The debate over the SPD’s revolutionary or revisionist path took on greater weight and consequence in the Wilhelminian era and only found resolution in the party’s schism in 1915 and in the fratricidal revolution of 1918–19.

Conclusion Machtstaat vor der Demokratie is the subtitle of an important work on the German Empire.19 The phrase can be translated as either ‘the power state over democracy’ or ‘the power state faces democracy’. The deliberate ambiguity is tantalizing and captures the essential difficulty in interpreting the Bismarckian era. On the one hand, few historians would contest the characterization of a ‘power state’. Bismarck’s Reich concentrated extensive military and political powers into the executive branch, which remained a Hohenzollern monarch until 1918. At issue is the failure of parliamentary rule to penetrate the Reich’s executive levels. The state’s authoritarian tendency was all the more strengthened with the premature death of Friedrich III, Wilhelm’s successor, who succumbed to throat cancer in the first year of his reign in 1888. Placing aside any exaggerated claims about Friedrich III’s moderate liberalism, the ninety-nine-day Kaiser 165

Nineteenth-Century Germany

possessed a temperament and an education far better suited to the job than his son, Wilhelm II, whose narcissism, fitful disposition and limited intelligence rendered him unfit for the work. Over time, the ‘personal rule’ of Wilhelm II set the Reich’s structural instability in full relief, allowing the preponderant influence of the military and his court’s political networks to compromise constitutional rule. Emphasizing Bismarck’s epigones as the central problem, however, begs the question of the constitutional system’s inherent flaws. On the other hand, there is far less agreement among historians about whether such executive power kept at bay the manifold forces of parliamentary politics, an industrializing economy and a rapidly changing society. Muzzling the dissonant voices of Catholicism, social democracy, nationalist minorities and other liberal-democratic interests proved impossible for Bismarck. Controlling critical public opinion or channelling the economy’s many material interests into manageable protectionist blocs proved equally untenable. Using Wolfgang Mommsen’s apt phrase, Bismarck’s Germany is best described as a ‘system of skirted decisions’.20 The contradictions that inhered in this mixed-powers government led by a monarchy, legitimized by sovereign princes and legislated by a democratic parliament were never fully resolved. Bismarck tinkered with his political system to the very end. He played with revenue streams to ‘fortify’ the Reich against parliamentary budgetary control, devised coalitions to play one enemy off another and re-adapted his chancellery and ministerial offices to sustain Prussia’s hegemony. He even considered implementing a coup d’état on numerous occasions after 1878, substituting for an unruly parliament a ‘national Diet’ based on corporate representation. That he never implemented a Staatsstreich, which he contemplated in 1878, 1881–2, 1886 and 1889–90, confirmed not only his shrewd instincts for adaptation but also his recognition that the parliament was the fulcrum that balanced states and empire as well as popular and elite institutions. Indeed, two decades of circumventions and deferrals had the unintended consequence of opening up more vistas of political reform, not fewer. Building upon the formidable achievements of a developed party system, an informed electorate, a mature bourgeois civil society and a rising workers’ party, Germany’s laws and political culture pointed towards greater constitutional rule as readily as towards authoritarianism. The nation, then, did not perceive the resignation of Bismarck as a political crisis. Rather, it greeted the new era as one of growth and development. Schooled in parliamentary politics for decades, emboldened by surging world markets and a new self-image as an imperial power, and sustained by millions of voters from well-defined constituencies, Germany embraced the new regime with guarded optimism and political resolve. Notes 1. Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (1977), p. 146. 2. Mommsen quoted in Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany (1960), p. 186; Wilhelm Liebknecht, ‘Über die politische Stellung der Sozialdemokratie, insbesondere mit Bezug auf den Norddeutschen “Reichstag”’, in Wilhelm Liebknecht, Kleine politische Schriften (1976), p. 16. 166

Bismarckian Germany 3. O. Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 3 (1990), pp. 437–8. 4. Quoted in J. Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life (2011), p. 467. 5. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Vol. 3, Von der ‘Deutschen Doppelrevolution’ bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges 1849–1914 (1995), pp. 368–76. 6. Including Franz Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1949–59); James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (1993); Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648–1871 (1971); Friedrich Lenger, Metropolen der Moderne. Eine europäische Stadtgeschichte seit 1850 (2013); Siegfried Weichlein, Nation und Region. Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich (2004); Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Die Politik der Geselligkeit. Freimauerlogen in der deutschen Bürgergesellschaft 1840–1918 (2000); Oliver Zimmer, Remaking the Rhythms of Life: German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State (2013). 7. D. Blackbourn, ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: Reappraising German History in the Nineteenth Century’, in D. Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Politics and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1984), pp. 195–8. 8. Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 3, p. 207. 9. M. Fitzpatrick, Purging the Empire: Mass Expulsions in Germany, 1870–1914 (2015), p. 93. 10. A. Goldberg, Honor, Politics, and Law in Imperial Germany (2010), pp. 81–114. 11. A. Green, Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Germany (2001), pp. 148–88. 12. Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918. Vol. 1, Arbeitswelt und Bürgergeist (1991), p. 809. 13. M. Gross, The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-century Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), pp. 170–84. 14. Secret treaties were a regular feature of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century diplomacy, a practice that enabled statesmen to strengthen informal commitments without public accountability. This form of treaty has largely disappeared today among democratic states, although covert cooperation through informal agreement, away from the public eye, still exists. 15. Quoted in Gordon Craig, Germany, 1866–1945 (1980), p. 236. 16. Quoted in Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 1, p. 3. 17. The subtitle of Lothar Gall’s biography (1990). 18. D. Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1993). 19. Thomas Nipperdey, Deutschland 1866–1918. Machtstaat vor der Demokratie (1993). 20. Wolfgang Mommsen, ‘Das deutsche Kaiserreich als System umgangener Entscheidungen’, in Mommsen, Der autoritäre Nationalstaat. Verfassung, Gesellschaft und Kultur im deutschen Kaiserreich (1990), pp. 11–38.

Select bibliography Anderson, Margaret L., Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (2000). Applegate, C., A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (1990).

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Nineteenth-Century Germany Berghahn, V., Imperial Germany, 1871–1918: Economy, Society, Cultural, and Politics (2005). Blackbourn, D., Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1993). Blackbourn, D. and Eley, G., The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Politics and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1984). Brophy, James M., Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830–1870 (1998). Clark, C., Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (2006). Feuchtwanger, E. J., Bismarck: A Political History (2014). Fitzpatrick, M., Purging the Empire: Mass Expulsions in Germany, 1870–1914 (2015). Gabriel, Elun T., Assassins and Conspirators: Anarchism, Socialism, and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (2014). Gall, L., Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, 2 vols (1986, 1990). Goldberg, A., Honor, Politics, and Law in Imperial Germany (2010). Green, A., Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Germany (2001). Gross, Michael B., The War against Catholics: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Imperial Germany (2004). Hartston, B., Sensationalizing the Jewish Question: Anti-Semitic Trials and Press in the Early German Empire (2005). Hewitson, M., Nationalism in Germany, 1848–1866: Revolutionary Nation (2010). Hoffmann, S.-L., The Politics of Sociability: Freemasonry and German Civil Society (2007). Lerner, K., Bismarck (2004). Lidkte, V., The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in Germany, 1878–1890 (1966). Lidtke, V., The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany (1985). Mommsen, Wolfgang, Imperial Germany, 1867–1918: Politics, Culture, and Society in an Authoritarian State (1995). Müller, Frank Lorenz, Our Fritz: Emperor Frederick III and the Political Culture of Imperial Germany (2011). Müller, Sven O. and Torp, C., eds, Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives (2011). Palmowski, J., Urban Liberalism in Imperial Germany: Frankfurt am Main, 1866–1914 (1999). Pflanze, O., Bismarck and the Development of Germany, 3 vols (1990). Retallack, James R., ed., Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (2008). Retallack, James R., Red Saxony: Election Battles and the Spectre of Democracy in Germany, 1860–1918 (2017). Ross, R., The Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf: Catholicism and State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871–1887 (1998). Roth, G., The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany: A Study in Working-Class Isolation and Integration (1963). Smith, H., The Continuities of German History: Nation, Race, and Religion across the Long Nineteenth Century (2009). Smith, H., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (2011). Stark, G., Banned in Berlin: Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (2009). Steinberg, J., Bismarck: A Life (2011). Steinmetz, G., Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany (1993). Torp, C., The Challenges of Globalization: Economy and Politics in Germany, 1860–1914 (2014). Waller, B., Bismarck at the Crossroads: The Reorientation of German Foreign Policy after the Congress of Berlin, 1878–1890 (1973). Williamson, D. G., Bismarck and Germany (2011). Zimmer, O., Remaking the Rhythms of Life: German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State (2013). 168

CHAPTER 9 DEMOGRAPHIC GROWTH, INDUSTRIALIZATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Volker Berghahn

Population growth, urbanization and industrialization represented long-term processes that did not start with the founding of the German Empire in 1871 (see Chapter 4). What can be said at a most general level, however, is that all three developments experienced a further acceleration in the late nineteenth century. This, to begin with, is certainly true of demographic change. In 1864, some 39.4 million people lived in the area of Central Europe, which became united under Prussian leadership in 1870/71. By that time the population had increased to some 41 million (see Table 9.1). About 24.6 million inhabitants of the new German Empire were Prussians, with the Bavarians, Saxons, Wὒrttembergians and Badeners trailing behind and followed by a welter of smaller states (see Table 9.2). The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871 after the defeat of France added some 1.6 million people. By 1913, no fewer than another 27 million had become citizens, and the total would have reached over 30 million if the roughly three million Germans who emigrated overseas between 1871 and 1911 are included (see Table 9.3). Put in percentages, the overall increase was more than 58 per cent. By 1910, some 1.26 million foreigners lived in Germany of whom 63.9 per cent arrived from the East (see Table 9.4). In trying to explain this veritable population explosion, the baby boom of the years of optimism around the time of the founding of the Empire was clearly a major factor. It was only in 1912 that lower-class parents followed the lead of the middle classes and began to limit the size of their families (see Table 9.5). The other major factors behind the explosion were an increase in life expectancy and a decline in mortality rates, including infant mortality that remained almost level and hence was demographically relatively insignificant (see Tables 9.6 and 9.7) Still, the statistics of babies who survived the crucial first year show considerable variations between those born legitimately and others born out of wedlock, between working-class and middle-class families and somewhat less between urban and rural areas (see Tables 9.8, 9.9 and 9.10). The many millions, young and old, who grew up in the new Empire were not evenly distributed throughout the land (see Table 9.11). Indeed, the demographic explosion was directly linked to the phenomenon of urbanization that was driven by a massive movement of people from the rural areas to the towns and cities (see Tables 9.12 and 9.13). Again, these were processes that had set in well before 1871, but the growth of many of the cities can only be described as staggering (see Table 9.14). Put in percentage terms, cities like Dortmund and Essen in the Ruhr industrial region or Kiel on the Baltic

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Sea in the north hovered around a rise of between 400 and 500 per cent from 1871 to 1910. Many others doubled and trebled in size. These growth rates were not exclusively due to high birth rates, rising life expectancies and declining infant mortality rates. Internal migration from the countryside to the urban centres was probably even more significant. Here it is important to differentiate between short-distance and long-distance migrants. The former tended to keep their ties with their families and places of birth and often went back and forth, partly depending on economic conditions and employment opportunities. Some of them even lived the life of commuters on a daily and seasonal basis and returned to their villages as helpers during harvest time. By the contrast, longdistance migrants were frequently actively recruited, for example, by envoys from the Rhineland to woo miners from the Polish parts of Prussia to work in the Ruhr region. Many of them then decided to stay and later often moved their families to join them. Both types of migrants, especially those from the eastern provinces of Prussia, have been of considerable interest not only to social historians but also to students of popular culture. The question is, what cultural traditions did they bring with them and preserve and which ones were adapted to indigenous habits and customs and produced an at least partial blending between the local and imported elements. There is also the problem of discrimination by the suspicious authorities, even if the Polish immigrants from Prussia became integrated in the long run, as many Slavonic names in the Ruhr region testify to this day. Immigration from neighbouring countries was also significant, even if many were temporary migrants who arrived as seasonal land labourers at harvest time, especially from Russia, and were sent back during the winter, often compulsorily. Quite dramatic shifts can also be seen by looking at changes in the size of communities over time. At the time of the founding of the Empire some 64 per cent of the population lived in small communities of under 2,000 inhabitants. Table 9.15 demonstrates the inexorable transformation of different localities some forty years later. Yet, it would be wrong to suggest that pre-1914 Germany had become fully urbanized by 1910 (see also Chapter 10). No more than 21.3 per cent lived in cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, while just about one-quarter continued to reside in provincial towns of up to 20,000 people. The rural population still added up to 21 million. At the same time, the more dramatic figure is presumably that over half of the population had left their place of birth and started a new life, mostly in the urban parts of the Reich. Finally, the movements of individuals and families within cities must be highlighted. Although precise statistics are difficult to come by, people frequently changed their abode within the same community, especially among the lower classes. Young unmarried migrants were forced to live a particularly unsteady life. They had to become lodgers (Schlafgänger) with working-class families who took them in for the night to help with the rent. Thus, in 1880, over 39,000 households (15.3 per cent) had such overnight lodgers and over 18,000 (7.1 per cent) had more permanent renters in Berlin alone, a major industrial centre. The huge demands for housing in the cities inevitably led to frequent and often extortionate rent increases so that among the working class over 20 per cent of the budget was eaten up by rental payments (see Table 9.16). Since many of the apartments in the so-called Mietskasernen (rental barracks, that is, multistorey 170

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tenements blocks) consisted of no more than a live-in kitchen and a bedroom, it is hard to imagine the cramped conditions, with two or three people sharing one bed. The toilet was often halfway down the staircase. It is also difficult to visualize how children grew up in these circumstances, especially in the winter when colds and influenza broke out. There were also the tensions that were bound to arise between parents as well as with lodgers. To escape these conditions, it was not uncommon for fathers and certainly the lodgers to spend the early evening in a local pub before they came to the apartment where the wife had borne the main burden of cooking and minding the children. When rents went up, cheaper accommodation had to be found in a hurry. Packing up and moving to another place was also dictated by the prospect of a better job or an increase in unemployment (see Table 9.17). In times of general economic prosperity, workers would not hesitate to move to another factory up the road that offered more money. Indeed, the search for improved material conditions and a ‘better life’ lay at the heart of most of the population movement. Land labourers tried to escape from the often very hard conditions, especially on the large estates in eastern Germany. Urban dwellers hoped to boost their income by moving and thereby also achieving some modest upward mobility. These conditions must, of course, be contrasted with housing available to the middle classes who could afford a larger rental apartment or even owned a single-family dwelling with a dining and living room, with kitchen and bathrooms, several bedrooms, children’s rooms and perhaps even a cubbyhole for a maid. Meanwhile, the wealthy lived in large mansions in a different part of town, while children of many landowners in the east but also in Hesse, Schleswig-Holstein or Bavaria grew up in a large Schloss. Germany was definitely a society stratified by socio-economic class. Channels of upward mobility from the working class into the middle class tended to be limited and largely intergenerational. A person might rise from being an unskilled or semi-skilled worker to being a Facharbeiter. But only the son of a craftsman might expand his father’s workshop to a small factory and thus rise into the lower middle class which would already be highly differentiated in itself. For example, a primary school teacher might become a ‘professor’ at a high school (Gymnasium). The advent of the Second Industrial Revolution led to a differentiation between the so-called Old Mittelstand of long-established successful craftsmen and other entrepreneurs, again with often invisible ceilings, complemented by white-collar workers of the New Mittelstand with an expertise in commerce and marketing or men trained in chemistry or electrical engineering. With society and politics becoming more complex, there was the expansion of the local and state bureaucracy and the rise of professionals, that is, university-trained doctors, lawyers, bankers, teachers and researchers. Proud of their achievements, they perpetuated an elitism that slowed down even intergenerational mobility. A very high percentage of them came from a middle-class or upper-middleclass background (see Table 9.18). This was even more true of the civil service (see Table 9.19). Nor did upward mobility through marriage increase much. At least most workers tended to marry women of working-class or peasant background. Social stratification was reinforced by the structure of the educational system. Universal primary education had been introduced before the founding of the German 171

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Empire and had facilitated the virtual disappearance of illiteracy (see Table 9.20). But streaming occurred at secondary level, when most girls and boys completed their education at age fourteen to take up an apprenticeship, followed by a lifelong career as workers in industry, commerce or low-level public services (see Table 9.21). Those who passed the hurdles to go on the an intermediate exam of mittlere Reife or even up to the Abitur at a Gymnasium for boys or a Lyceum for girls mostly had middle-class and upperclass parents who encouraged their children to obtain an advanced education and who could also afford the tuition fees. Although these fees were relatively low, they tended to be beyond the reach of working-class parents. With the Abitur certificate being the entry ticket to higher education, as late as 1912 the student population of the universities and technical universities was only around 72,000 among a total population of 67 million (see Table 9.22). However, there was also a denominational divide, stemming from the religious wars of the seventeenth century, that remained quite distinct. Table 9.23 illustrates the numbers of Protestants and Catholics and their regional distribution. Tensions between the two denominations had been exacerbated when Bismarck, for his own political reasons, initiated the Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church and the Vatican (see Chapter 8). Catholics were turned into ‘enemies of the Reich’. Their institutions, above all their religious orders, were subjected to blatant persecution. The policy proved to be a disaster and had to be abandoned a few years later. But it deepened the denominational divide, and discrimination of Catholics did not disappear. Thus, while it was possible to succeed in Catholic Bavaria, promotion of Catholics in the Prussian civil service remained difficult. This also applied to the German Jews. In 1871, there were some 512,000 of them, a number which grew to 615,000 by 1910. Either they had lived in the country for centuries and were politically and socio-economically integrated into the majority or they were more recent arrivals from the Russia, from where they had escaped the Tsarist pogroms, and now became the prime target of a rising anti-Semitism in the German Empire (see Chapter 8). Meanwhile, anti-Catholicism, while still a force, weakened as the Jews became the new scapegoat on whom all sorts of societal and economic ills could be blamed. For Germany’s Jews more so than for the Catholics, many of whom continued to live in a provincial conservative milieu, the removal of ancient legal discriminations opened up unprecedented opportunities for achieving economic and social success. Thus, Jews were disproportionately successful in the professions, in business, in the arts, and in intellectual life more generally (see Tables 9.24 and 9.25). On the other hand, their achievements fanned old prejudices against them among the Christian population. AntiSemitism proliferated from the 1880s onwards and resulted in renewed, though more selective discriminations. With few exceptions, it became virtually impossible to rise to higher positions in the civil service, the judiciary and the armed forces. Jewish scholars, however gifted and prolific, found it difficult to obtain university professorships. Jews were also excluded from social clubs and associations. Many of them fought the drawing of such lines, some by joining the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, whose title gave its aims away. Others became members of the Zionist movement 172

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which believed that having equality without having to abandon their cultural identity was possible only in a Jewish national state. Still, even those Zionists were sufficiently happy within German society and promoted emigration to Palestine mainly of fellow Jews in autocratic and pogrom-ridden Russia. Meanwhile the fallout from the Kulturkampf was lastingly felt in the field of party politics. Having introduced the universal manhood suffrage in 1871, Bismarck was faced with the growing formation and consolidation of political parties, which appealed to divergent socio-economic strata for support during and between elections (see Table 9.57). Thus, the Social Democrats presented themselves as an industrial workingclass party and promptly attracted this growing constituency in ever larger numbers. Middle-class people would cast their vote for a welter of bourgeois parties, and the landowning agrarians sided firmly with the Conservative Party. The Catholics, traumatized by Bismarck’s earlier policies of persecution, by contrast formed a party that cut across class lines and tended to attract Catholic workers in the Ruhr mining region, Rhenish bankers and commercial people, Catholic farmers in Bavaria and Catholic landowners in Silesia. At the same time, historians have moved away from the assumption that Catholics had greater problems with the many manifestations of urbanization and capitalist industrialization. It is probably correct that attitudes remained more reserved and traditional towards modernity than those of Protestants. The percentage of Catholics in the universities also remained lower. However, there were also quite a few Catholic families that operated with ease and success in Rhenish manufacturing and banking sectors. Mention must finally be made of yet another divide in German society: gender. Buttressed by the Civil Code of 1900, the Reich remained a patriarchal society. Men, but not women, not only had the right to vote but were in charge of the family’s assets as women could not have their own bank accounts. Illegitimate children had no legal rights towards their fathers, in addition to many other discriminations, some of which were finally removed only in the late twentieth century (see Chapter 14 for more details). As everywhere else in the world, women were disadvantaged in higher education and the arts. With a few exceptions, they were not represented in larger business ventures. Nor were professional careers open to them. Many of those who obtained an Abitur certificate at a Lyceum signed up for arts subjects or underwent a pedagogical training to go into school teaching (see Tables 9.26 and 9.27). At least they had a more satisfying career than millions of women in agriculture who were employed as helpers or in manufacturing industry (see Tables 9.28, 9.29, 9.30 and 9.31). No less than 30 per cent of them living in urban centres had to take up a factory job or accept employment as maids and office workers, where some of them achieved some upward mobility in the new industries, where they became, next to the white-collar employees, members of the white-blouse professions. All this already indicates that demographic change, population movements, urbanization and stratification by class, religion and gender cannot be understood without another revolution that pre-1914 Germany experienced: industrialization. There has been some debate on whether the shift from an economy based on agriculture 173

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to one based on industrial production was as dramatic in Germany as some scholar have asserted. Hartmut Kaelble, for example, has offered comparisons with countries such as Denmark, arguing that the Danes saw a more momentous industrial revolution than did Central Europe. Whatever the relativities may be in international perspective, suffice it here to emphasize that the changeover was dramatic enough to produce major socio-economic dislocations but also generated, at least from the 1880s onwards, a new prosperity and a general improvement of material and sociocultural conditions. If we begin by taking the share of agriculture in the gross national product (GNP), this sector remained in the lead with 35–40 per cent until the 1880s. Industry’s share at that time stood at 30–35 per cent (see Table 9.32). It was only just before the First World War that the percentages became reversed, while the commercial and service sector had risen to 30 per cent. This means that agriculture remained important to the national economy. In fact and thanks to the population explosion, it experienced an expansion of its production (see Table 9.33). That money was still to be made in agriculture is also reflected in the increased use of labour-saving machinery, such as tractors and steam threshers to achieve productivity gains and replace land labourers who were migrating to the urban centres. Permanent land labourers fled both the often very strict patriarchal attitudes and practices of the landlords who had retained ancient legal disciplinary powers; but they also voted with their feet against the lack of leisure time and for the attractions of city life. After all, on the large estates to the east of the Elbe River, animals had to be regularly fed round the clock. Harvests had to be gathered in, at least from spring to the late autumn, before the boredom of winter came. In the cities, though work hours continued to be as high as 10 to 12 hours six days of the week, there was at least the Sunday to recuperate and to spend in pubs and dance halls (see Tables 9.34 and 9.35). The economic gains in agriculture could not overcome a broader structural handicap that inexorably caused this sector to fall behind the other two over the longer term. Industry and the tertiary services were simply more productive. This was the part of the economy that employed increasing numbers of people but also where new riches could be made. Annual growth rates were high in the industrial sector at the time of the founding of the Empire in 1870/71. There was then a decline during the so-called Great Depression between 1873 and 1896 before the economy returned to averages of 4.5 per cent per annum in the years up to the First World War. Production in coal achieved a fourfold rise between the 1880s and 1913, and the growth of pig iron and steel production was even more impressive (see Table 9.36). In the early years, much of Germany’s iron and steel production was consumed by the building of railways. Even though this expansion of the all-important modernization of the infrastructure saw a marked slowdown, the system had nevertheless grown from its starting point of 19,000 kilometres in 1870 to some 61,000 kilometres by 1910. With the arrival of the automobile around the turn of the century, paved roads also saw a great improvement. Late nineteenth-century Germany greatly benefited from the rapid expansion of electrical engineering, chemicals and machine manufacturing. These were the new industries of the so-called Second Industrial Revolution that complemented the older 174

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industries of the First Industrial Revolution, such as textiles, coal and iron. It has been argued that those two revolutions occurred in Germany virtually at the same time or at least in very quick succession. Certainly, the new industries achieved a spectacular expansion. The country had gained a leading position in chemicals and pharmaceuticals in the world and by 1914 Britain, the first industrial nation, had also been outpaced in iron production (see Table 9.37). That money was to be made and wealth accumulated in industry can also be seen in the optimistic investment rates that hovered around the 43 per cent mark between 1905 and 1913, with agriculture trailing well behind at about 11 per cent (see Table 9.38). Tax returns similarly tell of the new riches that were being created. In 1895, the Inland Revenue department of Prussia, by far the largest state of the Empire, counted 3,429 taxpayers with a declared wealth of one to two million marks (see Table 9.39). Another 1,827 even declared over two million marks. By 1907, these figures had nearly doubled to 5,916 and 3,425, respectively. It is unknown what was hidden from the Treasury as a result of tax fraud or a deliberate underestimation of assets, especially the value of landed property, the more so since in Prussia, for example, the local administrators who were charged with supervising tax collection often turned a blind eye to the inaccurate returns of the local nobility because they came from the same social background and were assumed to need bureaucratic protection at a time of comparative agricultural decline. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of low-income citizens duly paid their taxes (see Table 9.40). The disposable incomes of these individuals, most of whom were in industry and finance, must be held against the national average of wages and salaries which stood at 854 marks per annum (see Table 9.41). The fact that this average had risen from 506 marks per annum in 1870 to 1,163 marks per annum in 1913 demonstrates that, even if the material benefits of industrialization continued to be very unevenly distributed, there was at least some improvement in living standards also among the large majority of the population who had virtually no assets and relied on their weekly wage packets for survival. There were some miners and also metal workers who reached slightly higher wages from the mid-1890s onwards. Meanwhile, white-collar employees who worked, for example, at the Maschinenfabrik Esslingen in southwestern Germany doubled their salaries between 1871 and 1912 from 1,871 marks to 3,753 marks. To be sure, such increases look less impressive, if inflation rates are factored in (see Table 9.42). Still, with slight variations in the calculations by different scholars, real wages are deemed to have grown by 30 per cent or more, and yet most of the weekly budget was used up for food and rent (see Table 9.43). To boost income, lodgers had to be taken in. Children had to help supplement income with home industry work, such as wrapping sweets at home late into the night or carrying out newspapers before school, where they arrived overtired and often without a proper breakfast. Nutritional standards improved. Increasingly, working-class families could afford meat at least once a week. Yet, many meals were fatty and high in calories to provide energy for the hard-working male head of the household during his ten to twelve hour day in the factory. Feeding the children came next, and the mother, exhausted from 175

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er Od

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

housework and looking after the children, often had to make do with what was left. Not surprisingly, tuberculosis was still widespread as the typical disease of the poor. Serious illness was a disaster. Bismarck and his successors had introduced an embryonic accident and medical insurance cover. But illness continued to be very hard on the poorer strata who could not afford to pay a doctor. Small pension entitlements and social welfare also contributed to improvements in living standards. Meanwhile, agricultural incomes were doing clearly less well than those in industry and the tertiary sector. Prosperity depended very much on the quality of the soil. Some large-scale landowners in the east claimed poverty due to low-yield sandy soils, not just towards the local tax inspector but also in the agrarian press. Others who went into forestry did better, especially also further west in Hesse, Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, the Southwest or Bavaria. But here the landholding patterns changed quite markedly to smaller family holdings (see Table 9.44) There were regions of dairy farming, grain growing, the production of wine, fruit and vegetables, poultry and red meat with largely smaller farmsteads and, with the population rising, families and their many helpers, including their children, if more efficient, could enjoy a modest standard of living, with some members also working in the nearby town as commuters (see Map 9.1). Inevitably, the age structure between town and country experienced some marked changes (see Tables 9.45 and 9.46). But young men and women, escaping the restrictions of life in the village or small town with their traditional rules of behaviour and pressures to conform to social, sexual and religious norms, did not arrive in an industrial land of milk and honey. Factory discipline was also very strict. Workers and employees had to clock in and the formation of unions as interest representations was banned. It was only towards 1914 that collective bargaining began in a few branches (see Table 9.47), but whenever workers reluctantly decided to go on strike, many employers countered with lockouts (see Table 9.48). The ups and downs of strike movements are intrinsically interesting as indicators of not only the state of the German economy and society but also changing patterns of politics. Strikes reached particularly high levels in the mid-1900s and towards 1913 when the economy seemed to dip into another recession. But these figures have to be correlated to the growing organization of the industrial working class. Bismarck may have hoped that, after abandoning the struggle against the Catholics as alleged enemies of the Reich, the Anti-Socialist Law of 1878 would hold. Yet, the national parliament (Reichstag) that had originally supported the chancellor’s proscription failed to renew it in 1890. It was a move to be seen in conjunction with Bismarck’s introduction in the 1880s of the incipient social security system that was also designed to appease the working class and to wean them away from the socialists (see Tables 9.49, 9.50 and 9.51; see also Chapters 8 and 10). With the Social Democrat trade unions and party again allowed to operate, both movements saw an impressive growth during the decade before 1914, with quite a number of women among them (see Tables 9.52 and 9.53). This applied to the unions in particular, and their rise was not seriously disturbed by the advent of a Catholic trade union and an even smaller Hirsch-Duncker union that advocated collaboration with the employers to obtain better wages and conditions instead of confrontation. 177

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Reich chancellor Bernhard von Bὒlow continued Bismarck’s appeasement policies and tried to expand social benefits. But they were costly and collided with the expansive rearmament, first of the navy under Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz where the increasing rate of building capital ships began to throw the original financial calculations into disarray from 1905. Alarmed by the escalation of international tensions that the emperor’s naval build-up against Britain had unleashed, from 1911 the German generals demanded funding for two major army bills that they had drawn up. As Tables 9.54 and 9.55 show, public finances were in a state of serious crisis in the last years before the outbreak of the First World War, and the Reich government under Chancellor Theobald von BethmannHollweg found it impossible to raise enough tax revenue to fill the large hole that had been created in the Reich Treasury. Consequently, tensions among the parties deepened; the polarization between the Conservatives, supported by the nationalists, on the one hand, and the Social Democrats, by 1912 the largest party in the Reichstag, on the other, sharpened. This domestic situation indirectly contributed to the preparedness of the military to resort to a major war that was supposed to stabilize not only Germany’s international situation but also the domestic one. Uncertainty also pervaded the political parties that were competing against each other on the basis of the universal manhood suffrage, even if over time a system that was theoretically genuinely democratic (also because it operated not with a simple majority voting system, but included run-off elections) had been progressively rigged (see Chapter 8 for further explanation of the electoral system). At the insistence of the Conservatives, electoral districts in the east that were emptying of voters were never redrawn. A single vote in the rural parts weighed much more than one in the cities that were not given an increase in seats corresponding to their population growth. There were other ‘tricks’ by which the popular will at Reich level was never fairly represented. Moreover, the class-based restrictive voting systems in many of the Federal States either remained unchanged, favouring the upper classes, such as the three-class voting system in the Kingdom of Prussia, dominated by the landowners and the aristocracy, or were even reversed in a more oligarchical direction, as happened in the Kingdom of Saxony (see also Chapters 8 and 10). Still, the results of the Reichstag elections are worth studying more closely as barometers of socio-economic and political trends in pre-1914 Germany. If election results provide a broad gauge of what kind of constitutional and political order they favoured and were hoping for, the picture is not uplifting. Party politics became more embittered between those who wanted to preserve the status quo and rejected demands for social reform and greater equity in the distribution of the fruits of economic prosperity. They were pitted against the growing number of working-class supporters of the SPD and the left-wing trade unions who agitated for being given a greater share of the economic pie and for shifting the centre of power and political influence away from the monarchy and its constitutional privileges towards the Reichstag. Middle-class parties which were looking for a middle road between outright reaction and radical reform lost support among their original constituencies. Fearful of the ‘masses’ and the Social Democrats who were wrongly seen as promoters of revolution 178

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

and traitors of the Fatherland, the middle classes nudged their leaders to ally themselves with the Conservatives and the nationalist associations that had cropped up demanding rearmament and a more assertive foreign policy (see Table 9.56). The history of the immediate origins of the First World War is examined by Roger Chickering in Chapter 12. Suffice it to say here that most of the evidence still points to the German military leadership, in cooperation with their colleagues in Vienna, as being the decisive influence on Emperor Wilhelm II to sign the mobilization order on 1 August 1914. There had been many warnings against unleashing a major war between the European powers, but they were pushed aside in the expectation that the war would end in a German victory by Christmas. When this did not happen and the conflict escalated into a war of attrition, the consequences were horrendous on all sides. Focusing on the demographic impact in Germany, some two million soldiers died at the western front in the trenches and in the war of movement in the east against Russia. Hundreds of thousands returned as cripples with amputated limbs or psychically mutilated, suffering from shell shock and depression, from what is nowadays diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At home, the war had brought increasing starvation that ultimately cost an estimated 700,000 civilian lives. After some 200,000 war widows who had remarried by 1924 dropped out of the pension system that had been promulgated in the Weimar Republic, there were some 372,000 women left who dependent on public support for war widows. The plight of orphans who had lost one or both parents exacerbated these public burdens, not to mention the psychic stress that the sense of severe loss and prolonged mourning inflicted on hundreds of thousands of families. The evermore total mobilization not only of the country’s manpower resources but also of its industries and agriculture provided an enormous temporary boost to the economy. But when Germany finally lost the war in 1918, the capacities that had been created were useless. Much of the machinery was clapped-out and required replacement and modernization. Millions of veterans returned from the front in search of jobs that were simply not available. Unemployment and destitution were widespread. The lack of finance was largely a result of the way the Kaiser and his government had paid for the war effort. Instead of raising taxes and taking the costs of the war straight out of the pockets of the citizens, they had persuaded patriotic Germans to take their savings to the bank to be used to pay for the war in return for war bonds, that is, certificates that could be redeemed after a German victory with a nice interest payment on top. The funds for this operation were to be extracted from Germany’s defeated enemies in the shape of draconian reparations. All these plans had collapsed in a revolutionary upheaval that resulted in the end of the Hohenzollern monarchy and the emergence of a parliamentary republic. And the only way the new government could get rid of the war debts it had inherited was to debase the currency and turn the bond certificates into worthless scraps of paper. The First World War that was to lead to victory, to a stabilization of an increasingly shaky monarchy and a new prosperity built on territorial expansion and exploitation of the neighbouring economies, had produced a socio-economic and political catastrophe. 179

Nineteenth-Century Germany

What had generated great optimism in the late nineteenth century demographically, socio-economically, culturally and politically had evaporated. The pre-1914 Germany that, as the tables in the appendix demonstrate, had once been looking towards a broadly bright future in the twentieth century was gone.

Select bibliography Bade, K.-J., Population, Labour and Migration in 19th- and 20th-Century (Germany, 1987). Desai, A. V., Real Wages in Germany, 1971–1914 (1968). Henderson, W. O., The Rise of German Industrial Power, 1834–1914 (1975). Hochstadt, S., Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany, 1820–1989 (1999). Hohorst, G., et al. (eds), Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch II (1978). [This is the only German title listed, but useful for statistics.] Knodel, J., The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871–1939 (1974). Lee, W. R. (ed.), Industrialisation and Industrial Growth in Germany (1986). Pierenkemper, T. and Tilly, R., The German Economy during the 19th Century (2004). Witt, P.-Chr., ed., Wealth and Taxation in Central Europe (1987).

Society and political mobilization Anderson, M. L., Practicing Democracy (2000). Augustine, D., Patricians and Parvenus (1994). Beck, H., The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia, 1815–1970 (1995). Dahrendorf, R., Democracy and Society in Germany (1968). Evans, R. J. and Lee, W. R., eds, The German Family (1980). Gay, R., The Jews of Germany (1992). Gispen, K., New Professions, Old Order (1990). Iggers, G. G., ed., The Social History of Politics (1986). Kocka, J., Facing Total War (1987). Lidtke, V., The Alternative Culture (1985). Ritter, G. A., Social Welfare in Germany and Britain (1983). Schofer, L., The Formation of a Modern Labor Force (1975). Spencer, E. G., Management and Labor in Imperial Germany (1984). Sperber, J., Popular Catholicism in 19th-Century Germany (1984). Sperber, J., The Kaiser’s Voter (1997). Spree, R., Health and Social Class in Imperial Germany (1987). Stern, F., Gold and Iron (1977).

180

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

APPENDIX: STATISTICS FOR GERMANY, 1841–1922 Tables 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17 9.18 9.19 9.20 9.21 9.22 9.23 9.24 9.25 9.26 9.27 9.28 9.29 9.30 9.31 9.32 9.33 9.34

Population growth and movements, 1876–1922 Number of inhabitants in Germany and its regions, 1864 and 1910 (000s) Emigration from Germany, 1865–1913 Foreigners living in Germany, 1871–1910 Average number of children per marriage by economic sector and occupation, 1905–14 Average life expectancy in relation to age in Germany, 1871–1910 Mortality rates in the Reich, 1871–1910; number of 1,000 live births reaching Average infant mortality in Prussia–towns and countryside, 1876–1914 (Per thousand) Infant mortality rates in different occupational groups in Prussia, 1877–1913 (%) Mortality rates for different age groups and regions of Prussia, 1876–1913 (per 10,000 in each age group) Population density in the major states, 1841–1910 (per square kilometre) Internal migration in Germany, 1880–1910 Regional origins of Bochum workers by occupation, 1907 (%) Growth of some major cities, 1850–1910 (000s) Population in different-sized communities, 1871–1910 (%) Budgeting for rent by different income groups in Hamburg, 1874–1901 (%) Unemployment, 1900–13 Social origins of high school teachers, physicians and engineers in Prussia and Württemberg, 1876–1900 (%) Social origins of higher civil servants in Westphalia and Bavaria, 1851–1914 (%) Illiteracy rates among military service recruits (%) Patterns of public education in Prussia, 1864–1911 Students in higher education, 1891–1939 Distribution of 10,000 residents according to religious denomination in 1871 and 1910 Jewish population in different-sized communities in Prussia, 1885–1910 (%) Occupational distribution of Jewish working population 1895 and 1907 Female student body in Prussia, 1896/97 Primary school teachers in Germany, 1901–11 Female labour force, 1882–1907 (no. and %) Percentage of women in major branches, 1882–1907 Number of female employees by sector, 1875–1907 (000s) Age and marital status of female factory workers in Prussia, 1875 (%) Structure of the labour force in occupational groups, 1875–1983 (000s) Net agricultural production at current prices, 1870–1913 (mill. marks) Structure of the labour force in occupational groups, 1875–1913 (000s) 181

Nineteenth-Century Germany

9.35 Average hours of work per week in major branches of industry, 1895–1914 9.36 Production indices of key industries, 1870–1913 9.37 Pig iron production in Germany, Britain, France and Russia, in annual averages, 1870–1913 (000s) 9.38 Net investments in agriculture and industry, 1870–1913 (%) 9.39 Growth in wealthy taxpayers and their average wealth per capita in Prussia, 1895 and 1907 9.40 Number of taxpaying individuals by income group in Prussia, 1882–1910 9.41 Average annual wages and salaries, 1870–1913 (in marks) 9.42 Indices of nominal wages, cost of living, and real wages, 1871–1913, According to A. V. Desai (A) and J. Kuczynski (B) 9.43 Allocation of resources in households of 522 working-class families and of 218 families of middle-level civil servants and teachers, 1909 9.44 Agricultural units in Reich by size, 1882 and 1908 (000s and %) 9.45 Age structure of urban population according to size of town, 1890, per 1,000 inhabitants 9.46 Age structure of German society, 1900 and 1910 (per thousand) 9.47 Agreements on wages and conditions in the metal industries of Brunswick (A) and Hanover (B), 1910–14 9.48 Strikes and lockouts, 1900–1913 (Base on trade union statistics [A] Reich statistics [B]) 9.49 Sickness insurance, 1885–1914 9.50 Accident insurance, 1886–1914 9.51 Workers’ pension insurance, 1891–1914 9.52 Trade union membership, 1890–1914 (000s) and SDP membership, 1905– 14 (000s) 9.53 Women in trade unions and the SPD, 1892–1913, in total numbers (A) and % (B) 9.54 Ordinary Reich revenue, 1901–14 (mill, marks) 9.55 Growth of Reich expenditure, 1872–1913 (mill. marks) 9.56 Membership of nationalist associations, 1881–1914

182

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.1  Population growth and movements, 1876–1922 Average annual growth rate in decade following (%)

No. of emigrants in decade following (000s)

Year

Populationa (000s)

1871

40,997

1.01

626

1881

45,428

0.89

1,342

1891

49,762

1.30

530

1901

56,874

1.42

280

1911

65,359

1922

61,900

0.60

Notes: a1871–1911: German Empire, incl. Alsace-Lorraine. Source: Hoffmann, 173f.

Table 9.2  Number of inhabitants in Germany and its regions, 1864 and 1910 (000s) Region

1864

1871

1910

German Empire

39,392

Prussia

23,582

–

40,165

  East Prussia

1,761

–

2,064

  West Prussia

1,253

–

1,704

  City of Berlin

633

–

2,071

 Brandenburg

1,984

–

4,093

 Pomerania

1,438

–

1,717

 Posen

1,524

–

2,100

 Silesia

3,511

–

5,226

 Saxony

2,045

–

3,089

999

–

1,621

 Hanover

1,926

–

2,942

 Westphalia

1,667

–

4,125

 Hesse-Nassau

1,388

–

2,221

 Rhineland

3,372

–

7,121

65

–

71

 Schleswig-Holstein

 Hohenzollern

40,997 64,568

(Continued)

183

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.2  (Continued) Region

1864

1871

1910

Bavaria

4,775

–

6,887

  Bavaria east of Rhine

4,150

–

5,950

625

–

937

Saxony (Kingdom of)

2,337

–

4,807

Württemberg

1,748

–

2,437

Baden

1,432

–

2,143

Hesse

817

–

1,282

Mecklenburg-Schwerin

553

–

640

Saxony (Grand Duchy)

230

–

417

99

–

106

Oldenburg

314

–

483

Brunswick

293

–

494

Saxe-Meiningen

178

–

279

Saxe-Altenburg

142

–

216

Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

165

–

257

Anhalt

193

–

331

Schwarzburg-Sondershausen

66

–

90

Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt

74

–

101

Waldeck

59

–

62

Reuß a.L.

44

–

73

Reuß j.L.

86

–

153

Schaumburg-Lippe

31

–

47

111

–

151

Lübeck

46

–

117

Bremen

104

–

299

Hamburg

279

–

1,015

1,584

–

1,874

 Rhine-Palatinate

Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Lippe

Alsace-Lorraine Source: Grütter, 85f.

184

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.3  Emigration from Germany, 1865–1913 Total

To the United States

1865–9

108,5

103,9

1870–4

96,9

90,2

1875–9

29,3

24,0

1880–4

172,9

159,6

1885–9

99,6

90,5

1890–4

92,4

85,7

1895–9

28,5

24,0

1900–4

28,2

25,7

1905–9

27,1

24,7

1910–13

23,2

18,6

Source: Hohorst, 38f.

Table 9.4  Foreigners living in Germany, 1871–1910 Year

No. (000s)

‰ of population

% of these from Eastern Europe

1871

206.8

5.0

43.6

1880

276.1

6.1

48.2

1890

433.3

8.8

50.5

1900

778.7

13.8

56.2

1910

1,259.9

19.4

63.9

Source: Marschalk, 175.

Table 9.5  Average number of children per marriage by economic sector and occupation, 1905–14 Occupational group

Year of marriage Pre-1905

1905–9

1910–14

 Self-employed

5.5

4.6

4.1

 Workers

6.1

5.2

4.7

  Agric. pop. in total

5.5

4.7

4.1

Agricultural

(Continued)

185

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.5  (Continued) Year of marriage

Occupational group

Pre-1905

1905–9

1910–14

 Self-employed

4.0

3.1

2.6

 Public officials and professional soldiers

3.5

2.9

2.3

  Non-manual workers

3.4

2.7

2.3

  Manual workers

4.7

3.8

3.3

  Non-agric. pop. in total

4.5

3.4

2.9

Total average

4.7

3.6

3.1

Non-agricultural

Source: Spree, 204.

Table 9.6  Average life expectancy in relation to age in Germany, 1871–1910 1871–80

Age

1901–10

Male

Female

Male

Female

0

35.6

38.5

44.8

48.3

1

46.5

48.1

55.1

57.2

15

42.4

44.2

46.7

49.0

30

31.4

33.1

34.6

36.9

45

21.2

22.8

22.9

25.3

65

9.6

10.0

10.4

11.1

Source: Marschalck, 166.

Table 9.7  Mortality rates in the Reich, 1871–1910; number of 1,000 live births reaching Year

Age 1

Age 15

Age 30

Age 45

Age 65

Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female

1871–80

747

783

609

639

545

576

453

485

248

297

1881–90

758

793

624

653

567

596

477

511

269

326

1891–1900

766

801

665

696

613

644

530

568

313

378

1901–10

798

830

720

749

671

698

594

627

361

435

Source: Marschalck, 165.

186

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.8  Average infant mortality in Prussia–towns and countryside, 1876–1914 (per thousand) Legitimate

Year

Illegitimate

Town

Country

Town

Country

1876–80

211

183

403

312

1881–5

211

186

398

319

1886–90

210

187

395

332

1891–5

203

187

385

336

1896–1900

195

185

374

336

1903

183

184

342

332

1906

168

167

303

303

1909

146

160

269

288

1912

130

141

234

262

1914

147

159

261

287

Source: Reulecke, 217.

Table 9.9  Infant mortality rates in different occupational groupsa in Prussia, 1877–1913 (%) Domestics, household Total servants population

Selfemployed

Public officials

White collar

Skilled workers

Unskilled workers

1887–9

18.2

17.5

18.6

18.9

20.6

29.6

20.1

1880–2

18.4

18.0

18.1

19.8

21.6

29.9

20.8

1883–5

18.7

17.8

18.3

20.2

22.3

30.5

21.2

1886–8

18.3

17.0

18.0

19.7

21.8

21.5

20.6

1889–91

18.3

16.3

17.3

19.6

22.2

29.9

20.6

1892–3

18.3

16.2

17.4

19.9

22.8

30.0

20.9

1894–5

17.6

15.6

17.1

19.3

22.6

29.7

20.4

1896–7

17.0

14.9

16.1

18.7

22.5

28.5

19.8

1898–9

17.1

14.7

16.1

19.0

22.2

28.6

19.9

1900–1

17.6

15.3

16.6

19.4

23.7

31.0

20.6

1902–3

16.0

12.5

13.6

17.1

20.2

26.6

18.3

1904–5

16.3

12.9

13.7

18.1

21.7

28.2

19.1

1906–7

14.6

11.0

12.0

16.2

19.7

25.5

17.3

1908–9

14.3

10.0

10.9

15.4

19.4

25.2

16.8

Year

(Continued)

187

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.9  (Continued) Domestics, household Total servants population

Selfemployed

Public officials

White collar

Skilled workers

Unskilled workers

1910–11

14.5

9.9

11.6

15.9

20.0

25.8

17.2

1912–13

12.3

8.3

9.3

13.1

17.4

22.5

14.8

Year

a

 p to 1901, armed forces excluded. From 1902, groups composed as follows (symbols taken from U Preußische Statistik): self-employed = Aa, Ab, Ba, Ca (up to 1901 including liberal professions); public officials = Ea, Eb, Ec (after 1901 including liberal professions and armed forces); white collar = Bb, Cb, skilled workers = Bc, Cc, Cd; unskilled workers = Ad, Bd, D2; domestics and household servants = Ac, D1. Average percentages for two- and three-year periods, including illegitimate children, but excluding stillbirths. Groups determined by father’s occupation for legitimate children and by mother’s occupation for illegitimate children.

Source: Spree, 194.

Table  9.10 Mortality rates for different age groups and regions of Prussia, 1876–1913 (per 10,000 in each age group) Year 1876

1901

1913

a

Age Group

Aa

B

C

D

F

G

H

0–1

2,055

2,181

2,207

1,512

1,680

2,950

1,883

2,015

1–15

168

190

185

207

185

257

244

240

15–30

66

58

64

81

80

68

88

75

30–60

150

164

172

167

164

155

197

178

60–70

481

520

512

535

494

463

565

490

All Groups

256

269

275

254

252

301

290

285

0–1

1,997

2,185

2,496

1,590

1,678

2,243

1,907

1,631

1–15

104

127

151

127

113

104

129

178

15–30

50

49

54

56

49

46

48

48

30–60

117

115

111

125

115

122

136

127

60–70

411

376

370

466

434

410

452

516

All Groups

207

227

252

199

190

180

204

213

0–1

1,420

1,853

1,951

1,255

1,216

–

–

–

1–15

58

60

60

67

54

–

–

–

15–30

41

42

39

47

41

–

–

–

30–60

94

103

95

95

87

–

–

–

60–70

380

353

347

420

398

–

–

–

All Groups

149

177

182

137

125

140

–

–

A= Prussia; B = District of Königsberg; C = District of Gumbinnen;

D = District of Arnsberg/Westphalia; E = District of Düsseldorf; F = Berlin; G = Dortmund; H = Essen Sources: Spree, 191; Conze, 276.

188

E

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.11  Population density in the major states, 1841–1910 (per square kilometre) Region

1841

1871

1890

1910

Germany

60

76

92

120

Prussia

54

71

86

115

  East Prussia

36

49

53

56

  West Prussia

36

52

56

67

 Posen

42

55

61

72

 Pomerania

34

48

51

57

 Silesia

71

92

105

130

 Saxony

65

83

102

122

 Westphalia

69

88

120

204

 Rhineland

97

133

175

264

Bavaria

57

64

74

91

Baden

84

97

110

142

Württemberg

85

93

104

125

115

171

234

321

–

107

111

129

Saxony Alsace-Lorraine Source: Reulecke, 201.

Table 9.12  Internal migration in Germany, 1880–1910 From 1880 to 1890 To

East

B’burg

North

Central

West

South

Total

East

x

281

106

122

103

12

624

From B’burg

23

x

15

21

6

2

67

North

8

11

x

18

28

7

72

Central

14

49

42

x

25

15

145

West

6

12

24

17

x

39

98

South

3

10

9

26

54

x

102

Total

54

363

196

204

216

75

1108 (Continued)

189

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.12  (Continued) From 1890 to 1900 To

East

B’burg

North

Central

West

South

Total

East

x

249

83

90

249

14

685

B’burg

34

x

15

24

17

6

96

North

18

20

x

20

59

9

126

Central

26

58

49

x

62

22

217

West

17

19

25

12

x

47

120

South

5

16

9

24

85

x

139

100

362

181

170

472

98

1383

East

B’burg

North

Central

West

South

Total

East

x

233

90

11

181

16

531

B’burg

26

x

23

17

21

9

96

From

Total

From 1900 to 1910 To From

North

9

19

x

12

47

9

96

Central

27

72

45

x

57

28

229

West

19

24

28

20

x

39

130

South

4

14

13

17

49

x

97

Total

85

362

199

77

355

101

1179

Source: Ogilvie/Overy, 14.

Table 9.13  Regional origins of Bochum workers by occupation, 1907 (%) Occupation

All Long-distance Rhineland/ North/East Natives migrants migrants Westphalia/Waldeck Germany Others

Chemicals

10.1

89.9

59.6

24.7

36.9

21.3

Mining/iron production

16.2

83.8

46.8

50.1

24.0

9.7

Construction

17.7

82.3

47.0

43.3

15.3

23.7

Food

27.0

73.0

22.7

52.4

5.2

15.4

Textiles

27.1

72.9

28.2

74.1

4.7

21.1

Machines/instr.

27.8

72.2

35.9

40.2

15.1

16.9

Printing

30.1

69.9

36.2

36.1

9.6

24.2

Woodworking

30.4

69.6

34.9

42.0

11.5

16.1

Leather

31.6

68.4

25.6

44.7

9.8

13.9

Paper

33.3

66.7

15.0

54.0

4.6

8.1

21.6

77.4

38.2

44.5

18.5

15.5

Total Industry Source: Crew, 80.

190

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.14  Growth of some major cities, 1850–1910 (000s) City

1850

1871

1880

1900

1910

Berlin

412

826

1,122

1,889

2,071

Hamburg

175

290

290

706

931

Munich

107

169

230

500

596

Leipzig

63

107

149

456

679

Dresden

97

177

221

396

548

Cologne

97

129

145

373

517

Breslau

111

208

273

423

512

Frankfurt/Main

65

91

137

289

415

Düsseldorf

27

69

95

214

359

Nuremberg

54

83

100

261

333

Hanover

28

88

123

236

302

9

52

57

119

295

Chemnitz

34

68

95

207

288

Duisburg

9

31

41

93

229

Dortmund

11

44

67

143

214

Kiel

16

32

44

108

212

Mannheim

24

40

53

141

194

Essen

Sources: Sandweg, 25; Reulecke, 203.

Table 9.15  Population in different-sized communities, 1871–1910 (%) Number of Inhabitants

1871

1880

1910

under 2,000

63.9

58.6

40.0

2,000–5,000

12.4

12.7

11.2

5,000–20,000

11.2

12.6

14.1

20,000–100,000

7.7

8.9

13.4

100,000 +

4.8

7.2

21.3

Sources: Hohorst, 52; Sandweg, 25.

191

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.16  Budgeting for rent by different income groups in Hamburg, 1874–1901 (%) Annual income (in marks)

1868

1874

1882

1891

1901

900–1,200

19.81

20.87

21.86

24.12

24.67

1,200–1,800

19.89

21.13

18.94

22.22

23.19

1,800–2,400

20.27

20.88

19.50

22.09

21.61

2,400–3,000

19.45

19.21

18.78

20.81

20.53

3,000–3,600

19.59

19.03

17.90

19.15

19.25

3,600–4,200

19.28

18.17

18.33

18.71

18.31

4,200–4,800

18.89

17.38

17.22

17.88

17.36

4,800–6,000

18.55

17.35

18.33

17.71

16.69

6,000–12,000

15.99

15.48

16.72

15.12

14.30

12,000–30,000

11.51

10.75

12.23

10.38

9.61

30,000–60,000

6.68

7.44

8.06

6.21

5.99

60,000 +

3.72

3.78

3.87

3.26

3.04

Source: Kaelble, 131.

Table 9.17  Unemployment, 1900–13 Year

No. (000s)

% of Working Population

1900a

183

1.9

1901

631

6.7

1902

272

2.9

1903

268

2.7

1904

211

2.1

1905

166

1.6

1906

128

1.2

1907

175

1.6

1908

319

3.0

1909

307

2.9

1910

211

1.9

1911

215

1.9

1912

239

2.0

1913

348

3.0

S tatistics for industry only, excluding handicrafts and only as far as recorded by trade unions. Actual figures probably much higher.

a

Source: Witt, 384.

192

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.18  Social origins of high school teachers, physicians and engineers in Prussia and Württemberg, 1876–1900 (%) Class

Teachersa

Physicianb

Engineersc

Prussia (1887–1900)

Württemberg (1887–1900)

Prussia (1876–1900)

Württemberg (1876–1900)

Upper/upper middle classd

37

30

72

34

23

Middle classe

41

66

22

61

64

7

1

1

0

5

Lower class

f

Based on students of philology Based on students of medicine c With academic training d Including officers, landowners, higher civil servants, professionals and clerics e Including artisans, white-collar employees and farmers f Including lower civil service, domestics and workers a

b

Source: Jarausch, Quantifizierung, 290.

Table 9.19  Social origins of higher civil servants in Westphalia and Bavaria, 1851–1914 (%) Upper/upper middle class

Middle class

(1851–75)

89

10

(1876–1900)

90

10

(1901–14)

92

5

(1851–75)

54

42

3

(1876–1900)

60

35

2

(1901–14)

56

25

Region Westphalia

Bavaria

Lower class

Source: Jarausch, Quantifizierung, 287.

193

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.20  Illiteracy rates among military service recruits (%) Region/state

1875–6

1890–1

1894–5

2.37

0.54

0.22

Germany Prussia

3.19

0.82

0.32

West Prussia

11.01

3.86

1.22

Posen

13.91

2.58

0.98

0.74

0.09

0.05

Bavaria

Rhineland

1.79

0.03

0.03

Saxony

0.23

0.07

0.07

Baden

0.22

0.03

0.03

France

ca. 20.0a

–

Russia

–

ca. 70.0

ca. 60.0c

ca. 10.0d

–

–

England and Wales

– b

For 1873 For 1888 c For 1896 d For bridegrooms in 1866 a

b

Sources: Hohorst, 167; Grütter, 28.

Table 9.21  Patterns of public education in Prussia, 1864–1911 Primary schools No. of pupils (000s)

1864

1886

1911

Middle schools

High schools

1864

1886

1911

1864

1886

1911

2.825

4.838

6.572

91

135

181

79

152

260

Pupils per teacher

92

75

56

41

34

30

21

17

21

Pupils per 100 pop.

15

17

16

0.47

0.47

0.41

0.41

0.54

0.65

Source: Hohorst, 157ff.

Table 9.22  Students in higher education, 1891–1939 Year

Total

Universities

Technical univ.

Othersa

1891

33,992

27,398

4,209

2,385

1902

52,538

35,857

13,151

3,530

1912

71,710

56,483

11,349

3,878

1928

110,808

11.6

c

1936

71,850

13.7

1939b

56,477

11.1

b

Academies of mining, forestry, agriculture and vet. med. Summer semester. c Winter semester. a

b

Sources: Hohorst, 161; Abelshauser, 171, 169.

194

Women (%)

c. 3.6

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.23  Distribution of 10,000 residents according to religious denomination in 1871 and 1910 State

1/12/1871

1/12/1910

Other Other/ Other Evang. Cathol. Christ. Jews Without Evang. Cathol. Christ.

Jews

6,497

3,349

22

132

0.3

6,182

3,631

47

104

Prov. East Prussia

8,609

1,278

34

79

0.1

8,434

1,409

84

3

Prov. West Prussia

4,819

4,880

98

203

0.3

4,632

5,182

99

82

City of Berlin

8,904

626

31

436

3

8,155

1,173

53

434

Prov. Brandenburg

9,760

170

14

56

0.1

8,984

734

50

150

Prov. Pomerania

9,761

118

30

91

0.0

9,536

328

70

52

Prov. Posen

3,228

6,374

7

391

0.1

3,079

6,773

20

126

Prov. Silesia

4,749

5,115

10

126

0.3

4,208

5,669

25

86

Prov. Saxony

9,351

603

18

28

0.1

9,161

753

23

25

Prov. Schleswig-Hol.

9,894

60

10

36

0.1

9,556

330

61

21

Prov. Hanover

8,727

1,191

17

65

0.1

8,513

1,372

43

63

Prov. Westphalia

4,543

5,347

13

97

0.1

4,722

5,143

58

51

Prov. Hesse-Nassau

7,056

2,655

28

259

2

6,839

2,824

56

233

Prov. Rhineland

2,534

7,343

16

107

0.1

2,946

6,903

41

80

269

9,618

5

108

–

503

9,437

2

57

Bavaria

2,761

7,123

11

104

1

2,821

7,061

20

80

Saxony

9,755

209

19

13

3

9,405

491

53

37

Württemberg

6,867

3,044

21

67

0.2

6,856

3,036

53

49

Baden

3,359

6,449

16

176

0.2

3,856

5,932

62

121

Hesse

6,852

2,803

46

297

2

6,615

3,101

52

188

Mecklenburg-Schwerin

9,921

24

2

53

0.4

9,618

320

20

22

Hamburg

9,044

229

93

407

227

9,163

503

42

199

Alsace-Lorraine

1,744

7,973

14

264

5

2,178

7,629

21

165

6,231

3,621

20

125

5

6,159

3,669

46

95

Prussia

Hohenzollem

Total Reich Sources: Hohorst, 54ff.

195

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.24  Jewish population in different-sized communities in Prussia, 1885–1910 (%) Number of inhabitants

1885

1900

1910

under 20,000

53.7

44.8

28.4

20,000–50,000

7.7

9.2

8.2

50,000–100,000

5.9

5.8

4.0

32.7

49.2

59.5

over 100,000 Source: Aubin, 607.

Table 9.25  Occupational distribution of Jewish working population, 1895 and 1907 Occupation

1895

Percentage

1907

Percentage

Manufacturing

46,000

19

63,000

22

Trade/services

133,000

56

146,000

51

Public service/professional

15,000

6

19,000

7

Self-employed

40,000

17

55,000

19

Source: Aubin, 608.

Table 9.26  Structure of female student body in Prussia, 1896/97 1. Age

No. of students

No. of students

14

Single

20–30

93

Married

23

30+

87

Widowed

3

Divorced

1

2. Citizenship German West European

132

183

6. Purpose of study

8

General cultivation

160

Russian

14

Oberlehrerin exam

40

American

53

PhD

5

Medical exam

5

Legal teacher exam

1

3. Religion Protestant

158

Catholic

11

Jewish

29

Other

3

4. Family status Single

183

7. Subject of study Science/mathematics

20

History/philosophy

28

Modern languages

65

Ancient languages Art history/literature

5

Married

23

Widowed

3

Economics

6

Divorced

1

Theology

3

Medicine

9

Law

1

Source: Jarausch, Students, 111.

196

5. Family status

Under 20

76

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.27  Number of full-time primary school teachers in Germany, 1901–11 Male Teachers

Female Teachers

Year

Total

Total

Of whom Catholic

Total

Of whom Catholic

1901

146,540

124,027

–

22,513

–

1906

166,597

137,213

–

29,384

–

1911

187,485

148,217

45,965

39,268

20,239

Source: Bölling, 27.

Table 9.28  Structure of the female labor force, 1882–1907 (no. and %) 1882

1895

1907

Total no. (000s)

7,794

8,219

9,742

Female rate of employment

24.0

25.0

30.4

Male rate of employment

95.5

95.0

95.2

Employment rate of single women

69.4

67.5

71.7

9.5a

12.2a

26.3a

Women working in agriculture as percentage of all working women

61.4

53.5

49.8

Women working in domestic services as percentage of all working women

18.0

18.2

16.1

Women working in crafts and industry as percentage of all working women

12.8

16.8

19.5

7.7

11.5

14.6

Employment rate of married women

Women in tertiary sector as percentage of all working women a

Probably higher because Reich Statistical Office applied rather restrictive criteria to helping family members.

Source: Müller, 35.

Table 9.29  Percentage of women in major branches, 1882–1907 Branch

1882

1895

1907

Agriculture

38.7

36.3

40.8

Metal production

2.7

2.9

2.7

Electrical engineering

4.7

12.7

16.4

Chemicals

14.2

17.9

19.9

Paper and printing

10.0

10.1

13.0

Leather, textile and clothing

34.1

42.7

49.4

Food and alcohol

12.1

17.2

22.3

0.7

1.0

0.9

Commerce

17.4

19.4

28.2

Transport

2.6

1.5

3.5

Banking and insurance

0.7

2.2

5.5

Education

12.4

36.8

32.4

Health

55.9

57.6

54.3

Cleaning services

91.8

93.8

87.4

Construction

Source: Müller, 132.

197

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.30  Number of female employees by sectors, 1875–1907 (000s)

Year

Agriculture, forestry, fishing Mining

Commerce, banking, Industry, insurance, crafts restaurant

Transport

Other Domestic services services Total

1875

–

12

960

376

7

–

–

–

1882

3,935

14

1,200

494

8

116

1,400

7,167

1895

4,153

17

1,536

770

12

180

1,490

8,158

1907

4,599

21

2,154

1,284

36

301

1,430

9,825

Source: Hoffmann, 210.

Table 9.31  Age and marital status of female factory workers in Prussia, 1875 (%) Age

Married

Single

Total

16–18

0.6

99.4

25.1

18–25

11.4

88.6

43.0

Over 25

56.0

44.0

31.9

Over 16

22.9%

77.1%

100.0%

Source: Frevert, 329.

Table 9.32  Structure of the labour force in occupational groups, 1875–1913 (000s) Sector

1875

1885

1895

1905

1913

Agriculture

9,230

9,700

9,788

9,926

10,701

286

345

432

665

863

5,153

6,005

7,524

9,572

10,857

349

461

620

901

1,174

1,116

1,457

1,970

2,806

3,474

(1,490)

1,488

1,571

1,541

1,542

Mining Industry and handicraft Transport Commerce/banking Insurance, hotels, domestic services a

Other services

589

659

894

1,159

1,493

Defence

430

462

606

651

864

18,643

20,577

23,405

27,221

30,968

Total a

Federal Rep. Including restaurants.

b

Source: Hoffmann, 206.

198

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.33  Net agricultural productiona at current prices, 1870–1913 (mill. marks) Year

Cereals and vegetables

Meat

Milk, eggs, etc.

Total

1870

1,698

976

1,406

4,080

1871

1,775

1,176

1,507

4,458

1872

2,094

1,296

1,802

5,192

1873

2,173

1,414

1,911

5,498

1874

2,692

1,495

1,622

5,809

1875

2,073

1,417

1,579

5,069

1876

2,061

1,419

1,814

5,294

1877

2,270

1,355

1,933

5,558

1878

2,291

1,454

1,578

5,323

1879

1,994

1,455

1,484

4,933

1880

2,316

1,426

1,677

5,419

1881

2,426

1,428

1,574

5,428

1882

2,206

1,471

1,570

5,247

1883

2,258

1,557

1,732

5,547

1884

2,185

1,634

1,676

5,495

1885

2,085

1,653

1,558

5,296

1886

2,035

1,695

1,484

5,214

1887

2,061

1,670

1,714

5,445

1888

2,078

1,767

1,629

5,474

1889

2,048

1,911

1,744

5,703

1890

2,451

2,019

2,042

6,512

1891

2,304

1,880

1,894

6,078

1892

2,798

1,922

1,782

6,502

1893

2,447

1,950

1,959

6,356

1894

2,206

2,073

2,009

6,288

1895

2,287

2,119

1,787

6,193

1896

2,224

2,282

1,809

6,315

1897

2,397

2,534

2,122

7,053

1898

2,738

2,753

2,251

7,742

1899

2,655

2,704

2,054

7,413 (Continued)

199

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.33  (Continued) Year

Cereals and vegetables

Meat

Milk, eggs, etc.

Total

1900

2,842

2,647

2,115

7,604

1901

2,544

2,744

2,142

7,430

1902

2,832

2,640

2,452

7,924

1903

2,827

2,645

2,440

7,912

1904

3,129

2,803

2,297

8,229

1905

3,082

3,275

2,675

9,032

1906

2,845

3,495

2,970

9,310

1907

3,400

3,185

3,041

9,626

1908

3,693

3,539

2,875

10,107

1909

3,470

3,592

3,206

10,468

1910

3,168

3,986

3,545

10,699

1911

3,116

4,110

3,680

10,906

1912

3,931

4,606

3,847

12,384

1913

3,540

4,593

3,607

11,740

a

After deduction of seeds, animal feedstuffs and processing losses.

Source: Hoffmann, 313.

Table 9.34  Structure of the labour force in occupational groups, 1875–1913 (000s) Sector

1875

1885

1895

1905

1913

Agriculture

9,230

9,700

9,788

9,926

10,701

286

345

432

665

863

5,153

6,005

7,524

9,572

10,857

349

461

620

901

1,174

1,116

1,457

1,970

2,806

3,474

(1,490)

1,488

1,571

1,541

1,542

Mining Industry and handicraft Transport Commerce/banking Insurance, hotels,a domestic services Other services

589

659

894

1,159

1,493

Defence

430

462

606

651

864

18,643

20,577

23,405

27,221

30,968

Total a

Including restaurants, etc.

Source: Hoffmann, 205.

200

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.35  Average hours of work per week in major branches of industry, 1895–1914 Year

Total

Coal Mining

Metals

Chemicals

Textiles

1895

64

51.5

63

60

65

1900

62

53

63

60

62.5

1905

60

46

–

60

61

1910

59

48.5

–

–

59

1914

57

50

60

58

–

Source: Hoffmann, 214.

Table 9.36  Production indices of key industries, 1870–1913 Year

Coal

1870

13.9

1875

19.7

1880

24.7

1885 1890

Lignite

Iron

Steel

Shipbuilding

Cars

Chemicals

8.7

7.2

6.0

–

–

–

11.9

10.5

8.8

–

–

–

13.9

14.1

10.9

–

–

–

30.7

17.7

14.1

13.4

–

–

–

36.9

21.9

24.1

18.0

–

–

–

1895

41.7

28.4

28.3

22.4

–

–

–

1900

57.5

46.4

43.6

33.4

–

–

–

1905

63.8

60.2

56.9

47.0

–

–

–

1910

80.4

77.5

76.6

75.8

63.8

51.1

80.5

1913

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

Source: Hoffmann, 340ff., 353ff., 358, 362.

Table 9.37  Pig iron production in Germany, Britain, France and Russia, in annual averages, 1870–1913 (000s) Year

Germany

Britain

France

Russia

1870–4

1,579

6,480

1,211

375

1875–9

1,770

6,484

1,462

424

1880–4

2,893

8,295

1,918

477

1885–9

3,541

7,784

1,626

616

1890–4

4,335

7,402

1,998

1,096

1895–9

5,974

8,777

2,386

1,981

1900–4

7,925

8,778

2,665

2,773

1905–9

10,666

9,855

3,391

2,779

1910–13

14,836

9,792

4,664

3,870

Source: Grütter, 16.

201

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.38  Net investments in agriculture and industry, 1870–1913 (%) Year

Agriculture

Industry

Constructiona

Railroads

Total (mill. marks)

1870–4

10.3

32.6

33.2

23.8

2,040

1875–9

10.8

10.6

53.0

25.5

2,338

1880–4

11.5

37.5

37.5

13.5

2,264

1885–9

13.9

45.3

35.2

5.7

–

1890–4

11.5

34.0

47.9

6.7

–

1895–9

9.0

54.5

30.6

5.9

–

1900–4

11.3

36.1

44.9

7.8

–

1905–9

10.0

43.2

40.4

8.4

–

1910–13

13.8

42.9

35.4

7.9

–

Private non-agricultural and all public construction

a

Source: Hoffmann, 143.

Table 9.39  Growth in wealthy taxpayers and their average wealth per capita in Prussia, 1895 and 1907 1895

Wealth (in marks)

No. of taxpayers

1907

Average wealth per capita

No. of taxpayers

Average wealth per capita

6,000–100,000

1,062,149

24,252

1,608,050

23,295

100,000–500,000

86,552

196,279

135,843

198,802

500,000–1,000,000

8,375

711,475

13,800

713,612

1,000,000–2,000,000

3,429

1,430,700

5,916

1,430,200

2,000,000 +

1,827

4,762,312

3,425

5,321,400

Source: Sombart, 530.

Table 9.40  Number of taxpaying individuals by income group in Prussia, 1882–1910 Annual Income (in marks)

1892

1900

1910

900–1,050

658,811

999,270

1,341,497

1,050–1,200

437,003

591,485

1,111,000

1,200–1,350

234,750

345,466

804,709

1,350–1,500

195,459

265,876

679,904

1,500–1,650

125,133

152,310

436,897

1,650–1,800

120,335

150,541

359,516

1,800–2,100

128,037

160,619

326,167

2,100–2,400

106,087

132,910

233,807

2,400–2,700

71,024

97,307

145,090

2,700–3,000

46,328

67,431

99,154

Source: Sombart, 529.

202

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.41  Average annual wages and salaries, 1870–1913 (in marks) Mining Year

All industries and handicrafts All miners

Metals

Administration

Employees

Workersa

Law, white collarb

Education

1870

506

767

798

–

1,871

1,306

1875

669

929

966

–

2,053

1,647

1880

565

721

750

–

2,416

1,778

1885

622

768

799

–

2,215

1,877

1890

711

966

1,005

1,058

2,515

1,947

1895

738

908

944

1,090

2,540

1,986

1900

834

1,173

1,220

1,287

4,151

2,055

1905

928

1,159

1,205

1,271

3,824

2,115

1910

1,063

1,299

1,347

1,426

3,213

2,409

1913

1,163

1,496

1,667

1,465

3,753

2,607

c

c

With BochumerVerein (Ruhr area) With Maschinenfabrik Esslingen (southwest) c For 1912 a

b

Sources: Hoffmann, 461, 469, 489 f.; Crew, 190; Kaelble, 75.

Table 9.42  Indices of nominal wages, cost of living, and real wages, 1871–1913, According to A. V. Desai (A) and J. Kuczynski (B) A

B

Year

Nominal wages

Cost of living

Real wages

Nominal wages

Cost of living

1871

74

106

70

78

95

82

1875

98

113

87

97

104

93

1880

82

104

79

82

104

79

1890

98

102

96

100

103

97

1895

100

100

100

100

100

100

1900

118

106

111

115

105

110

1910

147

124

119

139

126

110

1913

163

130

125

153

137

112

Real wages

Source: Langewiesche, 102; Aubin, 620.

203

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.43  Allocation of resources in households of 522 working-class families and of 218 families of middle-level civil servants and teachers, 1909 Working-class families

Items

Civil servants’ and teachers’ families

Marks

%

Marks

%

1,478.27

80.6

2,295.32

72.0

Food

883.09

48.1

1,101.50

34.6

Clothing

204.67

11.2

460.41

14.4

Housing/utilities

390.51

21.3

733.41

23.0

356.79

19.5

892.51

28.0

Alcohol

71.79

3.9

66.89

2.1

Insurance

55.52

3.0

129.05

4.0

Newspapers, books, organizations

51.47

2.8

66.88

2.1

Transportation

25.74

1.4

36.56

1.1

Amusement

21.23

1.2

76.12

2.4

State, municipality, church

19.21

1.1

63.06

2.0

Savings

17.57

1.0

40.58

1.3

Health care

15.26

0.8

106.27

3.3

Education (including materials/fees)

11.63

0.6

75.23

2.4

Miscellaneous

67.19

3.7

231.87

7.3

Necessities (total)

Other expenditures (total)

Yearly total

1,835.06

3,187.83

Source: Conze, 79.

Table 9.44 Agricultural units in Reich by size, 1882 and 1908 (000s and %) Size

1907

No.

%

No.

%

3,062

58.0

3,379

58.9

2–5 hectares

981

18.6

1,006

17.6

5–20 hectares

927

17.6

1,066

18.5

20–100 hectares

282

5.3

262

4.6

25

0.5

24

0.4

Under 2 hectares

100+ hectares Source: Aubin, 512.

204

1882

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.45  Age structure of urban population according to size of town, 1890, per 1,000 inhabitants Population

Age

5,000–20,000

20,000–100,000

100,000+

Under 15

345

321

291

15–40

417

450

474

40–60

170

169

177

68

60

57

60+ Source: Reulecke, 208.

Table 9.46  Age structure of German society, 1900 and 1910 (per thousand) Age

1900

1910

0–5

129

120

5–10

114

114

10–15

104

107

15–20

95

97

20–5

91

86

25–30

80

77

30–40

132

139

40–50

101

105

50–60

79

76

60+

79

79

Source: Reulecke, 209.

Table 9.47  Agreements on wages and conditions in the metal industries of Brunswick (A) and Hanover (B), 1910–14 No. of agreements

No. of companies

A

B

A

B

A

B

A

B

1910

5

10

60

262

433

926

7.2

3.5

1911

4

11

57

228

482

982

8.4

4.3

1912

4

11

69

263

438

1,287

6.3

4.9

1913

6

10

105

261

664

1,291

6.3

4.9

1914

8

9

136

251

772

1,024

5.7

4.2

Year

No. of Workers per workers involved company

Source: Boll, 78.

205

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.48  Strikes and lockouts, 1900–1913 (based on trade union statistics [A] and Reich statistics [B]) No. of strikes and. lockouts

Year

No. of employees (000s) A

Working days lost (000s)

A

B

B

A

B

1900

852

1,468

115.7

141.1

1,234.0

3,712.0

1901

727

1,091

48.5

68.2

1,194.5

2,427.0

1902

861

1.106

55.7

70.7

964.3

1,951.0

1903

1,282

1,444

121.6

135.5

2,622.2

4,158.0

1904

1,625

1,990

135.9

145.5

2,120.1

5,285.0

1905

2,323

2,657

508.0

542.6

7,362.8

18,984.0

1906

3480

3626

316.0

376.3

6,317.7

11,567.0

1907

2,792

2,512

281.0

286.0

5,122.5

9,017.0

1908

2,052

1,524

126.9

119.8

2,045.6

3,666.0

1909

45

1,652

131.2

130.9

2,247.5

4,152.0

1910

3,194

3,228

369.0

390.7

9,037.6

17,848.0

1911

2,914

2,798

325.3

385.2

6,864.2

11.466.0

1912

2,825

2.834

479.6

493.7

4,776.8

10,724.0

1913

2,600

2,464

249.0

323.4

5,672.9

11,761.0

Source: Hohorst, 132f.

Table 9.49 Sickness insurance, 1885–1914 Membersa Year

Figures (000s)b

Contributions

Benefits

Members Per member Cash Benefits Per member % of as % Figures in RM per Figures benefits in kind in RM per females population (milions) year (millions) as % as % year

1885

4,294

18.1

9.2

56

13.1

47

56.8

43.2

11.05

1890

6,580

19.9

13.3

91

13.4

84

52.6

47.4

12.82

1895

7,256

22.4

14.4

117

15.6

105

48.5

51.5

14.03

1900

9,521

23.1

16.9

166

17.4

158

49.3

50.7

16.74

1905

11,184

25.3

19.6

250

22.4

232

49.0

51.0

21.05

1910

13,069

27.9

20.3

358

27.4

320

46.8

53.2

24.84

1914

15,610

36.9

23.0

524

33.6

445

46.4

53.6

28.49

I nsured members dependents who were covered against sickness have to be taken into account in two respects. In the case of cash benefits, it has been calculated that the payments made to each member of a sickness fund in 1913 also partly protected, on average, two to three dependants against the economic effects of the breadwinner’s ill-health. This meant that financial hardship caused by ill-health was alleviated for around 62.5 percent of the Reich’s population. Benefits in kind could be extended to members’ dependents who were not themselves liable for contributions through appropriate terms and conditions laid down by the self-managed funds of the insured. This kind of insurance protection, which was made available at first by only a few funds, may well have benefited around 24 million citizens or 36 percent of the Reich’s population by 1913. b Annual averages. a

Source: Ritter, 187.

206

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.50  Accident insurance, 1886–1914

Year

No. of insured (000s)a

No. of persons registered injured or sickb Figures (000s)

% of insured

No. of persons receiving pensions or sickness benefits (000s)

Expenditure Total (mill.)

Benefit per recipient in RM p.a.

1886

3,822

100

2.68

11

10

178

1890

13,680

200

1.46

100

39

202

1895

18,389

310

1.68

318

68

157

1900

18,893

454

2.40

595

101

145

1905

20,243

609

3.00

893

176

151

1910

27,554

673

2.44

1,018

228

160

1914

27,965

705

2.52

1,000

223

178

 nnual averages. It was possible for the same persons to be provided with insurance coverage by several A separate agencies administering insurance. According to figures in the relevant volumes of the Amtliche Nachrichten des Reichsversicherungsamts, the number of persons insured by more than one agency amounted to approximately 1.5 million in 1895, 1.5 million in 1900 and 1905, 3.4 million in 1910, and 3.3 million in 1914. b Persons registered as injured and sick with accident or sickness insurance. a

Source: Ritter, 189.

Table 9.51  Workers’ pension insurance, 1891–1914

Year

Numbers of insured (000s)a

Number of pensions (000s)b

Expenditure (millions)

Revenue

% of Imp. Total govt. Old Age Disable­ment (millions) supplement

Average pension in RM per annum

Of which Total pensions Old age Disablement

1891

11,490

–

–

101

5.9

19

15

123.35

113.38

1895

12,145

–

–

133

12.8

49

41

132.80

123.92

1900

13,015

215

450

187

16.6

104

81

145.54

142.04

1905

13,948

156

858

250

18.8

173

137

159.10

159.45

1910

15,660

114

1,008

307

17.3

219

164

164.31

176.93

1914

16,552

98

1,129

405

15.3

258

200

167.99

200.81

 e number of insured is calculated in each case on the total amount of annual weekly contributions divided Th by the estimated number of weekly contributions, paid annually on a per capita basis. These estimates vary between fifty-two and forty weekly contributions. b For the years 1891 and 1895, figures are available only for pension awards: in 1891, 132,926 new old-age pensions (for people aged 70 or over before the law came into effect) and 31 disablement pensions were awarded: for 1895, the figures were 30,144 and 55,983, respectively. In 1897 the total number of pensions amounted to 226,275 old-age pensions and 237,416 disablement pensions. a

Source: Witt, 380.

207

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.52  Trade union membership, 1890–1914 (000s) and SPD membership, 1905–14 (000s) Year

Free TUs

Christian

Hirsch-Duncker

Total

SPD

1890

278

–

63

357

–

1895

259

5

67

327

–

1900

680

77

92

849

–

1905

1,345

192

116

1,653

384b

1910

2,017

316

122

2,455

720

1913

2,549

343

107

3,024

983

1914

2,076

283

78

2,437

1,086

a

a

Figure for 1891. Figure for 1906.

b

Sources: Groh, 724; Schönhoven, 101; Guttsman, 153.

Table 9.53  Women in trade unions and the SPD, 1892–1913, in total numbers (A) and % (B) Trade unions Year

A

SPD B

A

B

1892

4,355

1.8

–

–

1900

22,844

3.3

–

–

1906

118,908

7.1

6,460

1.7

1910

161,512

8.0

82,642

11.5

1913

223,676

8.8

141,115

14.4

Source: Frevert, 332.

Table 9.54  Ordinary Reich revenue, 1901–14 (mill. marks) Source

1901

1906

1909

1913

1914

Death duties

–

4.2

38.5

46.4

43.6

Capital gains

–

–

–

15.3

2.8

Property tax

–

–

–

–

Stamp duties

84.0

138.6

171.4

258.6

183.1

Tariffs

478.9

557.7

660.2

679.3

560.8

Taxes on consumptiona

333.2

378.4

485.7

659.7

775.8

Matricular contribution

15.2

24.2

48.5

51.9

51.9

Wehrbeitrag (1913)

–

–

–

–

637.4

Post office/railways

42.2

85.4

24.1

5.5

–

Reich Bank

12.8

29.2

16.4

34.7

–

–

–

–

–

43.6b

Special levies

208

–

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change

Table 9.54  (Continued) Source

1901

1906

1909

1913

1914

Other

94.4c

93.3c

196.6c

229.9c

118.3

Loans

332.8

258.4

639.0

109.3

–

Including tobacco, beer, sugar and spirits. Including Reich Bank, Darlehenskasse levy, export levy, transport levy and post office levy. c Including Reich Stationery Office, administrative fees and fund income. a

b

Source: Witt, 378f.

Table 9.55  Growth of Reich expenditure, 1872–1913 (mill. marks) Armamentsb

Administrationc

Social insurance subsidy

Totals

%

Mill.

%

822.1

98.3

14.0

1.7

–

–

836.1

1876–80

583.0

94.4

34.2

5.6

–

–

617.2

1881–5

460.8

95.0

24.0

5.0

–

–

484.8

1886–90

818.1

95.3

32.8

3.8

7.5

0.9

858.4

1891–5

882.9

93.9

40.1

4.3

17.3

1.8

940.3

1896-00

841.1

90.8

62.4

6.7

22.8

2.5

926.3

1901

1,162.9

90.4

94.8

7.4

28.1

2.4

1,286.6

1902

1,122.8

88.7

112.2

8.8

30.4

2.5

1,265.9

1903d

1,105.7

85.6

109.1

8.4

33.7

2.6

1,292.1d

1904

1,152.2

87.9

117.6

9.0

40.6

3.1

1,310.4

1905

1,233.5

88.4

116.9

8.4

42.0

3.2

1,394.6

1906

1,358.2

88.4

131.6

8.5

45.8

3.1

1,535.6

1907

1,631.1

88.4

121.7

6.6

90.7

5.0

1,843.5

1908

1,463.7

89.2

122.1

7.5

54.1

3.3

1,639.9

1909

1,593.6

89.2

134.6

7.6

58.2

3.2

1,786.7

1910

1,771.3

89.5

146.8

7.4

61.9

3.1

1,980.0

1911

1,707.5

88.6

152.4

7.9

66.8

3.5

1,926.7

1912

1,781.3

89.4

146.2

7.3

65.2

3.3

1,992.9

1913

2,406.4

90.1

176.0

6.6

87.9

3.3

2,670.3

Yeara

Mill.

1872–5

Mill.

%

1872–1900: Five-year averages. Including extraordinary expenditure, pensions, invalids welfare and expeditions. c Civilian departments, including debt service for civilian loans. d Including 42.6 million marks not specifically accounted for. a

b

Source: Witt, 380.

209

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Table 9.56  Membership of nationalist associations, 1881–1914

Year

Pan-German League

Navy League

Colonial Society

Eastern Marches Society

1881

–

–

–

–

1,345

1887

–

–

14,838

–

–

1891

21,000

–

17,709

–

36,000

1893

5,000

–

17,154

–

–

1894

5,742

–

16,264

–

–

–

1895

7,715

–

16,474

20,000

26,524

–

1896

9,443

–

17,901

18,500

–

–

1897

12,974

–

21,252

9,400

–

–

1898

17,364

14,252

26,501

–

–

–

1899

20,488

93,991

31,601

–

–

–

1900

21,735

216,749

34,768

20,000

32,000

–

1901

21,924

238,767

33,541

–

–

–

1903

19,068

233,173

31,482

29,300

–

–

1904

19,111

249,241

31,985

–

34,774

–

1906

18,445

315,420

32,787

40,500

–

–

1910

–

290,964

39,025

53,000

45,272

–

1912

c. 17,000

320,174

41,163

–

–

33,000

1914

–

331,493

42,018

54,000

57,452

90,000

Germandom Defence Abroad Society League

Source: Eley, 366.

Bibliographical references Abelshauser, W., et al., eds, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 1914–1945 (Munich, 1978). Aubin, H. and Zorn, W., eds, Handbuch zur Deutschen Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1976). Boll, F., Massenbewegungen in Niedersachsen, 1906–1920 (Bonn, 1981). Bὃlling, R., Volksschullehrer und Politik (Gὃttingen, 1978). Conze, W. and Engelhardt, U., eds, Arbeiterexistenz im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1981). Crew, D., Bochum (Frankfurt, 1980). Eley, G., Reshaping the German Right (New Haven, 1980). Frevert, U., Women in German History (Oxford, 1988). Groh, D., Negative Integration und revolutionärer Attentismus (Frankfurt, 1973).

210

Demographic Growth, Industrialization and Social Change Grὒtter, W. and Lottes, G., Die Industrielle Revolution (Paderborn, 1982). Guttsman, W. L., The German Social Democratic Party, 1875–1933 (London, 1980). Hoffmann, W. G., Das Wachstum der Deutschen Wirtschaft seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1965). Hohorst, G., et al., eds, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, 1870–1914 (Munich, 1975). Jarausch, K. H., Quantifizierung in der Geschichtswissenschaft (Dὒsseldorf, 1976). Jarausch, K. H., Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 1982). Kaelble, H., Industrialisierung und soziale Ungleichheit (Gὃttingen, 1983). Langewiesche, D., ed., Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, 1867/71 bis 1918 (Freiburg, 1984). Marschalck, P., Bevὃlkerungsgeschichte Deutschlands im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1984). Mὒller, W., et al., eds, Strukturwandel der Frauenarbeit, 1880–1980 (Frankfurt, 1983). Ogilvie, S. and Overy, R., Germany: A New Social and Economic History, vol. 3 (New York, 2003). Reulecke, J., Geschichte der Urbanisierung in Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1985). Ritter, G. A., Social Welfare in Germany and Britain (Leamington Spa, 1986). Sandweg, J. and Stὒrmer, M., eds, Industrialisierung und soziale Frage (Munich, 1979). Schὃnhoven, K., Expansion und Konzentration (Stuttgart, 1980). Sombart, W., Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im 19. Jahrhundert und am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1927). Spree, R., Health and Social Class in Imperial Germany (Oxford, 1988). Witt, P.-Chr., Die Finanzpolitik des Deutschen Reiches von 1903 bis 1913 (Lὒbeck, 1970).

211

212

CHAPTER 10 A NERVOUS AGE? WILHELMINE GERMANY BEFORE THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Mark Hewitson

The movement and ‘nervousness’ of important sections of Wilhelmine society and the eventual collapse of the Kaiserreich’s system of government continue to be the focus of narratives about the German Empire before the First World War. ‘A sense of political crisis developed in the German Empire more than anything else because of the untamed multiplicity of possibilities,’ writes Joachim Radkau in Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (1998): ‘The result’ – especially in the conduct of Weltpolitik (world policy) after 1897 – ‘was a set of grossly overblown, diffuse and vague desires, accompanied by an increasingly agonizing feeling of not actually achieving anything’.1 Few historians would agree with Radkau’s neurasthenic diagnosis of the mistakes and manoeuvres of specific sets of events such as the July crisis, but most – including transnational historians of ‘globalism’ and ‘world empires’ – continue to concentrate on the instability and dynamism of prewar Germany. With the end of the debate about a German Sonderweg (special path), historians have cast around for alternative explanations for the catastrophes of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Some, such as Niall Ferguson, have sought to separate the nineteenth from the twentieth century, which was characterized by the First World War, ethnic disintegration, economic dislocation and collapse of empires.2 Other scholars have called for a re-examination of Geoff Eley’s and Detlev Peukert’s theses about ‘classical modernity’ (rationalization, science, management and social discipline), beginning in the late nineteenth century and culminating in the Holocaust in 1941.3 Most historians have welcomed the marked increase in the number of approaches and in the objects of study, leading to a ‘competition of multiple narratives’ (Cornelius Torp and Sven Oliver Müller).4 Not all scholars have delighted in the ambiguity of such approaches. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, for example, denounced their ‘diffuse pointillisme’, warning of a failure to justify the selection of relevant topics and to explain why one series of events occurred or one set of institutions came into being, and not others.5 His own preference was to identify enduring ‘special conditions’ in Germany which explain later twentiethcentury events. Helmut Walser Smith also concentrates on continuities.6 What all these approaches share, whether stressing continuities, multiplicity, modernity or rupture, is a focus on transformation and instability. This chapter adopts a different approach, asking why a new territorial and political regime was accepted so quickly during a ‘modernity’ that was characterized, in the opinion of both contemporary champions and critics, by the economic and

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cultural uncertainties of ‘modern capitalism’ (Werner Sombart), industrialization, big cities (Ferdinand Tönnies), novel means of communication, globalization and the reconfiguration of the states’ system (Otto Hintze and Hans Delbrück). To this end, I look at instances of consolidation and the perpetuation of traditions, as well as sources of rupture and conflict. Because of the novelty of the Kaiserreich, the relationship between citizens and institutions was, of necessity, changing during the 1890s and 1900s. Under these circumstances, the legitimacy and functioning of the new organs of state, political parties, newspapers, civic associations, unions and companies, together with much older churches, universities, guilds and municipalities, depended on the perceived fixity or consistency of citizens’ – and leaders’ – horizons, affiliations, allegiances and actions.

Global uncertainty According to Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel in their volume on the ‘transnational Kaiserreich’, ‘no other period of modern history has been understood as a temporal unity in such an endogenous fashion as the Kaiserreich before 1914’. In effect, their tracing of the ramifications of events outside Germany – or contemporaries’ perceptions of those events – on identity-formation, scare-mongering and the formulation of policy in Germany, have reversed Fritz Fischer’s approach to the subject (from domestic radicalization to the seizure of ‘world power’), while retaining a focus on radical nationalism. The formation of nation states during the course of the nineteenth century, the argument runs, created a powerful mythology and contemporary record framed in national terms. To turn-of-the-century observers, the Reich ‘as a Nationalstaat without a forerunner had to be more insular than the polycentric German world of the preceding epoch’. Conrad and Osterhammel continue, ‘What belonged to Germany territorially was no longer uncertain’, with borders maintained by law and the conventions of the state. Yet, it was precisely its new-found power as a nation state that forced it to ‘project its influence outwards into the world’ and to play a role in the system of great powers. The Reich’s ‘economic dynamism pushed it beyond nationally-circumscribed systems of circulation’ and ‘its cultural institutions, which were so carefully cultivated in its competition with neighbours, became magnets with extensive powers of attraction’. The paradox of nation-building in Germany, as elsewhere, was that its principal sources – the projection of power, economic growth, scientific and cultural inquiry – were transnational: the more powerful the German nation state became, the more entangled in a web of relations beyond national borders and beyond the control of a national government it became. These entanglements ‘did not lead to a dissolution of borders and the utopia of a post-national history’, but to the ‘stabilization and territorialization of the nation-state’ as ‘one of the fundamental effects of global linkages before the First World War’, in Conrad’s view. All the same, the form and content of nationalism and state-building were affected by globalization and ‘the colonial structures that permeated economic and political exchange, migration and cultural interactions’, without which ‘the global integration of the world around 1900 was inconceivable’.7 214

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In important respects, such claims overlap with the case made by diplomatic historians like Gregor Schöllgen about the Reich’s need to attain world-power status, which had created frustration among the public and pushed decision-makers to contemplate ‘an escape into war’. In Schöllgen’s opinion, Germany was not only a ‘nation-state against history and geography’, threatened by ‘encirclement’ on the part of neighbouring powers and anxious about ‘the exposed geostrategic position of the Reich’, but also subject to the pressures and demands of ‘world politics’ (Weltpolitik): ‘Great-power status within Europe could only be maintained by activity and self-assertion outside Europe … . In Berlin, especially after 1890, there was little doubt that a great power had to act as a world power.’8 From a geopolitical starting point, in which traditional European power politics were linked to the new priorities of Weltpolitik, it seemed to be possible for the government to argue that the very foundations of the German nation state had been threatened in the decade before the First World War. Schöllgen and Conrad both assume a congruence between government policy and public opinion. How convincing is such an assumption? Certainly, statesmen faced the increasing involvement of parties, press and public opinion in foreign affairs, and uncertainty about Germany’s role in a rapidly changing system of international relations. The apparent oscillations of German diplomacy – with its ‘noisy intermezzi, speeches, telegrams and unexpected royal decisions’, in Weber’s phrase – were largely a response to such circumstances.9 The growing power of the Reich and clashes between Austria–Hungary, Germany and Russia in the Balkans worked against Bismarck’s aim of maintaining alliances with both Vienna and St Petersburg. Granted, Leo von Caprivi and his foreign secretary, Adolf Marschall von Bieberstein, were ignorant of international relations, prompting wits to label the latter Ministre étranger aux affaires (minister foreign to affairs) rather than his official title of Ministre aux Affaires étrangères (minister for Foreign Affairs), but they were advised in 1890 by Friedrich von Holstein, the most prominent counsellor in the Foreign Office, to abandon the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia (1887), according to which both powers had agreed to remain neutral except in aggressive wars against France or Austria. As the terms of the treaty themselves revealed, the principal allegiances in Europe between France and Russia, and Germany and Austria–Hungary, were already crystallizing in the 1880s. Russia’s refusal, at France’s insistence, to ratify the Treaty of Björkö (1905), which provided for mutual German and Russian military support in the case of an attack, showed how difficult it would have been to maintain the Reinsurance Treaty intact. Increases in the ‘real power’ of the Reich on the continent, seen through the lens of Realpolitik, together with Berlin’s unwillingness to cede Alsace-Lorraine and the pursuit of its own and Austria’s ambitions in southeast Europe, provoked anxiety and anger in Paris, St Petersburg and London. These fears were heightened by Germany’s rush to acquire extensive colonies and a strong navy, as policymakers strove to attain a world empire and world-power status, which seemed necessary in an age of British and French imperialism, and Russian, American and Japanese expansion. ‘Scarcely had we won the normal nation-state form, which countries like France and England have had for centuries, when we saw ourselves forced by fate into a new change of form, in order 215

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to maintain ourselves as one of the leading powers, as a “world power”, in the emerging system of world states,’ wrote Hintze in 1915: ‘This is the meaning of “Weltpolitik”, which characterised the era of Wilhelm II.’10 This version of Weltpolitik was territorial, national and global, implying the outward projection of an ‘internal’ understanding of state power (with Germany as a late but ‘normal nation state’) on the European mainland and in the wider world. Colonial conflicts and naval rivalries came to overlay and complicate calculations of Germany’s national interest during the Wilhelmine period, eventually pushing Britain closer to France via the Entente cordiale (1904) and Russia via the Anglo-Russian Entente (1907), both of which dealt primarily with colonial affairs. In such shifting sands of changing priorities and allegiances, statesmen struggled to formulate effective and consistent policies. Holstein, who dominated policymaking in the 1890s, continued to concentrate more on Europe than the rest of the world, seeking to retain a ‘free hand’ and avoiding alliance commitments because he was sure that the Reich would be able to profit from the conflicting colonial interests of the other powers. By contrast, Bernhard von Bülow, who took control of policy between 1897 and 1909, championed Weltpolitik and Flottenpolitik (naval policy) in order to acquire territory and influence on a world stage, with the result that he was more willing to distance the Reich from Britain and to oversee a rapprochement with Russia. Theodor von Bethmann-Hollweg reversed this policy, seeking a détente with London and an agreement to limit German shipbuilding in return for British neutrality in any future conflict during the failed Haldane talks in 1912. The chancellor’s priority was to strengthen the Reich’s continental position, even at the expense of naval expansion, so that Germany could enter any future war in Europe with the best possible chance of British neutrality. These initiatives were partly undermined, as they had been under Bülow, by the Foreign Office, which sought in 1911 to force Britain and France into concessions or to break up the Entente, by making London, Paris or St Petersburg decide that its alliance commitments were not worth the risk of war. Such reversals and contradictions helped to create mistrust among the diplomats and statesmen of the other great powers. The contradictory pressures exerted by political parties, the press and public opinion added to the confusion of policymaking, as the different protagonists sought the backing of powerful constituencies and were swayed by popular fears of encirclement, world empires and war. In 1911, the leader of the Alldeutscher Verband, Heinrich Claβ, was actively courted by Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter, the secretary of state at the Foreign Office, receiving an invitation to discuss government policy. This attempt to gain ‘nationalist’ backing during the Second Moroccan Crisis failed spectacularly, as the far right criticized as ‘a policy of concessions and retreat’ his acceptance of the French offer of ‘compensation’ in the Congo, in return for the recognition of France’s interests in Morocco (see Figure 10.1).11 Unlike the extra-parliamentary leagues of ‘Germannationals’, most political parties and many sections of public opinion counselled caution in the realm of foreign policy, constraining more hawkish policymakers. The centre and the left had grown in support and prominence during the Wilhelmine era, accompanied by a series of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines to counter those 216

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Figure 10.1  ‘Wahrheitsgetreuer ‘Kientopp’: Cambon und Kiderlen-Wächter bei 40 Grad Celsius’, Kladderadatsch, 27 August 1911, vol. 64, no. 35.

of the right. Although prepared to go to war at the beginning of the first Moroccan crisis (1905), urged on by Holstein, Bülow had come to realize by 1906 that ‘neither public opinion, parliament, princes or even the army will have anything to do with a war over Morocco’.12 Similarly, after the Second Moroccan Crisis, Bethmann had become certain that ‘war for the Sultan of Morocco, for a piece of the Sus or Congo or for the brothers 217

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Mannesmann would have been a crime’. ‘The entire nation would ask me, why this?’ he concluded: ‘And it would rightly string me up from the nearest tree.’13 Political parties and the public were more agitated and more divided by the major questions of foreign policy during the decade or so before the First World War than they had been during the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, creating uncertainty at home and abroad over the direction of the Reich’s diplomacy. Much of the uncertainty derived from clashes between the civilian government, which stuck to a policy of brinkmanship, and majority public and party opinion, which – at important junctures – was critical of the government’s policy. The European mainland remained the locus of that policy because the army and the possibility of a two-front war against France and Russia constituted the Reich’s principal sources of leverage. ‘We did not plunge into world politics, we grew, so to speak, into our task in that sphere, and we did not exchange the old European policy of Prussia and Germany for the new world policy,’ wrote Bülow, the architect of Weltpolitik just before the outbreak of the First World War: ‘Our strength today is rooted, as it has been since time immemorial, in the ancient soil of Europe.’14 As a consequence, the chancellor’s and Tirpitz’s notion of a ‘danger zone’, envisaging the construction of a Reich navy powerful enough to deter Britain from attacking Germany, was underpinned by Holstein’s ‘hostage theory’, which was predicated on the idea that the Reich could use the threat or declaration of war against France to influence Britain’s stance and to gain compensation if Britain confiscated German ships and colonies. Bethmann shifted course when he came to office in 1909, pursuing a policy of détente with Britain, but his overarching strategy continued to rely on the threat of force in Europe. ‘Germany can only pursue a strong policy in the sense of world policy if it remains strong on the Continent,’ declared the chancellor to the Reichstag in November 1911: ‘Only the authority which we exert as a continental power makes it possible for us to engage in world trade and colonial policy – both collapse if we do not keep our strength at home.’15 Although statesmen throughout the Wilhelmine period continued to toy – even during the July crisis itself – with the idea of alliances and rapprochements with Russia, Britain and France, their policies were arguably always founded on the possibility of a successful continental war against the Entente powers or, at least, the plausible threat of such a war. This policy of brinkmanship reached its apogee at the height of Germany’s perceived military ascendancy in Europe between the turn of the century and 1913, as France’s ‘decline’ became widely accepted and Russia’s near collapse was revealed by defeat in the Russo-Japanese war (1904–5) and the onset of revolution (1905–6). The risk of war which it entailed brought the government into conflict with left-wing and centrist political parties and with many newspapers. The clamour of foreign affairs – traditional rivalries, conflicts in Europe’s borderlands (especially in the Balkans), competition for colonies and access to overseas markets – contributed to the frenetic atmosphere of Wilhelmine politics. In important respects, however, political parties and the priorities of domestic politics served to stabilize and, on occasion, defuse international crises. ‘Much is now said [in the “nationalist” press] of the possibility of war, but the great majority has no intention of fighting except in selfdefence,’ noted the Catholic journal Historisch-politische Blätter at the height of militarist 218

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agitation in August 1913: ‘Of those who are the most bellicose, more than three-quarters would draw back at the prospect of immediate hostilities.’16 Until the outbreak of war in 1914, the relations between internal and external affairs – and between stabilizing and destabilizing elements – were surprisingly open-ended.

City life and local horizons The perceived agitation and fractures of the ‘public’ – or particular parts of it – were regularly connected to the transformation of Germany’s economy. The consequences of such economic change are still disputed. Few observers doubted at the time that they were witnessing an acceleration of the pace of life and a transformation of living conditions. Capitalist production and exchange introduced fundamental changes into the lives of most Germans during the Wilhelmine era. By the 1890s, the industrial sector had outgrown agriculture in terms of output and workforce. In 1882, 18.8 million, or 41.5 per cent of the population, were employed in or supported, as family members, by agriculture, and 15.75 million (35 per cent) by industry; by 1907, 17.5 million (28.5 per cent) and 26 million (42 per cent). Consequently, in the turn-of-the-century debate about whether Germany was an agrarian or industrial state (Agrarstaat or Industriestaat), most economists argued for the latter, predicting unemployment and economic collapse, were the tide of industrialization to be reversed. Within industry, there had been a movement away from independent artisans, whose fraction of the industrial workforce had dropped from 42 per cent in 1875 to 17.5 per cent in 1907, towards wage labourers, who accounted for 56 per cent in 1875 and 76 per cent in 1907. On this basis, economists like Werner Sombart described the emergence of large classes with conflicting interests deriving from their different positions within markets and processes of production – namely, a ‘proletarian class’ making up about a third of the population, to which could be added miscellaneous other workers, servants, small artisans, sellers and soldiers, altogether comprising two-thirds of the population (or thirty-five million people overall), beside a lower middle class (Kleinbürgertum), including self-employed artisans, retailers and independent farmers, of 12.5 million members, and an ‘entire bourgeois class’ of professions, merchants, managers, large-scale farmers and industrialists of about 2.5 million people, or 5 per cent of the population.17 Sombart assumed that capitalist and industrial relations of production, property and exchange had had a critical impact on the structuring of Wilhelmine society. Partly in his desire to demonstrate the centrality of such changes, he – and other economists – overlooked differences of behaviour and attitude which typified a new white-collar class of employees (der neue Mittelstand) and which continued to distinguish the agricultural sector from the rest of the workforce. The interlinking of industrialization and new types of social stratification, on the one hand, and migration and urbanization, on the other, seemed to many contemporaries to set new and challenging political – and cultural – questions. According to official statistics, the Kaiserreich had become an urban society by the mid-1890s, with the 219

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majority living in towns of more than 2,000 inhabitants. By 1910, 34.7 per cent of the population lived in cities of more than 20,000, with 21 per cent in Groβstädte of more than 100,000. There is evidence that these cities, which offered agricultural labourers higher wages, attracted migrants in increasing numbers so that almost 50 per cent of Germans in 1907 lived outside the commune in which they were born. Between 1860/70 and 1914, fifteen to sixteen million Germans had moved beyond the state in which they were born, often to neighbouring towns in the first instance and then to larger, more distant cities. Of those born in Posen, East and West Prussia, 24 per cent had moved westwards by 1907, with 400,000 settling in the Ruhr and 350,000 in Berlin. Such movement led not only to rapidly expanding cities but also to extremely unstable urban populations, as entire cohorts of workers – and many in the professions – moved on to other places. Thus, the population of ‘inner’ Berlin had grown by almost half a million between 1890 and 1910, from 1.59 to 2.07 million, but 8.6 million migrants had moved in and out of the city. This growing stream of migration – from 218,000 between 1880 and 1890 in Essen to 894,000 between 1900 and 1910, for example – meant that about a quarter of the population of the big cities was replaced each year. About half of the migrants were between twenty and thirty years old. As a consequence, urban life appeared youthful, uprooted, mobile and dangerous, with the influx of inhabitants matched by the changing topography, architecture, sights and lifestyles of urban centres. By 1875, Berlin had already doubled in size and population – to 966,000  – within a generation, encompassing working-class districts such as Moabit, Wedding, Friedrichshain and Lichtenberg in the north, and middle-class areas like Schöneberg and Tiergarten to the west and south of the centre. By 1910, the city had expanded in all directions, to include bourgeois areas like Charlottenburg in the west, which had grown from 20,000 in 1871 to 300,000 in 1910, and working-class quarters such as Rixdorf in the southeast, which had mushroomed from 8,000 to 262,000. By this date, the population of Greater Berlin was 3.7 million. ‘To the north, south and east the workercity stretches out its polyp arms and grasps the Westend in its iron grip,’ wrote the head of AEG, Walther Rathenau.18 The different parts of the capital were linked together by twelve railway lines, the Stadtbahn or viaduct railway (inaugurated in 1882), the underground (begun in 1896), electric tramways and, from the turn of the century onwards, motorcars. Known by Berliners as Elektropolis, the city was illuminated by electric lights and dominated by advertising hoardings to the extent that the writer Max Brod could claim, ‘All Berlin is one big placard’.19 Most of the metropolis’s largest buildings – the Reichstag, Dom, Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, Wertheim, KaDeWe and the Adlon Hotel – were built in the Wilhelmine era. Yet, while the upper and middle classes enjoyed new amenities, as their apartments were being refurbished with running water and electric light in the west, life in the working-class ‘rental barracks’ (Mietskasernen) of the north, east and south remained harsh, with several people per room, only one room – at most – with heating, and infant mortality rates two to three times higher than those of the Bürgertum. Most other cities displayed similar discrepancies, highlighted by the new wealth and lustre of their centres, which served to underline continuing inequalities. 220

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The transformations which were so visible during the Wilhelmine period to urban populations were relayed to much of the rest of the country by an expanding network of newspapers, magazines and newsreels. To contemporaries, the ‘nervousness’ that such communication and movement helped create was a recent phenomenon, characteristic of a mass age. ‘The demands made of the achievements of the individual in the struggle for existence have increased considerably, and he can only satisfy them by expending all his mental energies; at the same time, all the needs of the individual, the desire for pleasures, have become more extensive in all circles, an unheard-of luxury has spread to strata of the population which were earlier completely untouched by it,’ wrote one commentator in 1893: Irreligion, discontentment, and greed have increased in broad circles of the populace; through immeasurably increased communication, through the worldencircling network of the telegraph and telephone, relationships of commerce and exchange have completely altered; everything is done hastily and excitedly, night is used for travelling, day for business, even ‘recuperative trips’ become a punishment for the nervous system; great political and industrial crises introduce their agitation into far broader circles of the population than before; participation in political life has become general: political, religious and social conflicts, party politicking, electoral agitation, countless leagues, heat one’s head and foist ever new efforts on one’s mind, robbing one of time for recovery, sleep and calm.20 A confusing series of vistas had been presented by the press and other means of communication to a widening public, with important political consequences. Responses and reactions to social change can only be understood in this context. Few contemporaries denied that major economic and social transformations had occurred during the late nineteenth century, with the continuing crystallization of new classes and the emergence of new social conflicts. The rift between the working classes and the rest of society was arguably the most important, reinforced by myths of urban squalor and criminality, and of an imminent proletarian revolution. It led to anti-socialist legislation between 1878 and 1890; it produced a series of anti-SPD party alliances after 1890; and it underpinned most of the government’s social policies from the 1880s onwards.21 Yet, it is easy to exaggerate the destabilizing effects of such changes. The fault lines which class conflict produced were cut across by older divisions, especially those separating the Reich’s 40 million Protestants, 24 million Catholics and 615,000 Jews but also those dividing nationalities and regions. Moreover, middle-class fear of socialism did not, it now seems, lead to a defensive coalition or Sammlung of industrialists and agrarians, to a largely diversionary foreign policy of ‘social imperialism’, or to imitation of Junkers and ‘feudalisation’. Rather, it is evident from recent research that broad sections of the Bürgertum were increasingly wealthy, confident, urbane, educated and politically active in their localities and in political parties and leagues. In many respects, their striving for honours, their self-discipline, their serving in the reserve officer corps, their codes of honour, their social distinctions and their frequently authoritarian managerial style were indicative of their independence and support for the state in their own right. 221

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As in noble, working-class and Catholic circles, middle-class social milieux had been consolidated which, although often ill-defined, played a significant role through civic improvements and an insistence on public order and propriety in mitigating the most unsettling effects of industrialization and urbanization. Some processes of urbanization and industrialization were gradual and had begun much earlier, giving an impression of continuity and stability (see Figure 10.2, contrasting

Figure 10.2 ‘Groβstadtleben’, Simplicissimus, 2 June 1903, vol. 8, no. 10, 80. 222

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Munich and Berlin). Demographic growth had characterized the entire nineteenth century and had become widely accepted by 1890 as a necessary component of economic prosperity and national well-being. Ignoring evidence of a falling rate of growth during the early twentieth century, statisticians, economists and the press optimistically declared that Germany was expanding by 885,000 people per year, with one widely circulated report estimating that the Reich’s population would be 121 million by 2000.22 Since reductions in infant mortality had been offset by a declining overall birth rate, the population of the lands which made up the German Empire had increased by 12 million, from 29 to 41 million, between 1830 and 1870, and by 14 million between 1870 and 1910, reaching 65 million by that year. Although life-changing differences were concealed behind such figures, with fertility decreasing by 40 per cent in large cities between 1875 and 1910, for example, many of the consequences of Germany’s demography remained constant, not least the need to cope with large numbers of children and youths – 35 per cent of the population was under fifteen years old in 1816 and 1900 – and with relatively few old people. Those over sixty-five constituted about 5 per cent of the population on both dates, compared to about 20 per cent in 2005. Other overlapping processes were similarly long-term. The shift from a rural and agricultural society to an urban and industrial one proceeded slowly. Agriculture employed almost 1.4 million more people in 1907 (9.9 million) than it had in 1871 (8.5 million), continuing the trend of the previous forty years, when it had expanded by 900,000. The capitalization of agriculture had begun in the first half of the nineteenth century and was self-evident to a traditional-minded Prussian landowner like Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau when he returned to his family estates in the 1880s.23 Along with improvements in transport, these changes allowed agriculture to continue its expansion, preventing an overall depopulation of the countryside. Relatively, the industrial sector was growing more quickly, rising from 2.8 to 4.4 million workers between 1825 and 1867, and from 5 to 11.3 million between 1871 and 1907, with an increase of 3 million between 1895 and 1907. Yet, the majority continued to work alone or in factories or workshops employing fewer than fifty people, and in a bewildering variety of crafts, many with long histories of masters and guilds. Thus, even Sombart, whose much criticized treatise on Der moderne Kapitalismus (1902) had suggested there had been a thoroughgoing transition from craft (Handwerk) to capitalist forms of production, admitted that large numbers of artisans and small-scale workshops continued to exist, often in villages or small towns. Fifty-one per cent of Germans still lived in communities of fewer than 5,000 people in 1910. For most of them, traditional ways of life and political authority, although certainly changing, were of enduring significance. It can be contended that many – perhaps most – Wilhelmine Germans’ lives resembled, in important respects, those of their parents and grandparents. At the turn of the century, the family, with the pater familias granted legal power over the property and behaviour of his spouse and children, was the basic unit of authority, welfare, income and – for many – business, frequently bolstered by a culture of domesticity and sentimentality. It was just as central a part of the private sphere and civil society in 1900 as it had been for the philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel at the start of the nineteenth century. 223

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Indeed, proclaimed the historian Heinrich von Treitschke in his lectures on Politik (1898), the family was the cornerstone of the nation and state: ‘The state is the nation (Volk) legally united as an independent power’, and ‘by nation we understand a majority of families which have lived together for a long time’.24 Notwithstanding minor fluctuations of attitude and law, family structures in much of the Bürgertum (urban middle class) and Mittelstand (lower middle class), in the peasantry and nobility, gave a sense – if not always a reliable one – of constancy, meaning and order. Beyond the family, persistent structures of belief within confessions and patterns of social interaction within localities reinforced the impression of stability for many contemporaries. Local government, still entrusted with many powers and competencies, had altered much less markedly than higher tiers of administration and politics in the second half of the nineteenth century, and churches continued to be prominent in shaping and informing ideas and attitudes. Many regions boasted high levels of religious observance, in spite of secularization, with about 40 per cent or more Protestants receiving communion in 1913 in Hanover, Hessen, Posen, West Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, Bavaria, Baden and Württemburg, and with an estimated 60 per cent of all Catholics receiving communion in 1912. One literary editor had reckoned in 1880 that 40 per cent of literate adults read only the Bible, prayer books, catechisms and religious almanacs. About 80 per cent merely read religious works and a more or less occasional newspaper. These figures altered during the following forty years, but slowly. Religious values and traditions, like local milieux, were pervasive. Many of the social ties and geographical landmarks according to which Wilhelmine Germans defined their existence helped to insulate them from the apparent turmoil and transience of the big cities, artistic avant-gardes and sensationalist journalism. ‘Politics’, much of which was traditional and local, benefited from such order and continuity.

Party politics and constitutional crisis The case put forward by Max Weber, and taken up by historians, that there was a disjunction of politics and economics, with the Bürgertum economically strong but politically weak, fails to explain the trajectory of Wilhelmine politics.25 The new Reich was a piecemeal construction, assembled by Bismarck from existing institutions, states’ jurisdictions, princely prerogatives, foreign precedents and conservative, monarchical priorities. The system was characterized, on occasion, by deadlock and delay. The Kaiser, who was constitutionally responsible for the appointment and dismissal of ministers (Article 18), for summoning and proroguing the Bundesrat and Reichstag (Article 12), for representing the Reich internationally (Article 11) and for commanding the army and navy (Articles 53 and 63), was a continuing source of confusion after the resignation of Bismarck and the accession of Wilhelm II, who wished to ‘shoulder more of [the chancellor’s functions] himself ’.26 Moreover, the relationship between Prussia and the Reich remained hazy, as the historian Friedrich Meinecke pointed out in 1908; the party system was fragmented and prone to blockages; extra-parliamentary nationalist organizations such as the Pan-German and Navy Leagues seemed by 1911 to be beyond 224

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government influence or control; and the spectre of a revolution from the left or a coup from the right persisted until 1918. Most contemporaries believed, however, that the German Empire was legitimate by 1890, not least because it appeared to rest on historical foundations. The regime’s name – the Kaiserreich – hinted at a continuity dating back to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, as did the titles of the Kaisers, with Friedrich III, who ruled for a 100 days in 1888 before dying prematurely of throat cancer, effectively taking up the mantle of the medieval Hohenstaufen emperors, Friedrich I and II. The first emperor of the new Reich, Wilhelm I, was frequently compared, as ‘Barbablanca’, to ‘Barbarossa’, the popular name of Friedrich I. Likewise, the single-headed eagle, the official symbol of the German Empire, replicated not only that of Prussia and other German states but also the double-headed eagles of the Habsburg monarchy and of the old Reich. These symbolic linkages were reinforced by the quickly established hegemony of Prussianled – or ‘Borussian’ – histories of Germany at the time of unification. More mundanely, the institutions of the new regime developed gradually, overlapping with and drawing on existing agencies. As a result, the Reich Foreign Office, the Reich Office of the Interior, the Reich Post Office, the Reich Justice Office, the Reich Office for the Administration of the Railways, the Reich Treasury and the Reich Navy Office were not set up in 1871 but over the next two decades. The term for a ‘Reich government’ (Reichsregierung) did not come into common usage until the decade before the First World War. Bismarck’s deliberate avoidance of historical rupture, declaring in 1867 that ‘the more we continue the previous forms the more easily the thing can be done’, helped the Kaiserreich establish itself as the historically legitimate successor of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation and the individual German states. ‘In the last twenty years, one could regularly hear and read that the time of theoretical constitutional questions was over,’ wrote Naumann, one of the main critics of the regime, in 1908, ‘for the constitution, as it was fashioned by Bismarck’s hand, was to be accepted as the fixed property of the German people.’27 Much of the public found it easier to accept the Reich because of the federal principle. Indeed, while Bismarck was in office he had maintained the fiction that the Reich was a confederation, which the German princes and their governments had entered into voluntarily and which they could, therefore, leave at will. Although most contemporaries of the chancellor believed that the Kaiserreich was a Bundesstaat (federation) not a Staatenbund (confederation), they nonetheless agreed that the continued existence of strong individual states was essential to the functioning of the regime. Federalism was the cornerstone of Germany’s system of government, wrote Bernhard von Bülow in his memoirs.28 Federal states such as Bavaria and Saxony, together with municipalities, provided most of the country’s administration and accounted for 65 per cent of public expenditure in 1913, with the former at 32 per cent and the latter at 33 per cent. Their share in 1881 was 44.5 and 26.5 per cent, respectively, or 71 per cent in total. Expenditure as a whole had grown almost fivefold in the intervening period. Since the army and navy took about 90 per cent of Reich spending, this left the individual states to carry out most of the functions of the ‘state’, including the collection of direct taxes, the 225

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payment of subsidies to churches, the organization of poor relief, the running of schools and universities, the funding and regulation of the judiciary and the police, and the establishment and alteration of the rules and institutions of state and municipal politics, legislation and government. They also ran large state-run enterprises such as railways and mines which, in Prussia, made up 67 per cent of net state income by 1893–4. The municipalities, in addition to sharing responsibility for poor relief and education, looked after urban planning, public hygiene, hospitals, water, gas and electricity supply, and local roads and transport. On the eve of the First World War, 94 per cent of water works and 87 per cent of gas works were run by municipalities. Together with transport companies, these enterprises contributed over a third of municipal income, equivalent to income derived from local taxes. Communal, town and individual state authorities provided much of the fabric of civic society and political life in Wilhelmine Germany. Such continuity was reinforced by many contemporaries’ sense that German culture had preceded a single German state by centuries. In Meinecke’s terms, the long-standing Kulturnation (cultural nation) had produced the Nationalstaat (nation state) in Germany, whereas the Staatsnation (state-nation) had formed nation states in France and Britain. Hans Delbrück’s proclamation on the centenary of the Battle of Leipzig in 1913 betrayed the extent to which the ‘national mission’ had become a personal vocation for many educated Wilhelmine Germans: Whoever feels at one with his people (Volk) is national, whoever not only thinks of himself, his well-being, his advancement, his future or, beyond this, of his family, his fellow believers, his peers or his class, but also, without neglecting or underestimating all those ties, feels, above and beyond them, inwardly bound to his people in its entirety, and holds his own person worth so little beside this unity that he feels able to sacrifice it if necessary, to give his life for it, is national.29 Although the German nation, ‘this mental unity, this idea which exercises such enormous power over us’, was ‘not something given or unchangeable in its origins (Uranfang), but rather something which had developed historically’, it nevertheless had its roots in ‘the old Germanen’ and had long antedated the nation state, which had come into being in the nineteenth century when ‘our nation (Volk) attained full consciousness of its national unity’. The political institutions of the new Reich seemed to be ‘national’ by the 1890s. Partly as a result, it proved difficult to identify and ostracize Catholic and Social Democratic ‘national traitors’ or ‘internal enemies of the Reich’ during the Wilhelmine era, as had occurred during the Kulturkampf in the 1870s and the period of the anti-socialist laws in the 1880s, when the foundations of the German Empire appeared less secure. Instead, all political parties after 1890 competed to demonstrate their national credentials. This was true of a new generation of left liberals who had become prominent in the 1890s and dominant after the death of Eugen Richter in 1906 and who were much more willing to champion national, imperial and military causes. Most notably, they were ready to participate between 1907 and 1909 in the Bülow Bloc, which was predicated on a defence of Germany’s colonies, after the Centre Party had 226

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criticized the corruption of the Reich’s colonial administration. For their part, the leaders of the Centre Party had, by 1907, spent ‘a decade of efforts aimed at allaying passions and overcoming the confessional division by emphasizing national unity’.30 Younger ‘democratic’ Catholic politicians such as Matthias Erzberger, whose criticisms had precipitated the chancellor’s split with the Centre Party in 1906, were more, not less, forthright in their support of a German nation state so that fears of a second Kulturkampf and anxiety about being branded ‘internal enemies’ no longer dictated their stance. Their position was in some respects similar to that of ‘socialist imperialists’ around the editor of the Sozialistische Monatshefte, Joseph Bloch, who likewise were so certain of their national views that they were prepared to voice criticism of both the government and their party. They were joined by other reformists such as Eduard Bernstein and centrists such as party leader August Bebel in affirming their ‘patriotism’. ‘What we are struggling against is not the fatherland in itself … but the conditions which are present in this fatherland in the interest of the ruling classes’, proclaimed the latter at the time of the headline debate about the military and the nation at the Stuttgart congress of the Second International in 1907.31 Most political debate between 1890 and 1914 concentrated on the improvement of conditions rather than the replacement of the regime. The Kaiserreich was protected to a significant extent by its association with a popular fatherland. Many commentators distinguished a ‘constitutional’ system of government from the parliamentary regimes of France and Britain. In the ‘unique Prussian-German system’, in the phrase of the historian Otto Hintze, ministers were appointed by the monarch, who acted as the head of the executive and guarantor of a division of judicial, legislative and executive powers.32 The legislature, or assembly, scrutinized and sanctioned the proposals of the executive. This form of constitutionalism dated back to the first half of the nineteenth century and was practised in all German states except Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen, which were oligarchical, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, which – having no representative assembly – was neo-absolutist. It was believed by the majority of commentators to preserve the checks and balances of mixed government, preventing corruption, and to allow federalism, since the unitary ambitions of potentially dominant parties were opposed by an independent executive acting through the Bundesrat, or federal assembly, on the basis of the constitution. All political parties save the SPD, whose leaders labelled it ‘absolutist’ or ‘bureaucratic’, agreed that Germany’s constitutional monarchy was a distinct form of government likely to stay in place at least over the medium term. Some left liberals, including Naumann, and Erzberger, from the Centre Party, contended that ‘parliamentarism’, in which a parliamentary majority appointed the government, was a long-term goal, but they recognized that Germany’s federalism and its lack of a two-party system meant that any transition would be difficult and drawn-out. Other left liberals and virtually all Centre Party deputies refused to countenance parliamentarism. ‘We do not want a parliamentary regime,’ Karl Schrader told the Reichstag at the height of the Daily Telegraph affair in December 1908, ‘for the simple reason that it is not possible, as long as the constitution of the German Empire is in existence.’33 227

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As Social Democrats pushed for the introduction of parliamentary government during a string of domestic and foreign crises in the decade before the First World War – the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905–6, the Daily Telegraph affair and Bülow’s failed attempt to reform Reich finances in 1908, the campaign to scrap Prussia’s three-class franchise in 1910, the Second Moroccan Crisis and the debate about an Alsatian constitution in 1911, the imposition of Hertling’s Centre Party government in Bavaria in 1912 and the Zabern incident in 1913 (after the army had imprisoned local dignitaries in Alsace) – the ‘bourgeois’ parties supported constitutionalism and refused to treat votes of censure – with 293 for and 54 against after Zabern – as grounds for the government’s resignation. Indeed, their definition and defence of constitutional monarchy became clearer and more pronounced during these years, partly because of changes to the ramshackle and ambiguous structures of the Bismarckian state, with greater powers passing to both the Reichstag and the government. Above all, a national executive of competent ministers emerged which was led by the chancellor and which was generally known as the ‘Reich leadership’ (Reichsleitung) and, by the late 1900s, the ‘Reich government’. Regular cabinet meetings had been planned in 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War. This slowly crystallizing form of cabinet government had replaced the federal Bundesrat, which had fallen into disuse in the 1880s after proving unworkable, and the ad hoc, Prusso-centric improvizations of Bismarck’s administrations. An independent executive of expert officials and a veto-wielding Reichstag had, during the Wilhelmine era, become the twin pillars of a defensible system of constitutional government. The system seemed to work, despite blockages and public criticism. The Conservative Party (gaining between 13.5 and 18 per cent of seats in 1890–1907), the Free Conservatives (between 5 and 7 per cent), the National Liberals (between 11 and 13 per cent in 1890– 1912) and the Centre Party (between 23 and 27 per cent) provided majorities for the government between 1890 and 1906. The period after that was more fractious, with even the Conservatives claiming to have entered a ‘national opposition’ to the administration of Bethmann after disagreements over a reform of the Reich’s finances and over foreign policy, yet they – like all parties except the SPD – continued to vote for a range of government bills between 1909 and 1914. Unexpectedly, Social Democrats had backed the enactment of a capital gains tax, opening up the prospect – as in Baden, with its ‘grand bloc’ – of cooperation with other parties and the administration, admittedly to the horror of Conservatives. In these circumstances, the government suffered reverses but not stalemate.

Social policy and the state Many of the political challenges of modernity had been met, it seemed. The economic, fiscal and monetary structures which had been put in place in the 1860s and 1870s – the Commercial Code of 1861, the unification of weights and measures, the constitutional stipulation of a Reich budget (Article 69), the Reich’s right to raise tariffs and indirect taxes (Article 70), a common currency, the founding of the Reichsbank in 1875 and a common 228

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Patent Law in 1876 – were consolidated by the eventual enactment of a Civil Code in 1896, providing what Weber perceived to be the rational and predictable conditions necessary for capitalist enterprise. The principle of freer trade, which had been espoused by liberals in the 1860s and 1870s, was resurrected by Caprivi in the form of renewed trade treaties, passed against the opposition of Conservatives, with Austria–Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Romania and Russia. The majority of treaties, which had lowered grain tariffs, remained in force until 1906. Grain tariffs were increased by Bülow in 1902, coming into effect four years later, but most sectors of the economy continued to be covered by liberal trade treaties negotiated in 1904 and 1905. Like tariffs, internal taxes increased during the Wilhelmine era in order to fund increased spending on the military, administration and social insurance, yet the overall tax burden remained low. The total burden was 40 marks per capita in Prussia in 1881 and 144 in 1913, at a time when average income had increased from about 550 to 1,100 marks per annum. In 1891, a progressive income tax had been introduced in Prussia – ‘the clearest and most coherent regime’ in Europe, according to the Frankfurter Zeitung – which exempted earnings of less than 900 marks per year and rose incrementally to 4 per cent of incomes of more than 100,000 per annum.34 Further reforms followed in 1893 with the introduction of a wealth tax, and in 1892 and 1895 with the transfer of land, buildings and business taxes to the municipalities. At the level of the Reich, the main reforms came in 1909 with the enactment of a new tax on shares and increases in taxes on consumption, after Conservatives and the Centre had voted down an extension of inheritance tax, and in 1913 with the passing of a capital gains tax and a one-off, income-related ‘defence contribution’ of 996 million marks, which was unprecedented in scale. ‘I have committed the crime, by creating the finances,’ wrote the Treasury Secretary Hermann Kühn in February 1914, ‘of making possible the most comprehensive armaments legislation in our history.’35 Although carrying larger debts than in the past, the fiscal regimes of the Reich, federal states and municipalities, like the German economy as a whole, were successful enough to gain political support at home and elicit admiration abroad. The same was true of German social policies. By the 1890s, the term ‘Sozialpolitik’ was, wrote the sociologist Albert Schäffle, ‘one of the most used and also most abused words in the common vocabulary of our age,’ adapting the old notion of social support to the demands of the masses in a capitalist era of big industry.36 As such, it still encompassed poor relief administered by municipalities, but had also been extended to modern necessities such as social insurance, education, urban planning and large-scale bureaucracies. Social legislation was limited and not always enforced (see Figure 10.3 for an SPD view of ‘social reform’). Workers were not entitled to old-age pensions before the age of seventy and those who were eligible for a disability allowance received payments amounting to approximately one-sixth of average wages. In 1903, about two million school-age children were still working. Yet, in international comparison, German social insurance and labour laws were extensive. Increasingly, education, as the Schulstreit of the 1890s demonstrated, came to be viewed as a critical component of social reform, to be modernized in the same way as the workplace. In the Volksschule (primary school), which had been made free in 229

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Figure 10.3  ‘Im Lande der Sozialreform’, Der wahre Jacob, 28 Jan. 1904, vol. 457, 4255.

Prussia – but not in other states – in 1888, the pupil to teacher ratio almost halved between 1871 and 1914, with the number of teachers rising to 187,500, or roughly the same number as in 1949; syllabuses were widened and made more systematic; the school-day was lengthened and attendance increased to virtually 100 per cent (10.6 million), compared to 86 per cent in 1871. Such changes helped to double the number 230

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of pupils attending secondary schools, from 183,000 in 1875 to 398,000 in 1911, with an ever greater percentage going to Realgymnasien and Oberrealschulen (new forms of secondary school), which had been granted equal status in 1900 despite abandoning the Gymnasium’s emphasis on Greek and Latin in favour of sciences and modern languages. The number of university students had increased from 23,000 to 70,000 over the same period, with most of the expansion occurring after 1890 (34,000). By the 1900s, between 15 and 20 per cent of students went to scientific Technische Hochschulen, which had been granted the right to award doctorates in 1899. Although, as in other fields, such changes were limited, with university students constituting less than 2 per cent of their age group for example, educational reform – like social policy as a whole – was comparatively advanced in Wilhelmine Germany. Social policy and political freedoms were, in the opinion of Gustav von Schmoller, closely linked: there could be ‘no lastingly fruitful increase in state power and state finances without corresponding advances of individual freedom, freedom of associations, municipalities and other corporations’.37 The point for Schmoller was that the German Empire had successfully underwritten important civil liberties. Censorship still existed, with theatre scripts submitted to the police before performance for instance, but the banning of books or plays was rare. The Anti-Socialist Law, which had produced 500 prosecutions against journalists per year in the 1880s, had been allowed to lapse in 1890, partly because of Conservatives’ unwillingness to accept Bismarck’s draconian revision of the legislation shortly before an election. Subsequent attempts by the Prussian and Reich governments, spurred on by Wilhelm II, to enact repressive legislation were thwarted by liberals and the Centre Party. Botho zu Eulenburg’s threat in 1894 to bring an anti-socialist ‘Revolution Law’ (Umsturzgesetz) before the Reichstag was averted by Caprivi after talks had taken place with party leaders. When the bill was put forward in revised form by Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst in 1895, it was rejected by a large majority. Likewise, the chancellor’s reluctant bid to tighten Prussia’s association law in 1897 foundered on the opposition of National Liberals and the Centre Party in the Prussian Landtag, and his attempt to enact a ‘Hard Labour Law’ in 1899, promising harsh penalties to workers who incited others to go on strike or form unions, was rejected by the ‘bourgeois parties’ and the SPD in the Reichstag. Despite the efforts of reactionaries to increase repression in the 1890s, civil liberties had been preserved and extended. A new Law of Association in 1908, which unified the existing patchwork of state legislation, effectively placed an official seal on increasingly liberal regulation and policing of assemblies and organizations before that date. Notwithstanding qualms about clauses enforcing the use of German at public meetings, which were later watered down, left liberals in the Bülow Bloc voted for the associations bill. Civil rights were guaranteed by a representative, constitutional system of government. It is true that there were obstacles to democratization: most notably, the liberal and Social Democratic campaign to reform the three-class franchise of the Prussian Landtag failed in 1910. In other states such as Saxony liberals and Conservatives, fearing the growing vote of the SPD, replaced existing universal manhood suffrage – itself limited by a strict tax threshold which meant that a third of voters in Reichstag elections were 231

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excluded – with an indirect three-class franchise in 1896, modified to a system of plural voting – with the rich and educated having four votes and uneducated poor one vote each – in 1909. Similarly, in Hamburg, the electorate of 23,000 ‘burghers’ – as compared to 138,000 voters in the Reichstag elections of 1890 – was divided into five unequal classes in 1906, instead of the three voting colleges that had existed previously. In the south, by contrast, a movement in the other direction could be detected, partly because the SPD was weaker there: in Württemberg, the state-supporting left-liberal Volkspartei oversaw sweeping constitutional changes in 1906, including the introduction of universal manhood suffrage and the reform of the upper chamber and local councils; in Baden, a Groβblock of National Liberals, left liberals and Social Democrats, which united in opposition to the Centre Party, had come into being after a direct, equal and secret vote had been introduced in 1904; in Hesse, the franchise was extended in 1911; and in Bavaria, direct voting and fairer constituency boundaries, introduced in 1906, led to the formation of regular majorities for the Centre Party and the ‘parliamentary’ imposition of a Centre Party government in 1912. For its part, the Kaiserreich – unlike most other European states – had universal manhood suffrage, even if the government’s refusal to reform constituencies militated against the urban – and Social Democratic – vote. When the Reichstag debated the new polity of Alsace-Lorraine in 1911, which had until then been a military protectorate, the parties – including the SPD – opted for a constitutional system – with a government nominated by a Reich-appointed Statthalter – and a direct, secret vote based on universal manhood suffrage. In other words, all parties except the Conservatives, who opposed universal suffrage, voted for a system similar to that of the Kaiserreich. Contemporaries were, as they made plain at the time, conscious of the Reich’s deficits. The constitution of 1871 had failed satisfactorily to regulate and control the actions of the Kaiser and to keep the army in check. The first problem was illustrated above all by the Daily Telegraph affair in 1908, after Wilhelm II had claimed in an interview – apparently without government consent – that most Germans, with the notable exception of himself, were anti-British. All parties save the Free Conservatives condemned the utterances of the Kaiser in the Reichstag, with Ernst von Heydebrand, the leader of the Conservatives, lamenting that the affair had caused a ‘mass of concerns, reservations [and] annoyance’.38 Yet, the parties did not manage to agree on a law of impeachment, which was intended to strengthen the resolve of the chancellor – since he would be impeached – vis-à-vis that of the Kaiser. The second problem concerned the ill-defined relationship between the military and other organs of state, which was revealed during the Zabern incident in 1913, when the army backed the decision of a young lieutenant to imprison the inhabitants of an Alsatian garrison town. A Reichstag vote of censure against Bethmann, who refused to criticize the army, was carried by a ratio of six to one, but the Centre’s resolution to ‘regulate’ the military and to ensure the ‘independence of the civilian authority’ never passed into legislation. In spite of a successful struggle against the Kaiser to make Reich court martials public in 1898, as had been the case in Bavaria since 1869, the parties had not solved the question of civil–military relations. This failure to regulate the actions of the army or the Kaiser did not mean that either party acted with impunity 232

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and political irresponsibility, since the Reichstag continued to sanction military budgets and to discuss military and court affairs, and the chancellor, who was answerable to the Reichstag, was required to counter-sign all orders and decrees, including declarations of war and states of emergency. It did bear witness, though, to the continuing influence of the monarch and military on policymaking.

Conclusion The governments and subjects of the German Empire faced ‘modern’ problems. It is necessary, however, to put well-known instances of movement (migration, travel and commuting) and change (urbanization, electrification, social mobility and consumption) in the context of local continuities. Families, confessions, occupations, trades, tenancies, associations and municipal government arguably remained the fixed points of daily life for the majority of citizens. Migration from the land took place on a large scale, but it did not lead to a contraction in the size of the agricultural workforce, which continued to grow in absolute terms. Cities had transient populations, with the Saxon industrial centre of Chemnitz growing by 150,000 inhabitants and witnessing 1.4 million people settling there and then moving on between 1890 and 1910, but their civic traditions, elites and associational life were often maintained. Although the occupational and class structure of Germany changed, many groups, and the relations between groups, appeared to stay the same. The ‘nervousness’ and fears of contemporaries, which have been a feature of transnational or global histories of nationalism, are to be understood within this fabric of everyday existence. They were much more characteristic of sections of the Bürgertum living in large cities, comprising a small proportion of the overall population – less than 5 per cent – but constituting the core of an expanding political nation. The effects of democratization under these conditions are difficult to gauge, with growing numbers of newspaper readers, independent voters and party members sharing attitudes and acting ways which remained closely tied to the networks of their localities. The political structures of the Kaiserreich seemed to have benefited from such linkages between local and national politics, creating a multiplicity of banal or unnoticed national affiliations and allegiances.

Notes 1. J. Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (Munich, 1998), p. 248. 2. N. Ferguson, The War of the World (London, 2006). 3. G. Eley, ‘What Produces Fascism’, in G. Eley, ed., From Unification to Nazism (London, 1986); D. J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt, 1987). 4. C. Torp and S. O. Müller, ‘Introduction’, in S. O. Müller and C. Torp, eds, Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives (New York, 2012), p. 9. 5. H.-U. Wehler, Historisches Denken am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 2001), p. 102. 233

Nineteenth-Century Germany 6. H. W. Smith, The Continuities of German History (Cambridge, 2008). 7. S. Conrad and J. Osterhammel, eds, Das Kaiserreich Transnational (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 8–9, 11; S. Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich, 2006), p. 26. 8. G. Schöllgen, ed., Escape into War? (Oxford, 1990), pp. 3–4, 13. 9. Quoted in W. J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics (Chicago, 1984), p. 144. 10. O. Hintze, ‘Die Hohenzollern und ihr Werk’, cited in Michael Fröhlich, Imperialismus (Munich, 1994), p. 76. 11. Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, 8 November 1911. 12. Cited in Lerman, The Chancellor as Courtier, p. 142. 13. Quoted in Jarausch, The Enigmatic Chancellor, pp. 125–6. 14. B. v. Bülow, Imperial Germany, 6th edn (London, 1914), p. 10. 15. Cited in F. Fischer, War of Illusions (London, 1975), p. 90. 16. E. M. Carroll, Germany and the Great Powers, 1860–1914 (New York, 1938), p. 758. 17. Werner Sombart, Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1903), pp. 440–75. 18. Cited in D. C. Large, Berlin: A Modern History (London, 2001), p. 99. 19. Ibid., p. 87. 20. W. Erb, Über die wachsende Nervosität unserer Zeit (1893), cited in H. Glaser, Industriekultur und Alltagsleben, p. 185. 21. See James Brophy’s chapter in this volume. 22. Berliner Börsenzeitung, 13 July 1900; Westfale, 15 March 1901. 23. E. v. Oldenburg-Januschau, Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1936), pp. 32–52. 24. H. v. Treitschke, Politik (Leipzig, 1898), p. 13. 25. James Brophy discusses this in his chapter in this volume. 26. Wilhelm II, December 1887, cited in L. Gall, Bismarck: The White Revolutionary (London, 1986), vol. 2, p. 196. 27. F. Naumann, ‘Die Umwandlung der deutschen Verfassung’, Patria (1908), p. 84. 28. B. v. Bülow, Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. 1, pp. 443, 486–501, vol. 4, pp. 56–71. 29. Hans Delbrück, ‘Was ist national?’ (1913), in Hans Delbrück, Vor und Nach dem Weltkrieg (Berlin, 1926), pp. 379–80. 30. G. v. Hertling, 20 December 1906, cited in Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, p. 142. 31. Bebel quoted in Rojahn, ‘Arbeiterbewegung und Kriegsbegeisterung: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie 1870–1914’, in M. van der Linden and G. Mergner, eds, Kriegsbegeisterung und mentale Kriegsvorbereitung (Berlin, 1991), p. 58. 32. O. Hintze, ‘Das monarchische Prinzip und die konstitutionelle Verfassung’ (1911), in Oestreich, ed., Staat und Verfassung, 2nd rev. edn (Göttingen, 1962), 359. 33. K. Schrader, 3 December 1908, Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 233, p. 5948. 34. Frankfurter Zeitung, 16 March 1909. 35. Cited in P.-C. Witt, Die Finanzpolitik des Deutschen Reiches von 1903 bis 1913 (Lübeck, 1970), p. 376. 234

A Nervous Age? Wilhelmine Germany before the First World War 36. A. Schäffle, Deutsche Kern- und Zeitfragen (Berlin, 1894), p. 349. 37. G. Schmoller, Grundriss, vol. 1, p. 322. 38. Cited in Ullrich, Als der Thron ins Wanken kam (Bremen, 1993), p. 52.

Select bibliography Anderson, M. L., Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 2000). Augustine, D. L., Wealth, Patricians and Parvenues: Wealth and High Society in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 1994). Belgum, K., Popularizing the Nation: Audience, Representation and the Production of Identity in Die Gartenlaube, 1853–1900 (Lincoln, 1998). Bowersox, J., Raising Germans in the Age of Empire: Youth and Colonial Culture, 1871–1914 (Oxford, 2013). Chickering, R., We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886-1914 (Boston, 1984). Ciarlo, D., Advertizing Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, 2011). Coetzee, M. S., The German Army League: Popular Naationalism in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 1990). Confino, A., The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1997). Dickinson, E. R., ‘The German Empire: an Empire?’, History Workshop Journal, 66 (2008), pp. 129–62. Eley, G., Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven, 1980). Epstein, K., Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy (Princeton, 1959). Fairburn, B., Democracy in the Undemocratic State: The German Reichstag Elections of 1898 and 1903 (Toronto, 1997). Fitzpatrick, M., Purging the Empire: Mass Expulsions in Germany, 1871–1914 (Oxford, 2015). Fletcher, R., Revisionism and Empire: Socialist Imperialism in Germany, 1897–1914 (London, 1984). Fritzsche, P., Reading Berlin 1900 (Cambridge, 1996). Gross, M., The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, 2004). Heckart, B., From Bassermann to Bebel: The Grand Bloc’s Quest for Reform in the Kaiserreich, 1900–1914 (New Haven, 1974). Jarausch, K., The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven, 1973). Jenkins, J., Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg (Ithaca, 2003). Kocka, J. and Mitchell, A., eds, Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1993). Lerman, K. A., The Chancellor as Courtier: Bernhard von Bülow and the Governance of Germany, 1900–1909 (Cambridge, 1990). Mombauer, A. and Deist, W., eds, The Kaiser: New Research on Wilhelm II’s Role in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, 2003). Reagin, N. R., Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, 2007).

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Nineteenth-Century Germany Retallack, J., The German Right, 1860–1920: Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination (Toronto, 2006). Short, J. P., Magic Lantern Empire: Colonialism and Society in Germany (Ithaca, 2012). Smith, H. W., German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870–1914 (Princeton, 1995). Thompson, A., Left Liberals, the State and Popular Politics in Germany (Oxford, 2000). Umbach, M., German Cities and Bourgeois Modernism, 1890–1924 (Oxford, 2009). Verhey, J., The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilisation in Germany (Cambridge, 2000). Zimmer, O., Remaking the Rhythms of Life: German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State (Oxford, 2013).

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CHAPTER 11 IMPERIAL GERMANY: CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRENDS

Matthew Jefferies

In the opening chapter of his classic essay Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, Peter Gay makes a startling admission: ‘The Republic created little,’ he writes, ‘it liberated what was already there.’1 In other words, much that is celebrated as ‘Weimar culture’ was not the fruit of liberal democracy at all, but first began to blossom in the very different climate of the Second Empire. Whether one regards Gay’s claim as exaggerated or not, it is certainly true that the imperial era saw a growing pluralism, dissent and diversity in German cultural life, and ultimately demonstrated a dynamism and zest for innovation which was hardly apparent at the Empire’s birth. In the light of this, it is perhaps surprising that the cultural and intellectual developments of the imperial era have not received more attention from historians. While there are many monographs on particular aspects of pre-First World War German culture, and a growing number of valuable essay collections too, the sort of general studies which have helped to raise the profile of Weimar culture are thin on the ground for the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine periods. Surprisingly, this applies to the German-language literature as well as to that in English.2 My own attempt to provide an overview of ‘Imperial Culture’, published in 2003, remains an isolated example.3 Nevertheless, there are undoubtedly growth areas within the study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German culture. One of these has long been recognized as important but has been reinvigorated in recent years – the role of ‘classical’ music in the formation of German national identity;4 a second is the impact of colonialism on German culture and society (see Chapter 13).5 For all the lively and invigorating research of the past twenty years, however, it remains the case that some of the most widely read attempts to analyse the cultural and intellectual life of the Kaiserreich were written by historians primarily concerned with the roots of National Socialism. The result is, on the one hand, an exaggerated and misleading emphasis on ‘cultural pessimism’, anti-rationalism and völkisch mysticism; and, on the other, a preoccupation with the ‘unpolitical German’ and the ‘feudalized’ bourgeoisie. No one would deny that these are dimensions to Imperial German culture worthy of discussion, but the wider picture has sometimes been lost by historians whose approach has seemed dangerously teleological. It is important, therefore, to stress right at the outset that many of the themes and trends in German cultural and intellectual life were common, to a greater or lesser degree, to Europe as a whole. The decades either side of 1900 witnessed a far-reaching revolution in painting, architecture, music, literature and indeed in almost every other art form: an upheaval

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which did not stop at national borders and which coincided with – and was nourished by – a similarly radical questioning of previous assumptions in scientific and philosophical life. This dual revolution in the realm of culture and ideas, usually subsumed under the convenient if problematic term ‘modernism’, helped to transform a Europe already undergoing dramatic economic, social and technological change. Modernism in the arts revolted against the limitations of established representational codes and historical convention. It took very different forms – including a revived interest in ‘primitive’ cultures and folk myths as well as the shock of the new – and led to a rapid turnover in stylistic approaches – impressionism, symbolism, naturalism, cubism, futurism, expressionism – as the classical canon splintered and the international art trade developed into an increasingly sophisticated commodity market. Changes in the nature of arts patronage were accompanied by a breaking down of barriers between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, and between the various art forms themselves. Modernization, in general (industrialization, urbanization, the growth of mass politics and the mass media) and modernism, in particular, provoked hostility wherever they appeared, not only from enemies of progress and reactionary philistines. The costs of modernity – such as the alienation and anonymity of the big city, the loss of traditional lifestyles and the many threats posed to the natural world – were very real; while the arrogance of many modernists, who claimed to have triumphed over history, was always likely to arouse a hostile response. Indeed, the attitude of épater les bourgeois was an integral part of most modernist movements. By the 1890s, intellectual disdain for the emerging mass society and its culture was widespread throughout Europe among thinkers on both the left and right of the political spectrum. Almost all the values associated with nineteenth-century civilization – liberalism, materialism, positivism, rationality – were called into question, giving rise to a profound scepticism about the benefits of ‘progress’ and the mood of malaise popularly associated with the fin de siècle. ‘Modernists’ were themselves hostile to many aspects of the modern society which had spawned them, but by no means all were pessimists. Indeed, many expressed a youthful optimism for the future and became engaged in efforts to reform society through art, while others preferred to retreat into a cultish aestheticism or hedonistic decadence. However, for all that was essentially pan-European in character, there was clearly something particularly remarkable about a German culture which in these years not only played a decisive role in the development of abstract art, atonal music and modern architecture but also produced Nietzsche, Einstein and Freud. It was as if the trends and themes which shaped European culture as a whole affected Germany in a particularly heightened and acute form. Most historians suggest it was the unusually rapid and intense experience of modernization which made pre-First World War Germany, in Modris Eksteins’s phrase, the ‘modernist nation par excellence’.6 The relationship between economic and social modernization and cultural modernism is far from straightforward, but in searching for the cultural and intellectual trends which shaped Imperial Germany one has to put responses to modernization at the top of the list. There were, however, other pervasive themes which were important in the German 238

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case, and one deserves particular mention: the national question. The fact that culture (Kultur) had served as an important focal point of national consciousness in the century or so before the founding of the Reich ensured that the writer or artist had a more central role in German life than in many other countries. This did not subside after 1871, and cultural issues continued to be debated with an intensity and vigour untypical of other national contexts: attempts to define what was distinctively German, and how it differed from other national traditions, remained a major preoccupation of cultural critics and producers. At the same time, however, the manner in which Germany had been unified reduced rather than increased the chances of Germany developing genuinely national cultural institutions. The smaller German states, fearful of Prussian domination, saw cultural policy as an important area of autonomy, and as a counterweight to Berlin’s hegemony. Cultural affairs therefore remained largely under their own jurisdiction – the only major exceptions were press and copyright laws – and any attempt to increase the imperial role met with fierce opposition, from Bavaria in particular. The polycentric nature of German cultural and intellectual life – rightly highlighted as a positive consequence of German particularism – therefore continued, despite the rise of Berlin as a capital city of increasing importance. Germany’s other cultural centres fell into three main categories: the many Residenzstädte, the seats of royal courts, where rulers had provided theatres, museums and academies; the old university towns, such as Leipzig and Jena; and towns with thriving art markets. The most important of the latter were Munich, Düsseldorf, Dresden and – beyond the borders of the Reich – Vienna. Until the 1890s, however, this apparent abundance was not reflected in diversity.

Gründerzeit culture At the time of unification, and in the economically turbulent years which followed (the so-called Gründerzeit), the arts in Germany had a deserved reputation for being conservative and unadventurous. The Academies of Fine Art, whose occasional (usually annual or biennial) exhibitions or ‘salons’ were the crucial marketplace for most artists, were bastions of tradition, unwilling to accept innovation or deviation from established conventions. As anyone familiar with the trials and tribulations of the French impressionists will be aware, this was by no means unique to Germany, but even so, the insularity and conventionality of the German academies were frequently recognized by contemporaries. At a time when paintings were expected to tell a story, to inspire and to reflect lofty ideals, the predilection was for historical, mythological and biblical subjects, packed with detail and highly composed, yet executed in a style that was intended to give an illusion of reality, so that any evidence of artifice – the strokes of the paintbrush, for instance – had to be hidden from view. The most successful German painters of the day were men like Franz von Lenbach (1836–1904), who dominated the artistic life of Munich until the 1890s and was best known for his numerous portraits of Bismarck, and Anton von Werner (1843–1915), who held a similarly dominant position in the Berlin art world. Werner produced many 239

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large and pompous paintings for the Prussian state, depicting scenes from the FrancoPrussian War and most famously the proclamation of Kaiser Wilhelm I at Versailles (which he painted in three rather different versions between 1871 and 1885) (see Chapter 8, p. 142). These ‘princely painters’ (Malerfürsten), who mixed with kings, chancellors and great industrialists, lived in a truly palatial style and were probably respected more for their wealth and social status than their creativity. Certainly Hans Makart, a Viennese artist, is remembered for his imposing studio – piled high with artistic treasures and open to the public for an hour each afternoon – rather than his paintings. German painters of the mid- to late nineteenth century did not, on the whole, belong to movements or even have loose associations. They were highly conscious of their individual reputations and were often scornful of their ‘competitors’, particularly if they felt their place in posterity was under threat. With the exception of Adolph Menzel (1815–1905), who was always something of a maverick, the leading German painters consciously emulated the styles and themes of the old masters, in large and opulent canvases full of theatricality and pathos. The German historians Richard Hamann and Jost Hermand have drawn parallels between the heroic postures of Gründerzeit art and the cult of genius which pervaded other areas of early imperial culture: academic work, for instance, often concentrated on the biographies of great men, and Friedrich Nietzsche attempted to embody the whole of his philosophy in a single individual, Zarathustra. Of course, the work of the ‘heroic’ Gründerzeit artists was out of reach for all but the wealthiest individuals and institutions, but many of the leading painters also produced smaller genre scenes for more modest budgets and surroundings. Middle-class Germans could also obtain original works by joining one of the many Kunstvereine – by 1900 there were over eighty of these ‘art clubs’ – which were established in major towns during the nineteenth century and which usually allocated paintings to members by lottery. For the vast majority of people, however, art came in the form of reproductions, which were often of high quality. The demand for reproductions, the success of the Kunstvereine, the popularity of art history as an academic discipline and the high attendance figures at exhibitions all testify to a great hunger for art in late nineteenth-century Germany: indeed, historians such as Thomas Nipperdey have made much of art’s role as a surrogate religion in an increasingly secular society.7 The popularity of painting in the manner of the old masters was complemented by a vogue for heavy, highly ornamental furniture – antique or reproduction – and dark, wood-panelled rooms. This was due in no small measure to the proselytizing of the writer and publisher Georg Hirth (1841–1916), who vigorously promoted the German Renaissance as the most suitable historical tradition on which to base a national style for the new Empire. The long-running debate on what should be the German national style in design and architecture was complex, since the aesthetic arguments were clouded by political symbolism. For instance, Hirth and other liberal enthusiasts of the German Renaissance were principally attracted to the Dürerzeit by its image as a golden age of civic responsibility, in which the sturdy burghers of towns like Nuremberg had maintained a proud record of self-government. Architecture was similarly an issue of political identity for the Catholic politician and art critic August Reichensperger 240

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(1808–95), a founder of the Centre Party and the most vociferous champion of the Gothic style. He celebrated the completion of Cologne Cathedral in 1880 as a fitting symbol for the new Empire, but fought in vain for the new Reichstag building also to be designed in what he termed the ‘German style’. For others, however, it was essentially an economic issue: with the growing internationalization of trade, they argued, Germany would need to develop some sort of distinctive style of its own, if it was to compete with the established identities of British or French goods. It was largely in response to the poor impression made by German applied art in the shop window of the great world fairs that a major exhibition was held in Munich’s Crystal Palace in 1876. Visitors had to pass through a display of 3,000 pieces of historic German furniture and objets d’art under the banner of ‘Our Fathers’ Works’, before they could reach the contemporary exhibits, most of which were in historical styles. The message of the exhibition was that German designers should study the work of their forefathers and continue in their traditions, even if machines had largely replaced the craftsman’s hands. However, with manufacturers always eager to outshine their rivals’ products, and with designers anxious to show off their mastery of a range of historic styles, gained at a growing number of colleges of applied art (Kunstgewerbeschulen) or technical colleges, no uniform national style emerged. While each historical style had its own rules and conventions, these became increasingly blurred in the later nineteenth century, with particular problems caused by objects and buildings with no historical prototype, such as telephones and cookers, railway stations and department stores. More often than not, the result was the sort of eclectic historicism which was by no means unique to Germany but which became a prime target for German cultural critics at the turn of the century. Taking their cue from these early modernist critiques, contemporary historians have tended to portray the Gründerzeit as a period of cultural and moral decline: as a time of nouveau riche speculators and their tasteless attempts at upward mobility (the sort of characters portrayed in Sternheim’s The Snob, Fontane’s The Adulteress or Heinrich Mann’s Man of Straw); of paintings made by and for vulgar upstarts; of pygmies posing as giants; of a superficial architecture and design, which hid shoddy workmanship behind a veneer of surrogate sophistication. There is a good deal of truth in all this, but such generalizations can be overplayed and it would be wrong to dismiss all the cultural products of the 1870s and 1880s as pompous and overblown kitsch. It is perhaps instructive to note that houses and apartment blocks from this era are highly sought after in contemporary Germany, and even reproduction German Renaissance furniture can now demand high prices at auction. It is more doubtful whether the official art and architecture of the Empire will ever be regarded with much affection. The major imperial building projects – Paul Wallot’s Reichstag building, completed in 1894; the Imperial High Court in Leipzig, designed by Ludwig Hoffmann and completed in 1895; or Raschdorff ’s new Berlin Cathedral, built between 1894 and 1904 – were impressive only in their monumental scale. Similarly, the numerous monuments erected to honour the memory of Wilhelm I or (more frequently) Bismarck were imposing rather than imaginative, and few would dispute Gordon Craig’s assertion that ‘the victory over France and the unification of the German states inspired 241

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no great work of literature or music or painting’.8 Several of the largest monuments to unification, such as the Victory Column in Berlin (started in 1865 as a memorial to the war against Denmark and finally unveiled in revised form on Sedan Day in 1873) or the Hermann Monument near Detmold (started in 1838 but not finished until 1875 – see Chapter 5) were completed only with the financial assistance of the emperor but, in general, neither Wilhelm I nor Bismarck showed much interest in culture. This all changed with the accession of Wilhelm II in 1888. Wilhelm had dabbled in art since childhood, and went on to design trophies, uniforms, furniture and statues and to paint numerous pictures, under the tutelage of Anton von Werner. Although it is difficult to gauge the true extent of his influence, it is clear that – as in other areas of policy – Wilhelm tried to pursue a much more ‘hands-on’ approach to cultural affairs than his predecessors. As the king of Prussia, he was able to wield considerable influence through his powers of patronage and appointment in Berlin’s cultural institutions. Several episodes are well known: in 1898, he denied the recommended award of a gold medal to Käthe Kollwitz because he disliked both the style and content of her work; in 1904, he interfered with the selection of paintings to be shown in the ‘German House’ (Figure 11.1) at the St Louis World’s Fair, prompting a parliamentary outcry; and in 1909, the director of the National Gallery in Berlin, Hugo von Tschudi, was forced to resign after the Kaiser vetoed the purchase of some paintings by the French artists Courbet and Daumier, though the benefits of German particularism were once again demonstrated when von Tschudi was immediately invited to take up a similar position in Munich.

Figure 11.1  The ‘German House’ at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, modelled on the Baroque Charlottenburg Palace at the insistence of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Source: Education Images / Getty.

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Wilhelm was also able to use his wealth and influence to pursue grandiose projects, including a wave of monuments to mark the hundredth anniversary of his grandfather’s birth (1897), and an ‘avenue of victory’ (Siegesallee) in Berlin. The Siegesallee was an ambitious double row of thirty-two marble statues, designed to venerate the history of the Hohenzollerns, but which quickly became a target of satire and abuse (the writer Alfred Döblin condemned its ‘byzantine emptiness and falseness of spectacle’). After its completion in 1901, Wilhelm invited the sculptors and artists who had worked on the project to court, where he addressed them with a speech on the role of art in society. In it he described art as a body of unchanging, eternal values, which could be used to uplift and educate the German nation, and especially the working class, to appreciate truth and beauty.

Cultural critics and reformers By the time Wilhelm made this speech, however, it was clear that he was already swimming against the tide. The idea that cultural values were somehow permanent and unchanging, that the rules of art had been laid down centuries before and would only be challenged by fools and charlatans, was increasingly difficult to uphold at a time when a broadly based movement for cultural renewal was advancing on many fronts. The groundwork for the reformers was laid by a multitude of cultural critics, whose attacks on Gründerzeit values came from very different angles but often ended up hitting the same targets. The most biting and brilliant of the critics was undoubtedly Friedrich Nietzsche (1844– 1900), a master of German prose and a philosopher whose aphoristic style was unusually brutal and direct (‘philosophizing with the hammer’)9 but unsystematic and frequently contradictory: his most enduring ideas, the ‘Death of God’, the ‘Superman’ and the ‘Will to Power’, continue to arouse controversy today. Nietzsche once described himself as the great ‘seducer and pied piper’, and he has certainly been cited as an influence by numerous very different movements and individuals. However, since he viewed creative people as the vanguard of humanity – he wrote that the world was only justified as an aesthetic phenomenon and that only art could make life bearable – it is not surprising that artists, writers and composers were among his most devout followers. Nietzsche was a fierce critic of almost every aspect of Imperial Germany and its culture, and anyone who sought change could draw inspiration from his highly emotive language. Another inspirational figure with a problematic legacy was Nietzsche’s one-time friend, and later sworn enemy, Richard Wagner (1813–83). Wagner’s influence on late nineteenth-century Europe was considerable, and not just because of his music – which was far more innovative than the Germanic mythology of his librettos might suggest – or his works of theory and criticism, which were full of anger and spite (Figure 11.2). Wagner’s music dramas gained a permanent home at Bayreuth in 1876. In 1882, the festival theatre was ‘consecrated’ with the première of his last work, Parsifal, which Wagner believed should be performed nowhere else. More a religious rite than an opera, Parsifal was 243

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Figure 11.2  A Viennese caricature of the composer Richard Wagner, whose influence was felt far beyond the world of music. Source: Rischgitz / Stringer / Getty.

an initiation ceremony for a theatre that was fast becoming a temple. The huge and fanatical audiences which flocked to Bayreuth in a spirit of holy communion every year thereafter were drawn by the prospect of seeing a total work of art, the Gesamtkunstwerk: a concept which was to hold a particular fascination for succeeding generations of German artists. Among the many other cultural critics to emerge in the later nineteenth-century, the writings of the völkisch ‘cultural pessimists’ (principally Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn, although both Nietzsche and Wagner were also pulled into this sphere by their relatives and acolytes) have attracted particular attention from historians. Their work was first highlighted by a series of studies in the early 1960s by historians such as George Mosse and Fritz Stern, who argued that a distinctive ‘Germanic ideology’ developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was hostile to most aspects of the modern world, and which offered in its place a ragbag of Romantic, irrational and racist impulses, possessing a revolutionary dynamic, every bit as hostile to orthodox conservative thinking as it was to liberalism and socialism.10 It was suggested that these writers had a lasting and damaging influence on German society, and in particular on the educated middle class, the Bildungsbürgertum. Ultimately, of course, the influence of particular writers and thinkers is extremely difficult to measure. The ‘cultural pessimists’ certainly had more readers than disaffected intellectuals on the fringes of academic life could usually expect, but the proponents of the ‘Germanic ideology’ thesis have been convincingly challenged on a number of levels. 244

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The intricacies of the debate cannot be entered into here, but it is significant for our narrative to note the way in which de Lagarde (1827–91), Langbehn (1851–1907) and others were savagely critical of historicism in the arts and urged the development of new forms of cultural expression, based not on the pattern books of history, but derived from the soul and soil of the German Volk. Langbehn, in particular, was an important figure for many German artists and architects. Not only did he reject the unthinking adoption of historical forms, but he also urged the reconciliation of utility and beauty in a way that echoed early twentiethcentury functionalism; and although he was not in the same league as Nietzsche, he came up with some memorable aphorisms of his own, such as, ‘the professor is the German national disease’ or ‘the true artist can never be local enough’. Langbehn’s best-known work, Rembrandt as Educator (1890), helped to clear the way for a succession of widely read art pedagogues, who each in their own way tried to communicate to the general public the value of simplicity and spontaneity in artistic creativity, and to elevate the standing of folk art and vernacular traditions against the prevailing pomposity of imperial culture. These included Alfred Lichtwark (1852–1914), the long-serving director of Hamburg’s Kunsthalle; Ferdinand Avenarius (1856–1923), the publisher of the popular cultural journal Der Kunstwart; and Paul Schultze-Naumburg (1869–1949), whose writings on architecture and the landscape helped to sensitize many middle-class Germans to issues of town planning and conservation. The founding of artists’ colonies in rural locations, such as one established in the 1890s on the windswept North German Plain at Worpswede, were a direct response to such pedagogic efforts. The revolt against historicism inspired by this disparate group of cultural critics and pedagogues took a different guise in each of the arts, and nowhere was it clear-cut. The voices of renewal fell into two main camps: those who sought to re-establish continuity with folk values (‘primitive’ or naive art, vernacular architecture, folk tales, simple peasant clothing and so on) and those who looked for radically new approaches. Later, in the 1920s, these contradictions would become all too apparent, but for the time being, such distinctions were blurred by a shared contempt for the excesses of the Gründerzeit and a common vocabulary which placed emphasis on ‘honesty’ and ‘sobriety’. Chronologically, the first of the arts to experience the spark of revolt was literature. At the time of unification, in literature as in painting, it was believed that the ideal task of the creative artist was to depict what was uplifting, good and true. Thus, apart from Theodor Fontane’s novels, which dealt in a rather subtle and subdued way with the stresses and strains beneath the surface of contemporary life, German writers of the early imperial era showed little interest in social or political themes. This began to change in the 1880s when, inspired by Zola, Ibsen and others, a German variant of naturalism emerged in both Munich, where it was led by Michael Georg Conrad and revolved around the journal Die Gesellschaft, and Berlin, where its leaders were the Hart brothers and Otto Brahm (1856–1912). Brahm was a co-founder and director of the so-called ‘Free Stage’ (Freie Bühne), where ‘members only’ performances allowed controversial plays to escape the censor. Naturalist writers brought contemporary social problems – such as the plight of the poor or the position of women in society – to the German stage for the first 245

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time, though the depth of their social engagement has often been questioned. The best known of the German naturalists was Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946), whose play The Weavers (1892) was initially banned in Prussia and became the subject of a long court battle, which ultimately went Hauptmann’s way on the grounds that the seat prices at the Deutsches Theater were too high for the sort of people who might be tempted to riot. Wilhelm II, who condemned the play, cancelled his box in protest (Figure 11.3). Naturalism was also a trend in painting: Max Liebermann (1847–1935) painted artisans and (predominantly female) labourers in an unsentimental, naturalistic style – his painting The Goosepluckers led to him being dubbed an ‘apostle of ugliness’ – before developing a lighter palette and falling under the influence of French impressionism. With another naturalist painter, Fritz von Uhde (1848–1911), Liebermann played a prominent role in the Secessions of the 1890s; a series of rebellions by German artists, who ‘seceded’ or withdrew from the art establishment in their state by refusing to show their work at the annual salon and establishing their own gallery space instead. The Secessions, which effectively broke the stranglehold of the academies and enabled modern art to establish a foothold in Central Europe, began in Munich in 1892 and continued in Vienna (1897) and Berlin (1898). The exact combination of motives varied in each case: the conservative selection of works by salon juries, the hostility of juries to innovative foreign art, the cramped and insensitive ways in which pictures were hung, generational and organizational conflict, and so on. By no means were all the Secessionists modernists, and many were moved by economic rather than aesthetic motives, but this did not lessen the significance of their actions. The traditional importance of state patronage to artists in the German lands ensured that their rebellion

Figure 11.3  A plate from Käthe Kollwitz’s 1897 print cycle ‘A Weavers’ Revolt’, inspired by Gerhart Hauptmann’s play The Weavers. Source: Bettmann / Getty.

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against the art establishment also assumed a political character. This was especially the case in Berlin, where the Kaiser – who had nothing but baffled contempt for modern tendencies in art – became involved. As with many subsequent confrontations between modernism and the establishment, however, it was the latter which claimed to represent popular taste, and the Secessionists who were caricatured as ‘elitist’ and ‘undemocratic’. A number of the Munich Secessionists moved away from painting in the mid-1890s and turned to applied art and architecture. Thanks to former Secessionists like Peter Behrens (1868–1940) and Richard Riemerschmid (1868–1957), Munich for a time became a leading centre of the new style in design and architecture, known generally as Art Nouveau, but in Germany dubbed Jugendstil, after the graphic style of the journal Jugend (founded in 1896 by Georg Hirth, who embraced the new style every bit as enthusiastically as he had the German Renaissance). The close links between the Secessions and Art Nouveau were emphasized by the fact that in Vienna, where the architect J. M. Olbrich designed a purpose-built exhibition hall for the Secession, the new architecture and design was known as Sezessionsstil. Jugendstil, like other manifestations of Art Nouveau, is regarded by design historians as a crucial transitional phase between historicism and modernism. The desire of its practitioners to find a fresh style, untainted by historical associations, led many to seek inspiration in the forms of the natural world: the result was the free-flowing, curvilinear style, which made an impact in most European states in the last years of the century. Many of the young designers who identified with the style had not enjoyed a formal academic training, and some like Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) expressed a social concern inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement. If the new style was to integrate art and society, they argued, no object should be too small to be worthy of aesthetic concern, and wherever possible, it should be made in workshops, where the artist had control over the whole production process and the worker was more than an alienated automaton. The workshop thus became the focal point of Jugendstil design, and the Werkstätten in Munich, Vienna and Dresden became large and profitable enterprises for a time, although their handcrafted furniture was invariably too expensive for the working-class families which featured so prominently in the designers’ rhetoric. Jugendstil was quickly taken up by mass manufacturers and provincial builders, and it very soon became just another style in the pattern books; the artists’ colony established at Darmstadt by the progressive Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse as a ‘document of German art’ represented its swansong. However, although it blossomed only briefly, the new style brought forth a host of young talent, including individuals who were to remain at the forefront of German architecture and design for the next thirty years or more. Gordon Craig has written that ‘before 1914 it was only on rare occasions that German artists were interested, let alone stirred by political and social events and issues’.11 As the example of the Jugendstil designers suggests, this view is easily challenged. Of course, aesthetic narcissism and the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’ did exist, and some like the writer Stefan George (1868–1933) retreated into a rather precious private universe, but the stereotype of the unpolitical German artist, seeking Innerlichkeit (‘inwardness’) instead of social engagement, is unhelpful and inaccurate. On the contrary, artists and aesthetes 247

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often played a prominent role in the multitude of social and cultural reform movements to emerge in turn-of-the-century Germany. The best known of these is probably the youth movement, with its numerous hiking associations (Wandervögel), but many others existed under the broad umbrella of the Lebensreformbewegung (literally, ‘movement for the reform of life’). This term was first used in print around 1896, to denote a host of autonomous organizations active in a wide range of fields, but all aiming for a fundamental reform of lifestyles. Some of the groups targeted the individual (abstinence, naturism, vegetarianism, homeopathic medicine), while others focused on society at large (housing reform, land reform, clothing reform, conservation and environmental protection). Typical of the latter group was the German Garden City Association (founded in 1902). Germany’s first garden city, at Hellerau near Dresden, never developed much beyond a village, but still became a focal point for the Wilhelmine reformers and a place of pilgrimage for many individuals, including George Bernard Shaw, who recognized kindred spirits at work. The settlement was built to a plan by Richard Riemerschmid around the factory of Karl Schmidt’s Deutsche Werkstätten – one of the leading furniture ‘workshops’ – and also featured workers’ housing by progressive architects, and a centre for rhythmic gymnastics, where pioneers of dance such as Mary Wigman and Marie Rambert were among the students. The Garden City Association was, like most of the Lebensreform organizations, overwhelmingly middle class in character but attracted a bizarre mixture of reformist socialists, progressive liberals, anarcho-libertarians and völkisch nationalists. It has already been stated that the Wilhelmine reform movements embraced people with very different aesthetic approaches; much the same could be said of their political character. For instance, the principal theorist of the garden city idea in Germany was the notorious anti-Semite and arch-reactionary Theodor Fritsch, but the association’s leaders, the Kampffmeyer brothers, were supporters of the SPD. Just as the 1920s were to bring an aesthetic polarization, so the political climate of the Weimar Republic was to turn erstwhile colleagues into bitter enemies. Nowhere was this more apparent than in architecture: the well-known and highly politicized arguments of the 1920s, between ‘modernists’ and ‘traditionalists’, were fought out largely by former friends and associates from the same Wilhelmine organization, the German Werkbund. Founded in 1907, the Werkbund sought to resolve the dilemma on which the Jugendstil designers had foundered: namely, the proper role of artists, craftsmen and designers in an age of machine mass production. The reconciliation between art and industry, which the organization proposed, was to be on the latter’s terms. Its membership thus included major industrial firms as well as individual businessmen, politicians and designers, all hoping that an ‘ennobling’ of the modern industrial world would not only boost German exports but also increase the self-respect of industrial workers and thereby help to restore social harmony to the German people. Peter Behrens’s work with the electrical engineering giant AEG is the best-known example of the organization’s ethos in action, and the man once dubbed ‘Mr Werkbund’ further secured his place in the history books by employing all three of the future giants of European modern architecture  – 248

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Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier – in his studio near Potsdam before 1914. Gropius’s own project, the ‘Fagus’ factory at Alfeld (1911–13) became an icon of modernism in its own right and introduced many of the design principles he was to pursue as director of the ‘Bauhaus’ in the 1920s (Figure 11.4). Not all the products of Werkbund design were so unashamedly modern, but even so, Werkbund architecture is well summed up by Nipperdey’s phrase ‘modern buildings for

Figure 11.4  Poster designed by Peter Behrens advertising the 1914 German Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. Source: INTERFOTO / Alamy.

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modern people, proud of their modernity’.12 The organization’s work found relatively widespread acceptance among the general population – its 1914 Cologne exhibition attracted over one million visitors – and it even had some support in governing circles, as the choice of Peter Behrens to design the new German embassy in St Petersburg (1912) indicates. New ideas in music, which evolved in a way curiously parallel to the development of architecture – from ‘late nineteenth century bombast to disquieting severity’ as Norman Stone has put it13 – may have been more difficult for the public to accept, but one should not take the whistles and catcalls that accompanied Schoenberg’s moves towards atonality as necessarily representative of the concert-going public as a whole.

Technological and intellectual change Of course, many Germans had neither the time nor the inclination to involve themselves in cultural issues, and no doubt the more zealous Lebensreformer and outspoken modernists appeared rather crankish to the proverbial man or woman in the street, but whether they knew it or not, all Germans at the turn of the century were participating in a cultural revolution of unprecedented proportions. The rapid development of a commercial popular culture was made possible by technological change – the first telephones (from the 1870s), typewriters (late 1870s), Kodak cameras (1880s), Emil Berliner’s gramophone (1887) and radio broadcasts (1900s) – but predicated on changes in the organization of capitalism (mass production and consumption) and mass education. New printing techniques and almost universal literacy facilitated an explosion of printed matter. Between 1885 and 1913, daily newspaper circulation in Germany doubled and the range of popular fiction (such as Karl May’s adventure stories), illustrated magazines and satirical journals (like Simplicissimus, launched in 1896 and with a circulation of 85,000 by 1904) all expanded dramatically. The development of electric lighting helped a proliferation of cabaret, revue and nightclub shows, providing not only a venue for the music of the tango, the bunny hug and the turkey trot but opportunities for writers of the quality of Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), who was described as ‘a genius of smut’ but whose plays Spring Awakening (1891), Pandora’s Box (1894), and Earth Spirit (1895) broke through the conventions of naturalist theatre and paved the way for expressionist drama. Such subversive entertainment posed an obvious challenge to the censors. Laws on blasphemy, obscenity, incitement and ‘gross mischief ’ were all used against the theatre and the press in Wilhelmine Germany – Wedekind himself spent some time in jail for ‘insulting the monarch’ – but efforts to introduce a new censorship law (the infamous ‘Lex Heinze’) met with impressive and largely effective opposition. In fact, as Robin Lenman has pointed out, the principal regulator of cultural production was now the market rather than the censor. In other words, avant-garde artists and writers were more worried about not finding buyers for their work than about police interference or stern lectures from the likes of Wilhelm II. 250

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Rising levels of disposable incomes, and a gradual reduction in working hours, led to a growth in organized sport and increasing leisure opportunities. The institution which best represented this trend was the cinema. Gary Stark has claimed that a ‘bioscope’ performance at Berlin’s Wintergarten in November 1895 was the world’s first example of a film being shown to a paying audience; 10 years later, there was still only a handful of permanent cinemas in Germany (the first films were shown in touring circus tents); but by 1914, there were some 300 cinemas in Berlin alone, and up to 3,000 in Germany as a whole. Of course, the movie was not yet regarded as an art form, but it was already an established and important leisure pursuit for millions of predominantly working-class Germans. In time, it would – along with other commercial entertainments – reduce the appeal of the vast mosaic of clubs and associations built up in the sociocultural milieu of the socialist labour movement. For the time being, however, workers’ choral, theatre and reading societies continued to represent an important, if not exactly innovative, slice of German cultural life. If the growth of a commercial mass culture was regarded with fear and suspicion by Germany’s labour leaders, it was a similar story in the country’s great seats of learning. German academics, struggling to cope with a fourfold increase in students between 1871 and 1914, felt that their authority, status and economic well-being were all under threat. Countless gloomy tracts were written to contrast the values of German Kultur with those of Anglo-Saxon Zivilisation, by which they meant the British ‘shopkeeper mentality’ or the cold commercialism of American life. However, despite the generally conservative outlook of most of their number – Craig describes professors at this time as the ‘intellectual bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns’14 – intellectual life did not stagnate in the Wilhelmine era. On the contrary, many German academics became preoccupied with trying to make sense of the atomization of modern life and its effects, which could be felt all around them. Thus it was in these years that sociology began to emerge as an academic discipline, with valuable contributions from Simmel, Tönnies, Troeltsch and, above all, Max Weber (1864–1920), whose classic work on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–5) explored the relationship between ideas and social development. Weber shunned both cultural pessimism and vulgar optimism to produce a body of work noted for its subtlety, conceptual originality and methodological rigour. He perceived more clearly than most that while the modern world brought great benefits, it also posed new dangers of its own. The most important intellectual milestones passed in these years, however, were in the natural sciences. After the discovery of X-rays (1895), radioactivity (1896) and the electron (1897), the physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) outlined what became known as quantum theory in 1900, and five years later, another future German Nobel Prize winner, Albert Einstein (1880–1952), proposed his special theory of ‘relativity’. Perhaps the most important aspect of Einstein’s work was that it amounted to a denial of any absolute frame of reference, and thus called into question the very nature of scientific laws or, as Michael Biddiss has put it, ‘opened up vast vistas of uncertainty’.15 Much the same could be said of the work of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Viennese specialist in nervous ailments, who invented ‘psychoanalysis’ in the 1890s and 251

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whose publications The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and Three Essays on Sexuality (1905) revealed the power of the subconscious. His work was epoch-making – even if The Interpretation of Dreams took eight years to sell its first 600 copies – because it called into question the entire conventional terminology of sanity, morality and rationality. Freud’s work on the subconscious mind was to have a great influence on the last major movement in Imperial German culture: expressionism. Much has been written on German expressionism in recent years, not least because an expressionist tendency – characterized by emotion, exaggeration and violent distortion – became manifest in every field of the arts at some point between 1905 and 1925. The principal expressionist groupings in German fine art, Die Brücke (founded in Dresden in 1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (founded in Munich six years later), produced some of the greatest paintings of the twentieth century, and two members of the latter group – Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and Franz Marc (1880–1916) – were instrumental in the evolution of abstract art after 1910. In this, the relationship between expressionist art and music was very close: the first abstract artists cited music’s lack of a ‘subject’ as justification for their move away from representational art, while the composer Schoenberg was also a noted portrait painter. The pursuit of the Gesamtkunstwerk led artists to use every available medium of expression. German expressionists embodied many of the qualities and contradictions of modernism as a whole: proclaiming a new vision, yet turning to primitive folk art for inspiration; fiercely critical of bourgeois materialism, yet smart enough to secure the best prices for their work; anti-urban, yet fascinated by the city and unwilling to move far away from metropolitan life. The expressionists demonstrated that criticisms of rationality and materialism could be just as much an expression of modernity as of conservatism; and while much has rightly been made of the movement’s apocalyptic strain, it is important not to lose sight of the more prosaic aspects of the expressionist phenomenon. As Thomas Nipperdey has pointed out, this revolution in art went hand in hand with a fundamental change in middle-class consciousness: modern art established itself in Germany not in spite of the middle classes but because of them. New private art dealers – like Paul Cassirer in Berlin – and many new patrons – like the bankers Karl Ernst Osthaus and August von der Heydt, in the industrial towns of Hagen and Wuppertal, respectively – were vital for the breakthrough of expressionism, just as other bourgeois patrons commissioned buildings from Werkbund architects and attended concerts by Schoenberg. If nothing else, therefore, study of the cultural life of Imperial Germany can help revise the still-popular cliché of the ‘feudalized’ German bourgeoisie, aspiring to nothing more than reserve officer status and an attractive duelling scar.

Notes 1. P. Gay, Weimar Culture (1974), p. 6. 2. Honourable exceptions include R. Hamann and J. Hermand, Deutsche Kunst und Kultur von der Grűnderzeit bis zum Expressionismus, 5 vols (1967 ff.); C. Hepp, Avantgarde. Moderne

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Imperial Germany: Cultural and Intellectual Trends Kunst, Kulturkritik und Reformbewegungen nach der Jahrhundertwende (1987); A. Nitschke, G. A. Ritter, D. Peukert and R. vom Bruch, eds, Jahrhundertwende. Der Aufbruch in die Moderne, 2 vols (1990). 3. M. Jefferies, Imperial Culture in Germany, 1871–1918 (2003). 4. See C. Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (2005); C. Applegate and P. Potter, eds, Music and German National Identity (2002); S. O. Müller, ‘Cultural Nationalism and Beyond: Musical Performances in Imperial Germany’, in Müller and Torp, eds, Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives (2011); S. O. Müller and L. Raphael, eds, ‘Demarcation and Exchange. “National” Music in 19th Century Europe’, Journal of Modern European History, 5 (2007); A. Pieper, Music and the Making of Middle‐Class Culture: A Comparative History of Nineteenth‐Century Leipzig and Birmingham (2008). 5. See R. A. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire. Colonial Discourse in German Culture (1997); J. Bowersox, Raising Germans in the Age of Empire: Youth and Colonial Culture in Germany, 1871–1914 (2013); D. Ciarlo, Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (2011); S. Friedrichsmeyer, S. Lennox and S. Zantop, eds, The Imperialist Imagination. German Colonialism and its Legacy (1998); H. G. Penny, Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany (2002); J. P. Short, Magic Lantern Empire: Colonialism and Society in Germany (2012); S. Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family and Nation in Precolonial Germany (1997). 6. M. Eksteins, The Rites of Spring, the First World War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1990), p. xvi. 7. T. Nipperdey, The Rise of the Arts in Modern Society (1990). 8. G. Craig, Germany 1866–1945 (1978), p. 215. 9. The subtitle of Nietzsche’s book Twilight of the Idols (1889) was ‘How to Philosophize with a Hammer’. 10. G. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (1964); F. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (1961); H. Kohn, The Mind of Germany (1960). 11. Craig, Germany 1866–1945, p. 215. 12. Nipperdey, The Rise of the Arts in Modern Society, p. 20. 13. N. Stone, Europe Transformed, 1878–1919 (1983), p. 400. 14. Craig, Germany 1866–1945, p. 205. 15. M. Biddiss, in P. Hayes, ed., Themes in Modern European History 1890–1945 (1992), p. 88.

Select bibliography Essay collections Applegate, C. and Potter, P., eds, Music and German National Identity (2002). Chapple, G. and Schulte, H., eds, The Turn of the Century: German Literature and Art (1981). Forster-Hahn, F., ed., Imagining Modern German Culture 1889–1910 (1997). Kolinsky, E. and van der Will, W., eds, The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture (1998).

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Nineteenth-Century Germany Marchand, S. and Lindenfeld, D., eds, Germany at the Fin-de-Siècle: Culture Politics and Ideas (2004).

Essays and monographs Allen, A. T., Satire and Society in Wilhelmine Germany. Kladderadatsch & Simplicissimus, 1890–1914 (1984). Applegate, C., ‘Culture and the Arts’, in J. Retallack, ed., Imperial Germany 1871–1918: The Short Oxford History of Germany (2008). Aschheim, S., The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890–1990 (1992). Dalton, M. S., Catholicism, Popular Culture, and the Arts in Germany, 1880–1933 (2005). Eksteins, M., The Rites of Spring, the First World War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1990). Frisch, W., German Modernism: Music and the Arts (2005). Hau, M., The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany (2003). Heskett, J., Design in Germany, 1870–1918 (1986). Jefferies, M., Politics and Culture in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Industrial Architecture (1995). Jefferies, M., Imperial Culture in Germany, 1871–1918 (2003). Jelavich, P., Munich and Theatrical Modernism (1985). Jelavich, P., Berlin Cabaret (1993). Jenkins, J., Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg (2003). Lenman, R., Artists and Society in Germany 1850–1914 (1997). Lewis, B. I., Art for All? The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late Nineteenth Century Germany (2003). Makela, M., The Munich Secession: Art and Artists in Turn-of-the-Century Munich (1990). Nipperdey, T., The Rise of the Arts in Modern Society (1990). Paret, P., The Berlin Secession: Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany (1980). Paret, P., German Encounters with Modernism (2001). Pascal, R., From Naturalism to Expressionism: German Literature and Society, 1880–1918 (1973). Penny, H. G., Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany (2002). Pohlsander, H., National Monuments and Nationalism in 19th Century Germany (2008). Robertson, R., ‘German Literature and Thought from 1810 to 1890’, in H. Walser Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (2011). Rose, P. L., Wagner: Race and Revolution (1992). Schwartz, F., The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War (1996). Sheehan, J. J., Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism (2000). Stark, G., Banned in Berlin: Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (2009). West, S., The Visual Arts in Germany 1890–1937: Utopia and Despair (2000). Williams, J. A., Turning to Nature in Germany: Hiking, Nudism and Conservation, 1900–1940 (2007).

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CHAPTER 12 THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Roger Chickering

The summer of 1914 marks the pivot of modern German history. The popular reaction to the news of war was, as recent research has made clear, a great deal more complex than the general euphoria that was suggested in the famous crowd scenes in Berlin, Munich and other German cities (Figure 12.1).1 Still, whether they regarded it with enthusiasm or anxiety, Germans of all descriptions hoped in 1914 that war would resolve the many problems that had vexed their country since unification in 1871. A great common exertion in the name of national defence might, in this reasoning, heal the open sores of class conflict, confessional tension, political division, cultural uncertainty and international insecurity. These were the expectations to which the Kaiser gave voice when he exclaimed on 4 August that he henceforth ‘recognized no parties, only Germans’.2 In the event, the war had no such effect. Instead, the conflict that began in August 1914 exacerbated all these problems amid prodigious, unanticipated strains that eventuated, in the fall of 1918, in military and political collapse.3 The legacy of the First World War thereafter tormented the first German republican experiment, preoccupied the National Socialist dictatorship that followed and survived in political divisions that disappeared only in 1989. The repercussions of this war, which George Kennan has called ‘the great seminal catastrophe’ of the twentieth century, far transcended Germany’s history.4

War without end The dynamic that governed the broad impact of war in Germany was military in a strict sense. The armies that went to war in 1914 were composed and equipped in ways that discouraged a swift decision at arms. In the aftermath of the Franco-German war of 1870–71, the armies of all the continental powers had instituted universal military service, which drove the expansion of each of these bodies into millions of men. Industrial technologies thereupon placed lethal weapons – long-range, rapid-firing rifles; machine guns and field artillery – into the arsenals of all these armies. The effect of these technologies was to provide forces on the defensive with tactical advantages so overpowering that they frustrated offensive operations, until the advent of armoured vehicles toward the end of the war signalled a new dynamic of combat. The German plans for this war were by no means blind to the challenges that attended the movement of mass armies in an industrial age. The Schlieffen Plan provided the concept that governed the German campaign in 1914. It was predicated on the impossibility of a simultaneous German attack against the French and Russian armies,

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Figure 12.1  War enthusiasm. Source: Hulton Archive / Stringer / Getty.

as well as on the difficulty of a frontal assault on French lines.5 The most promising solution to this problem, General von Schlieffen reasoned, was to concentrate the bulk of Germany’s land forces for a swift operation in the west, which would exploit the speed and efficiency of German mobilization to envelop the French forces in a vast flanking manoeuvre that led through neutral Belgium and Holland. Victory over the French army would then liberate the bulk of the German forces for service in the east against the Russians, whose mobilization was projected to be much more ponderous. Between Schlieffen’s retirement in 1905 and the outbreak of war, his plan underwent a number of modifications at the hands of his successor as the chief of the general staff, Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger). For one thing, Moltke decided not to extend the army’s flanking manoeuvre into Holland, hoping to preserve Germany’s access to overseas markets through Dutch ports.6 For another thing, fearing the political repercussions of a French invasion of southern Germany, Moltke strengthened the southern flank of his armies at the expense of the northern flank, which was to spearhead the German invasion of Belgium. These decisions have animated the spirited debate over why Schlieffen’s plan failed, but it is safe to say that in any configuration, his concept amounted to an enormous gamble on a quick victory. The first five weeks of combat appeared nonetheless to vindicate his expectations. The German mobilization proceeded according to plan, and the advance of the German armies through Belgium and northern France portended the great decisive battle that Schlieffen had anticipated. This battle took place in early September 1914, but in circumstances that the German general had not foreseen, as staggering difficulties of supply and communication disrupted the coordinated movement of the German forces. At the Marne River, to the east of Paris, French and British forces halted the German advance.7 256

Map 12.1  Germany and the First World War in Europe.

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The Battle of the Marne was in fact a decisive moment of the war; and a case can be made that the Germans were henceforth likely to lose. Neither the initial German successes in the eastern theatre, which culminated in dramatic victories at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, nor the ensuing ‘race to the sea’ in the west could disguise the failure of the German gamble in 1914 – a strategic defeat of catastrophic proportions. In the west, the opposing armies now faced one another across a continuous front, which stretched for more than 400 miles from the Channel Coast to Switzerland. Now, offensive operations perforce meant frontal attacks by unprotected foot soldiers against elaborate entrenched positions, which bristled with weapons and were fortified to withstand artillery bombardment. For most of the war, the unhappy role of attacking such positions fell to the Entente forces, which faced the political and strategic challenge of dislodging the Germans from French and Belgian soil. Repeated British and French offensives in Flanders and northern France bought acres of barren land at a cost of tens of thousands of lives. A German strategic reprise came against the French fortress at Verdun in 1916. Here, in a battle that epitomized the war’s frightful immobility, German and French armies locked for ten months in a military rite of futility, in which they together suffered three quarters of a million casualties.8 To the east, the war featured more mobility, but it, too, defied a rapid military decision.9 In equipment, organization and training, the German forces were superior by a wide margin to their Russian antagonists and their Austro-Hungarian allies alike. Thanks to these disparities and the immense expanses of territory that defined the eastern war, German offensive operations succeeded on a scale unknown in the west. By the end of 1915, German armies had advanced hundreds of miles eastward to seize control of Poland and the Baltic lands. Still, victory eluded them. For all the disadvantages they faced, the Russian armies could tap massive reserves of manpower, which kept huge armies in the field to mount offensives in 1916 and 1917. Although its operational modes differed in the two theatres, military paralysis thus descended on both the eastern and western fronts. The war became a question of attrition, a dreadful stalemate in which the basic issue was the capacity of the contending sides to endure staggering losses. In these circumstances, the opposing forces were fated to feed the war’s insatiable demands for men and material, until the capacities of the one side or the other were exhausted. This logic remanded the decision to the home fronts, for it turned the conflict into a titanic contest to mobilize human and material resources for military use. Ultimately, however, the same logic encouraged the defeat of Imperial Germany.

Mobilization of the German home front The mobilization of Germany’s resources for this contest commenced the moment the troops began their march to the front in the summer of 1914. On 4 August, the Reichstag established the legislative framework for the whole undertaking. In a dramatic demonstration of patriotic unity, which quickly became known as the Burgfrieden (an 258

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allusion to the peace that reigned in medieval castles during times of war), the parties in the Reichstag delegated legislative authority to the Bundesrat, which was henceforth empowered to pass emergency laws that were binding at all levels of government. While the Reichstag retained the powers to veto any such laws, it never chose to do so. Instead, for most of the war, its role was reduced to convening every six months to approve the bond issues that financed the German military effort. For their implementation, laws decreed by the Bundesrat descended into an administrative labyrinth that bore the imprint of a much older piece of legislation. The Prussian Law of Siege was the administrative foundation of German mobilization. It had been framed in 1851 and incorporated into the Prussian constitution; it then passed, with minor modifications, into the constitution of the German Empire in 1871. Upon the outbreak of war, this law stipulated that the country’s twenty-four military districts become the fundamental units of home-front administration; and it vested the commanders of the army corps, which were based in these districts, with comprehensive, near-absolute executive powers. As these commanders departed with their units for the front, however, their administrative powers devolved onto their deputies. These ‘deputy commanding generals’ were henceforth the pivotal figures in the governance of the German home front. They were charged in the first instance with ensuring the orderly supply and reinforcement of all the front-line units associated with their corps. This responsibility extended well beyond the recruitment, training and deployment of replacement soldiers. It included basic matters of civilian life, including all facets of the transportation system in their corps’ district. The deputy commanding generals were responsible for maintaining domestic security and order, so the police and judiciary systems fell within their jurisdiction, too, as did questions of censorship and public morale. With a vast array of responsibilities to discharge on the home front, these soldiers became the most powerful officials in the country. The exercise of these powers, however, encountered important practical constraints. Upon the outbreak of war, offices of military administration settled like an ill-fitting template atop existing institutions of the civilian public bureaucracy. Any hope that military administration could provide relief for the bureaucratic fragmentation of Imperial Germany quickly proved illusory. The hybrid system that emerged was the characteristic German response to the domestic challenges of war, and it required the coordination and cooperation of thousands of civilian officials, from the provincial Oberpräsident to the municipal secretary, whose own powers and prerogatives were now massively circumscribed by military authority. For the duration of the war (and to the extent that they were not themselves called to military service), officials at all levels of the civilian bureaucracies remained at their posts, now in the role of auxiliaries to the soldiers. In keeping with guidelines laid down by the army, civilian policemen censored local newspapers, letters, brochures, posters and the cinema; they kept watch, too, over political assemblies and those people, like the members of the German Peace Society, who were suspected of subversion. Civilian officials in the state railways provided essential services in moving troops through Germany and beyond, while municipal officials had to confront the immense difficulties of administering the civilian food supply. 259

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The difficulties in this tangled administrative system lay paradoxically less in the practical problems that it posed for the powers of the deputy commanding generals than in the absence of constitutional limits on the same powers. The lines of authority that defined the powers of the military were themselves military; the deputy commanding generals were responsible alone to their military superior in the chain of command, which meant, in practice, the commander-in-chief of the German army, Emperor William II. This monarch, however, was notoriously unable and temperamentally disinclined to supervise his home-front commanders, let alone to impose uniform policy guidelines on them.10 Hence the deputy commanding generals ruled their districts like independent satrapies for most of the war. They could resist policy initiatives from the war minister in Berlin no less than from the civilian provincial president in a place like Düsseldorf. Communications from the war ministry typically arrived on their desks not as orders or directives but as supplications, ‘entreaties’ or ‘recommendations’. Nor could the Bundesrat, a civilian body, issue orders to them. As a consequence, jurisdictional irregularities perplexed the military administration of the German home front. Pamphlets or newspaper articles that were routinely banned from the empire of the Second Army Corps, in the environs of Stettin, could circulate freely in Baden, the domain of the Fourteenth Army Corps. These disparities symptomized another problem, which also had to do with the autonomous powers of the military commanders. The boundaries of the corps’ home districts did not, as a rule, correspond to the major civilian bureaucratic jurisdictions. The district of the Fourteenth Army Corps included not only the grand duchy of Baden but also the two Prussian principalities of Hohenzollern, which lay in the midst of Württemberg, which in turn lay in the dominion of the Thirteenth Army Corps. The Prussian Rhineland, the bureaucratic terrain of a single civilian provincial governor, was dissected into four separate corps districts. Given even the best of intentions, civilian and military officials found this proliferation of incongruent jurisdictions a growing source of conflict, confusion and delay. The German military’s bureaucratic design for the home front was, like its operational plans in 1914, geared to a short war. The chief administrative concern behind the Law of Siege was to maintain domestic order in the interest of funnelling supplies and reinforcements to the front during what was foreseen, in the script provided by General von Schlieffen, to be a well-delineated period of drama, as the apocalyptic battle of the first hours was fought – and won. In this regard at least, the administration of the home front functioned well in the initial phase of the war; and the inability of the German field armies to win the apocalyptic battle could not be blamed on deficiencies at home. From Königsberg to Freiburg, cooperation between military and civilian agencies was exemplary; the dispatch of men and resources to the front proceeded with remarkable precision, popular support for the war proved near unanimous and subversion non-existent. The failure of the war to end as planned laid bare all the institutional flaws in the military design for home-front rule. With the prolongation of combat, maintaining domestic order and providing supplies and reinforcements to the front posed colossal, 260

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unforeseen administrative challenges. Soldiers discovered that industrial war demanded new skills of them. These had much less to do with command or operational virtuosity than with economic planning and tedious negotiations with producers, wholesalers, consumers and civilian bureaucrats. Mounting shortages, which were driven by the Entente blockade and the natural limits of Germany’s human and material resources, lured bureaucratic oversight into phases of life that had hitherto been regulated by market forces. Popular discontent was a major product of the ensuing regimentation of economic life at home, and it called forth its own administrative response, which led to the attempted regimentation of morale. The army thus became a central, pervasive force in the bureaucratic nightmare that defined the war on the German home front. The challenges were several; and they were compounded by the absence of any systematic pre-war German planning for economic mobilization.11 In the first place, equipping the German armed forces demanded the mobilization of resources to produce the weapons and munitions that this war consumed in unforeseen quantities. This undertaking proved to be vast and complex, for it involved the wholesale sectoral redistribution of resources. The most intractable of these resources were human. Not only did industry compete directly with the army for its supply of male labour, but workers of every description had, like the soldiers, to be fed from limited stocks of food. Each of these challenges called forth its own bureaucratic apparatus, in which soldiers occupied central roles. The effort to mobilize the raw materials to produce weapons and munitions registered the greatest success. The bureaucratic means to do so took shape in the first weeks of the war with the establishment, by the Bundesrat, of the ‘War Raw Materials Section’ (Kriegsrohstoffabteilung) within the war ministry. This new agency, which was the inspiration of the German industrialist Walther Rathenau, was authorized to coordinate the procurement and distribution of all war-related raw materials. To this end, its officials herded the pertinent sectors of the economy into some two dozen hundred semi-public ‘War Raw-Materials Corporations’, each of which was charged with purchasing available stocks of the materials in question and then allotting them to the companies with which the war ministry had negotiated contracts to produce military equipment. ‘War Metals, Inc.’, for example, gathered together the twenty-two leading metal-processing firms in the country. The resulting corporation took charge of the supplies of all non-ferrous metals, which it then provided to the industrial firms that processed these metals for military use. The most striking feature of this arrangement, which was soon replicated in chemicals, iron and steel, cotton and other textiles, rubber, leather and other sectors, was to encourage a marriage of public and private corporate power, in which private entrepreneurs operated with the financial support and bureaucratic authority of the state. Eventually almost 200 of these corporations were in operation. In every case, they comprised the firms that dominated the sectors in question and held the bulk of the war contracts. The system thus bred the further concentration of an industrial base that was already the most cartelized in Europe. Mobilizing the raw materials of war proved to be easier than assembling the labour to fashion these materials into the weapons of war. The dilemma lay in basic limits of 261

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Germany’s demographic base and in the fact that many of the soldiers who marched to war had pursued peacetime occupation in mines and factories that were central to the production of munitions and weapons. The appeal to women, who could quickly be employed in less-skilled positions, offered one way to address this problem; and by the war’s end, women made up more than a third of the industrial workforce.12 Still, the war’s voracious appetites required the war ministry constantly to balance the competing demands for able-bodied males in the army and industry. Guidelines for the exemption or reclamation of labour from the army accompanied the war contracts issued in Berlin; but because the war ministry could not enforce these guidelines, industrialists who held the contracts found themselves regularly in negotiations with the deputy commanding generals, who did have the power to enforce them. Whether they served in the army or industry, these men had to be fed; and in this respect, they resembled every other German who experienced the war. The food supply was the most difficult administrative challenge of all. In this sector, the problems of bureaucratic control were far more daunting, given the variety of goods and the millions of small producers who had to be regulated. The situation became immediately urgent, however, as the Entente’s blockade of the North Sea coast cut Germany off from overseas imports, which in 1914 had provided about a quarter of the country’s food supply (and fertilizers). The difficulties were compounded by the privileged claims that the army enjoyed on the food supply, as well as the resistance of German farmers to regulation. The resulting difficulties debuted in the first moments of the war and led to growing shortages of basic foodstuffs, from flour and meats to potatoes and eggs (Figure 12.2). Public agencies on all levels struggled in vain to improvise effective solutions to these problems, which poor harvests rendered ominous at several junctures, particularly during the dismal winter of 1916–17, after the potato crop failed. The attempt to control prices locally merely drove agricultural goods to other localities. This experiment quickly yielded to national price ceilings, which the interior ministry administered; but price ceilings tempted farmers to withhold the controlled products or to steer them to the black market. Impressed with the success of the war corporations in the industrial sector, officials in the interior ministry moved early in 1915 towards a national system of rationing, which drew the entire cycle of agricultural production and consumption into bureaucratic regulation. An Imperial Grain Corporation set the pattern. It resided in the Federal Office of the Interior and comprised leading grain farmers and wholesalers, who were empowered to purchase the country’s entire grain crop at controlled prices and then to distribute it through a network of intermediate agencies to local governments, which in turn rationed it at controlled prices to their hungry citizens. Soon some forty of these corporations reigned over food stores of every description, from potatoes to sauerkraut (Figure 12.3). The failure of these agencies reflected the natural limits of Germany’s agriculture as much as it did the bureaucratic morass. It registered not only in the shortages but also in the unremitting inflation of food prices. An ingenious array of ‘ersatz’ products addressed the shortages of meat, sugar, potatoes and other precious goods, while ways no less ingenious were found to ‘stretch’ still others, from bread and milk to coffee and 262

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Figure 12.2  German agricultural production, 1912–1918. Source: Jens Flemming, Landwirtschaftliche Interessen und Demokratie: Ländliche Gesellschaft, Agrarverbände und Staat 1890-1925 (1978), pp. 84–6.

beer. Food shortages remained, nonetheless, the single most omnipresent dimension of life on the German home front, and they hit urban dwellers with particular force.13 Like no other feature of the war, the failure of public agencies to deal well with food shortages undermined public morale and confidence in the country’s leadership. The state intervened massively into the life of every man, woman and child; hence the institutions of the state were directly implicated in the war’s every frustration and disappointment. The prolongation of the war thus gnawed away at the state’s very legitimacy. This problem became critical during the second half of the war, but the administration of morale occupied the government from the beginning. Initial support for the war was genuine and deep. It reflected the conviction, which the government skilfully manipulated, that Germany had been attacked in 1914 by its envious enemies, who were determined to deny the country its rightful place in the world and to destroy its cultural achievement. This conviction supplied a moral consensus and sense of purpose that seemed, in the early stages of the war, to eclipse the uncertainties that had hovered over German cultural life on the eve of the war. The war would, proclaimed the philosopher Rudolf Eucken in August 1914, ‘bring about the sweeping purification and 263

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Figure 12.3  Weekly rations. Source: Three Lions / Stringer / Getty.

edification of our soul’.14 From Max Weber to Thomas Mann, the country’s cultural elites – scholars, writers, artists and composers alike – subscribed with near unanimity to this understanding of the war, and neither they nor the country’s schoolteachers and clergy needed the government’s encouragement to propagate it. During the first half of the war, overt opposition to the war of any kind remained sparse and fragmented, so most deputy commanding generals found their powers of censorship and monitoring public opinion to be ample. The year 1916 represented in this and most other respects the war’s turning point. The full dimensions of Germany’s material disadvantages became apparent in the monster battles at Verdun, the Somme and in the east, where the Russian Brusilov offensive brought the Austrian army to the brink of collapse. The growing strains visited on the German home front by strategic stalemate, the lengthening casualty lists, industrial mobilization and hunger all registered in growing discontent and eroding support for the war. In these circumstances, the supreme command of the army passed in the summer of 1916 to Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the two soldiers who had presided over the German triumphs in the eastern theatre.15 Behind Hindenburg’s authority and prestige, which quickly eclipsed the Kaiser’s, Ludendorff exercised the real power in the combination. The war, he believed, had become ‘total’; it demanded the removal of every restraint on the mobilization of economy and society. In the fall of 1916, the announcement of the ‘Hindenburg Programme’ signalled Ludendorff ’s designs.16 A ‘Supreme War Office’, with General Wilhelm Groener at its head, amalgamated the powers of several existing agencies in hopes of re-energizing industrial mobilization. Equipped with the authority at last to direct the deputy commanding 264

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generals in these economic matters, Groener’s office presided over a ruthless purge of the economy, which shut down firms that were not immediately involved in war production. An ‘Auxiliary Service Law’, which the Reichstag passed in December 1916, then provided for a civilian draft, whose object was to mobilize, into the army or the war industries, the entire male workforce between the ages of seventeen and sixty. In this way, an additional three million workers were to be channelled into industrial production – a feat that would, Ludendorff insisted, double the army’s munitions stores and treble its supplies of artillery and machine guns. The pendant to this effort was the army’s intensified attention to public morale. As signs of disaffection and war-weariness mounted, they persuaded Ludendorff that attending to morale required intervention more proactive than censorship, monitoring public opinion or supervising suspicious organizations. Accordingly, in the fall of 1916, the army launched a far-flung campaign of ‘patriotic instruction’.17 Its target in the first instance was the soldiers, in the barracks at home as well as in the trenches and staging areas; but ‘popular enlightenment’ was soon served up to the civilian populace as well. Its goal was to smother doubts about the wisdom of the war in a flood of propaganda, in which assurances of success were married to predictions of doom in the event of defeat. The Hindenburg Programme failed to achieve most of its goals, although the Germans did mobilize a greater proportion of the country’s domestic product for war than did any of their antagonists.18 However, the Programme’s institutional apparatus exacerbated the bureaucratic confusion, while the limits of Germany’s resources defied even Ludendorff ’s energy and determination. The army’s campaign of ‘popular enlightenment’ was heavyhanded and of questionable effect in the face of material conditions that worsened significantly in 1917. Nonetheless, the Hindenburg Programme represented, at least in the eyes of those who presided over it, the essential prelude to a final German attempt to win this boundless war on the battlefield.

The broader war The shortages that increasingly constrained the German war effort reflected the country’s immense geostrategic disadvantage in what had become, by 1916 at the latest, a world war. While most of the military action took place in Europe, the belligerents committed human and material resources to the European conflict that they had mobilized around the world. The problem for Imperial Germany was that it could not compete in this great effort. The Entente lands, particularly France and Britain, had access by sea to farflung colonial empires in Africa and Asia, as well as to the vast material resources of the western hemisphere. The Germans did not. The colonial empire that Germany had built before the war, primarily in Africa and the Pacific, was small in comparison to its French and British rivals. Any hope that its sparse resources might be exploited for the European war dissolved almost immediately, as German colonial holdings quickly fell to the Entente. In the Pacific, military forces from Australia, New Zealand and Britain’s ally, Japan, overwhelmed German settlements 265

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from New Guinea to the Mariana Islands and Tsingtau in China.19 Much the same fate befell the German colonies in Africa, as forces from the British and French African colonies seized German holdings in Togo (including a major German wireless station), the Cameroons and German Southwest Africa.20 The only exception to this pattern was the action in German East Africa, where a force of some 17,000 African mercenaries under German command exploited guerrilla tactics to hold out for the entire war, during which it tied down over 100,000 troops drawn from all over the British Empire. While this feat provided the Germans with a great moral boost, it brought no material advantage to the German war effort at home. Nor did Germany’s alliance with the Ottoman Empire bring home any advantage.21 In German eyes, the principal objective of this alliance was to subvert the empires of the Entente powers in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. When the sultan proclaimed a jihad in November 1914, this objective appeared to enjoy the support of a pan-Islamic crusade.22 The practical difficulty lay in the great discrepancy between the design and the military power available to achieve it. Despite several notable military successes, particularly at the Dardanelles in 1915 and at Kut-al-Amara in Persia in 1916, Turkish forces and their German advisers were unequal to the strategic challenges they faced; so they found themselves operationally on the defensive throughout the war. In hopes of provoking a revolt against British rule in India, small German expeditions reached as far east as Persia and Afghanistan but failed in their goal. In the end, the alliance brought the Germans little material benefit and, thanks to their ally’s massacre of the Armenian population, a great deal of negative propaganda.23 For all practical purposes, the German war economy thus remained landlocked, confined to the European continent for the duration of the war, while the Entente mobilized most of the world against the Central Powers. As long as the Entente’s blockade held – and after the great naval battle of Jutland in May 1916 few could doubt that it would – the Germans could draw only on the resources of the European lands that they controlled after their early military victories. These lands included Belgium, ten departments in northern France, Poland and most of the Baltic provinces of Russia, and, after 1916, most of Romania. The Germans placed all these areas under military occupation of one form or another; and they were determined to put the resources they found there into the service of the German war effort. Compared to the occupation regimes of the next European war, German rule looked almost gentle. It was animated initially by a kind of benevolent arrogance – the belief that the interests of the occupied peoples coincided with those of the occupiers. In Belgium and Eastern Europe, the Germans attempted to win local support (and make more efficient their own exploitive policies) by rationalizing indigenous institutions and appealing to local sentiment.24 In Warsaw, they established a Polish university. German policies called in all events for enlisting all available resources – food crops and coal, textiles, metals, machinery and human beings – into the German war economy, whether locally or in Germany itself. As the war lengthened and local resistance to the growing burdens of this exploitation grew, German policies became more ruthless and predatory, particularly after Ludendorff took control of them. In France and Belgium the occupiers 266

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dismantled factories sent the materials to Germany, along with thousands of forced labourers.25 The plunder of the French and Belgian agricultural fields created famine conditions that prompted an international relief campaign. Resources from occupied Europe did provide a degree of relief from the shortages of food, industrial materials and labour in Germany itself. The limits of this relief were defined by the growing depletion of the occupied territories, which were themselves affected profoundly by the Entente’s blockade, by the reluctance of people in these territories to collaborate with the occupiers, the shortage of German manpower and the scruples the Germans imposed on their own policies. They did not seek to starve the peoples whose land they controlled; and international protests persuaded them to stop importing forced labour. Things were different during the next war.26 In any case, the experience of confinement to the European continent during the First World War encouraged German visions of a great economic bloc of central European states after the war. It would stretch from Belgium to Ottoman Turkey as a customs union under German leadership, invulnerable to a naval blockade of the continent. In the eyes of many prominent Germans, a continental empire along these lines began to look like a more attractive and practical goal than overseas colonies. One of the attractions of this vision was that it seemed to offer the beleaguered German nation a fitting reward for its terrible wartime ordeal, from which no one at home was spared.

The social impact of war Mobilization for war had immense social repercussions. It unsettled several basic orders of group relationships, principally those that were defined by class, gender and age. The wrenching reorganization of the economy for war, the abrupt redefinition of essential goods and services, and the manner in which the German government chose to pay for the war all fanned social tensions that had been defined in the era before the war. The war meant the planned and systematic demolition of social resources. Men and materials were mobilized in pursuit of their own destruction. The consequence of four and a half years of this enterprise was to breed general immiseration. The social costs came in the form of direct material expenditures, depleted investments, a nearincalculable birth deficit and over six million military casualties. By a mechanism that was insidious, because it was largely unanticipated and misunderstood, the costs of the war reduced the real wealth of practically every German who endured the conflict. The government financed the war primarily by means of domestic borrowing, which took the form of regular flotations of war bonds and other unsecured instruments of indebtedness (Figure 12.4). The practical effect was to finance the war by printing money, in the expectation that the country’s defeated enemies would foot the entire bill at the war’s conclusion. In the meantime, inflation was the result, as the money supply exploded and precious goods, like food and shoes, became scarce.27 Between 1914 and 1918, the index of food prices more than doubled, and the general cost of living more than trebled. 267

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Figure 12.4  Purchasing war bonds. Source: Three Lions / Stringer / Getty.

All Germans faced the consequences of inflation, but some were better able to cope with them than others. The mobilization of the economy put a premium on the production of weapons, munitions and other goods whose employment in combat was immediate. The result was to steer massive amounts of both capital and labour into the war industries, in the first instance those that processed metals and chemicals. Businesses in these sectors thrived, to the comparative benefit of those who worked in them. Not only did the war encourage further centralization and the accumulation of capital here, but labour in the war industries was also better situated to deal with the ravages of inflation. Because workers here were essential to the war effort, the war ministry sought to keep them satisfied and loyal. One means to this end was to accommodate their wage demands. Another was to encourage them to organize, in the calculation that trade unions, even if they were Socialist, would promote discipline on the shop floor. The unions were happy to support the war in this fashion and participated in the administration of the Auxiliary Service Act. The power of organized labour increased substantially during the war, while unionized workers in the core sectors were to a degree shielded from inflation. Although their wages failed to keep up with the rate of inflation, they fell less behind the cost of living than did wages and salaries in the other sectors of the economy.28 Those who worked in the sectors that were marginalized by the war and the Hindenburg Programme were the hardest hit. This fate befell enterprises that produced for consumer or other ‘non-essential’ needs – like textiles, food-processing and printing – and smaller enterprises of nearly all descriptions. While wage rates lagged here, small business people were driven out of work for want of labour, capital or coal, which Groener’s office rationed in its efforts to purge the economy of non-essential production. The position of the ‘white-collar’ lower middle class of clerks, secretaries, teachers and salaried officials was especially precarious, for these people typically subsisted on fixed incomes, which 268

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they invested in war bonds, whose value shrivelled in step with inflation; and they were reluctant to organize. The war thus assaulted one of the hallowed measures of social status in Imperial Germany, as it left this clerical middle class worse off materially than the organized sectors of the ‘blue-collar’ industrial proletariat. Women faced similar material pressures, which were often compounded by the need to provide for families in the absence of a male breadwinner – an occupation that involved most of them in endless waits in queues for scarce goods. The mobilization of millions of men for the front resulted in the wholesale feminization of the home front, the assumption by women of critical positions in industry and administration. Women of the upper classes became prominent in charity and local government.29 The war encouraged the migration of millions of working-class women into the war industries, where many of them joined trade unions. Women of the lower middle class who were employed in clerical positions experienced the same material disadvantages as their male colleagues, except that their pay, like the wages of working-class women, was lower to start. In all events, the contribution of women to mobilization was essential and extensive enough that granting them suffrage at war’s end seemed a fitting tribute. The departure of male parents for armed service and female parents for the assembly lines left millions of children in the care of grandparents, siblings or no one at all, particularly as the lack of fuel for heating and the conscription of male teachers abbreviated the school year in many parts of the country.30 While the army beckoned to young males in their late teens, thousands of other teenagers of both sexes found occupation in the factories – and with it wages and more liberated lifestyles that aroused the concern of their elders. The absence of adult supervision was of growing concern to the police and courts, too, as young people turned increasingly, whether out of material needs or the lure of adventure, to criminal behaviour. Alarming increases in the rate of youth criminality were but one index of the tensions that mounted on the home front with the prolongation of war. The ferment in class and gender relations spawned widespread anxieties and recriminations – resentments between poor and rich, farmers and city dwellers, Bavarians and Prussians. Resentments grew as well between Protestants and Catholics, particularly once Catholic politicians joined the critics of the war effort. One of the most ominous symptoms of distress was also confessional; it lay in the growing popular association of Jews with slackers and war profiteers. Jews served, died and otherwise contributed to the German war effort in fact with as much dedication and determination as any other sector of the population, Protestant or Catholic. Jews were, however, one convenient and well-practised target of antagonisms that became rife as the Burgfrieden dissolved during the final two years of the war.31

Polarization and collapse The mood of unity and commitment that accompanied the war’s outbreak rested on a pervasive belief, which was captured in the idea of the Burgfrieden, that Germans were 269

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fighting a defensive war. In many sectors of German society, this belief sustained support for the war effort until the end. The difficulty was that ‘defensive war’ meant different things to different people; and as soon as debate turned to the specific aims for which the country was fighting and to the makeup of the German constitution after the war’s end, agreement collapsed. During the first half of the war, the government preserved a tenuous consensus by proscribing debate over Germany’s war aims. When Ludendorff removed the wraps in the fall of 1916, public debate began in earnest. Because it bred on the increasing privations of life on the home front, the debate became increasingly bitter, to the point where it threatened the Burgfrieden itself. From the Conservatives on the Right to the Social Democrats on the Left, the entire spectrum of German politics rallied to the defence of the fatherland in the summer of 1914, as the Reichstag voted unanimously in favour of the bond issue to finance the war. The failure of the war to end in the fall of 1914, however, invited closer scrutiny into the reasons why Germans were being asked to bear the ever heavier burdens of industrial war. Two opposing views quickly emerged, even as their loudest champions struggled with the censors.32 One camp argued that the outbreak of war had revealed the full extent of Germany’s vulnerability in Europe and that the peace settlement should make forever impossible any future military attack on the country by its many enemies. The solution proffered by this camp comprised far-flung German annexations in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in Africa. Germany was to retain effective control of Belgium and northern France, as well as Poland, the Baltic lands and areas of western Russia. The prospect of a great central European customs union featured in this vision. In the eyes of the people who embraced this programme of war aims, such acquisitions offered tangible rewards to the German people for their sufferings. Not incidentally, a victorious peace of this character was also calculated to emphasize the superiority of Germany’s semi-authoritarian constitutional system, in which the suffrage systems privileged the wealthy in Prussia and the other German states, while the prerogatives of the imperial government, particularly in military and foreign affairs, remained beyond parliamentary control. An alternative position took shape in another camp, where discussions dwelt less on foreign conquests than domestic constitutional change. In the view of leaders of this camp, the Entente powers figured less as objects of demonization, and demands for security guarantees were as a rule less extravagant. Here, too, the conviction reigned that the German people were to be rewarded after the war for their sacrifices, but the rewards were to come primarily in the shape of constitutional reforms, which meant above all a government responsible to democratically elected parliaments, not only at the federal level but also in all the German states. The contours of these contending views of the war corresponded to the positions occupied by their proponents in the pre-war structures of social and political power. The annexationist camp was populated in the main by the country’s elites – aristocrats and leaders of the propertied and educated middle classes. These men were leading figures in public bureaucracies, universities, the Protestant churches, the armed forces and the business world. They were at home in the political parties of the Right – the Conservatives, 270

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Free Conservatives and National Liberals – as well as in the patriotic societies, like the Pan-German League and the German Navy League, that served as the most vociferous proponents of a draconian peace. The other camp was home to the parties of the left – the Progressives and, most critically, the Social Democrats – who represented the sectors of German society that were bearing the greatest material burdens of war. In addition to the labour movement, the Reichstag – the most democratic institution in the land – was the principal locus of their power, particularly as the pivotal Catholic Centre Party began in 1916 to gravitate in their direction, providing a parliamentary majority to the reformist forces. Caught between two increasingly irreconcilable camps was the federal chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, who attempted to steer a tortuous path between the two by making both think that he was an ally.33 These vacillations have made him a controversial figure, thanks in no small part to Professor Fischer, who has portrayed him as a ruthless annexationist.34 Bethmann’s sympathy for the annexationists’ thinking was doubtless genuine, but it was tempered by an awareness of the overwhelming difficulties that confronted Germany in a war against a vastly superior combination of forces. His political strategy during the first years of the war was accordingly to appease all shades of opinion at home, while he explored cautiously the prospects of a negotiated peace with one or more of the country’s antagonists. The coming of Hindenburg and Ludendorff to power in 1916 soon made this political strategy untenable. The two soldiers had little patience for opposition or moderation of any sort; and they quickly became themselves the symbols of uncompromising victory or, as it became known, a ‘Hindenburg Peace’. In their eyes, the role of the chancellor was to manage the Reichstag and keep the critics docile, as the army’s leadership led the war effort to a successful conclusion. The growing power and prestige of the army’s supreme command made it an unequal match for the chancellor, whose position depended ultimately on the support of the Kaiser. The showdown came in 1917. After the Entente rejected a tentative (and arrogant) German offer to negotiate in December 1916, the initiative in Berlin passed to the soldiers, who were relieved but not surprised by the Entente’s refusal of the German overture. The next month they persuaded the Kaiser and a reluctant Bethmann to begin unrestricted submarine warfare against all maritime traffic to Europe – in the full knowledge that this German counterblockade would bring the United States into the war against Germany. The submarine campaign represented another military gamble, as well as a gesture to the German Right. The entry of the United States into the war eventuated in fact in April 1917; and it followed within weeks the news of revolution in Russia. Both events profoundly altered the complexion of domestic politics in Germany. The American intervention came in the name of a ‘world safe for democracy’ and a ‘war to end all wars’. In so far as they suggested a formula for a compromise peace, these gallant slogans provided encouragement to the German Left at a time of great anxiety. In Berlin and other industrial centres, German workers responded to news of the Russian revolution with a wave of strikes, in which calls for higher food rations mixed with demands for a negotiated end to the war. It was a sign of the alarm within the government that Bethmann could persuade the Kaiser to issue a proclamation on Easter 271

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Sunday in 1917 that promised, albeit in vague terms, constitutional reform at war’s end. On the same Sunday in April, the left wing of the Social Democratic Party, which had become increasingly appalled over a war that was difficult to portray as defensive any longer, formally broke away to form another party. This new one was united only in calling for an immediate end of the war, but a radical faction within it, the so-called Spartacus League, advocated social revolution to achieve this end. The split of the SPD into two separate parties, the new Independent Social Democratic Party and the old one, which became known as the Majority Social Democratic Party, signalled the end of Socialist unity in Germany, the great ideal that had animated the Socialist labour movement almost from its birth. In July 1917, the political ferment migrated to the Reichstag. Here, in defiance of the government, a parliamentary majority of Progressives, Majority Socialists and members of the Catholic Centre Party passed the so-called Peace Resolution, which renounced annexations and called for a negotiated peace. The response of Hindenburg and Ludendorff to this affront was to force the resignation of Bethmann-Hollweg and replace him with a pliant successor, Georg Michaelis, of whom few Germans had ever heard. With this step, German domestic politics settled into the uneasy pattern that prevailed until the fall of 1918. To speak of a ‘military dictatorship’ exaggerates the situation only a little, for Ludendorff was now effectively in control of executive powers, civilian as well as military.35 His power was not unfettered, however, for the government remained beholden to the Reichstag for its funds. The last months of the war thus witnessed the full-scale polarization of German politics. The Right coalesced around the high command. To lend moral support to the idea of a Hindenburg Peace, the high command gave its blessing to a massive new patriotic society, the Fatherland Party, which came to life in September 1917 and soon attracted over a million members.36 One of its principal objects was to intimidate the parties of the Left in the Reichstag, which was now home to all manner of popular disaffection with the war. The imperial government meanwhile insisted, in line with the Fatherland Party and the military leadership, on uncompromising prosecution of the war. By early 1918, it was clear to all that the resolution of the domestic stalemate would depend entirely on the military outcome of the war – the circumstances in which the stalemate was brought to an end on the battlefront. Ludendorff had reason for optimism, for in late 1917 his armies won the war in the east. The peace treaty that emerged in early 1918 gave expression to the wildest aspirations of the annexationists, for it left Germany in control of vast stretches of territory in Eastern Europe. The general could take further comfort in the fact that a majority in the Reichstag voted in favour of the Treaty of BrestLitovsk, which formalized this peace, for the settlement in the east seemed to mock the ideals of the Reichstag’s Peace Resolution. Only the Independent Socialists voted against it, while the beleaguered Majority Socialists abstained, fearful of the repercussions of further identification with the cause that Ludendorff symbolized. They had good reason for concern. In January 1918, thanks in part to the accurate perception that the high command was dragging out negotiations over the eastern peace, the largest and most alarming strikes of the entire war had broken out – in defiance of the Socialist unions – throughout Germany’s industrial centres. 272

Map 12.2  Germany in 1919.

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Late in March 1918, Ludendorff threw the dice a final time. Reinforced by troops recently transferred from the east, as well as by the fruits of the Hindenburg Programme from home, his armies in the west lashed out against the forces of France, Britain and – for the first time – the United States. Dramatic initial gains in several sectors of the front breathed hope on the German home front, but the offensive lacked both the strategic direction and, despite all the exertions of the home front, the material resources to sustain it. By the early summer, the ‘Ludendorff Offensive’ had been halted, and the Allies unleashed a series of counteroffensives, which were spearheaded by armoured vehicles. These attacks set the German armies into terminal strategic retreat. By the end of September, even Ludendorff had concluded that the German military cause was lost. At this moment, he undertook a shrewd, fateful political manoeuvre. To the Kaiser, he insisted that political power be turned over to the Reichstag, that the civilian executive be made responsible to this body and that the suffrage be democratized in Prussia and the other German states. By decrees from William II in his capacities as German emperor and Prussian king, these changes, which fulfilled all the basic demands of the democratic reformers, were quickly initiated. In early October, a new, responsible cabinet was cobbled together out of the leftist parties in the Reichstag. General Ludendorff had brought revolutionary political changes to Germany, once again, as in 1866–71, from above. The circumstances that faced the new democrats could hardly have been more daunting, however, for their first task was to bring the war to an end and to prevent the spread in Germany of violent social revolution, the possibility of which loomed in the spectre of Soviet Russia. In October, peace overtures went out from Berlin to the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, whom the Germans believed to offer the best chances for a moderate peace. This expectation was disappointed, and the armistice, which was concluded on 11 November 1918, was harsher than the Germans had hoped. By now, however, the situation in Germany urgently required an end to the war, for the collapse of the Imperial German political system, which had forfeited its legitimacy in the military collapse, had already begun. Ludendorff watched these events from exile in Sweden, where he had fled after resigning his post at the head of the army in October. He had nonetheless led the German armies to defeat on the battlefield. He also left an exhausted and dispirited home front, which had been pushed to heroic limits in an ordeal for which it lacked the resources to prevail. The general’s final legacy was to fashion a perverse connection between the military defeat and the home front. In this reasoning, the home front – riddled by slackers, pacifists, Jews and Marxist revolutionaries – had stabbed the German army in the back, surrendering to the Allies while the soldiers stood unvanquished in the field. The ‘stab in the back’ was a bald lie. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the morale of the German army began to deteriorate only after the transparent failure of Ludendorff ’s offensive in the summer of 1918.37 Military defeat was not a question of home-front subversion but one of the overwhelming military superiority of the country’s enemies. Nevertheless, Ludendorff ’s claim threw a dark shadow over the new republican government as it sought to contend with the material and emotional rubble of the First World War.38 The lie also frustrated a sober analysis of the German defeat, an appreciation 274

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of the material disadvantages that had made military victory increasingly unlikely once the German offensive in the west failed in 1914. The consequence of this misreading was to encourage an altogether different analysis of the German defeat. This one emphasized the moral failures of the home front, the subversion of both military and civilian morale by the ‘November criminals’ – the very groups that, in the same analysis, ruled the Weimar Republic. In all events, the lessons seemed clear to the men who took power in 1933 and led Germany to war again in 1939: the First World War should have been won and the next war would be. The keys to victory lay in streamlining the direction of the war effort and securing the food supply, in the ruthless suppression of dissent on the home front and the steeling of morale by means of discipline and effective propaganda. The fallacies in this reasoning were evident in 1945, when Germany’s military defeat in the Second World War eventuated out of the same dynamics of material inferiority that had brought the country’s defeat in the First World War.

Notes 1. Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (2000). 2. Quoted in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Bürgerstolz und Weltmachtstreben: Deutschland unter Wilhelm II. 1890 bis 1918 (1995), p. 566. 3. There are many new studies of this problem, most of which were published at the centenary of the war. See, for example: Gerhard Hirschfeld and Gerd Krumeich, Deutschland im Ersten Weltkrieg (2013); Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (2014); Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918, 3rd edn (2014). 4. George F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875–1890 (1979), p. 3. 5. Hans Ehlert, et al., eds, Der Schlieffenplan: Analysen und Dokumente (2006); Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth (1958). 6. Annike Mombauer, Hellmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (2001), pp. 93–5. 7. Holger Herwig, The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle that Changed the World (2009). 8. Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War (2014); Olaf Jessen, Verdun 1916: Urschlacht des Jahrhunderts (2014). 9. Gerhard P. Groß, ed., Die vergessene Front – der Osten 1914/15. Ereignis, Wirkung, Nachwirkung (2009); Watson, Ring of Steel. 10. John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile (2013); Holger Afflerbach, ed., Kaiser Wilhelm II als Oberster Kriegsherr im Ersten Weltkrieg: Quellen aus der militärischen Umgebung des Kaisers 1914–1918 (2005). 11. Lothar Burchardt, Friedenswirtschaft und Kriegsvorsorge. Deutschlands wirtschaftliche Rüstungsbestrebungen vor 1914 (1968). 12. Ute Daniel, The War from Within: German Working-Class Women in the First World War (1997).

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Nineteenth-Century Germany 13. Cf. Roger Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914–1918 (2007). 14. Quoted in Kurt Flasch, Die geistige Mobilmachung: Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der Erste Weltkrieg: Ein Versuch (2000), p. 21. 15. Wolfgang Pyta, Hindenburg: Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (2007), esp. pp. 244–94; Manfred Nebelin, Ludendorff: Diktator im Ersten Weltkrieg (2010); Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (2009), pp. 1–42. 16. Gerald Feldman, Army, Industry, and Labor in Germany, 1914–1918 (1966). 17. Dirk Stegmann, ‘Die deutsche Inlandspropaganda 1917/18: Zum innenpolitischen Machtkampf zwischen OHL und ziviler Reichsleitung in der Endphase des Kaiserreichs’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, No. 2 (1972), pp. 75–116. 18. Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison, eds, The Economics of World War I (Cambridge, 2005), 15. 19. Hermann Joseph Hiery, The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I (1995). 20. Hew Strachan, The First World War in Africa (2004). 21. Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918 (1968); Frank G. Weber, Eagles on the Crescent: Germany, Austria, and the Diplomacy of the Turkish Alliance, 1914–1918 (1970). 22. Donald McKale, War by Revolution: Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War I (2008). 23. Vahakn N. Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity (1996). 24. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (2000). 25. Helen McPhail, The Long Silence: Civilian Life under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918 (1999); Larry Zuckermann, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (2004). 26. See Sophie de Schaepdrijver, ‘Military Occupations, 1914–1945’, Roger Chickering, et al., eds, The Cambridge History of War, vol. 4: War in the Modern World (2012), pp. 236–56. 27. Gerald Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (1993); Martin Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation, und Moderne. München 1914–1924 (1998). 28. Jürgen Kocka, Facing Total War: German Society, 1914–1918 (1984). 29. Jean Quataert, Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (2001). 30. See Andrew Donson, Youth in the Fatherless Land: War, Pedagogy, and Authority in Germany, 1914–1918 (2010). 31. Christhard Hoffmann, ‘Between Integration and Rejection: The Jewish Community in Germany, 1914–1918’, in John Horne, ed., State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (1997), pp. 89–104. 32. Steffen Bruendel, Volksgemeinschaft oder Volksstaat: Die ‘Ideen von 1914’ und die Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg (2003). 33. Konrad H. Jarausch, The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (1969). 276

The First World War 34. Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (1967). 35. Martin Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff (1976). 36. Heinz Hagenlücke, Deutsche Vaterlandspartei: Die nationale Rechte am Ende des Kaiserreichs (1997). 37. Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (2008). 38. Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914–1939 (1984).

Select bibliography Chickering, R. and Förster, S., eds., Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (2000). Chickering, R., The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914–1918 (2007). Chickering, R., Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (2014). Daniel, U., The War from Within: German Working-Class Women in the First World War (1997). Davis, B. J., Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (2000). Feldman, G. D., Army, Industry and Labor in Germany, 1914–1918 (1966). Feldman, G., The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (1993). Fischer, F., Germany’s Aims in the First World War (1967). Jankowski, P., Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War (2014). Kocka, J., Facing Total War: German Society, 1914–1918 (1984). Ritter, G., The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth (1958). Röhl, John C. G., Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile (2013). Stevenson, D., The First World War and International Politics (1988). Stevenson, D., Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904–1914 (1996). Verhey, J., The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (2000). Watson, A., Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (2008). Watson, A., Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (2014). Whalen, R. W., Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914–1939 (1984).

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CHAPTER 13 GENDER ORDERS AND DISORDERS

Ute Frevert

In the beginning, there was Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793). Today, she is fairly well known as the French author of the 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. She thus has the honour of being the first European feminist and her name appears in many history textbooks. However, in her own lifetime, and after she was guillotined, she was hardly popular and quickly forgotten. Her campaign to establish equal rights for women and men in politics, the economy and the family went altogether unnoticed outside France. There is no mention of her in the letters, books and articles of German travellers who wished to observe revolutionary events first hand. What travellers did mention, however, was the ‘female mob’ that was rumoured to roam Paris streets and squares, committing barbaric acts of violence. A decade later, the poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) included such hearsay in his ‘Lied von der Glocke’ (‘Song of the Bell’). In order to criticize disrupted order and destructive turmoil, he particularly focused on the ways women brought out the worst in people. Once ‘the peaceful citizen’ followed the lures of ‘Freedom and Equality’, all hell broke loose: ‘Then women change into hyenas and make a plaything out of terror. Though it twitches still, with panthers’ teeth they tear apart the enemy’s heart. Nothing is holy any longer.’ Women here epitomized everything dangerous and detestable. Fuelled by revolutionary zeal, they cast off their proper calm, composed, soft and caring nature. Instead, they turned into wild beasts that knew no bounds. For Schiller, this was utterly alarming and frightening. After having spilled much ink on celebrating a harmonious sociopolitical order built on the ideal couple, the poet could not but be appalled by what he saw in the French Revolution: the complete ruin and demolition of order as such, be it political, social or cultural. And he used the perceived brutalization of women to make clear that this kind of destruction should be universally condemned.

Gendering the social and political order Writing in 1799, Schiller was one of the first to connect gender relations to the sociopolitical order in this fashion. But he was not the last. During the long nineteenth century, thinkers, politicians and poets repeated time and again that the well-being of the state and society depended on a sharp division of labour between men and women. Women’s place was in the family and the household, which they were supposed to care for with diligence and devotion. Men, by contrast, had to spend most of their time

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away from the family, busy working and earning a living. As breadwinners and heads of households, they were also entitled to political rights that women could and would not claim. For most contemporaries, the division between men’s and women’s roles seemed cast in stone or, rather, in nature. Since the late eighteenth century, legions of anthropologists and medical doctors had tried to prove that women were by nature different from men. This was reflected in physical features as well as in emotional dispositions.1 Women were fragile and delicate, while men were strong; women were modest, while men were daring and courageous; women empathically took care of others, while men chose to focus on their own projects; girls loved to play with dolls, while boys preferred tin soldiers (Figure 13.1). This, the men of science held, had nothing to do with culture but stemmed from nature’s wish and wisdom. Since their anatomy allowed women to bear and raise children, they had to develop the necessary skills and inclinations to do so. Men, on the other hand, were destined to feed and protect women and children, and were thus equipped with interests and faculties that enabled them to do so. In a well-ordered society, such faculties were to be nurtured and supported. This would benefit both the

Figure 13.1  ‘Girls loved to play with dolls, while boys preferred toy soldiers’. Engraving by Daniel Chodowiecki. Source: Kupfersammlung zu J.B. Basedows Elementarwerk für die Jugend und ihre Freunde, Berlin/Dessau: Crusius, 1874, Tab. V.

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two sexes and society at large. No woman could seriously be interested in taking a man’s role because she would not be good at it and would fail miserably. Conversely, any man who did a woman’s work would be ridiculous and embarrassing, to other men as well as to women. This was the message most widely disseminated during the nineteenth century. It was propagated in written form and in oral communication, in texts, images and sounds. It was taught in the family and in schools, at the workplace, in politics and church. Religion distinguished between male and female chores based upon God’s will and did not need natural laws to prove that heaven was infallible. The growing number of contemporaries, however, who chose to believe more in science than in religion, eagerly accepted the gospel of nature. Buttressed by medical expertise, it gained even more authority when medicine reinvented itself as a natural science and participated in the popular veneration of scientific progress. In 1900, a century after Schiller’s ‘Song of the Bell’, the neurologist Paul Julius Möbius (1853–1907) published a short essay in which he argued that women’s mental and intellectual deficiencies were rooted in their physiology. Since the female brain was less well-organized than the male brain, women were ill-equipped to master challenges in professional life and politics. This was not where they belonged. Instead, the inferiority of the female brain simply demonstrated that it was nature’s will that they should keep to their procreative faculties and thus sustain the nation’s growth and survival. Any society that allowed this to change would be committing suicide.2 Writing in 1900, Möbius synthesized the Darwinist language of his time with notions of international competition and power struggles. He believed that questioning the allegedly natural gender order as it had been implemented in the course of the previous century ultimately meant weakening the nation’s strength and endangering its future. This went far beyond the concerns of those who had advocated nature’s alleged dictate a few decades earlier. When the liberal Carl Theodor Welcker (1790–1869) or the conservative Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823–97) urged women to adhere to their naturally prescribed roles, they did not fear the death of the people but simply the loss of social stability. They sang the praise of healthy families that provided the state with well-bred new citizens and offered men a welcoming emotional refuge when they returned from their hard work in factories, laboratories and offices. Writing in 1838, Welcker thought that the family was the ‘nursery of state and society’ and that it was women’s duty to make it the ‘most valuable good for men and state’. In 1855, Riehl wrote that the state depended on the virtues learnt in family life, concluding that if women were to neglect their duties and enter public life, political and social order would be severely harmed. Thus, women’s ‘political emancipation’ had to be prevented at all costs, and the struggle over who wears the breeches stopped in the name of the common good.3

Power struggles Wearing breeches was not just a description of different dress codes (which, compared to former times, now distinguished far more strongly between men and women, with 281

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men’s suits becoming less colourful and varied and women’s dresses standing out as sophisticated marvels).4 Wearing breeches was also synonymous with being in a position of power (Figure 13.2). Neither Welcker nor Riehl addressed this openly. They did not talk about women’s inferiority and men’s superiority; instead, they emphasized their equal but different contributions to the common wealth. At the same time, however, it was clear to everybody that power was unevenly distributed between the sexes. Men were in a position of authority – not only in the public sphere but also in the family. As heads of the household, their powers were naturally or religiously given, socially administered and legally enshrined.5 This is what, in 1836, the Leipzig theologian Christian Gottlob Großmann (1783–1857) described as man’s ‘monarchy’, which women had to accept with ‘humility and obedience’.6 Großmann vigorously defended the Saxon parliament’s decision to keep its sessions closed to female observers. And he was seriously concerned. Letting women watch how men were doing politics would, he argued, threaten men’s superior position. If the male sphere was no longer neatly separated from the female sphere, male power was bound to wane. That separation had already been blurred by men acquiring more and more ‘homely features’ and turning into what Welcker called ‘familial beasts’. Although both Großmann and Welcker were definitely in favour of strong and healthy families, they deplored what they saw as a dangerous trend: men, they thought, were becoming increasingly immersed in family life and were turning their backs on politics. Clearly, men had an important and dominant role to play within the family. Indeed, their public

Figure 13.2  The battle for the breeches. Source: Metken, Sigrid. Der Kampf um die Hose: Geschlechterstreit und die Macht im Haus; Die Geschichte eines Symbols. Frankfurt: Campus, 1996, p. 76.

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roles rested on their status as heads of the household. But they should not forget that their ‘highest and holiest’ duties lay in patriotism and civic participation.7 Arguments about gender roles and how to expand or restrict them were thus squarely situated within larger debates on power. Men claimed power both in the household and in the public sphere, and they were not willing to share it with women. Welcker, Riehl, Großmann, and many others spoke out against what they perceived as women’s quest for ‘political emancipation’, which, they feared, would eventually undermine men’s authority in both the family and politics. When Möbius, in 1900, supported his argument that women should remain in ‘inferior’ positions due to their brain structures, he was fighting against the contemporary trend of opening universities and, consequently, professions to female students. Many men felt genuinely threatened by women entering their fields of expertise.8 In order to sustain and strengthen male power, the gender order had to rely on the notion of strictly separate spheres. In the end, men’s ‘monarchy’ would rest on solid foundations so long as the social spheres in which men and women could act were structured according to a more or less rigid hierarchy.

The Romantic project Blurring the gender lines meant making these foundations crumble. In the eyes of contemporaries, the two main destructive forces were the Romantics and feminists. In 1799, the year of Schiller’s ‘Song of the Bell’, the Romantic poet Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) published a short novel titled Lucinde. It celebrates the passionate love between a young man and a woman who embark on a life based on reciprocal devotion and abandonment. At the same time, both partners strive for individuality and aim at developing the self to ever greater perfection and harmony. But individuality is not conceived as separation. Instead, Lucinde wants to become a self-confident woman, while her lover Julius works to soften his masculinity. Without giving up their distinct identities as man and woman, they both try to overcome those identities’ limitations and restrictions. The novel proposes the radical idea that love should expand rather than limit each partner’s potential.9 Schlegel, however, did not suggest that gender differences should be eradicated. Lucinde’s femininity is beyond question and so is Julius’s masculinity. While her character is closer to nature, he is known for his affinity for abstract concepts. In fact, she does much to rescue him from what Schlegel elsewhere called the ‘machine-like shape’ of bourgeois life, whereas Julius does relatively little to raise her self-confidence and autonomy. Still, this was the most progressive model of gender relations possible at the time. It was as radical and provocative as could be. And it did provoke strong criticism fuelled by anger, hatred and resentment. Among the very few who defended it were the Berlin theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and Schlegel’s lover, Dorothea Veit (1764–1839). How could she not? As many knew, Lucinde had been modelled on her. Indeed, Dorothea stood out as a strong woman who took her life into her own hands and, in so 283

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doing, broke as many moral laws and conventions as possible. Born to Moses and Fromet Mendelssohn, she had been engaged, at the age of fourteen, to an older but wealthy businessman, Simon Veit, in Berlin. After marrying him in 1783, she bore him four children, only two of which survived. When she met Friedrich Schlegel in 1797, they fell in love. Dorothea filed for a rabbinical divorce and left her family for the poet (who was eight years her junior). In the eyes of her contemporaries, this constituted a threefold scandal. First, divorce was rather uncommon around 1800 and always left a moral stain on a woman who requested it. Second, breaking away from a Jewish marriage and falling in love with a Christian was frowned upon by Jews and Christians. Both confessions generally stayed apart, with Jews being legally discriminated against in multiple ways. Third, the liaison between Dorothea and Friedrich went on without being formally registered and approved. They only married in 1804 after many years of living together without a marriage certificate.10 The couple initially settled in Jena, in a close community of like-minded friends of both genders. The Jena Romantics and other artistic groups not only shared literary ambitions and aesthetic theories. They also lived rather unconventional lives that did not fit into ordinary middle-class models. Both men and women were highly educated and cultivated a sense of the avant-garde. A case in point is Caroline Schlegel (1763–1809), Friedrich’s sister-in-law. She grew up in the family of a Göttingen professor and was married, at the age of twenty, to a medical doctor. After her husband passed away, the young widow fell in love with a younger French officer whom she had met in Mainz after the city had been taken and occupied by revolutionary troops in 1792. The short and passionate love affair resulted in a pregnancy. Caroline gave birth in a town where nobody knew her, and left the newborn with a foster family. All four of her children – three from the first marriage – died early. In 1796, Caroline married the writer August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845), Friedrich’s older brother, and the two set up their household in Jena where it became the centre of the Romantic circle. Shortly afterwards, Caroline started a love affair with the young philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854), whom she married in 1803 after divorcing Schlegel. A woman of sharp wit and talent, she did not content herself with arranging tea parties or criticizing others’ work. Together with her second husband, she translated Shakespeare, but, in contrast to her sister-in-law Dorothea, shied away from trying her hand at literary work of her own.11 Even though the Romantics did not radically tear down the barriers between male and female spheres, they did pose a notable challenge to traditional gender roles and experimented with them, especially for women. At the same time, these roles were not radically novel ones. Female writers and salonières were not too uncommon in the French aristocracy. What was new was that such behaviour was adopted by the middle classes and that it was praised as an attractive model of bourgeois sociability. When Schleiermacher published his treatise Toward a Theory of Sociable Conduct in 1799, he took pains to emphasize the role of women as cultural mediators. He claimed that because women, in contrast to men, could not claim professional status and expertise and were not allowed to talk about household life and children in public, they were prone to present themselves solely as cultivated persons who indulged in intellectual 284

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conversation and aesthetic reflection. As such, he saw them as the ‘founders of a better society’. Men, on the other hand, usually had difficulties in moving beyond narrowly confined and homogenous – but boring – professional circles.12 Schleiermacher believed his theory cast its net far wider than what had been practised in Romantic circles in Jena, Berlin and elsewhere. He wanted it to be a blueprint for society at large, with women playing a prominent role. Sociable conduct, he argued, would instil in people a mode of communication altogether different from what it had been before: less socially fractured and more reciprocal, less artificial and more honest, less conservative and more liberal, less abiding to social ranks, more egalitarian and respectful, and, last but not least, less divided by gender. Such a model was expanded upon by early liberals, who articulated their own visions of a new society in the multivolume Staats-Lexicon that Carl Theodor Welcker, together with Carl von Rotteck, had been compiling since 1834. The encyclopedia, which addressed ‘all estates’ and social classes, also contained a lengthy article on ‘gender relations’ in which Welcker defined the liberal agenda. Women, he held, were undoubtedly restricted by their sex in that they bore children and raised families. In that very capacity, however, he thought that they were not to be alienated from state and society, but should be a vital part of it. In order to educate their sons to become good liberal citizens, they had to be educated themselves. Thus, he claimed that female education had to go beyond the confines of household chores and maternal duties and be expanded to all kinds of knowledge, ranging from the aesthetic to the political. In this regard, Welcker even encouraged allowing women to sit in on parliamentary sessions (which his co-liberal Großmann had denounced as an assault on male hegemony). Listening to political speeches and debates, he argued, would enable women to understand politics and form their own judgements, which would in turn have the fortuitous effect of bringing liberal politics into the home, where children would learn about liberal principles from an early age. Under no circumstances, however, were women to play an active part in politics. Liberals like Welcker made it very clear that they would not accept female parliamentarians or politicians, judges or professors. And they viciously attacked those so-called feminists and ‘blue-stockings’ who demanded equal rights of participation, in politics as much as in the economy.

Early feminists Knowing his enemies, Welcker did not explicitly mention Olympe de Gouges, who, four decades earlier, had drafted the first declaration of women’s rights. She had obviously been forgotten by then, just like Immanuel Kant’s Königsberg friend Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, who had, in 1792, published a treatise on the Civic Improvement of Women (Die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber). Likewise, Mary Wollstonecraft’s name was missing in Welcker’s diatribe against those who had taken the case of women’s emancipation too far. Among them, he counted ‘revolutionary women’ like the British writer Harriet Martineau, who had advocated women’s education and equal rights in family and society; 285

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in addition, he mentioned ‘spirited men’ like Jeremy Bentham, Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier. Such women and men probed the limits of their own societies, be they British, French or German. But even though they gained a great deal of publicity, they were neither able nor willing to build and lead a movement of like-minded followers. Yet, in their shadow several women’s clubs and associations were formed during the early decades of the nineteenth century. They did not have a political or feminist agenda; nevertheless, the fact that women organized themselves in groups was revolutionary in itself. The wars against Napoleon had mobilized many women in Prussia and other states to support men fighting against the French occupiers. Some of these associations survived after the war, while others were formed anew – often in a religious setting – and took up charitable tasks in the community. Their members were the wives and daughters of local dignitaries, merchants and civil servants. For them, organizing charity work did not mean stepping out of the female sphere, but enlarging it to aid needy strata of society, particularly women and families (Figure 13.3). In no way did they consider themselves to be striving for ‘emancipation’, a word that had been around since the late eighteenth century and was translated, in 1844, as liberating women ‘from the constraints that nature and social institutions had imposed on them’.13 As Schleiermacher had already lamented in 1799, the emerging public sphere, with the  notable exception of salon culture, was strictly segregated according to

Figure 13.3  Meeting of a patriotic woman’s association. Source: Frick, Inge et al. Frauen befreien sich: Bilder zur Geschichte der Frauenarbeit und Frauenbewegung. Munich: Frauenbuchverlag, 1976, p. 100.

286

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gender: middle-class men formed associations with other men, women met with other women. Even the liberal-democratic movement that gained momentum during the 1830s and 1840s adhered to the traditional pattern. Women were formally excluded from the numerous and diverse cultural clubs (choirs, gymnasts, riflemen) that constituted the backbone of early liberal politics. Wives and daughters were only invited to participate in public festivals. When in 1832 the journalist Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer (1789– 1845) called upon Germans to gather in Hambach for a powerful demonstration of liberal nationalism, he explicitly invited women to ‘adorn and vitalize’ the event. In his welcoming speech, however, he only mentioned men who, as ‘sons of the fatherland’, held citizenship, whereas women solely figured as ‘free comrades of free citizens’, or symbolically represented the nation.14 The year 1848 brought a sea change. The revolutionary spark that originated in Paris mobilized hundreds of thousands of people all over Germany, and it did not stop with men. Women hurried to be part of the upsurge, crowding the galleries of the Frankfurt National Assembly, taking political positions and collecting money to support the struggle for liberal government, democratic rights and national unity. Some even became national heroines who, like Mathilde Franziska Anneke (1817–84), mounted barricades and fought, side by side with men, against the armies of the Old Regime.15 But women also voiced their own, gender-specific concerns. They were no longer content to sew flags for male gymnastic associations, but formed their own clubs and learnt how to train and strengthen their bodies. In May 1848, the Leipziger ArbeiterZeitung published the petition of twenty-nine-year-old Louise Otto (1819–95), begging politicians and workers not to leave working women behind. A year later, Otto founded a new journal, the Frauen-Zeitung, under the emphatic motto, ‘I am recruiting female citizens for the realm of freedom.’ Although it did not survive the crackdown on the revolution, it marked the beginning of a feminist movement in Germany that gained more and more momentum during the 1860s and after.16

Class matters Louise Otto was a noteworthy figure in many ways. She was among a handful of women who, since the 1840s, earned a livelihood by writing emancipatory literature and condemning legal, political and social injustices. Born into a lawyer’s family, she lost her parents at the age of seventeen. Lacking financial means and spurred by social criticism, she started to write and publish novels, mostly about poor and lower-class families. As in her 1848 address to ministry and workers’ representatives, she deliberately overstepped social and class barriers and genuinely empathized with the ‘harsh destiny’ of her ‘poor sisters’. She knew from first-hand experience that the wives and daughters of skilled and unskilled labourers, both agricultural and industrial, desperately needed employment in order to raise the family income. They were, as Otto pointed out, in an extremely precarious position, earned lower wages and often had to resort to prostitution to make ends meet. As factory workers or salesgirls, they were not well liked by male colleagues, 287

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who resented women’s ‘dirty’ competition for allegedly lowering wages.17 Nevertheless, in general women and men rarely competed for the same jobs: while women predominantly worked in the (low-paying) textile and clothing industries, men preferred employment in heavy manufacturing, mining and metalworking. The labour market thus was strictly segregated according to gender. This only started to change with the rise of light industries, such as electrical manufacturing, during the late nineteenth century.18 Another type of employment that was firmly in female hands was domestic service. The growth and economic rise of the urban middle classes increased the demand for household help. The reputation of bourgeois families literally depended on employing one or several maids who mostly came from lower-class and rural backgrounds, lived in their employers’ homes and were completely at their mercy. Power relations prevailing, female sisterhood of the kind that Otto had envisaged and proclaimed in 1848 was rarely ever experienced between maid and mistress. Instead, employers complained about servants being untrustworthy and careless, whereas maids suffered from exploitation, abuse and low pay.19 For daughters and wives of middle-class men – lawyers, doctors, teachers, civil servants as well as merchants or entrepreneurs – employment was perceived as neither necessary nor acceptable. To be middle class during the nineteenth century meant, among other things, that the husband’s income was high enough to support the family. This did not rule out that women kept themselves busy with family and household chores, needlework, piano lessons and social gatherings. But it strictly barred them from earning money through gainful employment, which would have been widely considered an intrusion into the male sphere and a sign of a breadwinner’s failure or lack of authority. At the same time, male work increasingly moved away from home and became separated from family and household. Since women remained bound to the private sphere, they found themselves more and more detached from men’s affairs. This had not always been the case. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, middleclass households had been the work space of both men and women. Consider, for instance, Wilhelmine Bassermann (1787–1869). She had grown up in the family of a wealthy Mannheim merchant and, from early on, would do her father’s correspondence, accompany him on his travels and work in the office as well as in the store. When she got married, she did not like to leave her position, convinced that she knew far more about the business than her husband, and she kept a close eye on him.20 Similarly, Wilhelmine Friederike Schneider (1755–95) assisted her husband, a Leipzig bookseller, throughout her marriage: she collated the books, did the accounting and wrote letters to customers and authors.21 Husband and wife were still, as in earlier times, understood as a working couple; work and family were not yet divided into separate spheres and spaces.22 This changed rapidly and radically during the nineteenth century. Wilhelmine Bassermann was not amused when her daughter and son-in-law bought two stately houses in 1828, one for the family and one for the business. She considered this a waste of money, but she was also aware that her daughter Babette would no longer be as intimately involved in the family business as her mother had been. Spatial arrangements mattered, just as with the Krupp family. Until Friedrich Krupp’s early death in 1826, 288

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the family had lived in a small house on the factory site, and Krupp’s wife Therese (1790–1850), the daughter of a wealthy Essen merchant, was well acquainted with her husband’s endeavours to improve the production of cast steel. As a widow, Therese avoided bankruptcy and kept the business going until her son Alfred (1812–87) took over. When, in 1876, Alfred built himself a huge mansion in a serene landscape, miles away from the industrial premises, this was not only a symbol of wealth and power. It also signalled the distinction between work and family, men and women.23 Such distinction was far less relevant in small businesses where husbands and wives often used to work side by side. It also collapsed when it came to widows or heiress daughters who acquired hitherto male powers in order to keep their company under the control of the family. As a general rule, however, and as a growing tendency, men wanted to exclude women from business, and women sought compensation in cultural or charity activities. Rather than simply being logical consequences of the increasing complexity of the economic sphere, the new division of labour reflected deliberate gender policies, as explained by the ingenious engineer and successful entrepreneur Werner Siemens (1816–92) in the 1850s. When his younger brother Carl, who represented the company in St. Petersburg, was about to get married, Werner advised him to keep economic matters absolutely separate from family and household. Werner told Carl that the latter’s fiancée should under no circumstances meddle in the business or, in his absence, substitute for him. Werner set the example by never allowing his wife to give commands, not even to an apprentice. Her realm was the household, not the business. If it were otherwise, the situation would devolve into a ‘henpecking regime’ (Pantoffelregiment), and this suited neither wife nor husband.24

The women’s movement Men seemed increasingly keen on avoiding any impression that they might be ruled by women. Even if the battle for the breeches had been an ongoing feature of early modern caricature, it assumed an altogether new meaning during the nineteenth century.25 This was mainly due to the emergence of the women’s movement, as it had made its first appearance in 1848, with Louise Otto and others taking an active stance in the revolutionary upheaval. They posed a real challenge by no longer siding with men’s battles and interests, but defining and defending their own. As early as 1843, Otto, who had been good friends with the liberal-democratic publisher Robert Blum (1807–48), had answered his public question on the political status of women by claiming that women could be seen as the ‘barometer’ of how states valued freedom and patriotism. And she promised that both men and women, and society at large, would benefit once women became patriotic and took a greater interest in politics.26 Blum himself was more reluctant (Figure 13.4). In an article on gender relations, he avoided the subject of political emancipation altogether. Instead, he focused on the state’s obligation to sustain and cultivate ‘natural’ relations between the sexes, writing that this would allow both men and women to get married and lead 289

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Figure 13.4  Robert Blum and his family. Source: ullstein bild Dtl. / Getty

lives congruent with their ‘natural’ differences. At the same time, he argued that women should be given the opportunity to divorce if their marriage failed. This meant preparing them for greater independence and autonomy – that is, educating them, employing them and paying them well.27 In this regard, Blum was on a par with Otto. She also placed considerable weight on improving women’s education and employability. Public schools (Bürgerschulen) in towns and cities exclusively accepted male pupils, as did universities. Only elementary schools (Volksschulen) were open to boys and girls alike. Apart from religion, they taught basic skills (reading and calculating) and primed students for a life as factory workers, day labourers, seamstresses and domestic servants. Anyone with more ambitious goals needed precisely the secondary schooling from which girls were excluded. Witnessing a considerable expansion of the publicly financed school system, the nineteenth century initially saw the divide between male and female education widening. In the past, many middle-class families had engaged private tutors, and although their main responsibility was to educate the boys, their sisters benefited as well. When public schools took over, girls were left behind. Only gradually and on private initiative were schools for the daughters of local artisans, civil servants, professionals and entrepreneurs established. Their curriculum differed greatly from what was taught in boys’ schools. Since höhere Töchter were not supposed to ever enter the labour market, they only learnt skills that they would need as future wives and mothers. This comprised the basics 290

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of household economics and needlework, as well as knowledge about literature and languages, art, music and, of course, religion.28 Women like Louise Otto, however, did not care for such restrictions. They aimed at thoroughly improving female education on all levels, university studies included. As early as 1848, Otto and others had stressed the need to set up girls’ schools that went beyond the usually narrow curriculum and covered ‘patriotic’ subjects like history and politics. Cautious not to appear too radical, Otto agreed that the home should remain women’s privileged sphere of activity. Still, she argued that it was the ‘holy’ duty of each person to constantly cultivate and educate themselves, and the female sex was no exception.29 In later years, Otto became more outspoken. When she and others founded the Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein (ADF) in 1865, they openly petitioned for women’s admission to universities and the liberal professions. They also demanded that women hold office in local and school administration. And ultimately, although they did not mention it explicitly, they wanted the female suffrage.

The suffrage, or who shall rule? This, however, was a red line for male contemporaries. They tried everything to block it and ridiculed those who expressed their support. While many other demands of the growing women’s movement were eventually, though reluctantly, granted, female suffrage was not. The more women pressed for it, the more men and other women resisted. Their counterarguments remained basically the same: social and political order would suffer from women entering politics, as would male authority and dominance in the private sphere. Even for men, the suffrage had been widely contested. As discussed in the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1849, the suffrage posed the ‘real question of power’, that is, ‘the question who should rule’.30 Overall, liberals were careful not to answer the question too inclusively. In their view, not every man should be entitled to cast his vote and participate in political decision making. After all, a certain amount of education and economic independence were prerequisites for responsible and trustworthy citizens. When Prussia introduced a three-class franchise system in 1850, the liberal middle classes did not object. For one, their own privileges were sheltered because the system favoured those who paid higher taxes. Furthermore, it kept proletarian men at bay who threatened to radically overthrow the social order and, with the growth of socialist parties and trade unions, posed a visible danger to the capitalist mode of economic production and social reproduction. Under no circumstances would liberals, let alone conservatives, allow women to vote in political elections. When the first national parliament met in Frankfurt in 1848/49, it did not even discuss female suffrage. As much as lawmakers fought over social and economic gradations of political rights, they agreed on the complete irrelevance of gender: suffrage was simply reserved for ‘the German’ or ‘the person’. When a conservative representative insisted that women should be explicitly excluded, the majority thought 291

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otherwise. ‘Laws that spoke of political rights’ could not but ‘only refer to the male sex’; this was deemed such a self-evident truth that it seemed absolutely ‘unnecessary to exclude the female sex’.31 In this respect, nothing changed during the second half of the nineteenth century. When suffrage was again publicly debated in the 1860s, the ‘women’s question’ was not addressed. While conservatives, for tactical reasons, campaigned for universal male suffrage, they at no time considered extending it to female citizens. In elections to the Norddeutscher Reichstag in 1867 and, after 1871, to the imperial Reichstag, only adult men were called to the polls. Still, something was in the air. When, in 1849, conservative legislators wanted to make explicit women’s exclusion, they did not mean to be ‘pedantic’ but realistic. With contempt and resentment, they referred to recent movements promoting women’s ‘political emancipation’. In 1870, Johann Caspar Bluntschli (1808–81), the influential editor of the Deutsche Staats-Wörterbuch, hesitantly remarked that it was not altogether ‘improbable’ that even women might get the vote in the near future. He mentioned, as an eloquent protagonist, the eminent British liberal theorist John Stuart Mill, who, in the late 1860s, pushed hard for female suffrage in the House of Commons. Mill’s 1869 book on The Subjection of Women promoted ideas he had jointly developed with his wife Harriet Taylor. They argued that women’s inferior position in modern society was a relic from a barbaric past and ‘now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement’. They argued that it should therefore be ‘replaced by a system of perfect equality’.32 The book had a huge impact. Jenny Hirsch (1829–1902), one of the founding members of the ADF, immediately translated it into German, and it was printed in several editions. Yet most reviews were negative. For the historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–96), who taught politics at Berlin University, Mill had been brainwashed by Taylor, ‘a terrible bluestocking’ who had obviously seduced him to commit a logical ‘fallacy’. Since women and men were not equal, they could by no means claim social and political equality. Obrigkeit ist männlich, all governmental functions ‘belong to the manly sphere’, Treitschke told his students, who could not but agree. For those who needed further arguments, the popular professor referred to the ‘purely physical part of government, which must be backed by armed men. Now, armed men do not like taking their orders from a woman. Therefore, women cannot fill posts of genuine authority.’33 Linking military conflict and politics became increasingly fashionable, with several wars preceding Germany’s unification and the foundation of the Empire in 1871. Systematically and historically, that link had been on the table since the early nineteenth century. When Prussia introduced general male conscription in 1814, its proponents drew a direct connection between military service and political rights. And even though the Prussian king did not keep his wartime promise to grant his subjects a constitution, the connection remained alive. Male citizenship was buttressed by male conscription to the army, both in times of peace and war (Figure 13.5). Conversely, those who were, on principle, left out of the draft could not count on being accepted as full-fledged citizens.34 Liberals like Welcker used this argument as early as the 1830s; after 1871, it became a standard trope in the controversy over women’s rights.35 292

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Figure 13.5  Men parade while women look on. Source: Die Gartenlaube, 1874, p. 826f.

This posed a problem for the social-democratic movement that, despite severe repression, gained more and more followers and scored ever higher in general elections. Even though they were far from militaristic, socialists appreciated conscription as a basis of universal male suffrage. As party leader August Bebel (1840–1913) explained in 1895, duties had to be compensated by rights. But where did this leave the SPD when it came to legitimizing female suffrage? Here, Bebel borrowed his arguments from Hedwig Dohm (1831–1919), who had untiringly spoken out in favour of giving women political rights since the 1870s. First, she argued, one should not forget that even those men who did not serve in the military for health reasons or because they were not wanted could cast their vote in elections. Second, women also paid their dues to the fatherland: they bore future soldiers, and they often lost their lives in doing so. Death in childbirth, Bebel seconded, came in much higher numbers than death on the battlefield.36 After some initial hesitations, the SPD began to support women’s struggle for education, employment and political rights. Bebel was well acquainted with Louise Otto; in 1865, members of her Leipzig Frauenbildungsverein taught Sunday lessons to lowerclass girls in the gathering place of Bebel’s Arbeiterbildungsverein.37 Ten years later, Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht unequivocally argued in favour of giving women, just like men, the vote. A party indebted to equality would, in their view, ‘smack itself in the face if it denied political rights to half of humankind’. Suffrage would open political education to women and eventually turn them into men’s comrades. Most workers’ representatives, however, were not convinced and adopted a programmatic phrase that remained gender 293

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neutral: ‘all citizens’ should have political rights.38 Semantically, this excluded women, as in 1848. But Bebel did not refrain from campaigning for women’s suffrage. In 1879, he published his book Women under Socialism (Die Frau und der Sozialismus) that went through twenty-five editions over the next sixteen years and fifty by 1909. In it, he explained that women’s social position had changed considerably during the preceding decades. More and more women had taken up gainful employment, and a growing number depended on their own strength and skills, which, Bebel claimed, rendered it even more urgent for them to actively participate in lawmaking and defend their proper interests. At the same time, he argued that involving women in politics would benefit society at large and improve gender relations so that instead of being ‘a drag’ to men, ‘like-minded women’ would support their husbands or fathers and make socialism more successful and powerful.39 Enlisting women for the socialist struggle was easier said than done. Initially, parties and trade unions only recruited male members. While some unions started to woo female factory workers in the 1860s, most remained aloof. In 1892, the Free Trade Union movement only organized 4,355 women, less than two per cent of its entire membership. At that time, women made up more than twenty per cent of the industrial workforce. The SPD showed even less interest in female membership. By law, women had been prohibited from joining political associations since 1851, a ban that lasted until 1908. In 1909, hardly one out of ten SPD members was female. Most of them were the wives and daughters of male party members, who, as a general rule, and contrary to Bebel’s claims, did not like them to be politically engaged. At the most, they were welcome to participate in social gatherings and festivals organized by the SPD’s booming cultural network. More narrowly defined political activity, however, was widely considered a male monopoly, just as in liberal or conservative milieus.40 Neither liberal, nor conservative parties, nor the Catholic Zentrum joined the SPD in its struggle for female suffrage – a struggle that had been firmly enshrined in the party programme since 1891. Not even the women’s movement went so far as to make the vote part of their official platform. In 1876, Louise Otto explained why women’s associations hesitated to put female suffrage on the agenda: they did not want to scare away those women who were interested in issues that seemed more obvious to them, like education, employment or social work. Among the many hundreds of women’s clubs and associations that had emerged since the 1860s in most German towns and cities, only few campaigned for women’s political rights. The overwhelming majority were engaged in professional networking, legal advice and career counselling, as well as in the reform of women’s dress, the struggle against alcohol consumption, the organization of charity, gymnastics and the like (Figure 13.6).41 Most, but not all, were gathered under the umbrella of the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, which was founded in 1894. Since the BDF aimed to represent a broad swathe of women (attracting half a million members before the First World War), it shied away from raising controversial issues. Women were divided along many lines, confessional as well as social and political. Some were in favour of the vote, others 294

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Figure 13.6  Leading figures in the women’s movement. Source: Die Gartenlaube, 1894, p. 257.

fiercely against it. Housewives were represented and so were female teachers, and both groups had widely divergent agendas. Catholic, Jewish and Protestant women organized side by side, with only limited political overlap.42 Women like Hedwig Dohm, who posed radical demands for women’s ‘emancipation’ in science, politics, society and marriage, could only do so because they were lone fighters for what they considered a just cause. They charmed and convinced some, but pushed away many others. Anyone who aimed to organize women as a powerful collective voice had to compromise and settle on the lowest common denominator. Before 1914, that most definitely did not include women’s suffrage.

Hot topics: Sex, law and science There were other controversial issues, too. Sexual reform was one of them. Around 1900, some women and men took initiatives to improve intimate relations between the sexes. 295

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They campaigned for ‘new ethics’ and promoted free love as a positive alternative to conventional marriage. They wanted single mothers to be protected by law and legal distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate children to be abolished. For most people, men and women alike, this sounded like a violent assault on morality, and only very few could identify with such radical claims. Still, Helene Stöcker (1869–1943) found enough collaborators to establish the League for the Protection of Mothers (Bund für Mutterschutz) in 1905 and edit its journal Die Neue Generation (The New Generation), which remained in print until 1933.43 When the League applied for membership in the BDF, however, it was denied. Discrimination against illegitimate children was firmly enshrined in civil law, as were many other provisions that angered both the radical League and the far more cautious BDF. As early as 1876, middle-class women petitioned the Reichstag to improve women’s legal status and curtail the broad reach of paternal rights. Nevertheless, the new civil code – passed in 1896 and becoming effective four years later – did not comply with these demands. Even though it did grant full legal status to married women so that they could now sign contracts and go to court on their own, it did very little to curb male privileges in marriage, family and the household. Men still had the power to make decisions for the family, serve as legal guardians of their children, and manage and benefit from their wives’ assets. They could even go so far as to limit their wives’ newly won contractual rights.44 From a strictly legal standpoint, women’s position was far better if they remained unmarried. In social and economic terms, however, it was often worse.45 Unmarried daughters from middle-class families, like Helene Stöcker, had very few professional options. Stöcker moved to Berlin in 1892 in order to become a teacher. In her social milieu, teaching was increasingly considered an acceptable profession for women who, after attending seminars, took up employment in private or public girls’ schools. In 1890, the teacher Helene Lange (1848–1930), who had long campaigned for improving women’s education, founded the Allgemeine Deutsche Lehrerinnenverein, which soon had 3,000 members. Within a decade, the number grew to 16,000. Even though members felt fortunate to hold jobs and be able to support themselves, they complained about suffering severe discrimination. Female teachers were only allowed to teach girls up to a certain age; like boys, older girls had to be taught by male teachers who, unlike women, had obtained a university degree. Salaries for women were generally lower than for men, who were supposed to earn a living for their families. By contrast, female teachers were legally compelled to remain single and lost their jobs once they got married. For women, marriage was deemed incompatible with salaried work.46 For Stöcker, marriage was not an option. Neither did teaching suit her. Instead, she started attending classes at Berlin University. Although women were officially barred from studying and passing exams, some professors did not mind letting them listen in on their lectures. Heinrich von Treitschke, however, did. When Stöcker asked for his permission, he flatly refused, arguing that he would not help to destroy German universities by admitting women.47 Treitschke’s was by no means a minority view. When in 1896, 122 German professors, teachers and writers were asked whether women were 296

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capable of studying at universities, less than half answered in the positive, and very few approved of admitting female students without any restrictions and reservations. Most interviewees feared that women might lose their femininity by immersing themselves in academic work. Others, like Treitschke, complained that sciences would suffer and admonished women not to compete with men since they were doomed to fail. Max Planck (1858–1947), director of the Department of Theoretical Physics in Berlin and member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, cautioned society not to encroach on nature’s laws. Even if a few women had enough talent and passion to study at university, ‘nature itself has prescribed women’s vocation as mother and housewife’. Those who ignored such ‘natural laws’, he said, would do considerable damage, particularly to the next generation.48 Still, women went on petitioning for access to universities, and finally the authorities gave in. Universities in Baden officially began accepting female students in 1900, Bavaria followed in 1903 and Prussia in 1908. At the same time, women gained the right to pass the Abitur (or A levels), which was a precondition for starting academic studies. For Stöcker, this came too late. Like many women before her, she enrolled at the University of Bern in Switzerland to submit her doctoral dissertation and earn her degree. The younger generation, however, could from now on officially matriculate in Germany and study arts and sciences, medicine and law. In 1913, 3,649 female students were enrolled altogether, making up 6.3 per cent of all university students.49

Conclusion: Women in a new man’s world It seems, therefore, that women had ultimately become quite successful in breaking down the barriers that prevented them from participating in the institutions and developments of modern society. The ‘women’s question’ that had haunted contemporaries during the second half of the nineteenth century had been solved by a compromise: while women, on the one hand, accepted their ‘natural vocation’ as mothers and wives, they found ways, on the other hand, to broaden that vocation and reach beyond the sphere of family and the household. As teachers, doctors, nurses and social workers, they applied their ‘feminine’ and ‘maternal’ qualities to wider sections of society. In the lower classes, women filled the ranks of industrial workers and, even more frequently, found employment as maids, salesgirls or in the cottage industries. Increasingly, they also gained access to office jobs in the expanding tertiary sector and performed secretarial work that men initially found too degrading for themselves. Positions of government, though, continued to be barred to all women; only after the demise of the Empire, and as a gift from the revolutionary interim, did women get the vote in 1918 (Figure 13.7).50 At the same time, such achievements pale against the background of general social and political developments. The nineteenth century was a period in which the fabric of society changed dramatically. First, economic structures underwent considerable shifts. Industrialization created millions of new jobs for men and, less so, young unmarried women. Centralized production sites meant that work and household were increasingly 297

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Figure 13.7  ‘Women! Equal rights – Equal duties. Vote Social Democrat!’. Source: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy.

separated from one another. The same held true for professions that had hitherto been embedded in a wider family setting, with offices, stores and business spaces being part of the family house, and servants, apprentices and journeymen living under the same roof with their masters and mistresses. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, those spheres began to move apart, and men became used to spending more and more time away from their wives and children. This also showed in the proliferation of social associations and gathering places from which women were excluded. 298

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Second, men’s lives, in all social strata, were greatly and intimately affected by processes of politicization, militarization and nationalization. In the wake of the French Revolution and liberal struggles for political representation, all men, regardless of social class and religious belief, became newly defined as citizens bearing political rights and fulfilling military duties in order to protect their fatherland and nation. This was accompanied by new honour and prestige and had a considerable impact on men’s identities and ideas.51 Political mobilization was extensive and men joined all kinds of parties, unions and associations. In 1913, Social Democrats counted a million party members, and veterans’ organizations boasted of close to three million. Men thus increasingly led their lives in public spaces that were distant from home and hearth. As such, they came to enjoy higher social esteem, economic valence and the rights of political influence. Around 1800, this had been the exception. A century later, it was the general rule. For women, this posed a problem and provoked ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, they benefited from the growing appreciation and valourization of home and family. As propagated in Schiller’s ‘Song of the Bell’ and countless other texts, songs and images, home and family were praised as a refuge for men returning from their strenuous public work and hard struggles. The Romantic movement further promoted the transformation of the loving couple into the sanctuary of middle-class lives, for women as well as for men. But even when men adored their wives and cherished their children, they increasingly spent most of their time far from home. Conversely, Romantic imagination led women to harbour intense expectations of marital intimacy, trust and understanding, bound to be disappointed, sooner or later. Left behind in a private sphere with fewer economic responsibilities and the number of children per marriage decreasing rapidly from the late nineteenth century onwards, women, on the other hand, became more and more attracted to the burgeoning public sphere and all it had to offer: political influence, social status and cultural diversity. Even the labour market, delivering more white-collar jobs and professional opportunities for women from middle-class families, was no longer a taboo. Women thus strove to take advantage of such possibilities and fought to level the legal, social and cultural barriers erected in defence of male monopolies step by step. Paradoxically, even those women who considered themselves conservative and by no means attempted to compete with men over rights and power came around and pushed the limits, not unlike liberals or social democrats who subscribed to the gospel of freedom and equality. When more than half a million women organized themselves in Patriotic Women’s Associations or nationalist and colonialist leagues, they made it clear that they wished to participate in the nation’s battles for power and Weltpolitik.52 For them, accepting the principle that government should remain in male hands did not mean that women should completely stay out of politics. This became ever more obvious with the outbreak of the First World War. Women hardly differed from men in their early enthusiasm for the war. Moreover, the political divisions that had defined the women’s movement up until then – conservative, liberal, social-democratic and confessional – no longer seemed to matter. As Gertrud Bäumer 299

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(1873–1954), president of the BDF, proclaimed in 1914, women were happy to leave their ‘special interests’ behind and join the national project. The call for national unity resonated well with women, whose very nature, as they saw it, predestined them to bring about social and national harmony. In the National Women’s Service, set up in 1914, class conflict was put to an end, as was the struggle about how far to take the issue of women’s rights – at least for the time being.53 Thus, at the end of the long nineteenth century, Olympe de Gouges’ demands for women’s rights were still far from having been realized, in Germany as much as in other European countries. No country had granted women the vote, despite strong women’s movements that gradually became more outspoken and demanded it. In legal matters, the German civil code had denied equal rights to married women, but so had other European legal systems. Compared with other countries, however, Germany was more concerned about protecting its first-class universities from female students and scholars and also barred women from entering state-administered professions like law and medicine. The huge importance of the army in society was another factor that made it more difficult for women to make their voice heard in public and politics. Yet organizing themselves in patriotic associations proved an opportunity for women – in Germany as well as in France or Britain – to pledge their honour to the fatherland and its interest at home and in the wider world. In this regard, female patriotism displayed in 1914 did not come as a surprise. For a short historical moment, de Gouges’s ideal vision of a society in which both genders cooperated harmoniously and respectfully seemed to materialize. Nevertheless, divisions became evident again quickly. When military conflict ended and revolution broke out, not only the social, economic and political order was at stake. Gender relations, too, had to be renegotiated, with newly enfranchised women and men returning from the battlefield, defeated.

Notes 1. Claudia Honegger, Die Ordnung der Geschlechter: Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen und das Weib 1750–1850 (Munich: dtv, 1996). 2. Paul J. Möbius, Über den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes (Halle: Marhold, 1900). 3. Carl Theodor Welcker, ‘Geschlechtsverhältnisse’, Staats-Lexikon, vol. 6 (Altona: Hammerich, 1838), pp. 629–65; Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Die Familie, 11th edn (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1897), p. 147. 4. Sabina Brändli, ‘Der herrlich biedere Mann’. Vom Siegeszug des bürgerlichen Herrenanzugs im 19. Jahrhundert (Zurich: Chronos, 1998). 5. See Hermann Wagener, ed., Staats- und Gesellschafts-Lexikon, vol. 7 (Berlin: F. Heinicke, 1861), p. 316. 6. Mittheilungen über die Verhandlungen des Landtages im Königreiche Sachsen 1836–1837, p. 39. 7. Ibid.; Carl Theodor Welcker, ‘Bürgertugend und Bürgersinn’, Staats-Lexikon, 2nd edn, vol. 2 (Altona: Hammerich, 1846), pp. 763–70. See, as (partial) empirical confirmation of such

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Gender Orders and Disorders trends, Anne-Charlott Trepp, Sanfte Männlichkeit und selbständige Weiblichkeit. Frauen und Männer im Hamburger Bürgertum zwischen 1770 und 1840 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996); Rebekka Habermas, Frauen und Männer des Bürgertums. Eine Familiengeschichte 1750–1850 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000). 8. Ute Planert, Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998). 9. Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, ed. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971); Friedrich Schlegel, Theorie der Weiblichkeit, ed. Winfried Menninghaus (Frankfurt: Insel, 1983), pp. 61, 92, 99. 10. Carola Stern, ‘Ich möchte mir Flügel wünschen’. Das Leben der Dorothea Schlegel (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1995); Frauenbriefe der Romantik, ed. Katja Behrens (Frankfurt: Insel, 1981), pp. 331–69. 11. Sigrid Damm, ed., ‘Lieber Freund, ich komme weit her schon an diesem frühen Morgen’. Caroline Schlegel–Schelling in ihren Briefen (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1981). 12. Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Toward a Theory of Sociable Conduct, and Essays on Its IntellectualCltural Context, ed. Ruth Drucilla Richardson (Lewiston: Edward Mellen Press, 1995). 13. Allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyclopaedie für die gebildeten Stände, 9th edn, vol. 4 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1844), p. 686. See, on early nineteenth-century women’s associations, Dirk Reder, Frauenbewegung und Nation. Patriotische Frauenvereine in Deutschland im frühen 19. Jahrhundert (1813–1830) (Cologne: SH, 1998). On religious women’s clubs, see Catherine M. Prelinger, Charity, Challenge, and Change: Religious Dimensions of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Women’s Movement in Germany (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987); Sylvia Paletschek, Frauen und Dissens: Frauen im Deutschkatholizismus und in den freien Gemeinden 1841–1852 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990). See also Dagmar Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Ursula Baumann, Protestantismus und Frauenemanzipation in Deutschland 1850–1920 (Frankfurt: Campus, 1992); Veronika Jüttemann, Im Glauben vereint: Männer und Frauen im protestantischen Milieu Ostwestfalens 1845–1918 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008). 14. Ute Frevert, ‘Nation, Krieg und Geschlecht im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte, eds, Nation und Gesellschaft in Deutschland, (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1996), pp. 151–70, here 158f.; Bettina Brandt, Germania und ihre Söhne: Repräsentationen von Nation, Geschlecht und Politik in der Moderne (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010). 15. See Siemann’s chapter in this volume. 16. Ute Planert, ‘Die Nation als “Reich der Freiheit” für Staatsbürgerinnen: Louise Otto zwischen Vormärz und Reichsgründung’, in Ute Planert, ed., Nation, Politik und Geschlecht (Frankfurt: Campus, 2000), 113–30. 17. Louise Otto, ‘Adresse eines Mädchens’, in Renate Möhrmann, ed., Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormärz: Texte und Dokumente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978), pp. 199–202. 18. Ute Frevert, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (Oxford: Berg, 1990), pp. 83–93. See Lee’s chapter in this volume. 19. Karin Orth, ‘Nur weiblichen Besuch’. Dienstbotinnen in Berlin 1890–1914 (Frankfurt: Campus, 1993); Dorothee Wierling, Mädchen für Alles. Arbeitsalltag und Lebensgeschichte städtischer Dienstmädchen um die Jahrhundertwende (Bonn: Dietz, 1987). 20. Lothar Gall, Bürgertum in Deutschland (Berlin: Siedler, 1989), pp. 133ff., 166ff. 21. Gallerie edler deutscher Frauenzimmer mit getroffenen Schattenrissen (Dessau: Buchhandlung der Gelehrten, 1784), vol. 2, pp. 357–84.

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Nineteenth-Century Germany 22. Heide Wunder, He is the Sun, She is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 63ff. 23. Ute Frevert, ‘Kulturfrauen und Geschäftsmänner’, in eadem, ‘Mann und Weib, und Weib und Mann’. Geschlechter-Differenzen in der Moderne (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1995), pp. 133–65. 24. Werner von Siemens, Aus einem reichen Leben. Werner von Siemens in Briefen an seine Familie und an Freunde, ed. Friedrich Heintzenberg (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1953), p. 113 (letter from 10 November 1855), 124 (letter from 23 September 1856). 25. Sigrid Metken, Der Kampf um die Hose. Geschlechterstreit und die Macht im Haus – Die Geschichte eines Symbols (Frankfurt: Campus, 1996), pp. 73ff. 26. [Louise Otto], ‘Das Verhältnis der Frauen zum Staate’, Sächsische Vaterlandsblätter, no. 142, 5 September (1843), p. 633f. 27. Robert Blum, ‘Geschlechtsverhältnisse’, in Robert Blum, ed., Volksthümliches Handbuch der Staatswissenschaften und Politik, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Robert Blum, 1848), pp. 408–12. 28. Margret Kraul, Das deutsche Gymnasium 1780–1980 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), pp. 144ff.; Elke Kleinau and Claudia Opitz, ed., Geschichte der Mädchen- und Frauenbildung, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Campus, 1996). 29. Möhrmann, ed., Frauenemanzipation, pp. 45–54. 30. Franz Wigard, ed., Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main, vol. 7 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1849), p. 5304. 31. Ibid., pp. 5236, 5329. 32. Johann Caspar Bluntschli and Karl Brater, ed., Deutsches Staats-Wörterbuch, vol. 11 (Stuttgart: Expedition des Staats-Wörterbuchs, 1870), p. 130f. 33. Heinrich von Treitschke, Politics, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1916), p. 252. 34. Ute Frevert, A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (Oxford: Berg, 2004), pp. 20ff., 65ff. 35. Frevert, ‘Mann und Weib’, pp. 117ff. 36. Hedwig Dohm, Die wissenschaftliche Emancipation der Frau (Berlin: Wedekind & Schwieger, 1874), p. 172f.; August Bebel, Die Sozialdemokratie und das Allgemeine Stimmrecht (Berlin: Verlag der Expedition des ‘Vorwärts’, 1895), p. 50; August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Frankfurt: Marxistische Blätter, 1976), p. 340f. 37. Herrad-Ulrike Bussemer, Frauenemanzipation und Bildungsbürgertum: Sozialgeschichte der Frauenbewegung in der Reichsgründungszeit (Weinheim: Beltz, 1985), p. 120ff. 38. Werner Thönnessen, Frauenemanzipation: Politik und Literatur der deutschen Sozialdemokratie zur Frauenbewegung 1863–1933, 2nd edn (Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1976), p. 33. 39. Frevert, ‘Mann und Weib’, pp. 104ff. 40. Frevert, Women, p. 99f., ch. 12. 41. Ibid., p. 114f.; Louise Otto, Frauenleben im deutschen Reich (Leipzig: Moritz Schäfer, 1876), p. 259. See, as local studies, Elisabeth Meyer-Renschhausen, Weibliche Kultur und soziale Arbeit: Eine Geschichte der Frauenbewegung am Beispiel Bremens 1810–1927 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1989); Kirsten Heinsohn, Politik und Geschlecht: Zur politischen Kultur bürgerlicher Frauenvereine in Hamburg (Hamburg: Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, 1997); Christina Klausmann, Politik und Kultur der Frauenbewegung im Kaiserreich: Das Beispiel Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997). 302

Gender Orders and Disorders 42. Angelika Schaser, ‘Women in a Nation of Men: the Politics of the League of German Women’s Associations (BDF) in Imperial Germany, 1894–1914’, in Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann and Catherine Hall, eds, Gendered Nations (Oxford: Berg, 2000), pp. 249–68; Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1894–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981); Brigitte Kerchner, Beruf und Geschlecht: Frauenberufsverbände in Deutschland 1848–1908 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992). 43. Christl Wickert, Helene Stöcker 1869–1943 (Bonn: Dietz, 1991); Edward Ross Dickinson, Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 44. Ute Gerhard, ed., Frauen in der Geschichte des Rechts (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1997), pp. 633ff. 45. Bärbel Kuhn, Familienstand ledig. Ehelose Frauen und Männer im Bürgertum (1850–1914) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002). 46. Angelika Schaser, Helene Lange und Gertrud Bäumer. Eine politische Lebensgemeinschaft (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), pp. 29–41, 50–75. 47. Helene Stöcker, Lebenserinnerungen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015), p. 54. 48. Arthur Kirchhoff, Die Akademische Frau (Berlin: Steinitz, 1897). 49. Claudia Huerkamp, Bildungsbürgerinnen. Frauen im Studium und in akademischen Berufen 1900–1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996). 50. See Chickering’s chapter in this volume. 51. Ute Frevert, ‘German Conceptions of War, Masculinity, and Femininity in the Long Nineteenth Century’, in Sarah Colvin and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, eds, Women and Death 2: Warlike Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination since 1500 (Rochester: Camden House, 2009), pp. 169–85. 52. Jean H. Quataert, Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001); Andrea Süchting-Hänger, Das ‘Gewissen der Nation’: Nationales Engagement und politisches Handeln konservativer Frauenorganisationen 1900 bis 1937 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002); Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). 53. Frevert, Women, pp. 152ff.

Selected bibliography Blom, I., Hagemann, K. and Hall, C., eds, Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Berg, 2000). Dickinson, E. R., Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Frevert, U., Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (Oxford: Berg, 1990). Frevert, U., A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (Oxford: Berg, 2004). Frevert, U., ‘German Conceptions of War, Masculinity, and Femininity in the Long Nineteenth Century’, in S. Colvin and H. Watanabe-O’Kelly, eds, Women and Death 2: Warlike Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination since 1500 (Rochester: Camden House, 2009), pp. 169–85.

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Nineteenth-Century Germany Hausen, K., ‘Family and Role-Division: The Polarization of Gender Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century’, in R. J. Evans and W. R. Lee, eds, The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1981), pp. 51–83. Herzog, D., Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Prelinger, C. M., Charity, Challenge, and Change: Religious Dimensions of the Mid-NineteenthCentury Women’s Movement in Germany (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). Quataert, J. H., Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). Wildenthal, L., German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). Wunder, H., He is the Sun, She is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

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CHAPTER 14 TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY

Ulrike Lindner

Introduction It is only recently that the history of Germany in the nineteenth century has been convincingly contextualized within a wider transnational and global setting. Nationbuilding, the radicalization of nationalism, the development towards the Second German Empire and debates on the German Sonderweg have long been the dominant themes in discussions on nineteenth-century German history. However, new research on transnational movements connecting German history not only to European but also to global developments has inspired scholars to look at German history in a new way, moving away from more traditional approaches that focus on diplomatic exchanges and international relations. In this text, the term ‘transnational’ is used pragmatically in order to focus on flows of people, ideas, objects and images crossing and transcending borders and connecting regional, national and global perspectives.1 The focus on transnational movements has brought hitherto unacknowledged topics to the fore such as travel, migration, scientific explorations, trade, issues of citizenship, cultural exchange and the impact of colonial and imperial connections and fantasies – even before the actual colonial expansion of Germany which began in 1884. These perspectives also shed new light on issues such as the European revolutions of the long nineteenth century, placing the French Revolution in an Atlantic context and pointing at the strong connections between France and Haiti or addressing 1848 together with other mid-century ‘convulsions’ in China and India and highlighting the transnational influence of 1848 exiles as Jürgen Osterhammel has done in his book on the global history of the nineteenth century.2 Increased attention is also directed towards ‘people on the move’ to and from the German lands. Mass migration to the Americas had a strong impact on many developments in Germany as well as on changing understandings of national belonging. For example, since the 1860s discussions of citizenship addressed emigrants (Auswanderer) often as ‘Germans abroad’(Auslandsdeutsche), signifying their distinct role in the definition of Germanness (Deutschtum) and implying they would contribute substantially to the strengthening of a German nation.3 Transnational and global connections are even more obvious in the period of the German Second Empire.4 It is now widely acknowledged that Germany was an important part of the wave of economic globalization at the end of the nineteenth century, with strong impacts on German economy and society. The integration of Germany into world

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markets reached almost all branches of the economy and had repercussions in everyday life. Germany was embedded in the imperial expansion of the European countries at the end of the nineteenth century, which played an important role in European and world history. Germany was a major player in the ‘scramble for Africa’. Newly evolving scientific disciplines, such as ethnology and anthropology, and new fields in various natural sciences, like botany, geology and zoology, were closely connected with the expansion of European empires and the ongoing exploration of the world. German scientists and explorers were responsible for important aspects of all these developments. Global developments and colonial expansion impacted everyday life in various ways (consumerism, advertising, literature, sciences, medicine, leisure). Imperial imaginations and colonial fantasies flourished. They also shaped discussions about German identity. Notions of a distinctive white German supremacy that would help to ‘civilize’ the world became an important component of German self-understanding and were linked to the aim of attaining Weltgeltung (worldwide recognition) of Germany. Race came to play a decisive role in the definition of citizenship, as could be observed in the heated debates on the banning of mixed marriages between indigenous women and German men in the colonies, and in debates about a new citizenship law.5 The chapter concentrates on two topics that were closely connected to global and transnational developments which point to specific forms of interdependency and interconnection. It looks at projects, organizations and structures that created circulations of people, knowledge and ideas. First, the chapter will address mass migration movements to and from Germany and analyse their impact on the German lands and subsequently the German Second Empire. Second, it will examine Germany’s imperial and colonial engagements, including formal colonial expansion from 1884 onwards.

Mass emigration in the nineteenth century and the appearance of Auslandsdeutsche Germany has been seen as a classical emigration country for most of the nineteenth century, only becoming a land of immigration towards the end of the nineteenth century and up until the First World War. However, the real picture is far more complex since people were on the move in various directions. Whereas a significant number of immigrants had reached the German lands in earlier decades, such as skilled workers from England or labour migrants from Italy, emigration continued during the Second German Empire even when the economic circumstances improved significantly during an era of rapid industrialization. Additionally, internal migration intensified during the second half of the nineteenth century due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, with more ‘people on the move’ than ever before. Through these diverse forms of mobility, large parts of the population experienced transnational entanglements6 (see chapters 4 and 9, especially Tables 4.3 and 9.3). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, traditional emigration routes to the east continued to lead Germans, mainly from southern regions, to various parts of Russia 306

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and into the territories of the Habsburg Empire. These movements lasted until the 1830s, bringing Germans to regions along the Volga and in southern Russia. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, following the invitation of Czar Alexander I, large groups of Germans from southwestern and western Germany moved to regions around Odessa, the lower Dnieper and the Crimea, forming the last large migration movement to the east.7 From the 1830s onwards overseas migration overtook these earlier population movements. Routes to the east were increasingly blocked as Tsarist authorities now privileged Slavic migrants. Furthermore, emigration to the Americas became more attractive as land prices there became much cheaper than in the east. Migration to the Americas was triggered by an agricultural crisis in Germany during the winter of 1816/17, with about 20,000 people leaving German ports for the New World. Such movements continued throughout the nineteenth century and into the 1920s, except for the period of the First World War. Transatlantic migration developed into a mass movement from the 1840s onwards. The main destination was North America, with around 90 per cent of all German transatlantic emigrants heading for the United States. Other major destinations were Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and to some extent the settler colonies of the British Empire including Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The major reasons for emigration were socio-economic: huge population growth since the end of the eighteenth century combined with a pre-industrial labour market that could not absorb all the additional people. The agrarian structure in many regions of Germany, with small landholdings that according to custom had to be divided between the heirs and therefore could not support all their families, often contributed to the decision to emigrate. Between 1846 and the early 1850s an initial emigration boom was evident, with around one million people leaving the German lands. In 1846 and 1847, the last preindustrial economic crisis in Germany impoverished hundreds of thousands of people and immediately increased the level of emigration (see Chapters 4 and 6). Additionally, after the failed revolution of 1848 political refugees, the so-called ‘Forty-Eighters’, went into exile in the United States. They added an element of elite migration to the dominant group of small peasants and rural underclass. During the American Civil War, emigration numbers dwindled, but a second peak in the German transatlantic emigration movement can be observed between 1864 and 1873. One million people left the German lands and the newly founded Second German Empire, again mainly heading for the United States. With economic recession in the United States during the 1870s, the emigration rates decreased once again. The high point of mass migration to the Americas was reached between 1890 and 1893, with approximately 1.8 million emigrants leaving Germany8 (see Tables 4.4 and 9.3). Due to an increasing demand for labour in the industrial regions of Germany, overseas migration was gradually replaced by internal migration within the Second German Empire. The reasons and conditions that prompted people to leave the specific social settings of their living place behind were much more complex than just a reaction to economic pressure. Individual decisions to migrate were often tied to decisions made by the wider 307

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family or to forms of chain migration. People from a rural community in Germany would often migrate to similar regions in the United States and would then develop migratory traditions with other people following them, even without immediate economic pressure in the homeland. Agencies were established and remittances were sent back that allowed others to follow. Consequently it has been argued that one should no longer speak of several waves of overseas emigration from the German lands but should rather understand the migration process as a continuous one which exhibited certain peaks. Additionally, the regions of origin shifted during the nineteenth century, with the south and the southwest of Germany dominating from the 1840s to the 1850s, the northwestern regions following shortly afterwards, and many people from eastern Prussia attracted to the potentials of the New World by the end of the century.9 Also, the means and costs of transportation changed fundamentally under the influence of technical innovations. Whereas trips to the United States took several months in the 1840s, in the late 1880s, due to railway transport to the ports and steamship connections to the United States, the journey would only last a few weeks and became less costly. This again changed the conditions under which migration became a possible choice (Figure 14.1). Even if German return migration is a rather under-researched field, some studies show that at least at the end of the nineteenth century many people pursued careers that would include a period of time overseas. Not only merchants, who traditionally followed such a life plan, but also clerks, artisans and qualified workers used the new possibilities of relatively cheap transport to the United States to establish themselves anew. On returning to Germany, they could often use their experience as a means to enter into well-paid jobs or their savings to establish new small firms.10 By the end of the nineteenth century, some industrial workers were living as transatlantic ‘commuters’, moving several times between Germany and the United States. The exodus of hundreds of thousands of Germans had a deep impact on the German lands. There was a growing infrastructure of migration, with agencies and transport services providing commercial networks for people who wished to migrate. There was also a growing discussion of the role migrants should play in their country of origin. Since Germany did not have a unified state until 1871 or, until after 1884, possess overseas colonies that might to some extent channel migratory movements, discussions of emigration in the 1850s and 1860s were often charged with colonial fantasies. Increasingly, literary works and widely read periodicals addressed the question of emigration as a problem, demanding a stronger connection between migrants and the German lands, not only for Germans settling in the United States but also in South America and elsewhere. They deplored the alleged loss to Germany that these migrants would represent. The term Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad) was coined during these discussions, which substituted the term Auswanderer (emigrants), thereby addressing the fear that ethnic Germans abroad would lose contact with their homeland.11 Still, compared to other European countries such as Britain and Austria–Hungary, Germany did not have the highest emigration rate in Europe as a proportion of the overall population. Instead, German mass emigration to the Americas must be seen as 308

Transnational Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Germany

Figure 14.1  Germans emigrate from Hamburg, 1874, ‘From the Old to the New World’ German emigrants boarding a steamer in Hamburg, Germany. Source: Harper’s Weekly, November 7, 1874.

one element in a global process: the Atlantic migration movement between the 1820s and the 1930s comprised around fifty million people, to which the German lands contributed some six to seven million.12 Besides the overseas migration, there was also a long tradition of German labour migration to neighbouring countries in Europe, such as that of the so-called Hollandgänger, workers who went from northern Germany to the Netherlands for seasonal employment. Other European migratory trajectories saw German workers move to France, Belgium, Switzerland and England. The majority of these migrants were seasonal single male labourers. However, these movements never approached the scale of the overseas mass migration.

Immigration into Germany and the negotiation of German citizenship A surplus of labour in the German lands during most of the nineteenth century inhibited migration into Germany. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, with the rapid industrialization in several regions of the German Kaiserreich, this changed substantially. A high demand for labour, not only in the industrialized regions but also in the agrarian east, could not be satisfied by internal German migration, and instead led to increased immigration from other European countries, including Russia, Austria–Hungary, Italy and the Netherlands. Shortly before the First World War, immigration reached a peak, 309

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with around 1.2 million foreign migrant workers living in Germany. In contrast to the German emigrants, who expected to be seen as important members of the community in their countries of destination, immigrants to the Second German Empire were generally considered as ‘foreign workers’ with restricted rights of residence.13 Internal migration from the eastern Prussian provinces to the centres of industrialization in the north and west of Germany included the large group of the socalled Ruhr Poles – people who were Prussian citizens but Polish-speaking. They moved to industrial centres in other parts of Prussia, especially the Ruhr, with around 400,000 Polish-speaking migrants living in Ruhr cities in 1914. Additionally, since the 1890s, continental migration from Russia and Austria–Hungary dominated the immigration patterns in Germany. As the Prussian statistics registered ethnic origin, it was clear that Russian and Galician Poles were the largest groups migrating into Germany during the Second Empire.14 These groups mainly went to East Prussia as agrarian workers. Dutch labour migrants also came to German industrial regions, replacing the former Hollandgänger, thereby forming a reverse Preußengänger movement. They were one of the largest groups of foreign workers in Germany before the First World War and mainly arrived in regions near the Dutch border. For example, in the industrial firms of Duisburg 90 per cent of all foreign workers in 1890 were Dutch. Labourers from Northern Italy, especially from Friuli, had traditionally worked as builders and brick makers in many regions of Germany throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, mainly in the Catholic south. At the end of the nineteenth century, this group increased significantly. Italian workers now also moved to the industrial centres of northern and northwestern Germany working in the mining industries. Seasonal migration changed towards longer periods of immigration (see Table 14.1).15

Table 14.1  Italian migration to Germany during the Kaiserreich, 1872–191516 Years 1872–5

60.618

1876–80

36.574

1881–5

34.634

1886–90

51.758

1891–5

76.228

1896-1900

154.703

1901–5

280.045

1906–10

310.999

1911–15

280.906

1872–1915

310

Number of Immigrants

1.286.465

Transnational Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Germany

Immigration was met with increasing fear and induced various forms of state control, at least in Prussia. Whereas Italian and Dutch workers could move relatively unimpeded in Germany until 1914, the control of Polish immigrants from Russia and Austria– Hungary became a strong objective of Prussian policy. Prussian authorities dreaded the impact of Polish nationalist ideas in Germany and tried to prevent a mixing of Russian, Austria-Hungarian and German Poles in industrial centres that might lead – in their eyes – to upheaval and unrest. Thus, Russian and Austrian-Hungarian Poles had to stay in East Prussia as seasonal agricultural workers. Migrants from Eastern Europe, who used Germany as a passageway to the new world after German emigration dwindled, roused the concern of the Prussian administration as well. They benefited from the established infrastructure and embarked from the German ports to the United States. Around five million emigrants from Russia and Austria–Hungary travelled via Germany, under strict transit control by the Prussian authorities, who tried to prevent the immigration of Poles and Jews to their lands by any means.17 Even if the economy was in need of more labour in East Prussia, the Prussian authorities introduced strict laws, including a compulsory return home every year during the winter and a compulsory identification card which allowed for strict surveillance of migrant workers. As Klaus Bade has shown, of approximately 270,000 foreign Polish employees in 1913, only around 3,000 still remained in the country at the end of the year. Since Prussia formed the major part of German territory and employed most of the foreign workers in Germany, one may conclude that the Second German Empire did not become an immigration country but rather should be seen as a labourimporting country.18 Connecting the issues of immigration and German overseas migration, debates on migration and mobility and on borders and border control evolved as important sites for the discussion of German citizenship and nationalism during the German Kaiserreich. Mobility regimes and borders became places of negotiation over belonging and nonbelonging. Discussions focused on the connections between Germans abroad and the German Second Empire in order to strengthen a German identity, to emphasize the German Weltgeltung which should be accorded to the millions of emigrants in numerous countries of the world and to propose forms of rejuvenation of the German nation through diaspora Germans. The re-routing of overseas mobility to Germany’s own colonies became a prominent topic from the 1880s onwards. However, these ambitions never fully succeeded, since only around 20,000 Germans ever settled in German colonies, mainly in German South West Africa, the only settler colony of the German Empire. Compared to the millions who left for the Americas, the number of people settling in German colonies remained marginal. Nevertheless, public discussion focused on these projects, triggering fantasies of opening space in the colonies for Germans who would form new German settler communities overseas and thereby contribute to German influence in the world.19 Questions of emigration and ethnicity were also part of the ongoing discussion of German citizenship during the Second German Empire.20 In the beginning, the 1870 citizenship law of the North German Confederation was adopted by the new nation 311

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state. Several reforms during the next decades, especially in Prussia, aimed at national homogenization, limiting the inclusion of certain groups that were seen as undesirable, especially Poles and Jews. The discussions surrounding the new citizenship law that was finally adopted in 1913 clearly show this trend towards an ethnic redefinition. Whereas under the old law of the North German Confederation, German citizenship ended after ten years of living abroad, this was now changed to allow settlers in German colonies and in other countries, especially in South America, to uphold their citizenship and to strengthen their ties with the German fatherland.

Colonial fantasies and colonial and imperial engagements before the 1880s Even if Germany had no formal empire until the 1880s, Germans were engaged in many ways in colonial and imperial endeavours worldwide. Colonial imaginations and fantasies played an important role in various discourses and to some extent in everyday German life. As in other European countries, the development of the sciences was strongly connected with colonial and imperial expansion throughout the nineteenth century. Many Germans served as officials, soldiers, sailors or physicians in the Dutch East Indies or in the English East India Company. Several people – including Georg Foster, Alexander von Humboldt and the Schlagintweit brothers – undertook voyages of scientific discovery to Africa, South America, China, Australia and New Zealand, often working for British expeditions. German missionaries, mainly from various Protestant missions such as the Berlin, the Dresden and the Rhenish missions, tried to bring Christianity to indigenous inhabitants of Africa, Asia and America. German merchants, particularly from Bremen and Hamburg, played a pivotal role in the development of imperial trade worldwide. Some of these merchants established outposts in territories, a few of which became German colonies later. One example was the Hamburg trader Adolph Woermann, whose family company had an office in West Africa from the 1840s in what later became the German Cameroons. The activities of these explorers, settlers, missionaries and merchants stimulated German colonial imagining and more far-reaching aims.21 Germans did not only play an important role in the exploration of new territories made possible by colonial expansion and imperial strategies during the long nineteenth century. Colonial knowledge was developed by various ‘experts’ travelling between colonial territories, often working for more than one European power. German scientists and explorers played a major role in the exchange and creation of these new forms of knowledge. Since the mid-nineteenth century, a growing body of experts in all European countries specialized in different aspects of colonialism. They came from developing disciplines such as anthropology and ethnology, or from fields like tropical agriculture and medicine, forestry, language studies and geography, such as the German geographer Heinrich Barth and the physician Gustav Nachtigal. Experts freely exchanged their knowledge across national borders. The establishment of ethnology and anthropology 312

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societies in Germany in 1869, scientific fields that focused on working with data collected from the colonial world, demonstrates the strong connection between imperial expansion and the German scientific landscape. David Blackbourn has even claimed that the German lands served as a clearing house for European knowledge of the nonEuropean world.22 Until national unification in 1871, the lack of state-sponsored colonialism helped make colonial images and visions especially attractive. German publications on colonial topics during the first half of the nineteenth century were dominated, as Susanne Zantop has argued, by fantasies of colonialism and visions of virgin lands that had to be explored and possessed. They would then be developed into new territory for Germans to colonize. Alexander von Humboldt, the best-known German explorer, was addressed as the German Columbus or the scientific Columbus of modern times. Humboldt undertook his famous voyage to the Americas from 1799 to 1804, and his travel reports were published over the following decades. He became vastly popular, not only in Germany but also in France, where he lived for most of his life. Moreover, in various biographies, popular books and plays he served as a figure representing German imperial greatness and a model of heroic discovery. Often, such notions were paired with images of colonial space into which the German nation could expand. These notions were partly derived from Humboldt’s observations, as he presented the Americas mainly in terms of nature, with mountains, vast plains and huge forests, writing little about the indigenous population. One could speak of a Germanization of fantasies of discovery, exploration and colonization during the first half of the nineteenth century, even if the German states had no empire of their own.23 During the 1870s, after the foundation of the Second German Empire, colonial fantasies became more substantial and centred on expansionism, with people from diverse backgrounds now arguing for real colonies as an additional market for German products, an outlet for migrants, a means to strengthen German identity worldwide and a way to exhibit German superiority. Where these colonial outposts should be located remained vague, with talks of South America, Africa or other places. An article of 1879 by colonial activist Friedrich Fabri, leader of the Rhenish mission in Barmen, entitled ‘Does Germany need colonies?’ (Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien?), was highly influential. Fabri strongly advocated the acquisition of colonies.24 From the end of the 1870s, colonial associations were founded and gained some momentum in Germany, especially the German Colonial Association (Deutscher Kolonialverein) in 1882 and the Association for German Colonization (Gesellschaft für deutsche Kolonisation) in 1884. Nevertheless, initially these associations had only a small membership and their influence in the German Kaiserreich was limited.

Germany’s colonial expansion and trans-imperial involvements Germany’s first colonial acquisitions were in Africa, in what would become the colonies of Togo, Cameroon, German East Africa and German South West Africa (see 313

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Map 14.1). It began with expeditions by entrepreneurs and adventurers, who aimed to agree treaties with African leaders and to seize land, similarly to the advancements of other European colonial powers. Economic interests clearly prevailed, but they were connected with notions of a civilizing mission and a racially justified white supremacy.25 To take an example, in the south of the later colony of German South West Africa, the merchant Adolf Lüderitz negotiated trade agreements with the Nama, a people living in that area. These agreements were used by Lüderitz to justify the acquisition of territory – often under false pretences as Nama signatories did not understand that they would lose vast amounts of land. That territory was then placed under the protection of the German Empire by Chancellor Bismarck in April 1884. Lüderitz failed to successfully administer the newly acquired colonial territory and, following his early death in 1886, the German Colonial Society for South West Africa took over but was also unsuccessful. Eventually, official colonial rule was established, more land acquired and the borders (adjoining the British Cape Colony and British Bechuanaland) agreed upon in a treaty with Great Britain in 1890. Similar stages in the establishment of colonial rule in Africa can be observed in other German colonies as well as those of other European colonial powers. Germany’s new colonial course after 1884 surprised other European powers. Previously, Bismarck had opposed colonial expansion and had been critical of the aims of the German colonial associations. His change of mind was partly due to domestic considerations, although questions of international prestige also played a role. However, Bismarck had long been in favour of chartered colonial companies such as the British East India Company. Thus, his guarantee for the new German Schutzgebiete (areas of protection) exhibited a certain political continuity.26 From the beginning, Germany’s colonial endeavour was strongly associated with European imperial expansion and global developments in the decades before the First World War It was shaped by transnational connections, which should rather be referred to as trans-imperial, because these connections and interactions were to be found not only between the individual European nation states but likewise between their colonies. German expansion in Africa happened in the context of intense international entanglements. In the 1880s, it was an integral part of the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’. The Portuguese, British and French empires, the Belgians under King Leopold II and later also Italy expanded their territories in Africa or acquired new lands during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The Berlin Africa Conference of 1884–5, hosted by Bismarck, demonstrates the international context of German colonial expansion (Figure 14.2). The conference was originally intended to deal with the territorial claims of King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo region. Ten European states (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden/Norway and the United Kingdom), not all in possession of African territory, along with the Romanov Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the United States, took part in the conference. The delegates agreed on the recognition of Leopold II’s Congo State, procedures for taking possession of African lands in the future and for negotiating the division of African territories. No African representatives were present, signs of the self-assurance and assumed racial 314

Transnational Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Germany

Figure 14.2  Berlin Conference of 1884. Source: Adalbert von Roessler, Allgemeine Illustrierte Zeitung, 1884, p. 308.

superiority of the white participants, who judged themselves as authorized to decide on the fate of another continent. When the German colonies turned out to be more or less economic failures, prestige became the principal motive for German colonial expansion. This is especially obvious with the occupation of parts of Samoa, Papua New Guinea and some South Sea islands in 1899, following agreements with the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States (see Map 14.1). These regions were neither strategically nor economically viable. After Bismarck’s departure from office in 1890 and the rise of new German world-power politics under Wilhelm II, German policy was informed by the desire to emphasize a German Weltgeltung and to establish Germany on an equal footing with other colonial empires27 (see also Chapter 10). The island of Samoa especially came to occupy an important place in exotic fantasies and was cherished as a German South Sea paradise, a discourse that connected back to earlier colonial fantasies. In China, the occupation of Kiautschou was again embedded in an international setting; most of the European colonial empires had secured access to the Chinese market via treaties with Chinese port cities by the end of the nineteenth century. From the 1890s, German entrepreneurs pressed their government for a colonial engagement in China. Using one incident as a pretext, in 1897, the German navy forced China to grant Germany a lease of the bay of Kiautschou, where Germany built a naval base and tried to establish a so-called Musterkolonie (model colony) with large investments in infrastructural projects. Conflicts with the Chinese population quickly arose (see Map 14.1). 315

316

Map 14.1  Map of the German colonial empire.

German South West Africa

Togo Cameroon German East Africa

German Empire

Kiautschou

Marshall Islands

KaiserWilhelmsLand

German Samoa

Bismarck Archipelago

German New Guinea

Mariana Islands Caroline Islands

Nineteenth-Century Germany

Transnational Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Germany

The Boxer War in China in 1900 demonstrates again the international entanglements driving this process of what has been called ‘high imperialism’, here taking the form of close cooperation between the imperial powers. In this war, soldiers and sailors from Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Austria–Hungary, Russia, the United States and Japan formed a coalition and fought against the Chinese.28 This engagement in China also links to the growing nationalism in Germany and the drive to make Germany a ‘world power’. Exaggerated notions of German superiority and of German worldwide presence are well illustrated by Wilhelm II’s infamous Hun speech, which he gave to the German navy before they embarked for the Boxer War in China (Hunnenrede), in which he advised the German troops to treat the Chinese mercilessly and to act as the Huns did under Attila. When taking over the new territories, the German government had hardly any pre-existing concept of colonial rule, as this expansion happened unexpectedly and often developed in an experimental fashion. During the acquisition of a colonial empire between 1884 and 1900, administrative problems shaped German colonialism’. The Colonial Office developed out of a subdivision of the Foreign Office and had an ambivalent status in the German administrative hierarchy. Careers in the Colonial Office, and even more so in the colonies themselves, were not seen as very prestigious – in marked contrast with Britain and France. Appropriate training for colonial personnel was only established in the last years of German colonial rule, for example, by the Colonial Institute in Hamburg which was founded in 1908. Throughout the thirty years of its existence, the German colonial undertaking was embedded in a strong network of knowledge transfer and mutual observation between European colonial empires. Knowledge from longer established empires, especially that of Britain, stored in hundreds of files was amassed in the colonial administration in Berlin and then used to develop Germany’s own policies. High-profile German colonial experts became members of the Institut Colonial International (ICI), an institution founded in Brussels in 1894 by Belgian, French, Dutch and British colonial administrators and experts to promote the exchange of colonial knowledge between imperial powers. The institute published substantially and organized yearly or biannual meetings in Brussels, the capital cities of other member states and Berlin, dealing with topics such as colonial administration, colonial law, colonial economy and colonial labour. Methods such as statistical surveys, cartographic surveys or legal codification processes gained enormous influence in the European colonies, being always connected with international debates and inter-imperial exchange.29 During the last years of German colonial rule, Colonial Secretary Bernhard Dernburg (1906–11), a liberal and former banker, sought to reform the German colonial system and establish an economically successful, ‘modern’ colonialism. For him, the British example of indirect colonial rule became an important model. The close attention to the policies of other colonial empires and the exchange of information in institutions such as the ICI was made possible by the rapid globalization of the late nineteenth century, which had a strong impact not only on German economy and society but also on German colonial developments. Technical and economic globalization enabled and 317

Nineteenth-Century Germany

increased faster transport and transfer of knowledge between colonies and empires, for example, through steamships and the installation of telegraph lines throughout the colonial world. A high degree of interaction and connectedness between Germany and other European powers was an important feature of German colonialism during the age of ‘high imperialism’. At the same time, this intense reception and interconnectedness also stimulated an emphasis on a specifically German style of colonial rule. The two processes – interconnection and demarcation – were closely intertwined.30

From the colonies to the metropole: Colonial cultures and colonial discourse in the Kaiserreich Although one part of European imperial expansion and intensified globalization, one should emphasize that German colonial rule was first and foremost shaped by local conditions and by the indigenous peoples who had lived in the later German territories for centuries with their own social and economic structures. German colonizers had to interact with these peoples. In the course of such interactions, representations and imaginations of both colonizers and colonized underwent change. While not questioning the influence of European expansion on colonial territories, postcolonial approaches have emphasized the impact of the colonial world on the metropole. Over the last few decades, a broad and highly productive discussion has evolved about these mutual influences, particularly focusing on the British Empire. Even if the German colonial empire was relatively small, lasted only some thirty years and was often considered ‘marginal’ in earlier research, colonial experiences did have an impact on metropolitan culture and society. This can be observed not only in colonial circles and associations but in parliamentary debates and the increasing number of colonial periodicals and other publications. Experiences gathered during colonial expeditions played a role in the sciences increasingly, as can be especially observed in tropical medicine, for example, with Robert Koch’s research in German East Africa and British Uganda on sleeping sickness, including morally questionable human experiments. The growing influence of race theories and the radicalization of German nationalism were equally strongly connected with colonial expansion and the debates it occasioned. Furthermore, colonial imaginings played a growing role in daily life in the Second German Empire. The 1896 colonial exhibition in Treptow, Berlin, attracted over seven million visitors; more than one hundred Africans from different German colonies were brought to Berlin and compelled, for some months, to present scenes of African village life on stage, even if most of them opposed such displays and instead wished to be regarded as ambassadors of their people (Figure 14.3). Ethnological exhibitions, most prominently the Völkerschauen (literally ‘people shows’) of zoo director Carl Hagenbeck which exhibited in towns across Germany, along with colonial products, colonial advertisements, colonial pictures and postcards, became parts of German everyday experience. Besides satisfying people’s curiosity and 318

Transnational Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Germany

Figure 14.3  A group of people from Southwest Africa at the Berlin exhibition. Source: Hans Herman Graf von Schweinitz (ed.), Deutschland und seine Kolonien im Jahre 1896. Amtlicher Bericht über die erste deutsche Kolonialausstellung, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag (Ernst Vohsen), 1897, p. 26.

their desire for exoticism, such images also continuously reinforced racist hierarchies in everyday life. Colonial products and representations were not exclusively connected with German colonies but more generally with the colonial and global world of European imperialism. Colonial products came from Latin America and Dutch, British and other colonies, and actors in the ethnological expositions arrived from colonies and dependent territories of many different European empires. In this regard, the interactions between Germany’s colonial expansion and the German metropole must also be seen in their transnational and global embeddedness.31 Another feature of German metropolitan colonial discourse, the strong scientific interest in colonial matters, should also be placed within this inter-imperial context. By 1900, most European empires had tried to develop what was called a ‘modern, efficient, scientific colonialism’. This commitment was prominent in Germany, as evidenced by the German colonial congresses of 1902, 1905 and 1910, the establishment of colonial research institutes in Germany and the colonies (e.g. the Amani Institute in German East Africa, which became an international centre for agrarian and botanical research) and a growing range of specialized journals considering many different aspects of colonialism. The German dedication to these issues was even admired by British colonial experts, one of them stating in 1914: Expedition after expedition has been sent out to investigate on the spot every conceivable aspect of the subject. No stone has been left unturned, and for much information of a scientific kind about Africa, German literature is almost the only available source of supply.32 319

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Regions other than German overseas territories were the object of German attention. Oriental images and interest in the Ottoman Empire played a considerable role in German colonial imagination, even though Germany never had colonies in the Middle East and North Africa. Wilhelm II’s travels to the region, especially to Palestine, and the German engagement in the Baghdad Railway project as part of a new German world policy, also roused public attention. Some historians have argued that the main imperial interest of Germany was directed towards Central and Eastern Europe and not towards overseas possessions. In the Kaiserreich, this line of thinking, connected with annexationist ambitions, was especially supported by right-wing and völkisch-national groups such as the Alldeutsche Verband (Pan-German Society).33 How far overseas colonial policy and European annexationism were connected and mutually influenced each other is hard to determine. It is at least worth applying a colonial framework to an understanding of Prussian settlement policy in East Prussia and Posen. In the 1880s, around 30,000 Poles without German citizenship were driven out of the two provinces. A settlement commission purchased land and promoted German small-scale settlement to strengthen Germanness and act against a dreaded ‘Polonization’.34 Such a policy was linked to the strict regulation of immigration in Prussia, but it was also very similar to overseas colonial settlement policies and was strongly informed by racial thinking, as Poles were generally conceived of as an ‘inferior race’ in the Kaiserreich. Nevertheless, the status of Poles with German citizenship significantly differed from that of Africans and other indigenous people, who were classed as colonial subjects and deprived of most of their personal rights. Race segregation as well as land expropriation and management were much more rigid and extreme in the overseas colonies than in the East Prussian provinces. However, it is clear that imperial concepts of the east and of overseas territories were linked, at least in ideas of colonialism and attempts to demarcate a German nation against other ‘races’. By far the most important German colonies were in sub-Saharan Africa, in four very different territories. Equally, Africa figured most prominently in the discussions and debates of colonial experts, the general press and the public, as well as in colonial literature. Highly popular colonial novels, such as those by Frieda von Bülow and Carl Falkenhorst, published at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, were set in African colonies.35 The German African colonies were marked by different geographical conditions and different degrees of enforcement of colonial rule. In Togo and Cameroon on the west coast of Africa, there was only a very small white population with a colonial economy specializing in cash crop farming by Africans. In Cameroon, some plantations were established after 1900. In Togo, there were still just a few civil servants by 1914. In German East Africa, a planters’ economy developed in some regions with an increasing number of settlers and plantation owners. African farmers were also compelled to engage in cash crop production. There was only one settler colony, German South West Africa, with a substantial white minority, with settler structures, accompanied by a fast-growing administration. Here, colonial rule took on a very different character from elsewhere, with strict segregation and comprehensive land expropriation. 320

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Settlers and planters occupied an important intermediary position between the colonial government, the colonized and the metropole. They could exercise political pressure on the colonial government; they saw themselves as entitled to a key position within the colonial administration; and they substantially influenced decisions in the colony. In most of the settler colonies, racial segregation developed into a key issue of politics.36 Settlers became important players in the Kaiserreich as well, as they could exert a strong influence via the colonial associations in Germany and the colonial-friendly conservative press. Generally, colonial policies were a product of struggles and negotiations between the colonized and the colonizers, between different groups of colonizers within the colonies, and between the colonial administration and the metropole. In the case of German East Africa, the influence of settlers was quite remarkable. The government both in Berlin and East Africa favoured a cash crop policy with goods produced by local farmers but the growing settler population and some pressure groups in the metropole opposed these goals, aiming for an economy of plantations run by Europeans with dependent African workers. The settlers and colonial pressure groups gained more and more influence during the last years of German colonial rule. In most colonies, administrative penetration of the colonial territory was combined with dispossession of the indigenous population. Additionally, these peoples were increasingly forced into dependent work. Generally, the colonizers relied on cheap local labour for their colonial undertakings, be it infrastructure projects, farming, plantation economy or mining. Hut or head taxes were imposed, which had to be paid in cash, in order to force the indigenous population to take on paid labour and to migrate to the places where the workforce was needed. In German South West Africa, the colonial government seized large amounts of the land to provide for German settlers and deprived Africans of their means of subsistence. For most of the local population, colonial developments after 1900 meant shrinking room for manoeuvre, diminishing possibilities of negotiation, growing financial burdens, more coercion and an increasing penetration of their living spaces. These were the major reasons for rebellions and for the two devastating colonial wars in German colonies during the first decade of the twentieth century. The Maji-Maji war in German East Africa 1905–8 left around 300,000 Africans dead, around two-thirds of them dying as a consequence of the destruction of the harvest, the land and the settlements. In the genocidal Herero–Nama war in German South West Africa 1904–7, General von Trotha issued an annihilation order against all Herero people. After their military victory at the Waterberg, the German troops drove the Herero into the waterless desert and left them there to die. The Nama suffered a similar treatment. Altogether, of the 60,000 to 80,000 Herero only 20,000 survived; the Nama lost more than half of their population, around 10,000 people.37 The Maji-Maji war went relatively unnoticed in Germany, as mainly Africans were fighting for the German side and only a few German officers died. However, the Herero– Nama war, with the excessive brutality of the German troops, Trotha’s annihilation order, the high number of German soldiers in the colony (around 16,000 German troops in 1908) and the high costs of the war attracted strong criticism in parliament and from the German public. A majority of the Reichstag refused new credits for the war in 1906; 321

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subsequently, the parliament was dissolved and a new election was called in 1907, the Hottentottenwahlen (‘Hottentot’ election, using a derogatory term for the Nama people). In the heated debates in parliament and the public accompanying the election, the Centre Party and particularly the Social Democrats were not only highly critical of the war and the conduct of the German troops but also more generally of radical nationalist and racialist positions. As a consequence, leading conservative politicians such as the president of the German Colonial Association, Count Johann Albrecht zu Mecklenburg, accused the Social Democrats of being ‘vaterlandslose Gessellen’ (unpatriotic fellows), who would not support the German soldiers fighting heroically against ‘wild predatory Hottentots’ for national honour. These discussions radicalized national debates and emphasized notions of white superiority that should be upheld by any means.38 National liberals and conservatives who supported colonial policy in general and the war in German South West Africa in particular as a necessary instrument to demonstrate the capability of German colonial rule won the election by a close margin, even if the SPD was by far the strongest party in terms of votes. The creation of new electoral districts and the coalition of conservative and liberal parties (Bülow Bloc) meant that the Social Democrats lost half of their mandates.39 Consequently, the financial support of the war continued.

Colonial involvement and racial thinking Not only the wish to emphasize German Weltgeltung through colonial success but also the aim to show German racial superiority was an important part of the German colonial endeavour. Racial and Social Darvinian theories were as widespread in the German Second Empire as elsewhere in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Racial categories were used in colonial policy and colonial developments reinforced racial stereotypes in the German motherland. Direct influences between colony and metropole can be traced in the new fields of anthropology and ethnology. German scientists attempted racial classification, using human remains, particularly skulls, from various colonies to prove their theories. After the Herero–Nama war, with thousands of victims on the battlefields and in the concentration camps, skulls were easily available. Thousands of these skulls were brought from German Southwest Africa to Germany and many can still be found in university collections. The start of colonization in Germany in the late nineteenth century meant that theories of dissimilation and racial hierarchies had become a dominant discourse for understanding colonial society and justifying imperial rule. Placing Africans on the lowest rung of the racial ladder made easier the escalation of violence in German African colonies. Other colonial powers had experienced earlier phases of colonial rule and established control when forms of biological racism were less dominant in the metropolitan discourse. Such long-standing experiences of colonial policy were not available to the German colonial administration which often reverted to radical measures. The Germans, as colonial ‘latecomers’, were often keen to develop a ‘better’, more rigid form of colonialism than other empires and were ardent to prove that they were an 322

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‘able’ colonial power, something which further radicalized racial measures, especially in German South West Africa after the Herero–Nama war. Here, the colonial government issued new ordinances that deprived the indigenous population of the right to own land, denied them the right to choose their place of residence freely and forced them to carry identity badges and work permits. Even compared to other settler colonies of the time, the measures of racial segregation and exploitation were extreme. The broadly debated ban on so-called mixed marriages (between a German man and an indigenous woman) underlines the prominence of racial discourses in Germany as well. Sexual relations between colonial rulers and indigenous people were an important and highly contested problem in all colonial societies, since the demarcation lines between the colonized and the colonizers, as well as definitions of ‘white’, ‘native’ and ‘mixed-race’, had to be constantly negotiated. The term ‘race mixing’ implied not only a fear of sexual contacts between the races but also a fear of their consequences – that is of an increasingly mixed-race society. In German, the effect of a mixed-race partnership was called Verkafferung, implying the social descent of men who lived with local women to the allegedly lower cultural level of the indigenous partner.40 The dangers of these connections were increasingly emphasized. Theories of dissimilation gained more and more ground in German colonial discourse, and separation of the races was seen as the preferred form of colonial rule. The growing number of settlers and planters, along with the arrival of white women (at least in German South West Africa), intensified this separation between colonizers and colonized.41 The Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society) and the Alldeutsche Verband (Pan-German Society) had long been ardent advocates of strict racial segregation in the colonies, of a new definition of German citizenship and of a general ban of mixed marriages. Ordinances banning such marriages were introduced in German South West Africa in 1905, in German East Africa in 1906 and in Samoa in 1912. These were the only colonies of a European colonial power where mixed marriages were generally forbidden, not only for white women but also for white men. In many other colonies, such relationships were socially stigmatized but not illegal. The ban was principally concerned with preventing the offspring of mixed-race marriages acquiring German citizenship, which was automatically transmitted from the father. In fact, the growing mixed-race population in German colonies was mainly comprised of illegitimate offspring and was not affected by the ordinances.42 Nevertheless, a broad and heated debate took place on the few mixed marriages involved (just 50 in German South West Africa and around 160 in all German colonies) back in Germany, at the colonial congresses of 1910 and 1912, at meetings of colonial associations, in journals and newspapers. This connected the issues of colonial policy with the discussions concerning the new citizenship law. Even Colonial Secretary Wilhelm Solf, who opposed mixed marriages, addressed the topic in a speech to the Reichstag in 1912. Solf said that if Germans sent their sons to the colonies, they would certainly not wish them to return with a black daughter-in-law and a grandchild with curly hair.43 However, many Reichstag deputies, especially from the Catholic Centre Party, opposed the ban on mixed marriages and in 1912 proposed instead a law guaranteeing 323

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the validity of all marriages in Germany and its colonies. Against this, the Pan-German Society called for the exclusion of mixed-race offspring from German citizenship in the new citizenship law being debated. This law of 1913 did not include such a provision but colonial issues and racial categories obviously had a strong impact on the debates over German nationality. Involvement in colonial affairs, especially the problems raised by sexual relations between the colonizer and the colonized, fostered the wish to define German nationality in rigid racial terms.

Conclusion The German lands and later the Second German Empire were strongly embedded in transnational and global developments that had a significant impact on politics, economy, society and culture. The nineteenth century saw a huge expansion of European empires, a growing integration of economic markets worldwide, a systematic exploration and measurement of the world, the cultivation of new scientific fields which researched and interpreted the colonial world and the growing influence of biological views of society, especially of racial theories. Germans were involved in these developments, and transfers and exchange of such ideas and practices over imperial and national borders included Germany. Germans were on the move in growing numbers, not just as a result of industrialization and urbanization in Germany44 but also as a part of the Atlantic mass migration, with most of the millions of Germans going to the United States. Mass immigration from Eastern Europe by the end of the nineteenth century led to increased regulation at German borders and new ethnic demarcations between Germans and others. Thus, migration not only changed society and economy in Germany but also had a significant impact on perceptions of belonging and nationality. German colonial expansion after 1884 was intertwined in the dynamics of European imperialist expansion and accelerated globalization at the end of the nineteenth century. It was also embedded in knowledge transfer between European empires. At the same time, the attempt to attain recognition as a world power and to demonstrate German superiority tended towards a specific, often rigid German style of colonial rule. The German Second Empire was confronted with the new experience of colonial rule and the racial tensions of colonial societies, which in turn reinforced racial delimitations of citizenship and nationhood back in the metropole.

Notes 1. Pierre-Yves Saunier, ‘Transnational’, in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, eds, The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 1047–55. 2. Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (München, 2009), pp. 777–97. An English translation was published in 2014 under the title The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. 324

Transnational Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Germany 3. David Blackbourn, ‘Germans Abroad and Auslandsdeutsche: Places, Networks and Experiences form the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 41 (2015), pp. 321–46. 4. See Chapters 8 and 10. 5. Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds, Das Kaiserreich transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 2004). 6. Sebastian Conrad and Philipp Ther, ‘On the Move: Mobility, Migration, and Nation, 1880–1948’, in Helmut Walser Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (Oxford, 2011), pp. 573–90, 573. 7. Detlef Brandes, ‘German Settlers in Russia since the 18th Century’, in Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen and Jürgen Oltmer, eds, The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Cambridge, New York, 2011), pp. 439–44. 8. Klaus J. Bade, ‘German Transatlantic Emigration in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in Pieter C. Emmer and Magnus Mörner, eds, European Expansion and Migration Berg (New York, Oxford, 1992), pp. 121–56. 9. Jürgen Oltmer, Migration im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (München, 2010), pp. 9–14. 10. Karen Schniedewind, ‘Return Migration to an Urban Center: The Example of Bremen 1850–1914’, in Dirk Hoerder and Jörg Nagler, eds, People in Transit: German Migrations in Comparative Perspective, 1820–1930 (Washington DC, Cambridge, New York, 1995), pp. 329–45. 11. Bradley D. Naranch, ‘Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche. Emigration, Colonial Fantasy and German National Identity, 1848–1871’, in Eric Ames, ed., Germany’s Colonial Pasts (Lincoln, 2005), pp. 21–40. 12. Christiane Harzig, Dirk Hoerder with Donna Gabaccia, What is Migration History? (Cambridge, 2009), p. 41. 13. Dirk Hoerder, ‘Introduction’, in Hoerder and Nagler, eds, People in transit, pp. 1–19, 1. 14. Klaus J. Bade, ‘Labour, Migration and the State: Germany from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Onset of the Great Depression’, in Klaus J. Bade, ed., Population, Labour, and Migration in 19th- and 20th-Century Germany (Leamington Spa [UK], New York, 1987), pp. 59–86. 15. René Del Fabbro, Transalpini. Italienische Arbeiterwanderung nach Süddeutschland im Kaiserreich 1870–1918 (Osnabrück, 1996), 283–6. C. van Ejil, ‘Dutch Labor Migrants in Germany in the Late nineteenth and the Early 20th Centuries’, in Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen and Jürgen Oltmer, eds, The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Cambridge, New York, 2011), pp. 329–31. 16. Del Fabbro, Transalpini, Tab. II.4, p. 35. 17. Barbara Lüthi, ‘“Germs of Anarchy, Crime, Disease and Degeneracy”: Jewish Migration to the United States and the Medicalization of European Borders Around 1900’, in Tobias Brinkmann, ed., Points of Passage. Jewish Transmigrants from Eastern Europe in Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, and Other Countries, 1860–1929 (New York, 2013), pp. 27–44. 18. Bade, ‘Labour, Migration and the State’. 19. Sebastian Conrad, ‘Wilhelmine Nationalism in Global Contexts: Mobility, Race, and Global Consciousness’, in Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp, eds, Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives (New York, 2011), pp. 281–96. 325

Nineteenth-Century Germany 20. Dietrich Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen. Die Nationalisierung der Staatsangehörigkeit vom Deutschen Bund bis zu Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Göttingen, 2001), chapter V–VII. 21. Susanne Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox and Susanne Zantop, ‘Introduction’, in S. Friedrichsmeyer, S. Lennox and S. Zantop, eds, The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor, 1998b), 1–32. 22. Blackbourn, ‘Germans Abroad and Auslandsdeutsche’, pp. 321–46, 325. 23. Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, 1997), pp. 166–201. 24. Friedrich Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien? Eine politisch-ökonomische Betrachtung (Gotha, 1879). 25. Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, Imperialismus vom grünen Tisch. Deutsche Kolonialpolitik zwischen wirtschaftlicher Ausbeutung und ‘zivilisatorischen’ Bemühungen (Berlin, 2008). 26. Winfried Speitkamp, Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte (Ditzingen, 2005). 27. Birthe Kundrus, ‘Die Kolonien – “Kinder des Gefühls und der Phantasie”’, in Birthe Kundrus, ed., Phantasiereiche. Zur Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Kolonialismus (Frankfurt am Main, New York, 2003), pp. 7–18. 28. Mechthild Leutner and Klaus Mühlhahn, eds, Kolonialkrieg in China. Die Niederschlagung der Boxerbewegung 1900–1901 (Berlin, 2007). 29. Ulrike Lindner, ‘New Forms of Knowledge Exchange between Imperial Powers: The Development of the Institut Colonial International (ICI) since the End of the 19th Century’, in Volker Barth and Roland Czetowski, eds, Encounters of Empires. Interimperial Transfers and Imperial Manifestations, 1870–1950 (London, 2015), pp. 57–78. 30. Ulrike Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen: Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914 (Frankfurt/Main, New York, 2011). 31. Sebastian Conrad, Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte (München, 2009), pp. 86–8. 32. William A. Crabtree, ‘German Colonies in Africa’, Journal of the African Society, 14 (1914), pp. 1–14. 33. Philipp Ther, ‘Deutsche Geschichte als imperiale Geschichte. Polen, slawophone Minderheiten und das Kaiserreich als kontinentales Empire’, in Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds, Das Kaiserreich transnational (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 129–48. 34. Dörte Lerp, Imperiale Grenzräume. Bevölkerungspolitiken in Deutsch-Südwestafrika und den östlichen Provinzen Preußens 1884–1914 (Frankfurt a. Main, New York, 2016). 35. See, for example, Frieda von Bülow, Tropenkoller. Episode aus dem deutschen Kolonialleben (Berlin 1897); Carl Falkenhorst, In Kamerun. Zugvogels Reise- und Jagdabenteuer (Leipzig, 1893). 36. Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, 1994), p. 102. 37. Jürgen Zimmerer and Joachim Zeller, eds, Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika. Der Kolonialkrieg (1904-1908) in Namibia und seine Folgen (Berlin 2003). 38. Ulrich van der Heyden, ‘Die „Hottentottenwahlen“ von 1907’, in Zimmerer and Zeller, eds, Völkermord in Deutsch-Südwestafrika, pp. 97–102. 39. See also Chapters 8 and 10.

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Transnational Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Germany 40. Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BAB), R 1001/5423, Kaiserlich-Deutsches Gouvernement für Südwestafrika an das Auswärtige Amt Kolonialabteilung, Zulässigkeit von Eheschließungen zwischen Nichteingeborenen und Eingeborenen, 1905, p. 69. 41. Ulrike Lindner, ‘Contested concepts of “white”/“native” and mixed marriages in German South-West Africa and the Cape Colony 1900–1914: A histoire croisée’, Journal of Namibian Studies, 6 (2009), pp. 57–79. 42. Birthe Kundrus, Moderne Imperialisten. Das Kaiserreich im Spiegel seiner Kolonien (Köln, 2003), pp. 219–34. 43. In a parliamentary debate on 2 May 1913. 44. See Chapter 10.

Select bibliography Bade, K. J., Migration in European History: The Making of Europe (Malden, 2003). Bade, K. J., Emmer, P. C., Lucassen, L. and Oltmer, J., eds, The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Cambridge, New York, 2011). Conrad, S., Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (München, 2006). Conrad, S., German Colonialism: Short History (Cambridge, 2012). Conrad, S. and Osterhammel, J., eds, Das Kaiserreich transnational: Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 2004). Hoerder, D., Geschichte der deutschen Migration (München, 2010). Hoerder, D. and Nagler, J., eds, People in Transit: German Migrations in Comparative Perspective, 1820–1930 (Washington DC, Cambridge, New York, 1995). Kundrus, B., Moderne Imperialisten. Das Kaiserreich im Spiegel seiner Kolonien (Köln, 2003). Lindner, U., Koloniale Begegnungen; Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914 (Frankfurt a. Main, New York, 2011). Manz, S., Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914 (New York, 2014). Oltmer, J., Migration im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2009). Speitkamp, J., Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte (Stuttgart, 2005). Steinmetz, G., The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Quingdao, Samoa and Southwest Africa (Chicago, 2007). Zantop, S., Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, London, 1997).

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CHAPTER 15 CONCLUSION: MAKING CONNECTIONS IN GERMANY IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY 1

John Breuilly

Introductory remarks Modern German history often appears as a dramatic story. The Holy Roman Empire is destroyed by revolutionary France. A new Germany emerges following French defeat but falls prey to reaction. The 1848 revolutions promise liberal and national renaissance but fail. Instead, authoritarian Prussia brings about national unity by force of arms. The Second Empire steadily increases in power and wealth, seeking to expand in Europe and the wider world. After conquests in Europe through much of the First World War, there quickly follows defeat, loss of European and overseas territories, collapse of monarchy and conversion to a republic. The drama continues after 1918. Focusing instead on the ‘social and economic transformation of central Europe’ or ‘the development of modern society’ would present German history as part of something larger and less obviously dramatic. It would also go against the widespread practice of presenting modern European history as a series of national histories. Increasingly, this perspective has been questioned, perhaps linked to a sense that a stable world order of nation states is drawing to an end or at least being profoundly challenged and transformed. However, a book entitled ‘Nineteenth Century Germany’ implies a national frame. It is easier to critique that frame than to replace it. Conventionally, this involves dividing pre-1871 Germany into three zones: Prussia, Austria and the rest. Prussia is usually regarded as the dynamic agent in a series of changes which culminate in the exclusion of Austria from and the incorporation of the remaining German states into the Second Empire, a transformation usually called ‘national unification’. An air of inevitability is often imparted to this process. However, leaving aside arguments about these roles, it is difficult to identify these agents clearly as none are stable entities, territorially or institutionally. Prussia expanded in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, then contracted drastically after defeat against Napoleon in 1806–7. There was re-expansion after 1815 but not to all the same territories as before, and with three different institutional arrangements. After temporary collapse in 1848, Prussia became a constitutional monarchy. In 1867, it annexed Hanover and other north German states as well as Schleswig-Holstein. The Habsburg Empire was created in 1804, anticipating the end of the Holy Roman Empire, and imitating Napoleon. It avoided introducing a constitution in

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the 1848 revolutions but introduced more centralized and bureaucratic rule in the counter-revolution. It gave up Lombardy after military defeat in 1859, engaged in constitutional experiments in the early 1860s and lost its remaining Italian province of Venetia following defeat in 1866. That defeat ushered in the ‘dualist’ constitution of 1867 with most governmental powers devolved to the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the empire. Finally, it annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, following some thirty years of de facto occupation. The ‘third Germany’ was constantly changing during the Napoleonic period. Indeed, the modern form of the states of Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg (still Länder in today’s Germany) were Napoleonic creations. There were various constitutional changes before 1871, most notably after 1815, following uprisings in the early 1830s and as a result of revolutions in 1848–9. In 1867, Prussia compelled the states north of the River Main to join the North German Confederation as well as imposing secret military agreements on the south German states. In 1871, the Second Empire incorporated the south German states, and annexed Alsace-Lorraine. The years from 1871 to 1914 witnessed the longest period of territorial and institutional stability in modern Germany, although there was colonial expansion. However, after the outbreak of war in 1914, Germany massively expanded by military occupation in Europe while losing its colonial empire. By 1916, it had changed from an authoritarian monarchy into a de facto military dictatorship. Consequently, historians writing about ‘Germany’ have often regarded the peacetime Second Empire as a territorial template, the norm upon which ‘Germany’ converged before 1871 and from which it diverged after 1914.2 Trying to identify German history with something other than the states brought together into a looser or tighter German political system using concepts such as language, ethnicity, culture or race is even more fraught with problems and associated with ambitious nationalist projects. Therefore, one can see the advantage of focusing on the German Second Empire as the goal towards which German history moved before 1871 and which established a template for subsequent notions of a German nation state. German history could then be treated as a process of becoming national, if by that we mean moving towards the form of a sovereign nation state. One can criticize this approach as ‘teleological’, interpreting the past in terms of its future. However, there is a difference between interpreting the past as conditioning the future – something which seems unavoidable to me – and seeing that future as inscribed in its past. Nevertheless, it is difficult to be precise about what that difference is. Even the former approach usually privileges the history of the ‘winners’. We know much more about how Bismarck envisaged the future between 1864 and 1871 than did his Danish, Austrian and French opponents in the ‘wars of national unification’. (The very name anticipates the presumed outcome.) Yet, abandoning such teleology can tip us into history as a narrative of ‘one damn thing after another’. In this conclusion, I sketch out a history in which ‘becoming German’ is treated as part of the process of ‘becoming modern’, which I present as changes drawing ever closer 330

Conclusion

together, increasing numbers of widely dispersed people. I describe how such large-scale connections increased in importance in Europe, focusing on those lands which came to be regarded as German. Then I consider the extended social meanings people projected on to these connections. Finally, I sketch the rise of movements which sought to mobilize people politically by turning those social meanings into ideologies. Before presenting this argument, some qualifications are in order. First, the sequence is logical, not chronological. There were intellectual constructions and even ideological movements which anticipated large-scale connections and social meanings.3 Second, national connections, meanings and ideologies – the main focus of national history – were just one among many. Third, although the focus is on large-scale connections and meanings, small-scale ones such as those of family and locality remain important, even if changed in significance. Indeed, I argue that modern ideologies drawing on large-scale connections and meanings tap into the emotional associations of that small-scale world. Fourth, the distinction between large and small scale is somewhat arbitrary, especially given the importance of intermediate networks which help make this world function. Finally, the story is not one of the steady rise of certain types of large-scale connections but of constant change. The ‘modern’ which contemporaries extrapolated into the future at one moment was frequently very different from that of another moment.

Making large-scale connections Social action on a large scale comes about in various ways. One is through ecological impacts on many unconnected, widely dispersed people. Another is through networks such as commodity and capital markets expanding with wider and faster forms of transport and communication. A third involves increasingly extensive direction by institutions and organizations. All of these impact on a world dominated by small-scale connections. Whaley and Lee describe that German world, one in which family and locality loom large. Different roles were blurred through personal connection. The extended household and family were central to farming and manufacture. There were significant large-scale networks and institutions – territorial monarchies and churches, long-distance trading, the literary world. However, their perceived importance for most people was limited. The dynasties were ‘capstone’ states which perched on top of this small-scale world and directly penetrated the lives of their subjects in limited forms such as conscription and taxation. Religious life revolved round the rituals and calendar of the parish church. International markets mattered but not as much as local exchanges between countryside and market towns. There was a national and international literary world but most people either did not read or confined themselves to a limited, repetitive fare: the Bible, a few other Christian texts and such genres as almanacs. The impact of large-scale connections was largely indirect, mediated through complex chains until absorbed into smallscale worlds. Ecological change can directly affect many people over large areas. It has been a neglected historical subject but research is now being published which demonstrate 331

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its importance.4 Man-made events like the Thirty Years’ War can have similar effects. This was the case with the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Apart from intentional outcomes (conscription, taxation, requisitions, battlefield violence), these had unintended consequences for harvests, standards of living, incidence of disease, mortality and fertility rates. They were the last and greatest of pre-industrial wars. The next war between major European powers – the Crimean War – featured steam-powered ships and trains, mass-produced precision-engineered armaments and other military materiel, and the telegraph. In Napoleon’s time, armies moved by foot and horse, navies by sail, and most messages could travel no more quickly than by horseback courier. The French revolutionary break with dynastic capstone states enabled new largescale connections. Napoleon combined innovations such as universal conscription and promotion by merit with the reimposition of discipline and hierarchy. He was an inveterate road and canal builder. His imperial government, though short-lived, introduced functional bureaucracy, staffed mainly but not only by Frenchmen. In Napoleon’s ‘inner empire’ – regions with effective military pacification and local elites sympathetic to French reforms – this was an enduring legacy.5 Whaley describes the ‘territorial revolution’ which irreversibly swept aside the micro-polities of the Holy Roman Empire. Clark shows how the double impact of losing temporal power and economic assets forced churches to rely on their spiritual resources. The French, copied by German princes, attacked local webs of seigneurial, ecclesiastical, trading and guild privilege. Short-lived extensive connections were established, such as Napoleon’s Continental Blockade aimed at Britain, and his Continental System designed to favour French manufacturing. This undermined other connections as Britain responded with a naval blockade, and European regions were excluded from French markets. In place of privilege came new arrangements – in law, for example, criminal and procedural codes, and the Code Civile (known as the Code Napoleon), based on the principle that private property was at the absolute disposal of its owners. Around 1810, Napoleon’s imperial system appeared impregnable. Most people accommodated themselves to arrangements which seemed likely to endure. There was naturally resentment of taxes, conscription and the intrusive French presence. However, so long as princes collaborated, such discontent rarely expressed itself in large-scale form. Many inhabitants of western Germany lived in relative peace and prosperity between about 1800 and 1812. Certain Prussian reforms which have been interpreted as preparing for liberation – an unlikely looking future between 1807 and 1813 – make more sense seen from this perspective. Abolishing guilds and replacing their payments to the state with a general business tax was not principally designed to unlock enthusiasm (indeed, it had the opposite effect) but to help pay the French indemnity, create financial stability and undermine corporate privilege. Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia destroyed his ‘system’ and with it assumptions about the future on which collaboration with Napoleon rested. To raise, equip and move his Grande Armée of 600,000 required vast resources. His opponents mobilized on a 332

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comparable scale. At the ‘Battle of the Nations’, fought outside Leipzig in October 1813, one million soldiers were on the battlefield or at a distance of less than a day’s march. The ecological impact was enormous. Numerous communities were disrupted as young men were conscripted, food and horses seized, and armies marched east and then west across their lands. These communities were not connected but confronted the same problems and responded in similar ways. This could be channelled by appropriate institutions. Most important of these were the states ruled by native princes. As Napoleon’s domination faltered, most of these princes abandoned him. In Prussia this began literally as treason. Yorck, the Prussian commander of troops allied to Napoleon, abandoned this alliance in December 1812, negotiating a truce with approaching Russian forces. This was in defiance of the king in Berlin, where the French were still in control. Only by March 1813 did Frederick William III find the courage and opportunity to turn against Napoleon. Metternich, who had managed Austrian foreign policy since defeat in the war of 1809, followed suit but only after negotiations with Napoleon failed. Metternich also worked hard to bring over other German princes from their collaborations with Napoleon into an anti-French alliance. A new set of large-scale connections, a grand military alliance, was forged by the end of 1813, defeated Napoleon by mid-1814 and re-formed after Napoleon’s escape from Elba. Waterloo was a ‘close-run thing’, but it is difficult to see Napoleon eventually prevailing over the huge forces mobilized by his opponents. Russia and Austria raised their armies on traditional lines: noble officers commanding forcibly conscripted peasants. Prussian reformers had debated since 1807 the advantages of willing consent and promotion by merit. However, during the June 1813 armistice, the regime pressed young men into service in a time-honoured manner and expanded its officer class by bringing back those dismissed after 1807. Universal conscription was eventually introduced, appalling many conservatives and members of the educated classes to whom it might apply, but this can hardly be treated as consent. That came from the fairly small volunteer units upon which much subsequent nationalist myth-making would focus. The dynasts explicitly appealed to subjects, a novel step by absolutist rulers. The Kalisch Declaration of Alexander I and Frederick William III in May 1813 called upon ‘Germans’ to rise up and throw off the French yoke, condemning the Rheinbund as the instrument of a foreign power. Yet, an appeal to ‘Germans’ quickly turned into an invitation to German princes to join the alliance, along with a warning of the consequences should they fail to do so. Frederick William III in March 1813 addressed ‘my people’ (Mein Volk) as ‘Brandenburgers, Prussians [meaning inhabitants of East Prussia], Silesians, Pomeranians, Lithuanians’. These included many non-German speakers. When the German nation was invoked, it was arrayed alongside the Russians, Spanish, and Portuguese and compared to the earlier valour of the Swiss and Dutch. The references are to cultural communities, not political entities. The dynasts were Christian leaders. Protestant chaplains and Orthodox and Catholic priests were prominent in their armies. Like Frederick William, 333

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other German princes used terms such as Volk and Nation to refer to their state. Even a city state like Hamburg was called Vaterland. There was some extensive popular resistance to Napoleon, such as the Spanish and Tyrolean uprisings. Religious and loyalist values as well as material grievances were the principal motives. The lead was taken by parish priests, local notables and wealthier peasants, not state officials or nationalist intellectuals. In the Tyrol Andreas Hofer led guerrilla forces against ‘fellow Germans’, the Bavarian army whose king had been granted the region (and his kingship) by Napoleon. Some ‘resistance’ took the form of similar but unconnected actions, such as Russian peasant harassment of the retreating Grande Armée, an army which had devastated their lands. Such non-state-led resistance was only made possible by a landscape of mountains and deep valleys, or a demoralized army in retreat, unlike the central European plains on which Napoleon had won his wars up to 1812. Clark points out that the term ‘Restoration’ implies turning the clock back and Vormärz that nothing significant happened between 1815 and 1848. Clark, Köhler and Lee show that both implications are misleading. The very effort to ‘restore’ drew upon large-scale connections shaped by Napoleon. It was reformed, bureaucratic monarchies which clamped down on liberal, radical and nationalist movements. Those measures were coordinated more effectively by the Bund than would have been possible under the Holy Roman Empire. The Bund to some extent was modelled upon the Rheinbund, only now with Austria and Prussia as its dual ‘Protector’ instead of Napoleon. As for economic development, if this is seen in terms of factory industrialization, urbanization and city growth, then it might appear that nothing much happened until mid-century. However, Lee demonstrates significant economic development, even if population growth meant this did not translate into improved living standards. Even where corporations such as guilds were formally restored, the rapid growth of new entrants into artisan occupations destroyed the ratio between masters, journeymen and apprentices on which traditional craft production rested. More journeymen travelled longer distances and times in search of a ‘place’. Increasing numbers of landless labourers – in part due to a widespread transformation of shared land-use practices into private property rights – had no ‘place’, meaning not just work but a defined social position. Although unable themselves to forge new, extended social connections they responded to similar experiences of hunger, homelessness and dependence on handouts. In turn, many better-off people displayed increasing awareness of the ‘social question’, and there were some large-scale efforts to tackle it. Lee describes the growth of rural industry based on concentrations of trading capital by putting-out merchants. The erosion of local privilege accompanied large-scale ways of organizing production. This was promoted by the reduced number of states which sought to remove internal and interstate tariff barriers. Coupled with transport improvements – by road and water before the onset of the railway age – this increased the importance of long-distance, large-scale economic activity. Various customs union projects culminated with the Prussian-led Zollverein, intended to integrate Prussia’s separated western provinces with others. It was supported 334

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by other governments whose tariff revenue increased, reducing the pressure to make constitutional concessions in exchange for higher taxes. Eventually, the Zollverein promoted complementary divisions of labour on an extensive geographical scale. However, it also disrupted established economic ties. International trade increased, promoting regional specialization in agriculture, industrial raw materials, heavy and light industrial manufactures. These links were regional and transnational, not ‘German’. Friedrich List, whose ideal was a German economy, regarded that as a future goal. Such connectivity within and beyond German states constrained illiberal attempts to restrict communications. Merchants needed reliable information about their markets which extended beyond ‘pure’ economic data such as commodity prices and commercial shipping movements to intelligence concerning political stability, likely future harvests, and changing tastes and levels of demand from potential consumers. Prescient state officials realized this made blunt efforts at censorship harmful and could weaken government by creating dissatisfaction and inefficiency. As states reduced or removed internal tariff barriers and confronted increasing levels of both intra- and interstate migration, they monitored their external rather than internal boundaries, and controlled movement by tightening citizenship laws and documentation instead of using physical controls. This increased the salience of state connections at the expense of both local and national ones. Wider connections were fostered through expanding literacy, advances in printing technology and increased postal communication. Köhler shows what this meant for published work, from novels to periodicals, almanacs to song sheets. Newspaper, journals and circulating libraries made printed material more widely and easily available. The eighteenth-century achievement of a standardized written German imparted a national character to this. However, one needs also to analyse patterns of circulation, reception and content. For many, as letter writing greatly increased, such letters might well have meant more than published texts. We know little of the content of such letters and can only speculate as to their impact on the correspondents. However, we can measure the number of letters handled and their geographical distribution. This suggests that regional and intra-state connections mattered more than interstate and national ones. Furthermore, as overseas emigration increased, so did transnational correspondence. Clark argues that limited political opposition was possible, especially in the constitutional ‘middle’ states. Connections were formed between like-minded elites across state boundaries. The coordinated persecution of such politics by the Bund pushed liberals and radicals towards supra-state cooperation. The Bund as a loose political system fostered a loose national opposition. There were other loose networks based on occupation (literary scholars, doctors, lawyers) and leisure (male choirs and gymnastic clubs) which could also be mobilized in 1848. Clark demonstrates that, far from modernization reducing its significance, the exclusion of churches from temporal affairs induced clergy to focus on their spiritual vocation. Especially in the Catholic church, a new type of priest who rose from parish to high office became more important, starting to displace a division between parish and higher clergy based on privilege and social origins. An activist church leadership 335

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with closer connections than before to the papacy instituted such events as the Trier Pilgrimage of 1844, when close to half a million pilgrims visited the cathedral to view a fragment of Christ’s ‘holy coat’. This stimulated vigorous dissent such as the German Catholic movement, some of whose leaders mocked the superstition of the pilgrimage and condemned the immorality they alleged such events promoted. Consequently, when revolution broke out in early 1848, there were various large-scale connections available on which new movements could build. Siemann uses the concept of ‘levels’ to help understand the complexity of such connections. At an ecological level, bad weather and crop diseases led to poor harvests in 1845 and 1846. This was compounded by a downturn in the novel, man-made and transnational business cycle associated with recent capitalist development. These together stimulated widespread similar but uncoordinated responses, above all food riots. These may have been short-lived – the 1847 harvest was good and food prices were falling by early 1848 – but they created experiences of collective action and a sense of the fragility of the existing order. In early 1848, one can trace the spread of urban demonstrations and rural disturbances from France eastwards, helped by memories such as of a similar diffusion of unrest following the July Revolution of 1830. The process was accelerated by observation of the apparent paralysis of authority and through railway and telegraph connections. Once established authority collapsed in the face of these uncoordinated actions, there was a vacuum to be filled. This was initially achieved by the loose political opposition which already existed. However, the new situation also quickly generated further connections. Contemporaries marvelled at the speed with which conversations were struck up in the street, in newly formed associations, in public meetings, in assemblies and in print. Much of what was discussed was unrealistic, but the main problem was not naivety (a shared feature at the outset of most revolutions) but that there were so many potential connections and goals and so little time to channel these into effective organizations with coherent programmes before the revolutionary situation was closed down. One example can demonstrate this problem. Although the bourgeois networks mentioned above meant that perhaps a couple of hundred of the newly elected deputies to the German National Assembly knew one another, most of the seven hundred who arrived in Frankfurt in May 1848 were strangers to each other. To streamline debate, they needed to act as groups, not individuals. In the absence of other connections, an initial method used was the alphabet! Understandably this failed and deputies quickly connected with like-minded peers to prepare for debates, draft resolutions and organize votes. Restaurants provided meeting places for these groups and gave their names to such factions. The loose ties thus formed then extended outwards to constituencies across Germany from which the deputies had been elected. However, this took time and was hampered by a political culture unfamiliar with and suspicious of partisan politics as a routine activity. There was a specific German quality to the politics of 1848. In France, there was a single state upon which political opposition concentrated; in Italy there was nothing like the Bund and so the existing states absorbed most political action. In the eastern half 336

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of the Habsburg Empire, the collective capacity of the Magyar gentry focused political conflict. Siemann shows the very special way politics in the German lands was diffused across communal, state and national levels as well as between a variety of institutions and organizations. This conferred a great advantage upon those possessed of the best large-scale connections and clearest goals. This favoured the German princes, especially once major concessions, above all peasant emancipation, took the steam out of popular discontent. It became increasingly clear that the ‘people’ were not a unitary bloc but themselves deeply divided. Counter-revolution organized at a European level. In Hungary, the Habsburg regime called upon Russian military aid to repress the most formidable of all mid-century revolutions. In Italy, the radical nationalist Garibaldi and his followers were hunted down by soldiers from Austria, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, France and elsewhere. Counter-revolution closed down connections through censorship, dissolution of parliaments, political policing, repression of associations and the imprisonment or execution of radicals. Many radicals went into exile. Repression was harsher and on a larger scale than before 1848. However, not all new connections were destroyed, and it was impossible to erase memories of revolution, whether hopeful or fearful. Peasant emancipation enabled new connections between commercial farmers. Moderate liberalism was tolerated. Educational and cooperative associations flourished, some disguising political ambitions. Prussia enacted a constitution. This was not the liberal-democratic one drawn up by the parliament elected in 1848–9 but one imposed by the Crown. It restricted parliamentary power and replaced the universal manhood suffrage for elections to the lower house (Landtag) with the three-class system which survived until 1918. Nevertheless, this was an elected parliament and it promoted partytype connections at state-wide level. By contrast, the Habsburg Crown dissolved the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments and returned to unconstitutional rule. Lee and Berghahn note the resumption of economic growth from the mid-1850s. Massive railway investment had both significant demand and supply effects, and greatly increased the movement of people and goods. Innovations in banking and company law facilitated the mobilization of capital well beyond family and local connections. The demand for skilled labour promoted worker organization. The Zollverein extended its membership to Hanover and began to be seen as nationally significant, as demonstrated by the successful Prussian effort to keep out Austria. Even if the political content of print media was restricted after 1848, Köhler describes the great expansion in the range and volume of newspapers and journals. More people than ever wrote letters. The Crimean War renewed military conflict between major European powers. New alliances were made. Austria, officially neutral, mobilized, doing so again for its war against France in 1859. Prussian reforms greatly expanded the military budget and army size. The wars of 1866 and 1870–1 mobilized more soldiers than at the climax of the Napoleonic Wars (see Chapter 7 on these matters). Governments were increasingly aware of the importance of public opinion. All the major powers, and other German states, fought press wars. Bismarck combined demagogy, bribery and appeals to material interests, as well as reasoned argument. His confidence in 337

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the power of popular conservatism helps explain the decision to elect the lower house of the North German Confederation (Reichstag) on the basis of direct and equal manhood suffrage. Significantly, he also had to concede the secret ballot. Carried over into the Second Empire, these reforms had profound implications for large-scale political connections. One set of national connections was destroyed. The Bund – although having some influence on the legal and constitutional arrangements of the Second Empire – was dissolved, and Austria excluded from the new Germany. Attention turned to managing the new political creations: Austro-Hungarian dualism, given constitutional form in 1867; the new territories annexed by Prussia; the North German Confederation; finally its successor, the Second Empire. Economic connections and divisions moved in a similar direction as the Habsburg Empire was definitively excluded from the Zollverein which by 1888 covered all the Second Empire. Cultural connections between Germany and Austria continued to matter. Various organizations established in the 1860s use the phrase ‘General German’ (Allgemeine Deutsche) in their titles, implicitly repudiating the division of the German lands which ‘unification’ involved.6 Established associations such as choral societies, gymnastic and sharpshooting clubs continued to operate at an ‘all-German’ level. Nevertheless, such connections receded in importance as the Second Empire and Austria–Hungary (a subordinate ally of Germany from 1878) went their separate ways as sovereign states. Increasingly, large-scale connections described as ‘German’ were equated with the Second Empire. New large-scale connections multiplied. Berghahn, Brophy and Hewitson all stress the continued importance of agriculture and artisanal manufacturing, countryside and small towns. Nevertheless, a sense of dynamism associated with demographic, urban, industrial and capitalist growth became increasingly apparent. It is no accident that most leading theorists of modernity before 1914 came from Germany and Austria. Ferdinand Tönnies elaborated the distinction between community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft), juxtaposing small-scale tradition against large-scale modernity. Georg Simmel caught the sense of a myriad of, often fleeting, new social relationships, such as the importance of fashion, and analysed how money shaped relationships. Max Weber conceptualized the large-scale and rationalized connections of modernity and their irreversible effects. Fin-de-siècle Vienna is central to the modernist culture considered by Jefferies. It is the site of Robert Musil’s novel, The Man without Qualities, which vividly conveys the rush and anonymity of the modern metropolis. Political parties, industrial, financial and agricultural pressure groups, agitational associations, trades unions and other large-scale organizations flourished. Many operated at local and federal levels but were increasingly national. For example, Bismark’s health insurance legislation stimulated trade unions to organize nationally to maximize benefits for their members. With the shift towards protectionism, business pressure groups lobbied for favourable legislation. Compulsory elementary education, mass literacy and mass communications extending beyond print into early visual and aural forms shaped the diverse popular culture considered by Jefferies.7 Many of these connections were not ‘national’, if we mean operating only at national level or making national identity the central concern. Jefferies brings out the pan-European, 338

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even pan-Western nature of cultural activity, as well as the federal dimension. Lindner touches upon the involvement of Germans in the few and recently acquired colonies but shows that more important were the activities of German emigrants, especially to the Americas, and as participants in imperial ventures pursued by other European powers. However, Hewitson notes the danger of ‘pointillism’; multiplying perspectives without a sense of their relative importance. One safeguard is quantification. For example, the steep decline of Reichstag votes for regional parties and the consequent steep rise for national parties, as well as the fact that Prussia constituted some 60 per cent of the population and territory of Germany, puts into perspective the significance of regional and state differences. Chickering shows how the First World War transformed these connections in massive and unanticipated ways. Most dramatic was the mobilization of millions of armed men. This was accompanied by an economic mobilization which brought millions of women into the workforce and new positions within that workforce. Other large-scale connections were curtailed or destroyed by martial law, renewed censorship, suspension of elections and open political debate, and the closing down of contacts with the wider world, other than those based on military alliances and conquests. The free market was replaced, or more accurately, smothered by a command economy crudely coordinated by the army. By 1916, Germany was a military dictatorship. The rhetorical stress on national unity abstracted from the complex and differentiated connections of modernity could not be sustained for long. Even though subject to many restrictions, oppositional parties became increasingly critical of the objectives and conduct of the war, questioning whether it was being fought in the ‘true’ interests of the nation. Material deprivation and its unequal distribution stimulated widespread resentment. At first barely organized, by 1916 strikes and other protests were increasing in scale and frequency. This in turn radicalized those for whom the defence of the ‘nation’ was paramount, especially when connected to interests benefitting from prevailing arrangements. Growing political polarization grew sharply with the sudden change in the military situation from the mid-summer of 1918. German victory would have given these re-emerging connections a different form from those they assumed with defeat. The short-lived Treaty of Brest-Litovsk imposed on Russia in January 1918, plans for satellite Polish and Ukrainian states, and a demilitarized western Europe hint at the shape of a German-dominated postwar Europe. Such achievements would have greatly diminished intra-German conflict. Instead, defeat brought conflicts to a head and enabled those oppositional parties which could command popular opinion to take power and found the Weimar Republic.

Creating social meanings Large-scale connections imply impersonal, not face-to-face, relationships.8 In order to work, they usually have clear, limited aims and specified ways of pursuing these, unlike the multipurpose nature of small-scale connections in which emotion and habit play a 339

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prominent role.9 What do such differences signify for the social meanings people project upon such connections? In the world of the late Holy Roman Empire around 1780, face-to-face relations predominated, even if eroded by various large-scale connections. In a village or noble manor or small market town, even in larger urban centres (and there was no city in the German lands comparable to the size of contemporary London or Paris), it was difficult to keep apart different relationships. There were different roles, and people were conscious of these: debtors and creditors; privileged landowners, peasants and agricultural labourers; parents and children; guild masters and assistants; parish clergy and congregations. However, these relationships overlapped, were entangled within the locale and were often constructed on the basis of birth, privilege and corporate position rather than function. This was a complex and diverse world. A labourer tied by personal bonds of servitude to a lord in East Prussia lived an utterly different life from a wealthy banker in Frankfurt. People knew their ‘place’; a word which extended beyond occupation and locality to mentality. This is a more ‘multi-cultural’ world than that of a modern society where people are subject to common rules and can easily imagine themselves moving from one position to another. It makes little sense to call this a pre- or non-modern world if that signifies a particular way of life. It is the juxtaposition of many small-scale worlds with their different ways of life which is striking. The increasing importance of large-scale connections erodes these differences while introducing new social meanings. Although major ecological events affected many people over wide areas, and often induced similar responses, they did not constitute large-scale relationships to which social meanings could be attached. Insofar as people did not regard famines and epidemics as mysteries beyond understanding, they mostly accepted the interpretation of their churches that these were divine punishments for sinful conduct. Fatalism or prayer, not purposive social action, was the appropriate response. Alternative views which advocated such action informed by reason and knowledge – notions we associate with the concept of the ‘enlightenment’ – were being worked out but as yet had limited impact. Such rational views matter more when we turn to large-scale connections. Princes and their officials had to project meaning upon their authority over subjects; churches over their congregations; merchants and bankers upon trading and financial dealings; artists in relation to their audiences. Those subjects, congregations, clients and audiences responded, ranging from affirmation to rejection. We know more about the few producers than the numerous consumers, except when these actively reject what they are offered and express preferences for alternatives. The dominant social meanings projected upon state and church authority were Christian. Princes ruled by divine right; the hierarchical social order was God-given; churches were the authoritative interpreters of divine will. The major religious divisions, with the significant exception of Jews, were within the Christian faith, one of which was usually the official religion of the state.10 These meanings were mediated through the descending chains of church and government offices. Although legitimated in 340

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Christian terms, authority was increasingly buttressed by rational arguments. The 1794 codification of Prussian law justified the corporate order in terms of the different functions each corporation discharged. This justification potentially could undermine traditional legitimations because, if one could show that the corporations were failing to fulfil their functions or that these could be more effectively carried out in other ways, then a case could be made for their reform, even abolition. When these chains of authority reached provincial and local level, they were translated into corporate forms. This was not a harmonious or static world. Privileged landowners, free peasants, small-town guildsmen, city merchants and bankers, the high clergy, state officials, and members of the traditional professions of law and medicine jostled for power as the corporate world frayed. Birth and/or wealth remained the major ways in which elite positions were obtained but there was plenty of scope for social as well as individual conflict. There was little room in this world for significant social meaning associated with nationality. Leaving aside the everyday world of the small-scale and personal, large-scale connections operated in non-national ways. The rulers of small polities within the Holy Roman Empire did value its ‘national’ institutions as helping them settle internal disputes and conflicts with other such polities, as well as offering some protection against the larger states. Prussia and Austria valued imperial prestige and the possibilities it offered of influencing smaller members. However, these were not the central concerns of these two states. Austria and Prussia ruled territories beyond the Empire, many inhabited by nonGerman speakers. They competed with each other and other European powers. Prussian church leaders were orientated to their state; their Austrian Catholic counterparts were part of a Europe wide elite. Long-distance merchants and large banking houses were tied into increasingly global networks which did not include all of the German lands. Elite cultural values were shaped more by ancien régime France than anything ‘German’. However, in the ‘Atlantic world’ (Britain, northwest Europe and the newly independent United States), a different world was taking shape in which the large-scale connections of trade, commercial art, finance, capitalist agriculture and manufacturing, and military organization (exemplified by the Royal Navy) were more important. Such connections were already penetrating the corporate world of Central Europe. Britain imported food and raw materials through the Baltic, the rivers running to the European Atlantic coast and the Mediterranean, which in turn connected further afield. Between 1714 and 1837, Hanover was ruled by the British dynasty. German mercenaries were employed by Britain in its war to retain control of North America. The Seven Years’ War (1756–63) took on a global character, although Austria and Prussia were entirely absorbed by their particular wars. As important as the direct connections with this Atlantic world were the future possibilities they disclosed. Travel literature was an important genre among the educated. Alexander von Humboldt became one of the most best-known figures of his time through his writing on South America, depicting a land of infinite abundance and potential, so different from ‘old’ Europe. 341

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The contrast between small-scale and large-scale worlds can be linked to different views of what was ‘German’. The first built on the corporate institutions of the Empire. The smaller polities wished to streamline arrangements to resolve conflicts and provide protection. The larger members appealed to ‘imperial patriotism’ to enhance their interests, such as the Prussian-led League of Princes aimed against the Habsburgs. These meanings included proposals for reform but contained within the corporate system. As regards later national meanings, such ideas were taken up by a modern German federal tradition. The second was associated with the idea that all men (few writers extended the argument to women) are equal. The reason men appeared so unequal was due to social arrangements which men could change. The purpose of government was ‘to promote the life, liberty and happiness’ of subjects. From such assumptions, it was difficult to resist the conclusion that those subjects should be the judges of how best to do this. This abstract view had to be worked out in the world in which its advocates – often widely published writers – lived. The two most powerful and enviable societies – France and Britain – were national states. Each possessed a vernacular language with literary repute which enabled their subjects (citizens) to communicate with each other and access significant cultural values. On this basis could be constructed the vision of a German cultural nation. Could this vision of the German cultural nation be combined with imperial reform movements? There was little opportunity to explore such combinations before the French Revolution and the plunge into continual warfare from 1792 until 1815. It was the revolution and war which generated social meanings which deepened the break with the corporate world. The key roles were played by Napoleon, the model and satellite states ruled by members of his family and native princes, Austria and Prussia. This contrasted with the Atlantic world and France where economic transformation and popular movements respectively were the drivers of change. The social meanings embraced within Napoleon’s ‘inner empire’ were at odds with those of the corporate world. There was a conscious juxtaposition of modern against traditional, even if not framed in those words. These meanings were not primarily German. When framed in ‘national’ terms, this referred to the reforming state: Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, etc. The justifications were those of the enlightenment; the state should induce the loyalty of subjects by issuing constitutions, convening consultative assemblies and opening up opportunities beyond the constraints of the corporate world. Only such reforms could secure the power needed to survive against those states and societies which were already well down this new path. It is doubtful whether such meanings extended to most subjects. Much of it went little further than rhetoric. While Napoleon enforced harsh conscription, fiscal and other burdens upon his ‘allies’, it was their negative impact which dominated responses, not the promises of better political and social organization. Most positive were those German parts of the ‘inner empire’ where people prospered, for example, in the regions directly annexed by France as new departments. Where responses were negative, they were often accompanied by nostalgic longing for the ‘good, old times’ of the Holy Roman Empire. 342

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Other potential large-scale meanings were blocked by the small-scale distinctions of the corporate world. Assistants to master craftsmen, agrarian workers subject to lords, day labourers in casual employment: these people could not imagine themselves in class terms. Congregations were Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed or other, not Christians as such, let alone ‘religious believers’. The duties of a noblewoman had nothing in common with those of a peasant wife. Even language difference was framed as corporate. When people moved from countryside into a city dominated by those of another language, ambitious immigrants sought to advance their situation or at least that of their children. Those who assimilated into higher social ranks assimilated into a different language. Not until some time into the nineteenth century did such newcomers assert a national identity against urban elites. Some intellectuals constructed social meanings and futuristic visions based on the extended connections of class, religion, gender, nationality or even humanity. However, until such connections increased in importance and salience, these remained little more than speculations. In the previous section, I sketched the large-scale connections suddenly forming at the climactic end of Napoleonic domination. The princes appealed to many of these in a situation of huge uncertainty and danger. It was as if every possible note must be sounded in the hope of striking chords. It is difficult to estimate the significance of these various appeals. Subsequently one meaning – German national identity – has been selected as central in much historical writing. Recently, there has been a reaction against this, with many historians selecting some other meaning such as anti-French hatred, monarchism, localism or Christianity. The chaotic, rapidly changing situations resist firm judgements, especially when one includes other motives of self-interest, deference and fear. However, one can consider which meanings endured after 1815 and how far they were displaced by others. Militarism as mindset and institutional dominance dissipated quickly. Rulers were anxious to reduce the massively expensive armies as quickly as possible. This chimed in with widespread war-weariness. Metternich’s emphasis on diplomacy instead of force as the key to international relations must be seen in this context. Central to increases in large-scale connections after 1815 was an expanded middle class. Merchants, manufacturers, bankers, civil servants, publishers and artists were acutely aware of changes taking place across Europe and beyond. The opening up of trade with new states in the Americas and elsewhere was accompanied by the cultivation of tastes for these regions’ music, visual art, cuisine and natural products. It was more important for the sons of Hanseatic merchants to speak English, learn British commercial law working in London and travel beyond Europe, than to visit Berlin or Vienna. The same applied to their counterparts in the Rhineland, except there it was French and Napoleonic law. These bourgeois families were aware of the greater freedom and wealth enjoyed in France and Britain. This contributed to taking up the meanings associated with ‘liberalism’ as Clark shows. I would add two points. First, until the 1840s, it makes little sense to write of ‘German’ liberalism rather than Rhenish, Hanseatic or East Prussian liberalism. Variations can be related to 343

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different emphases, such as on British free trade or French constitutionalism, as drivers of ‘progress’. Distinctions have been made between liberals who accepted that rapid economic change would be accompanied by great inequality, and those concerned to maintain or restore the dominance of a broad ‘Mittelstand’ stretching from skilled craftsmen and peasant farmers to the wealthy bourgeoisie. The contrasts implied different views of the future, for example, in terms of the centrality of factories and cities. However, hardly anyone as yet imagined there could be perpetual growth and innovation. Second, what made such liberalism ‘German’ was less the content of its values than its practical focus. The Bund blocked liberal reform within individual German states. Tariffs within and between German states were materially resented and seen as barriers to ‘progress’. What we observe is less ‘German liberalism’ than ‘liberalism in Germany’.11 Other extended social meanings were associated with religion. This was a time of popular revivalism, both Protestant and Catholic, established and dissenting, in Germany and beyond. The Trier Pilgrimage could be regarded as the largest single mass movement in mid-century Germany. Religion was becoming a distinctive activity, organized extensively, tapping emotions detached from social position or church doctrine. Conservatism was becoming more than an unreflective defence of the status quo, even if still elite and informal in organization. A special case was popular Catholicism opposed to Protestant states or liberal anticlericalism. The Trier Pilgrimage was intended as a demonstration of strength to the Prussian state. Radicalism and socialism had not yet generated such extended social meanings. What radicalism existed drew on influences from Switzerland and France. Intellectuals and artisans formed associations in Switzerland, Paris and London where they imbibed socialist ideas. These radical and socialist ideas were projected upon ‘Germany’, a homeland invested with special emotional resonance for exiles. These and other social meanings such as early feminism and cosmopolitanism referenced large, abstract, ‘imagined’ communities and processes: women, workers, the people, humanity, progress, Christianity and legitimacy. Informing all of this was the diffuse influence of Romanticism considered by Köhler. This was a transnational movement, even – indeed especially – when it took national form. The Grimm brothers belonged to a European intellectual network which ‘edited’ national epics, collected folk tales and songs, and compiled vernacular dictionaries. Such activities were presented in the German language which Romanticism treated not just as a form of communication but the expression of the national soul. These extended social views barely took the form of ideological movements, with programmes and public appeals, partly due to the constraints of authoritarian rule. This changed with the collapse of authority in early 1848. Bourgeois liberals who envisioned constitutional politics and free markets were confronted by a fearfully rapid opening up of political participation. The ‘social question’, with the poor an object of elite concern, turned into a political question as popular movements threatened to take matters into their own hands. 344

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Radicals who had preached just such a change were divided between those wedded to pre-revolutionary ideas of conspiracy and insurrection, those who favoured direct communal action, and those who sought to use the indirect methods of representative democracy at state and national levels. Radicals and liberals who had invoked the ‘people’ as an abstract category now had to deal with people in their diverse forms. Others invoked their own divisive, yet abstract categories. Frevert shows how the revolution enabled a women’s movement to form, although with limited support, and often aiming to expand the abstract concept of the ‘people’ by adding women to men. Socialists used class terms but hardly worked out a class politics, engaging in activities such as cooperatives, education and organizing model communities. Like radicals, when they did deploy divisive terms, these set the vast majority who ‘worked’ against a tiny minority of parasites, envisaging the ideal future as being realized through a simple once-and-for-all transformation. Political Catholicism took on clearer shape. Its programmes could appear liberal, as when demanding separation of church and state, or socialist, when proposing corporatist solutions to social problems. However, it soon became clear that such overlaps were superficial, as the church claimed control over any new arrangements. Conservatism changed sharply. Dependent on power exercised through existing institutions, once these collapsed conservatives had to work out ways of re-establishing authority extending beyond simple restoration. Siemann points to ways, some uncovered by recent research, in which popular conservatism was constructed. These currents of opinion, having had the opportunity to organize and express themselves, needed to formulate programmes for the new mass electorate. Such programmes initially were vague and non-partisan. However, once new ministries and parliaments started work, more precise but also divisive policies were required. This included the ‘national question’. In May 1848, virtually no one had much idea of what the question was, let alone how to answer it. However, the German National Assembly soon posed clear questions to which it suggested answers. What would it mean to be a German citizen? If citizenship rights included freedom of movement and occupational choice, must existing state and communal restrictions be abolished? How should a German executive relate to the national parliament, and what would this mean for state executives and parliaments? Could the German lands of the Habsburg Empire be included in the nation state and its other lands excluded without destroying the empire? How could Prussia and Austria be induced to agree on the form of a future nation state? These were just some, if the major, questions which the Assembly addressed. The Assembly never implemented its proposals – one element of the ‘failure’ of 1848. However, it had made explicit the problems of seeking to realize any national state and the necessity of deciding on one of a limited number of options. Awareness of this was here to stay and shaped the politics of the post-revolutionary age. Elite speculations were turning into conflicting political and ideological movements. The new horizons disclosed and then shut down promoted ‘realism’, if by that term we mean a style rather than a way of getting close to ‘reality’. As Köhler shows, this is when literary realism came of age in Germany. It is also true of political realism. Three 345

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figures are emblematic of this. August von Rochau was an idealistic liberal before 1848. Afterwards he coined, elaborated and popularized the notion of Realpolitik. Liberals, scarred by radical and popular politics, saw cooperation with existing authority as the realistic way forward. Karl Marx, exiled to London, broke with erstwhile radical colleagues and their view of political change as a matter of will. He now worked on his analysis of capitalism, its class divisions and the way its impersonal workings would pave the road to socialism. Otto von Bismarck alienated conservative allies as he stressed the importance of material concerns and the need to ally with ‘social forces’, above all the increasingly powerful bourgeoisie, if Prussia was to dominate Germany. Bismarck famously declared in 1862 that the national question would be solved by blood and iron, not parliamentary resolutions. However, when the short, if bloody, wars were over, it was back to politics, including parliamentary politics. Berghahn sketches the economic transformations which accompanied the formation and institutionalization of the Second Empire while Brophy and Hewitson analyse these institutional and political changes, showing the continuing growth of existing and the proliferation of new large-scale connections. With the formation of the Second Empire, conceptions of the future changed yet again. A German state had been formed through dramatic military successes which themselves communicated a message of the power of large-scale action. Soon, the other major powers were imitating Germany, for example, establishing powerful general staffs for war planning. There were increasing concerns with ‘efficiency’ and survival of the fittest, measuring and comparing oneself with competitors, envisaging a world divided between a few imperial blocs, and everything being irresistibly better and more massively organized – whether in a capitalist or socialist form. Nevertheless, the small-scale connections of family and community remained important. Furthermore, there is no sharp division between ‘large-scale’ and ‘smallscale’, with links between them. Some relationships do not fit the distinction, such as those sustained through letters between people in Germany and friends and relatives in the United States. The justification for the distinction is that it helps capture key elements of modern change. Links must be made between large-scale connections and the world of family and locality. So far as politics is concerned, one helpful idea is that of ‘milieu’.12 The starting point is the steady increase in mass voting in Reichstag elections and the rise to dominance of four political groupings: Catholic, socialist, conservative and liberalradical. How did this reduction of the multistate and highly regionalized politics of pre1871 Germany come about in the course of one generation? The milieu concept embeds these parties in specific social contexts. Voting was only once every few years, but this vote affirmed ways of life in sub-cultures of which the party formed just one element. The concept has been criticized as too static and failing to grasp the fluid and changing patterns of political choices. Nevertheless, it provides an initial way of linking the largescale to the small-scale. Furthermore, it can be used to show that the political ideologies associated with these milieus which are projected upon large-scale social meanings drew upon the imagery 346

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and emotions associated with the intimate connections of family and community. This is the focus of the next section.

Ideologies and movements Political ideologies and their associated movements take shape within the world of largescale connections and extended social meanings. The overlapping roles of the smallscale social world are displaced by a series of specialized roles where individuals relate to large numbers of strangers. These large-scale connections are based on instrumental relationships, and their ramifications are difficult, if not impossible, to observe directly. Ideologies help people feel they understand this world and how to act in it in ways which go beyond performing their prescribed roles. Reichstag elections are a case in point.13 How do voters choose? In a small-scale world, one can vote for someone one knows, maybe because the candidate is like oneself or maybe because he is a trusted authority figure. However, regional political parties declined quickly in the Second Empire while the size of the electorate and the level of electoral participation increased (see Brophy chapter, Table 8.1). Voters grew confident that the secret ballot really was secret and that they could vote free from direct pressures such as those of employers. The national parties between which voters could choose appealed to a widespread and diverse electorate. Ideology is a vital element in such appeals. Political movements must address specific interests but ideology unifies these and endows them with an emotional charge which claims to transcend interest. Liberalism is arguably the ideology of modernity. At its centre is the individual, abstracted from social connections. In politics, laws rule, not men; in economics, individuals act in markets according to reason, not as members of privileged corporations according to tradition; in culture, creative genius and originality are prized over tradition and ritual, ‘art for art’s sake’ instead of art for court, church and other patrons. In practice things never went this far. Nevertheless, such principles informed liberal critiques of existing arrangements and in the envisioning of better ones. Early liberalism was an affair of elites entangled in a world of small-scale connections. There were no national and few state-wide political parties or an extensive public sphere. When these possibilities arrived in 1848, they were accompanied by threats to liberalism embodied in popular action and radical politics. Liberals turned to cooperation with existing authority, drawing upon their elite connections, wealth and prestige, as well as through control of much of the print media which shaped ‘public opinion’. As other ideological movements challenged it, liberalism fissured and retreated to its heartlands, especially the city. At the same time, some of its key objectives such as rule of law, parliamentary representation, freedom of speech and assembly, occupational mobility, and free markets were increasingly entrenched into institutional arrangements. In a world which embodied many elements of liberal modernity, liberalism lost much of its distinct ideological character. 347

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It shared this fate with democratic radicalism. While liberalism centred on the abstract ‘individual’, radicalism did something similar with ‘the people’. By mid-century, as cartoons accompanying Siemann’s chapter show, there were efforts to represent this in a specific image: the German Michel. However, such a single, static image could not adjust to the ideological challenges posed as the abstract unity of the ‘people’ was increasingly divided by class, ethnicity, gender, religion and other attributes. Of the four political milieus, those associated with liberal and radical political movements were the most open and characterized by abstract ideological representations. During the Second Empire, the parties which formed around liberal and radical principles were the least stable, the ones which most divided and reorganized. At the moderate liberal end of the spectrum, personal connection and elite networks, especially located in and between cities, became more important than ideology for enabling extensive political coordination. To some extent doctrinaire principle played a similar role towards the radical pole. It would be the diverse social constituencies from which liberalism and radicalism drew which would prove especially receptive to new kinds of nationalist ideology in the later years of the Second Empire. The links between milieu and ideology were tighter with political Catholicism and socialism, milieus which have been characterized as ‘closed’ or defensive compared to those of liberalism and radicalism. The Catholic church and its adherents had long experience of persecution since the sixteenth century, although these were confessional conflicts in which Catholics also persecuted others. A different challenge was posed with Napoleonic domination: anticlericalism. In the German lands, this did not take the fierce, even violent form one finds in revolutionary and post-revolutionary France, or in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain. There were radical elements within the Catholic church which were concerned to shift power from the clerical hierarchy to the laity but these were not central in the German lands. The major threat came from elite-led reforms aiming to divest the church of its wealth and temporal powers and subordinate it to state authority. Having failed after 1815 to reverse such institutional reforms or restore the ecclesiastical polities of the Holy Roman Empire, Catholic leaders worked out defensive principles. Most important was control of the upbringing and education of children, and preserving the autonomy of the church in the selection, training and promotion of clergy. The first issue erupted into open conflict between the archbishop of Cologne and the Prussian state over the issue of mixed marriages, with the church insisting that the children of such marriages be raised as Catholics (see the chapter by Clark). From 1848, political Catholicism outlined programmes demanding control of schools, framing this in the apparently liberal terms of separation of church and state. The year 1848 also brought organized engagement in popular politics and the use of print media to shape public opinion. Though diminishing following the failure of revolution, this legacy, along with a softening of the relations between the state and the church during the counter-revolution which regarded religion as a source of stability, informed the open and mass politics of the Second Empire. By then attacks on Catholicism intensified with the ‘culture war’ (Kulturkampf), a term coined by liberals in 348

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which religion was framed less as belief and ritual and more as values and ways of life. The Catholic reaction broadened in a corresponding way and enabled lay associations and leaders to play an increasingly prominent role (see especially the chapter by Brophy). This reaction built on Catholic ‘milieus’ centred on charitable, educational and other voluntary associations, as well as popular religious practices extending beyond the parish church and its clergy, such as pilgrimages and spiritualism. The establishment of the Reichstag in 1867 meant these different large-scale connections with their associated meanings could feed into a political party with a national focus. At the same time, ideological elaborations constructed an idealized image of Catholics as a persecuted community bound together not just by religion but by shared ways of life and everyday solidarity. The mobilization of this imagined community – greatly helped by the fact that those who persecuted shared in this imagining, only negatively – was successful. By 1900, long after official persecution had ceased, the great majority of the Catholic electorate, across different social groups with apparently opposed interests to which other parties appealed, voted for the Centre Party. Inevitably, as it became involved with other parties and government in policymaking, and as the range of Catholic social interests increased and diversified, this impressive solidarity declined. Something similar happened with the convergence between workers and socialism as an ideological movement. Just as the churches in their locales provided the initial nucleus for the Catholic community, so did workplace and working-class districts for the labour movement. Connections extended beyond the workplace through occupational networks, especially trades unions, as well as cooperatives and educational associations. By the 1860s, many political ideas circulated in these organizations – liberal, radical, Catholic, socialist – and the future dominance of socialism did not appear likely. Two associations formed in the 1860s led in this direction. These were the General German Workers’ Association (ADAV) founded by Ferdinand Lassalle, and the League of German Workers’ Associations (VDAV) led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. All three were in contact with Marx, an exile in London. As with the Centre Party, it was explicit state persecution which unified and radicalized these associations, starting with arrests, trials and imprisonments at the very foundation of the Second Empire, and then being enacted as a special law in 1878 (see chapter by Brophy). This in itself made persuasive the view that workers shared a common identity and interest opposed to that of the existing state and ruling order. In his short life as the leader of the ADAV, Lassalle had always considered the association as political but envisaged possibilities of cooperation with the existing state.14 State persecution killed that idea. Marx shared the view that the working-class movement must be political but opposed any alliance with a state which served capitalist interests in an increasingly class-divided society. However, its own ‘laws of motion’ would increase the contradictions of capitalism along with the size and solidarity of the working class. This in turn would make possible a socialist future, though just how this was to be realized, and the role to be played by a socialist party, was unclear and led to increasing disagreements within its leadership. 349

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However, step by step the party moved to an explicit acceptance of Marxism, culminating in the formation of the German Social Democratic Party and a new programme at Erfurt in 1890. This ideology could root itself in the increasing size and density of working-class communities with its proliferation of associations and networks. (For the period after 1890, see the chapter by Hewitson.) Karl Kautsky, the chief ideologue of the party, referred to the pub as crucial to the success of the party, as it provided not just sociability but also facilities for meetings when other public venues were denied to socialists. As with political Catholicism, this rich and diverse set of connections generated their own concrete, romanticized images of what it meant to be working class – above all, physical ones of the powerful manual worker – images which could then be given an overarching meaning by Marxist ideology. As workers (with the major exceptions of German and Polish Catholics) turned away from Christianity, this Marxism also offered a guarantee of a better future, certified by science instead of religion. In both the Catholic and the socialist cases, explicit state persecution pressed together existing connections into a particular form. At the same time, by twentieth-century standards, this repression was mild. Bismarck could not even force the post office to open mail at governmental command! Both the Centre Party and the SPD could put up candidates for elections to the Reichstag and state parliaments. This led the SPD to make national elections its key political focus and this paid off handsomely; by the last election of 1912, the SPD was the biggest party in the Reichstag and, in terms of votes and members, in the world. Yet, also similar to the Centre Party, as repression decreased after 1890, as the party became increasingly influential in everday politics, as class became more differentiated with the growth of new skilled manual and non-manual wage-earner group, as living standards improved, and as government passed measures such as food tariffs which hit the less well-off generally, so the ideology became less clear-cut, along with the class base of the SPD electorate. Some historians have argued that by 1914 the SPD was well on the way from being a working-class party to becoming a Volkspartei. Conservatism, like liberalism and unlike political Catholicism and socialism, started as an elite movement, though one holding, not seeking power. It began to elaborate a popular political strategy during the 1848 revolution but this was not sustained and extended in the counter-revolution as once more it could rely on restored regimes. Such a strategy became more necessary from the later 1860s with electoral mass politics and liberal dominance in the early Second Empire. Even then a conservatism which depended greatly on deference and control of local institutions could not achieve much in free peasant farming regions. Things changed in 1890s when the government negotiated free trade agreements which reduced food tariffs. The Farmers’ League, originally formed as an East Elbian, Junker-dominated pressure group to fight these agreements, sought to extend its appeal socially and regionally. For this, it needed a broader programme and ideological claims. Central to this was the Romantic idea of the agrarian community as the heart of the nation. This could be given a new twist in the face of industrial and urban growth: the need to 350

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preserve the Agrarstaat against the Industriestaat. As an analytical concept, this was economically and sociologically nonsense but it generated many concrete images with emotional resonance. These ranged from preserving national self-sufficiency in food, the strong peasants and agrarian workers as backbone of the army, and resistance to the parasitic forces of international finance, especially embodied in the figure of the Jew. However, compared to the more closed and defensive Catholic and socialist milieus, this was much more a matter of artifice and manipulation and could never acquire their solidarity. There were other ideological movements – Polish nationalism, feminism (for which see Frevert), early ecological and lifestyle movements (for which see Jefferies) – but these were not as significant during the Second Empire. However, one can hazard generalizations which apply to them too. Ideological movements select one large-scale characteristic: confession, class, market, agriculture, language, gender, nature, nation. They link this to various milieus: church, workplace, the city, villages, the household or the countryside. They idealize such milieus as communities which they imagine in concrete, romanticized images, and they project futures in which these communities can be fully realized. In these ways, the large-scale connections and extended meanings of modernity are linked to particular people and places, and invested with the emotional associations of intimate connection. This process of creating ‘imagined communities’ was given its best-known expression by Benedict Anderson in the title of a book. That is a book about nationalism, not socialism or political Catholicism, liberalism, radicalism or conservatism. Nationalism is regarded as central to nineteenth-century German history. Readers therefore might find puzzling my argument that nationalism does not take the form of a distinct, popular ideological movement on the scale of the movements so far considered. Nationalist ideology which builds on the idea of nation in similar ways that other movements build on class or confession, agriculture or industry, individual or people, expressed itself politically in a range of pressure groups and agitational associations, not as a political party. This does not mean nationalism is not as important but that it must be understood differently from other ideologies. I suggest it must be analysed in two distinct ways. One is as an explicit ideological movement. The other is as an important component of other ideological movements. These converge with the outbreak of war in 1914. One problem for ideological movements based on such features as confession or class is that they constitute just one part of the world in which they operate. They only make sense opposed to others within that world. Indeed, the hostile stereotypes these movements project upon each other are vital elements in their own identity. It is difficult, probably impossible, to imagine a world in which those opponents did not exist. Marx, who came closest to outlining a social process which abolished class divisions, refused to speculate on the details of such a future. Increasingly as the different movements became entangled in the give-and-take of everyday parliamentary politics, such futuristic images of harmony and unity declined in significance. 351

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Nevertheless, arguably there is a strong desire in people to belong to ‘society’ as such. This presents problems in a world of multiple and large-scale connections and meanings. Edward Shils devoted much of his intellectual life to trying to understand this problem. If they [people from various walks of life] call themselves lawyers or machinists, fathers or sons, white or blacks, Protestant Christians or Hindus, or several of these together, there still remains a sense of incompleteness. It is thought that they have to bear also the name of their ‘society’. The ‘society’ is that most inclusive yet bounded collectivity of which they are seen to be only parts.15 Seen from this perspective, the question is how the nation comes to be that ‘most inclusive yet bounded collectivity’. One aspect of this is what one might call nation and/ or nation-state formation. Another is the elaboration of nationalist ideology. Finally, there is the question of how these combine. There is nothing unique about nation and nation-state formation in the German case. There are other examples of forcibly bringing together separate states and calling the result a nation state. Italy is the most obvious one but arguably the US Civil War and the Meiji restoration in Japan were similar and occurred at roughly the same time.16 As for nation formation in terms of an increasing web of large-scale connections, what I have described resembles the changes considered in Eugen Weber’s classic 1976 study Peasants into Frenchmen. What arguably was special about Germany was the previous existence of a loose national political system and then the speed of the transformation into an urban, industrial society and world power, accompanied by the rapid emergence of mass electoral politics and ideological movements. However, each national case has its specific qualities and it makes little sense to call any one of these unique. In the German case, the nation state quickly emerged as the key ‘power-container’ (Michael Mann). The federal states retained important powers, although the diversifying effects of this were reduced by the dominance of Prussia. All the political parties increasingly focused on government and parliament in Berlin and in increasing their share of the vote and seats. Understandably, each party came to see the nation state and the nation it supposedly embodied as ‘that most inclusive yet bounded collectivity’. This was reflected in the ideology. The SPD, for example, responded to the accusation that their internationalism meant they were not ‘truly’ German by turning it around; it was the regime which failed to represent the nation, promoting instead only sectional interests. In their different ways, the same reasoning was applied by Catholics, liberals, radicals and conservatives. Only Polish nationalists differed in this and even they focused on achieving protection as a national minority rather than advocating a Polish nation state. Michael Freeden has made a useful distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ ideology.17 Liberalism, conservatism, socialism and political Catholicism are examples of thick ideology, that is, one which elaborates notions of certain ways of life and values. By contrast, nationalism is a thin ideology. It makes an identity claim but it does not bind that claim into particular ways of life and values. In principle, it can appeal to everyone 352

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within the nation, but it is difficult to understand why people with different, often opposed values and interests would respond. When such nationalist ideology was first elaborated, there was not much of a response. The philosopher Fichte gave a series of lectures in French-occupied Berlin in 1807–8 which became famous as ‘Addresses to the German Nation’. These lectures were authentically nationalist. They identified a unique and worthy German nation – principally on the basis of language – and asserted that gaining national independence was the overriding priority. However, they had little appeal beyond certain Prussian elites, smarting under their humiliating defeat by Napoleon, because they could not relate to widespread identities or interests. It was much later, in the German Second Empire, that Fichte’s ideas started to matter. This was partly a result of the new nation state asserting itself in the wider world. The war against France in 1870–1 had brought together opposed political elements, notably liberals and conservatives, Prussian and non-Prussians, although much of this sense of solidarity soon diminished. The pursuit of an overseas empire had a similar effect of drawing attention to conflict with existing imperial powers. However, much of the ideological justification was made in broader terms of race and civilisation which Germans shared with others. Furthermore, specific policies such as acquiring overseas colonies or greater assertion in Central Europe remained sectional and divisive (see chapters by Brophy, Hewitson and Lindner). Nationalism tended to take the form of single-issue associations such as the navy or Pan-German Leagues which appealed across party boundaries but did not displace those parties. This was more the case where the existing political milieus were loose, above all in the spheres of liberal and radical politics. In these single-issue movements, the claim was made that they expressed distinctive national values which were ‘higher’ than those of the existing and divided parties. These different orientations to the nation as ‘highest’ value and ‘most inclusive collectivity’ converged in the July crisis. The explicit but politically divided nationalists who desired territorial expansion and race assertion were enthusiastic supporters of the war. However, more significant in terms of popular support and political influence were the major parties. The liberal and conservative parties on which the government generally relied were supportive. The Centre Party and especially the SPD which had opposed various ‘national’ policies earlier were anxious to demonstrate their national credentials for many reasons: to ward off threatened persecution, to gain concessions such as abolition of the Prussian three-class franchise, but above all to be accepted as parts of a nation united against outside threats, especially from Russia. The outcome was a massive show of national unity which underpinned the war effort. Later, as Chickering shows, hardships, the growing recognition of differences on war aims, the receding prospect of victory and finally the reality of defeat broke apart the fragile unity. However, this did not mean a return to the pre-war world. The sheer scale and nature of the war and defeat had entrenched new kinds of national sentiment in the population though that did not produce national unity. What it did produce is another story. 353

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Concluding remarks This book presents a history of Germany during the ‘long nineteenth century’. This is mainly achieved through chapters which focus on particular periods and themes. In this conclusion, I have tried to place these in a broader context by outlining a way in which one can maintain a national perspective without detaching German history from broader changes in Europe and the wider world, or regarding that history as unique. I suggest that, although German identity was almost bound to become increasingly important as ‘that most inclusive yet bounded collectivity’ in a modernizing world, that does not mean it had to take the form of a single nation state, let alone the particular form of the German Second Empire. It is not productive to speculate on alternative histories, such as having the 1848 revolutions ‘succeed’ or Prussia fail to win the wars of 1866 and 1870–1. However, the historian needs to be alert to the fact that contemporaries, not blessed with the wisdom of hindsight, did envisage alternative and competing futures. They rarely guessed right! These visions of the future in turn changed as the present from which they were extrapolated itself changed. Awareness of this should lead us to examine more closely those changing circumstances and to be alert to the other possibilities they disclose. To do this, one needs a general framework within which to locate the actual course of events and possible variations. Otherwise, there is no way of disciplining the imagination. My focus on modernity as the growth of large-scale connections and social meanings and how these were taken up by ideological and political movements drawing upon the images and emotions of small-scale connections represents one way of providing such a framework.

Notes 1. I only provide references to direct quotations or citations. I also refer to other chapters in the book as appropriate. My thanks to Jim Brophy, Mark Hewitson, Matthew Jefferies, Dieter Langewiesche and Joep Leerssen for comments on earlier drafts. 2. The generalization of the principle of ‘national self-determination’ after 1918 and the manner of its application to Europe meant that this territorial template was shorn of its Danish (Schleswig), French (Alsace-Lorraine), and – most contentiously – much longer held Polish territories. 3. Unlike certain historians of ideas, I do not regard these as contributing much to the future they imperfectly anticipated, an argument, for example, which Elie Kedourie makes with regard to Kant, Herder and Fichte in his pioneering work Nationalism (1960). 4. See Wolfgang Behringer, Tambora und das Jahr ohne Sommer: Wie ein Vulkan die Welt in die Krise stürzte (Munich, 2015), tracing the impact of a volcano in the Dutch East Indies in April 1815 across the globe, including in the German lands. For a short, English-language argument focused on Germany, see his chapter ‘Climate and History: Hunger, Anti-Semitism, and Reform During the Tambora Crisis of 1815–1820’, in David Lederer, ed., German History in Global and Transnational Perspective (London, 2017), pp. 9–41.

354

Conclusion 5. The distinction between Napoleon’s ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ empire made by Michael Broers is a very powerful one. It can be linked to Michael Mann’s distinction between states with ‘despotic’ power (including capstone states) and those with ‘infrastructural’ power. 6. Examples include the Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein (1865) considered by Frevert and the Allgemeine Deutscher Arbeiter Verein I discuss below. 7. See the statistical tables in Berghahn’s chapter, especially 47–58, for measures of some of these developments. 8. That the elites at the top of institutions and organizations operating large-scale connections are often, probably usually, known personally to each other is an aspect of the matter which there is no space for me to pursue. I mention it briefly in the concluding remarks. 9. These ideas are strongly influenced by those of Max Weber. I have elaborated on their use for the understanding of nationalism in John Breuilly, ‘Nation, Nation-State, and Nationalism’, in The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber, edited by Edith Hanke, Laurence Scaff and Sam Whimster. OUP online, May 2019. 10. Unlike many other places, such as premodern Ottoman Europe, where Christian and Jewish communities existed side by side with Muslim communities. 11. Contrast the title of the book by James Sheehan, German Liberalism in the 19th Century (1995) with that by Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalism in Germany (2000). 12. The concept was originally developed independently by M. Rainer Lepsius and Karl Rohe. Lepsius, ‘Zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft’, in Lepsius, Demokratie in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1993), pp. 25–50; Rohe, Wahlen und Wählertraditionen in Deutschland (Frankfurt/M, 1992). 13. For more detail on Reichstag elections, see the chapters by Brophy and Hewitson. 14. Lassalle was a fascinating individual. He held secret conversations with Bismarck and was killed in a duel in 1864. 15. Edward Shils, Centre and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago, 1975), p.vii. 16. See my essay on unification nationalism in Breuilly, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism (2013). 17. Michael Freeden, ‘Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?’, Political Studies, XLVI (1998), pp. 748–65.

355

356

APPENDIX 1: GERMAN STATISTICS, MAPS AND DOCUMENTS

Statistics Statistics for ‘Germany’, especially before 1871, can be confusing. Some of the figures frequently provided relate to the area which became the territory of the German Second Empire in 1871. These are of limited use for long-run comparisons because that geographical unit made no sense whatsoever before 1871. Some statistics are for the territory of the German Confederation formed in 1814–15. However, that territory excluded parts of Prussia (the provinces of East and West Prussia, the grand duchy of Posen), the eastern half of the Habsburg Empire and its Italian possessions. Some statistics which claim to be for the Confederation exclude its Austrian territories, although there is no possible excuse for so doing. Some statistics are for the area of the German Customs Union (Zollverein), which itself was continually changing between its formation in 1834 and its final extension to the whole territory of the German Second Empire in 1888. Statistics for individual states before 1871 also present problems. The basic statistics provided here only start in 1815. The political map of ‘Germany’ in the revolutionary and Napoleonic period was changing so rapidly with each military change of fortune, that some contemporary cartographers gave up compiling political maps and turned their attention to ‘natural frontiers’. Even for the more stable post-Napoleonic period there are difficulties. Prussia was greatly expanded by annexation in 1866–7. Austria lost its Italian provinces; Lombardy in 1859, Venetia in 1866. The German Second Empire annexed Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. The Habsburg Empire did the same with Bosnia-Herzogovina in 1908. Finally, during the First World War there were rapid changes in the territories controlled by Germany and Austria, mainly expanding until 1918 and then rapidly contracting. Furthermore, the methods of gathering statistics for particular subjects were often different. This point should, for example, be borne in mind when comparing labour force statistics. Different German states, especially before 1871, not only used different definitions (e.g. for what is a town) but applied them with differing degrees of accuracy. Prussia was always noted for her superiority in this regard. Generally, statistics get more reliable the later they are compiled. The Second Empire brought a higher level of uniformity, consistency and professionalism to such work. There were also improvements due to international meetings and agreements between statisticians. Overall, many statistics, especially for the period before 1871, should be regarded as providing little more than orders of magnitude. In addition to the basic statistics provided below, there is a much expanded set of statistics provided by Volker Berghahn in Chapter 9, as well as additional material in other chapters, especially Chapter 4 by Robert Lee.

Appendix 1

For readers wishing to go further, in German but easy to consult as these consist of tables and graphs, are three volumes published under the general title of Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch. Volume 1, edited by Wolfram Fischer, et.al, covers 1815-1870; volume 2, edited by Gerd Hohorst, et.al, 1870-1914. There is a third volume edited by Dietmar Petzina, et.al for 1914 to 1945, though there is little for the period 1914-1918.

1.  Population before unification The German Confederation Total population (in millions) 1822

39.6

1843

49.4

1864

53.7

Individual states in 1841: Population in the German Confederation (in millions) Austria

16.6

Bavaria

4.4

Hanover

1.7

Saxony

1.7

Württemberg

1.7

Baden

1.3

None of the other states had a population of over 1 million; their total population amounted in 1841 to about 5.5 million, ranging from about 734,000 inhabitants in Kurhesse to some 28,000 in Schaumburg-Lippe. The table does not include Prussia, figures for which are given below for its whole territory, both within and outside the Confederation. It is, however, worth providing the population of the Habsburg territories within the Confederation as this was always regarded as the ‘German’ part of the empire. Prussia 1820

10.3

1840

14.9

1870

19.4*

This excludes the additional 4.5 million subjects gained by annexation in 1867.

*

358

Appendix 1

Austria–Hungary 1820

25.5

1870

34.8

2.  The German Second Empire Population (in millions) 1870

40.8

1880

45.0

1890

49.2

1900

56.0

1910

64.6

Composition of the labour force for the territory of the subsequent German Second Empire Date

Primary sector

Secondary sector

Tertiary sector

1800

62

21

17

1825

59

22

19

1846

57

23

20

1861

52

27

21

1871

49

29

22

Composition of the labour force for the German Second Empire Date

Primary sector Secondary sector

Tertiary sector*

1882

41.6

34.8

23.7

1895

35.0

38.5

26.5

1907

28.4

42.2

29.4

*This includes the unemployed and those on unearned incomes.

359

Appendix 1

Maps The maps in this second edition are improved versions of those in the first edition along with additional maps. There is a ‘counter-factual’ map in Chapter 7 on unification. This was constructed by Helmut Walser Smith on the basis of a secret agreement made between France and Austria on the eve of the 1866 Austro-Prussian war, setting out how Germany might be politically reorganized following an Austrian victory in that war. Finally, there is a map of Germany’s nineteenth-century colonial empire which accompanies the new chapter by Ulrike Lindner. These maps are in black and white and are political maps. Coloured maps are often much clearer, for example, for the German lands before their Napoleonic ‘simplification’ when there are hundreds of political units to be distinguished from each other. To get beyond these limitations one can access the collection of digital maps compiled by the Institute for European History in Mainz at www.iegmaps.de. These include political maps of the German lands and of Europe for this period and also extending before 1780 and after 1918. There are also maps on such subjects as road, rail and water transport. Some of these are dynamic maps which plot change over time.

Documents For readers who wish to look at documents from this period of German history, here are some useful collections of English-language documents and documents translated from German into English. Books in the series ‘Seminar Studies in History’ include a document section. Relevant volumes are John Breuilly, Austria, Prussia and the Making of Modern Germany, 1806– 1871 (2011); D. G.Williamson, Bismarck and Germany, 1862–1890 (3rd. ed., 2014); John. W. Mason, The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867–1918 (2nd. ed., 2017). Readers consulting these sections can follow up references to other collections of relevant documents in English. One very interesting document collection is the four-volume British Envoys to Germany, 1816–1866 edited by the German Historical Institute London. This provides detailed evaluations of German politics from British envoys based in various German capital cities. A digital index is available on envoys(GHI)ghil.ac.uk. Most valuable is German History in Documents and Images. To quote from its webpage, this ‘is a comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany’s political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present. It comprises original German texts, all of which are accompanied by new English translations, and a wide range of visual imagery. The materials are presented in ten sections, which have been compiled by leading scholars. All of the materials can be used free of charge for teaching, research, and related purposes; the site is strictly intended for individual, noncommercial use.’ For the link go to http:​//ger​manhi​story​docs.​ghi-d​c.org​/inde​x.cfm​.

360

APPENDIX 2: CHRONOLOGY – GERMANY, 1780–1918

1780

Joseph II becomes sole ruler of Austria following death of his mother Maria Theresa.

1785

League of Princes, under leadership of Prussia, opposes Austria.

1786

Death of Frederick II of Prussia (‘Frederick the Great’); succeeded by his nephew Frederick William II.

1789

Outbreak of revolution in France.

1790

Death of Joseph II; succeeded by his brother Leopold II. Convention of Reichenbach signals move towards Austro-Prussia cooperation against France.

1792

France declares war on Austria and Prussia; War of the First Coalition (including Britain) lasts until 1797. Death of Leopold II, succeeded by his son, Francis II, as Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Austria.

1793

Execution of Louis XVI of France; France declared a republic; Prussia makes separate peace (Peace of Basel) with France.

1797

Austria makes peace with France (Treaty of Campo Formio).

1798

Austria resumes war (War of the Second Coalition) against France with allies including Britain and Russia.

1799

Coup brings Napoleon to power as First Consul in France.

1801

Following military defeats by Napoleon, Austria makes peace with France (Peace of Lunéville). Alexander I becomes Emperor of Russia, following the assassination of his father, Paul I.

1802

Britain makes peace with France.

1803

France gains the left bank of the Rhine; the larger German states receive compensation on the right bank, resulting in the destruction of many small states.

1804

Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, assumes title of Francis I, Emperor of Austria; Napoleon crowns himself Emperor.

1805

Bavaria and Württemberg become kingdoms. War of Third Coalition (including Austria, Britain and Russia) against France. French victories over Russia and Austria (Austerlitz). French naval defeat at Trafalgar. Peace of Pressburg: Austrian territorial losses.

Appendix 2

1806

End of Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon establishes the Confederation of the Rhine. Fourth war of coalition pits Prussia, Russia and Britain against France. French victories over Prussia (Jena and Auerstadt). With Berlin Decree Napoleon initiates blockade of Britain.

1807

Peace of Tilsit between France and Russia ends war. Prussia reduced to rump state; her lost territory is used to form the grand duchy of Warsaw in the east and Kingdom of Westphalia in the west. Stein appointed First Minister in Prussia and begins process of reforms with the October Edict emancipating the peasantry. Napoleon tightens blockade with Milan Decree and founds an order of imperial nobility.

1808

Stein dismissed on Napoleon’s insistence; Spanish uprising against Napoleon.

1809

Fifth war of coalition (Austria and Britain against France). Austrian defeat (Wagram) leads to further territorial losses and to appointment of Metternich as Austrian chancellor.

1810

Napoleon marries Marie-Louise, daughter of Francis I. Hardenberg appointed Prussian chancellor.

1811

Prussia joins military alliance with France.

1812

June: Napoleon invades Russia. French retreat begins in October. Yorck, the Prussian general, signs agreement with Russian army in December (Convention of Tauroggen).

1813

March: Prussia declares war on France. Austria declares war on France in August. October: France defeated in ‘Battle of the Nations’ at Leipzig.

1814

March: Allies enter Paris. May: first Peace of Paris. Peace Congress convened in Vienna agrees territorial settlement of German lands.

1815

March: Napoleon lands in France. June: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo. Final Act of Congress of Vienna. German Confederation established. Otto von Bismarck born.

1817

German Students’ Associations (Burschenschaften) organize nationalist festival at Wartburg.

1818

Constitutions granted in Baden and Bavaria. Hegel appointed Professor at the University of Berlin.

1819

Murder of Kotzebue by a nationalist student in March leads in September to proclamation of the Carlsbad Decrees by the German Confederation to enforce political restrictions on the German states. October: Prussia signs first trade treaty (with Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen).

1820

Vienna ‘Final Act’ establishes greater control of Confederation over affairs of individual states.

1823

Provincial diets established in Prussia.

362

Appendix 2

1826

Start of publication of Monumenta Germaniae Historica, edited by Stein and intended to cultivate a love and knowledge of German history through the publication of medieval documents.

1830–1

Revolts in Hesse, Brunswick and Saxony lead to granting of constitutions.

1832

Nationalist festival in Hambach. Death of Goethe.

1833

Establishment of Zollverein (German Customs Union).

1834

Launch of Young Germany movement.

1835

Death of Austrian emperor Francis I; succeeded by his son Ferdinand I.

1837

Hanoverian constitution of 1833 suspended by new king.

1840

Frederick William IV becomes King of Prussia. ‘Rhine crisis’ with France.

1841

Friedrich List publishes National System of Political Economy advocating a programme of economic protectionism and nationalism.

1842

Consecration of Cologne Cathedral in presence of Frederick William.

1847

Meeting of the Prussian United Diet in Berlin.

1848

Outbreak of revolution in the German lands, other territories of the Habsburg Empire and elsewhere. German National Assembly convenes in Frankfurt in May; Prussia goes to war with Denmark over issue of Schleswig-Holstein; a truce agreed in August. December: Ferdinand I abdicates and Franz Joseph becomes Emperor of Austria. The Prussian National Assembly is dissolved and Frederick William issues his own constitution.

1849

April: Frederick William IV rejects offer of hereditary emperorship of Germany under terms of constitution drawn up by German National Assembly. Spring and early summer: counter-revolution, including use of Prussian and other troops against rebels in smaller states, Habsburg troops in Italy and Hungary, and Russian troops in Hungary.

1850

March: Frederick William IV summons a German parliament to Erfurt. July: peace agreed between Prussia and Denmark. November: Prussia backs down over Hesse-Cassel, abandons its ‘Erfurt Union’ plan and agrees to accept the authority of the Confederation. December: Austrian chancellor, Schwarzenberg, abandons plan to include all of Habsburg Empire in Confederation.

1851

Confederation formally restored; Bismarck appointed first Prussian ambassador to Federal Diet.

1852–3

Formation of Germanic National Museum in Nuremburg.

1853

Zollverein renewed for a further 12 years. Austria unable to form AustroGerman Customs Union and has to settle for commercial treaty with Zollverein.

363

Appendix 2

1854–6

Crimean War signals final breakdown of the 1814–15 alliance system: Austria neutral but anti-Russian; Prussia neutral.

1858

Agreement between France and Piedmont to act against Austria. William appointed Regent in Prussia.

1859

War of France and Piedmont against Austria. Austria cedes Lombardy to Piedmont; Piedmont later cedes Savoy and Nice to France. The German National Association (National Verein) established. Bismarck appointed Prussian ambassador to Russia.

1860

Prussian minister of war, Albert von Roon, introduces military reforms into Prussian parliament.

1861

Death of Frederick William IV; William I becomes King of Prussia.

1862

September: Bismarck recalled from his recent appointment as Prussian ambassador to France and appointed Minister-President in midst of constitutional conflict. October: Bismarck delivers his ‘blood and iron’ speech.

1863

March: Denmark incorporates Schleswig. October: German Diet votes for action against Denmark. December: Hanoverian and Saxon troops enter Holstein.

1864

February–July: War of Austria and Prussia against Denmark. By Treaty of Vienna (October) Denmark cedes Schleswig and Holstein to Austria and Prussia. November: Confederation agrees Prussian and Austrian forces should remain in sole charge of Schleswig-Holstein.

1865

August: by terms of Convention of Gastein, Austria and Prussia occupy and administer Holstein and Schleswig respectively. October: Napoleon III and Bismarck meet at Biarritz.

1866

January: renewal of Zollverein on low tariff basis which ensures continued exclusion of Austria–Hungary. April: secret three-month alliance between Prussia and Italy. June: start of war of Italy and Prussia against Austria. July: Prussian victory at Königgrätz. August: Treaty of Prague – Austria agrees to her exclusion from Germany. October: Treaty of Vienna – Austria cedes Venetia to Italy. Prussia annexes Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and Frankfurt. The North German Confederation established.

1867

February: Constitution agreed for North German Confederation, including a lower house (Reichstag) elected by universal manhood suffrage. May: Bismarck acts to block French acquisition of Luxembourg. July: customs agreement between Confederation and the south German states.

1868

Establishment of a customs parliament.

1870

July: Hohenzollern candidacy (for the throne of Spain) made public; outbreak of war of Prussia and other German states against France. September: German victory at Sedan and Paris placed under siege. October: capitulation of French fortress of Metz.

364

Appendix 2

1871

January: German Second Empire proclaimed at Versailles – William becomes German Emperor. March: first imperial Reichstag convenes and agrees a constitution in April. May: Treaty of Frankfurt by which France cedes Alsace and Lorraine to Germany and agrees to pay a large war indemnity. July: beginning of the Kulturkampf (the campaign against Catholics).

1872

June: expulsion of Jesuits from Germany.

1873

May Laws increase power of Prussian state over education and appointment of clergy.

1873–4

End of the economic boom ushers in a period of reduced growth and price deflation.

1875

Pius IX condemns German government for persecution of Catholics. Formation of the Reichsbank. ‘War in Sight’ crisis.

1878

Bismarck shifts policy: introduces Anti-Socialist Law following two assassination attempts on William I. Reichstag elections weaken the largest party, the National Liberals.

1879

Bismarck meets a papal envoy of the new pope, Leo XIII. Bismarck able to form new parliamentary coalition with one section of the National Liberal Party along with conservative deputies. Introduces a general protective tariff.

1882

May: Germany, Austria–Hungary and Italy form Triple Alliance. December: Colonial League formed.

1882–4

A period of active colonial policy by Bismarck.

1884

Reichstag elections held with great emphasis by Bismarck on colonial issues.

1884–85 Berlin Conference on establishment of colonies in Africa 1887

February: ‘cartel’ elections to Reichstag leading to majority for the governmental parties (Free Conservatives, Conservatives, National Liberals). June: Reinsurance Treaty with Russia.

1888

March: Death of William I. Short reign and death of his son, Frederick, in June leads to the accession to the Prussian Crown and German emperorship of Frederick’s son, William II.

1890

February: Reichstag elections undermine the Bismarckian ‘cartel’ majority; Anti-Socialist Law not renewed. March: Bismarck resigns and General von Caprivi appointed Chancellor. June: the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia is allowed to lapse.

1891

Formation of Pan-German League.

1893

Formation of Agrarian League in response to a series of bilateral treaties reducing grain tariffs.

1894

January: formation of Franco-Russian alliance. October: Caprivi resigns as Chancellor and is replaced by Prince von Hohenlohe.

365

Appendix 2

1896

William II congratulates President Kruger of the Boer Republic on the failure of the Jameson Raid.

1897

Conservative reconstruction of government with three key appointments: von Tirpitz as Secretary for the Navy; von Miquel as Prussian minister of finance; and Bernard von Bülow as Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

1898

March–April: breakdown of Anglo-German talks on resisting Russian expansion in the Far East. April: passage of first Navy Law through the Reichstag; formation of the Navy League. June: Reichstag elections produce poor results for the right. September: Fashoda crisis between Britain and France.

1899

Anglo-French agreement on Africa.

1900

June: second Navy Law. October: Bernard von Bülow becomes Chancellor. Germany part of an alliance of states which represses the Boxer Rebellion in China

1902

Britain and Japan sign defensive alliance. Implementation of a new protective tariff.

1903

Reichstag elections see major socialist party success.

1904

Formation of Entente Cordiale between Britain and France. Commercial treaty between Germany and Russia. War between Russia and Japan.

1904–5

Naval defeats in Russo-Japanese war precipitate crisis and revolution in Russia.

1904–7

German war of annihilation against the Herero and Nama peoples in German South West Africa.

1905–8

German repression of resistance in the ‘Maji Maji’ war in German East Africa.

1905

February–July: First Moroccan crisis.

1906

January–April: Algeciras Conference settles Moroccan crisis. February: Britain launches its first Dreadnought in response to German navy building. June: third Navy Law.

1907

January: Reichstag ‘Hottentot’ elections see socialist setback and a parliamentary majority (the ‘Bülow bloc’) of pro-colonial parties against Centre Party and SPD. Naval talks between Britain and Russia lead to agreement. June–October: Germany rejects disarmament proposals at The Hague. July: Triple Alliance renewed for six years.

1908

The Daily Telegraph affair. October: Austrian annexation of BosniaHerzegovina. Fourth Navy Law.

1909

March: collapse of ‘Bülow bloc’; June: final defeat of the financial reform programme that had led to collapse. July: Bülow resigns and is replaced as Chancellor by Bethmann-Hollweg.

366

Appendix 2

1910

Failure of scheme to reform Prussian three-class franchise for elections to the lower house (Landtag).

1911

Second Moroccan Crisis.

1912

February: Haldane mission to Germany fails to end naval race. March: new Navy Law published along with an Army Bill. First Balkan War. Reichstag elections: SPD becomes largest party with 110 seats and over one-third of the popular vote.

1913

Second Balkan War. June: Army Finance Bill to pay for massive expansion of army. France also passes an Army Bill to expand its army.

1914

28 June: assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria leads to the July crisis. Austrian ultimatum to Serbia issued on 23 July. The first declaration of war was Austria on Serbia (28 July). Seven further declarations of war by 12 August saw a general state of war in Europe. On 4 August, in a demonstrative display of national unity, all the parties in the Reichstag vote for war credits. September: first battle of Marne halts German advances into France; Russian defeat at the Masurian Lakes. Falkenhayn replaces Moltke as German commander-in-chief. November: Hindenburg appointed commander-in-chief on the eastern front.

1915

February: Germany declares blockade of Britain. War on western front settles into pattern of inconclusive trench warfare.

1916

February: Battle of Verdun. July: Battle of the Somme. August: Hindenburg appointed Chief of General Staff with Ludendorff as Quartermaster-General. December: Auxiliary Service Law.

1917

February: revolution in Russia. April: the United States declares war on Germany; William II promises universal suffrage for Prussian elections. July: Bethmann-Hollweg replaced as Chancellor by Michaelis; mutiny in German navy; Reichstag passes motion in favour of peace. October: Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia leads in November to opening of peace negotiations between Russia and Germany. December: hostilities suspended on eastern front; Michaelis replaced as Chancellor by Hertling.

1918

January: strikes in Berlin. March: Brest-Litovsk treaty between Russia and Germany gains territory in the east and provides basis for a renewed offensive on the western front (March–April). July: third and last German offensive on western front. September: the Army Command admits the war is going badly and calls for an armistice; Hertling replaced as Chancellor by Prince Max von Baden. October: Germany requests armistice from President Wilson of the United States; dismissal of Ludendorff; William agrees to the appointment of a chancellor based on a Reichstag majority and a democratic reform of the German constitution; sailors’ mutiny. November: revolution; abdication of William II; armistice signed; proclamation of a republic under the SPD leader, Ebert. December: Reich Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils in Berlin; formation of the German Communist Party.

367

GENERAL READING SUGGESTIONS

This is, inevitably, a highly selective list. Many other works of general relevance are included in the references and reading suggestions provided in the individual chapters. I make a few comments on this selection.

General, European and Global History Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (2004). A landmark in the recent turn to ‘global history’ along with the book by Osterhammel listed below. Evans, R. J., The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 (2016). Recently published in the ‘Penguin History of Europe’ series. Hobsbawn, E., The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Capital (1975); The Age of Empire (1987). Dated but classic volumes by a great historian. Kennedy, P., The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1988). Kocka, J. and Mitchell, A., eds, Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 1993). Linked to a research project focused on Germany. Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914 (1993). A major work of historical sociology. Osterhammel, J., The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (2014). Schroeder, Paul W., The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (1994). Argues for a major shift in the nature of diplomacy before and after the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. Sperber, J., Revolutionary Europe, 1780–1850 (2000).

General 19th Century German History Berger, S., Germany: Inventing the Nation (2004). German volume in a series entitled ‘Inventing the Nation’. Blackbourn, D., History of Germany, 1780–1918: The Long Nineteenth Century (2003). Breuilly, J., Austria, Prussia and the Making of Modern Germany, 1806–1871 (2011). Brophy, J. M., Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800–1850 (2007). Brose, E. D., The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia (1993). Clark, C., Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (2006). Craig, G., Germany 1866–1945 (1978). Along with Sheehan below, the two relevant volumes on Germany of the Oxford History of Modern Europe. Dwyer, Philip G., ed., Modern Prussian History, 1830–1947 (2001). Green, A., Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Germany (2001). This is about a number of the ‘medium’ states in nineteenth century Germany, instead of being focused on Prussia and Austria.

General Reading Suggestions Hamerow, T., The Social Foundations of German Unification 1858–1871, 2 vols (1969, 1972). Dated but full of valuable material. Judson, Pieter M., The Habsburg Empire: A New History (2016). A major reinterpretation of the Habsburg Empire which is usually marginalized in treatments of nineteenth century German history. Lee, W. R., ed., German Industry and German Industrialisation Essays in German Economic and Business History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1991). See, in particular, the chapters by Rainer Fremdling, R. H. Dumke, Wilfried Feldenkirchen and Richard Tilly. Nipperdey, T., German History from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866 (1996). The only volume so far translated from his great trilogy, for which see below. Ogilvie, S. and Overy, R., eds, Germany A New Social and Economic History: Volume 3 Since 1800 (2003). Pierenkemper, T. and Tilly, R., The German Economy during the Nineteenth Century (2004). Retallack, James R., ed., Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (2008). Sheehan, J. J., German History 1770–1866 (1989). Simms, B., The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779–1850 (1998). Smith, H., The Continuities of German History: Nation, Race, and Religion across the Long Nineteenth Century (2009). Smith, H., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (2011). Sperber, J., ed., Oxford Short History of Germany 1800–1870 (2004).

Select German language works The Gebhardt series provides the fullest ‘handbook’ treatment of 19th century Germany. The Lutz volume is notable because it deliberately avoids a ‘Prussian’ perspective. The two multivolume works by Thomas Nipperdey and Hans-Ulrich Wehler represent major and very contrasting ways of interpreting German history. Finally, I have added a couple of German language works focused on the earlier period. There are many good English language textbooks on German history after 1871 but rather fewer for the earlier nineteenth century. Fahrmeir, A., Europa zwischen Restauration, Reform und Revolution 1815–1850 (2012). Gebhardt Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte. This series, published by Klett-Cotta Verlag Stuttgart, has five volumes (13–17) covering the period 1806–1918. Lutz, H., Zwischen Habsburg und Preussen: Deutschland 1815–1866 (1985). Nipperdey, T., Deutsche Geschichte, 3 vols (1983, 1990, 1992). Siemann, W., Vom Staatenbund zum Nationalstaat. Deutschland 1806–1871 (1995). Wehler, H.-U., Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1700–1990 (five volumes published between 1987 and 2008).

369

NAME INDEX

Note: Dates next to princes indicate the duration of their reigns. Albert, Karl, King of Sardinia-Piedmont  119 Albrecht zu Mecklenburg, Count Johann  322 Alexander, King of Bulgaria  156–7 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia  307, 333 Anderson, Margaret L.  145 Anneke, Mathilde Franziska (1817–84)  287 Anzengruber, Ludwig (1839–89)  95 Arndt, Ernst Moritz (1769–1860)  20, 22, 23 Arnim, Bettina von  41, 87, 89, 92 Assing, Ottilie  40 Aston, Louise (1814–71)  92, 94 Auerbach, Bertold (1812–82)  95 Augusta, wife of Wilhelm I (1811–90)  148 Augustenberg, Duke Frederick  129, 130 Avenarius, Ferdinand (1856–1923)  245 Baader, Franz von  44 Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685–1750)  84 Bachem, Josef  153 Bade, Klaus  311 Bakunin, Michael  118 Balzac, Honoré de (1799–1850)  95 Barckhausen  16 Bassermann, Wilhelmine (1787–1869)  288 Bäumer, Gertrud (1873–1954)  299–300 Bebel, August (1840–1913)  227, 293, 294, 349 Beethoven, Ludwig von (1770–1827)  83 Behrens, Peter (1868–1940)  247–50 Benedek, Ludwig August Ritter von (1804–81)  133 Bentham, Jeremy  286 Berghahn, Volker  125, 169, 337, 338, 357 Berliner, Emil  250 Bernard Shaw, George  248 Bernstein, Eduard  227 Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von, German Chancellor (1856–1921)  178, 216–17, 228, 271 Beust, Count  138 Biddiss, Michael  251 Bieberstein, Adolf Marschall von  16, 215 Birch-Pfeiffer, Charlotte (1800–68)  95 Bismarck, Prince Otto von (1815–98)  120, 123, 124, 126, 128–31, 134, 135, 137–40, 143–67, 172, 173, 177, 224, 225, 239, 241, 242, 314, 330, 337, 346, 350

Blackbourn, David  145, 150, 159, 313 Blind, Karl  113 Blittersdorf, Freiherr von  37 Bloch, Joseph  227 Blum, Robert (1807–48)  46, 289–90 Bluntschli, Johann Caspar (1808–81)  292 Bonaparte, Jerôme, brother of Napoleon, King of Westphalia (1807–13)  17 Börne, Ludwig (1786–1837)  92 Botzenhart, Manfred  119 Boyen, Hermann von  19 Brahm, Otto (1856–1912)  245 Brahms, Johannes (1833–97)  96 Breuilly, John  123, 329 Brophy, James M.  143, 338, 346 Büchner, Georg (1813–37)  91, 92 Busch, Moritz  148 Bülow, Bernhard von  178, 216, 228, 320 Caprivi, Leo Count von, German Chancellor (1831–99)  157 Cassirer, Paul  252 Charles, Archduke  12 Chickering, Roger  179, 255, 339, 353 Chodowiecki, Daniel  280 Christian IX, King of Denmark  129 Claβ, Heinrich  216 Clark, Christopher  62, 335–6, 343, 348 Conrad, Michael Georg  245 Conrad, Sebastian  214, 215 Cotta, J. F.  87, 151 Craig, Gordon  145, 241, 247, 251 Custine, Marquis de  91 Dalberg, Karl Theodor von, Grand Duke of Frankfurt  14 Darwin, Charles (1809–82)  94 de Lagarde, Paul  244, 245 Delbrück, Hans  214, 226 Delbrück, Rudolf  158 Dernburg, Bernhard (1906–11)  317 Descartes, René (1596–1659)  93 Dickens, Charles (1812–70)  95 Disraeli, Benjamin, British Prime Minister (1804–81)  148 Döblin, Alfred  243

Name Index Dohm, Hedwig (1831–1919)  293, 295 Droste-Hülsoff, Annette von  87 Dryden, John  157 DuMont, Joseph  151 Dürer, Albrecht (1471–1528)  97 Du Thil  16 Einstein, Albert (1880–1952)  238, 251 Eley, Geoff  145–6, 213 Engels, Friedrich (1820–95)  41, 82, 92, 93, 116–17 Erzberger, Matthias (1875–1921)  227 Eucken, Rudolf  263–4 Fabri, Friedrich  313 Fahrmeir, Andreas  120 Falkenhorst, Carl  320 Ferdinand I, Emperor of Austria (r. 1835–48)  101, 112, 118 Ferdinand II, King of Naples and Sicily  102 Ferguson, Niall  213 Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804–72)  92 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb  9, 20, 22, 93 Fischer, Fritz  214 Fontane, Theodor (1819–98)  95, 152, 241 Forckenbeck, Max von  149 Foster, Georg  312 Fouqué, Friedrich de la Motte  87 Fourier, Charles  286 Francis I, Emperor of Austria (1804–35)  13 Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor (1792–1806)  13, see also Francis I Frank, Gustav  82 Frederick, Duke of Augustenburg  129 Frederick I, Elector of Prussia (1688–1700), and King of Prussia (1700–13)  16 Frederick II, ‘the Great’, King of Prussia (1740–86)  3, 80 Frederick William I, ‘the Great’, Elector, of Prussia (1640–88)  80, 132, 143 Frederick William III, King of Prussia (1797–1840)  46, 166, 225, 333 Frederick William IV, King of Prussia (1840–61)  46, 101, 112, 115, 118, 123 Freeden, Michael  352 Freiligrath, Ferdinand (1810–76)  96 Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939)  238, 251–2 Frevert, Ute  279, 345 Freytag, Gustav (1816–95)  95, 97 Friedrich, Caspar David (1774–40)  83, 84 Friedrich Wilhelm, see Frederick William Fritsch, Theodor  248 Gagern, Heinrich von  37, 110 Gagern, Ludwig von  36 Gay, Peter  237 Geißler, Benjamin  10

Gentz, Friedrich  22 George, Stefan (1868–1933)  247 Gerlach, Leopold von  27, 44 Gerlach, Ludwig von  44 Gerschenkron, Alexander  49, 65, 67, 75 n.1 Gneisenau, August Neidhardt von  19 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749–1832)  82, 83, 86, 91 Görres, Joseph  14, 46 Gouges, Olympe de (1748–93)  279, 300 Grillparzer, Franz (1791–1872)  95 Grimm, Jacob  81 Grimm, Wilhelm  81 Großmann, Christian Gottlob (1783–1857)  282– 3, 285 Groener, General Wilhelm  264, 268 Gropius, Walter  249 Gross, Michael  159 Gutenberg, Johannes (1398–1468)  97 Gutzkow, Karl (1811–78)  92 Haeckel, Ernst (1834–1919)  94 Hagenbeck, Carl  318 Hahn-Hahn, Ida (1805–80)  92 Hardenberg, Karl August  3, 16, 18–20, 23, 33 Harkort, Friedrich  61 Hart brothers  245 Hauptmann, Gerhart (1862–1946)  246 Haydn, Joseph (1732–1809)  83 Hebbel, Friedrich (1813–63)  95 Hecker, Friedrich  113 Hegel, G. W. F. (1770–1831)  9, 32, 83, 92, 94, 223 Heine, Heinrich  23, 92 Helmholtz, Hermann von (1821–94)  94 Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803)  9, 17, 21, 82 Hertling, G. V.  228 Herz, Henriette (1764–1847)  89 Hewitson, Mark  152, 213, 338, 339, 346 Heydebrand, Ernst von  232 Heydt, August von der  252 Hindenburg, Paul von  264 Hintze, Otto  214, 216, 227 Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von  285 Hirsch, Jenny (1829–1902)  292 Hirth, Georg (1841–1916)  240, 247 Hobsbawm, Eric  43 Hofer, Andreas  22, 334 Hoffmann, E. T. A. (1776–1822)  92 Hoffmann, Ludwig  241 Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Chlodwig Fürst zu (1819–1901), Imperial Chancellor and Prussian Prime Minister (1894–1900)  231 Holborn, Hajo  145 Hölderlin, Friedrich (1770–1843)  21, 93 Holstein, Friedrich von  157

371

Name Index Hülshoff, Annette von Droste (1797–1848)  94 Humboldt, Alexander von  312, 313, 341 Humboldt, Wilhelm von  19 Hume, David (1711–76)  93 Ibsen, Henrik  245 Immermann, Karl (1796–1840)  94 Jacoby, Johann  149 Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig (1778–1852)  20, 22, 23, 97 Jefferies, Matthew  2, 90, 237, 338–9 Jellacic, Banus  117 Joachim-Napoléon Murat (1767–1815) brotherin-law of Napoleon; Grand Duke of Berg (1806–8), and King of Naples (1808– 15)  17 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1765–90), coruler of Habsburg lands with his mother Maria Theresa (1765–80), sole ruler (1780–90)  7, 17 Kaelble, Hartmut  174 Kampffmeyer brothers  248 Kandinsky, Wassily (1866–1944)  252 Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)  9, 19, 82, 84, 91, 93, 285 Kaschuba, Wolfgang  108 Keil, Ernst (1816–78)  99 Keller, Gottfried (1819–90)  95 Keynes, John Maynard  123 Kiderlen-Wächter, Alfred von  216 Kinkel, Johanna  40 Kleist, Heinrich von (1777–1811)  22, 91, 92, 97 Klenze, Leo von (1784–1864)  90, 97–8 Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian  82 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb  21 Knigge, Freiherr von  10 Knoblauch, Eduard  98 Koch, Robert  318 Kocka, Jürgen  85, 91 Köhler, Astrid  81, 335, 337, 344, 345 Kollwitz, Käthe  242, 246 Kontje, Todd  86, 89 Körner, Theodor (1791–1813)  22, 96 Kottwitz, Baron  44 Kotzebue, August von (1761–1819)  31, 97 Krupp, Akfred  289 Krupp, Friedrich  288 Krupp, Therese  289 Kühn, Hermann  229 Langbehn, Julius  244, 245 Lange, Helene (1848–1930)  296 Langewiesche, Dieter  37 LaRoche, Sophie von  86, 87

372

Lasalle, Ferdinand  149, 349 Lasker, Eduard  158 Laube, Heinrich (1806–84)  92 Le Corbusier  249 Lee, Robert  49, 331, 337 Lenbach, Franz von (1836–1904)  239 Lenman, Robin  250 Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold  82 Leo XIII, Pope (1878–1903)  161 Leopold, Prince  138 Leopold II, King of Belgium  314 Levin-Varnhagen, Rahel (1771–1833)  89 Lewald, Fanny (1811–89)  40, 87, 89, 92 Lichtwark, Alfred (1852–1914)  245 Liebermann, Max (1847–1935)  246 Liebknecht, Wilhelm  146, 349 Lindner, Ulrike  305 Lipp, Carola  108 List, Friedrich  335 Louis Philippe, King of France (r. 1830–48)  113 Louis XVI, King of France (r. 1774–92)  11 Ludendorff, Erich  264–6, 272, 274 Lüderitz, Adolf  314 Ludwig II, Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt (1830–48)  36, 96, 144, 247 Luther, Martin (1483–1546)  97 Maffei, J. A.  62 Makart, Hans  240 Mann, Heinrich  241, 264 Mann, Michael  352 Marc, Franz (1880–1916)  252 Marlitt, Eugenie  88–9, 95 Marr, Wilhelm  154 Martineau, Harriet  285 Marx, Karl (1818–83)  39, 92, 93, 346, 349 May, Karl  250 McPherson, James  82 Meinecke, Friedrich  3, 226 Mendelssohn, Fromet  96, 284 Menzel, Adolph (1815–1905)  240 Metternich, Prince Clemens (1773–1859)  17, 22, 23, 39, 343 Mevissen, Gustav  61 Meysenbug, Malwida von  40 Michel, German  348 Mill, John Stuart  292 Möbius, Paul Julius (1853–1907)  281, 283 Moltke, Count Helmut von (1800–91)  130, 133, 134, 139, 140, 143 Mommsen, Theodore  146, 166 Montgelas, Maximilian Graf von  16, 17–18, 20, 44, 69 Mörike, Eduard (1804–75)  94 Mosse, George  244 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–91)  83

Name Index Müller, Adam  22 Müller, Oliver  213 Müller, Wilhelm (1794–1827)  84 Mundt, Theodor (1808–61)  92 Musil, Robert  338 Nachtigal, Gustav  312 Napoleon, Louis, French Emperor (r. 1851–71)  114, 131–4, 138 Napoleon Bonaparte  3, 4, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20–23, 96–8, 123, 129, 296, 329, 332–4, 342, 353 Nassau, Duke William of  36 Naumann, F.  227 Nestroy, Johann (1801–62)  95 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)  94, 238, 243, 244 Nipperdey, Thomas  4, 19, 33, 153, 240, 252 Oergel, Maike  96 Olbrich, J. M.  247 Osterhammel, Jürgen  214 Osthaus, Karl Ernst  252 Otto, Louise (1819–95)  287, 288, 291 Perthes, Friedrich  3 Peukert, Detlev  213 Pflanze, Otto  148 Pilsachs, Senfft von  44 Pius, Pope  159 Planck, Max (1858–1947)  251, 297 Ploeckl, Florian  66 Raschdorff, Julius  241 Recke, Count von der  44 Radetzky, Joseph Graf von (1766–1858)  117 Radkau, Joachim  213 Raimund, Ferdinand Jakob (1790–1836)  95 Rambert, Mary  248 Rathenau, Walther  220, 261 Reichensperger, August (1808–95)  240–1 Reitzenstein, Sigismund von  16 Richardson, Samuel  86 Richter, Eugene  149, 226 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich (1823–97)  281 Riemerschmid, Richard (1868–1957)  247 Rochau, August von  346 Rohe, Mies van der  249 Roon, Albert von  128 Rotteck, Carl von  285 Rudé, George  104 Ruge, Arnold  110 Saint-Simon, Henri de  286 Salisbury, Lord  157 Salzburg, Duke of  13

Sand, Karl Ludwig  31 Schäffle, Albert  229 Scharnhorst, Gerhard Johann von  19 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775–1854)  93, 284 Schiller, Friedrich (1759–1805)  21, 82, 83, 97, 127, 279, 281 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich (1781–1841)  90, 98 Schlagintweit brothers  312 Schlegel, August Wilhelm (1767–1845)  284 Schlegel, Caroline (1763–1809)  284 Schlegel, Friedrich (1772–1879)  22, 83, 283, 284 Schlieffen, General von  256 Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834)  283–6 Schmidt, Karl  248 Schmoller, Gustav von  231 Schneider, Friederike (1755–95)  288 Schoenberg, Arnold  250, 252 Schön, Theodor von  37 Schöllgen, Gregor  215 Schopenhauer, Johannam (1788–1860)  88, 93–4 Schubert, Franz (1797–1828)  84 Schultze-Naumburg, Paul (1869–1949)  245 Schumann, Robert (1810–56)  84, 96 Semper, Gottfried (1803–79)  90, 98 Shakespeare, William  82 Shils, Edward  352 Siebenpfeiffer, Philipp Jakob (1789–1845)  287 Siemann, Wolfram  1, 40, 101, 348 Siemens, Werner (1816–92)  289 Sinzendorff  17 Smith, Adam  18, 20 Smith, Helmut Walser  213 Solf, Wilhelm  323 Sombart, Werner  214 Sonnemann, Leopold  153 Stadion, Johann Philipp  17, 22 Stahl, Friedrich Julius, 40 Stark, Gary  251 Stein, Heinrich Friedrich von  3, 19, 22, 23 Stein, Lorenz  41 Steinberg, Jonathan  145 Stern, Fritz  244 Sterne, Laurence  86 Sternheim, Sophia  241 Stifter, Adalbert (1805–68)  94 Stöcker, Helene (1869–1943)  296, 297 Stone, Norman  250 Storm, Theodor (1817–88)  95 Struve, Gustav von  46, 113 Thompson, E. P.  104 Thót, Heléna  120 Tirpitz, Alfred von  178 Tönnies, Ferdinand  214, 338

373

Name Index Torp, Cornelius  145, 213 Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834–96)  3, 224, 292, 296, 297 Uhde, Fritz von (1848–1911)  246 Unruh, Hans Victor von  158 Velde, Henry van de (1863–1957)  247 Veit, Dorothea (1764–1839)  283, 284 Veit, Simon  284 Victoria, British Queen (r. 1837–1901)  115 Virchow, Rudolf  158, 159 Wagner, Richard (1813–83)  95–6, 243–4 Wallot, Paul  241 Wartenburg, Yorck von  22 Weber, Carl Maria von (1786–1826)  83 Weber, Eugen  352 Weber, Max  224, 229, 251, 264 Wedekind, Frank  250 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich  145, 213 Weidling, Pastor Wilhelm  92

374

Welcker, Carl Theodor (1790–1869)  281, 285, 292 Werner, Anton von  113, 143, 239–40, 242 Whaley, Joachim  1, 3, 331, 332 Wigman, Mary  248 Wilhelm, Kaiser  143 Wilhelm I  241 Wilhelm I, King of Prussia (r. 1861–88) and Emperor of Germany (r. 1871–88)  240 Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and German Emperor (r. 1888–1918)  165, 166, 216, 231, 242, 250, 260, 315, 317, 320 Wilson, Woodrow  274 Windischgrätz, Alfred Fürst von (1787–1862)  117 Windthorst, Ludwig  149, 159 Winter, Christian Friedrich  36 Woermann, Adolph  312 Wolff, Guntram B.  152 Wollstonecraft, Mary  285 Württemburg, Duke of  13 Zantop, Susanne  313 Zola, Emile  245

SUBJECT INDEX

Abitur certificate  172, 173 Absolum and Achitophel (Dryden)  157 academics, Wilhelmine era  251 Academies of Fine Art  239 accident insurance  207 ADAV, see General German Workers’ Association ADF, see Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein Adlon Hotel  220 administrative cities (Residenzstädte)  50, 239 administrative reform  60, 63 Adulteress, The (Fontane)  241 AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft)  248 Afghanistan  266 Agrarstaat  351 agriculture  223 capitalism  160 crises  71–2 depression  51 employment  53 First World War  262 industrialization  173–7, 179 net investment  202 productivity  19, 34, 42–4, 51, 176, 199–201, 262, 263 reforms  34, 52, 64 regionalization  58 Alldeutsche Verband (Pan-German Society)  216, 320, 323, 324 Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein (ADF)  291, 292 Allgemeine Deutsche Lehrerinnenverein  296 Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794  8, 18 Allgemeine Zeitung (Cotta)  151 Alsace-Lorraine annexation of  140, 146, 169, 330, 357 Berlin’s unwillingness to cede  215 Holy Roman Empire  10 inhabitants  184 population density  189 population growth and movements (1876– 1922)  183 resident distribution according to religious denomination  189 social policy  232 Alsatian constitution  228 Altenburg  109 Altes Museum (Old Museum) (Schinkel)  90 Amani Institute  319 Amberg, Battle of (1796)  12

American Civil War  307 Anglo-Russian Entente  216 anti-Catholic laws  159 anticlericalism  348 anti-Semitism  97, 103, 145, 148, 154, 172 Anti-Socialist Law of October 1878  153, 161, 165, 177, 231 Arbeiterbildungsverein (workers’ educational association)  293 Arbeiterverbrüderung (workers’ brotherhood)  108 Arbeitervereine (workers’ societies)  108 architecture  90 modernists/traditionalists  248–50 national  97–9 Second German Empire  240–2, 245 Argentina  307 army home front mobilization  258–65 1848–9 revolution  115 Prussia  127 artisans, growth  9, 39, 41, 42 arts Art Nouveau  247 expressionism  252 German Confederation  91–6 Gründerzeit culture  239–3 industrial  248 Jugendstil  247, 248 modernism in  238 national style  240 naturalism  246 painters  239–41, 246 Romanticism  83 Secessionists  241 Aspern, Battle of (1809)  22 assembly democracy (Versammlungsdemokratie)  117 Association for German Colonization (Gesellschaft für deutsche Kolonisation)  313 Athenäums-Fragmente (Schlegel)  83 Auerstedt, Battle of (1806)  13 Aufklärung  7, 9, 18, 19, 21, see also Enlightenment Auslandsdeutsche (Germans abroad)  306–8 Australia  265, 307 Austria  154, 158, 338, 341, 342, 345 armed neutrality  126

Subject Index Campo Formio settlement (1797)  12 eighteenth century  7, 80 federalism  152 German Confederation  28, 30, 124 maps  6, 15, 132 Prussia relationship  8, 10–13, 124, 126 reforms, failure of  20 revolution (1848)  116, 118, 120 unification (1871)  124 wars  126, 131–4 Austro-Hungary  97, 215, 229, 338 maps  135, 136, 176 migration  308–10 population  308–10, 359 Auswanderer (emigrants)  308 authoritarianism  166 Auxiliary Service Act  265, 268 average life expectancy  186 Baden  224, 330 abolished internal censorship  31 agricultural reforms  52 bureaucracy  33, 64 censorship  31 conservative politics  40 economy  50, 52, 58 education  69 First World War  260 France relationship  12, 23 German Confederation  28, 31 industrialization  52, 54 liberal press laws  31 parliament  36, 40 political mobilization  35–7 population  55, 56, 169 reforms  16, 17 regional variations in development  58, 59 religion  47 revolution (1848)  109, 113, 116–18 road and railway development  67, 68 social policy  232 sovereignty  13, 14, 17 taxation  63, 84 territorial expansion  63 war of 1866  133 Zollverein  66 Baden-Baden  89 Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse  220 Bank für Handel und Industrie in Darmstadt  65 banking system, role of  65–6 Basel, Peace of with France  11 Bauakademie (School of Architecture) (Schinkel)  90 Bavaria  61, 62, 98, 224, 225, 330, 342 agriculture  51, 52, 177

376

architecture  90 bureaucracy  17, 34, 64 cultural and intellectual trends  239 economy  50, 58 education  69 German Confederation  28 higher civil servants, social origins of  193 industrialization  54 infant mortality  54 modernizing state  33, 34 Netherlands exchange  7, 11 non-agricultural income  50 parliament  36 political mobilization  35–6, 39 population  56, 169 reforms  16–20 regional variations in development  58, 59 religion  44, 45, 172 revolution (1848)  109, 113, 114 road and railway development  67 social changes  71 Sparkassen (savings banking system)  65 taxation  63 Zollverein  66 BDF, see Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine Beamtenstaat (civil service state)  32 Befreiungshalle  98 Belgium  120, 229, 256, 266, 270 Berg, Napoleonic satellite state  13, 17 Berlin  10–11, 22, 54, 83, 102, 105, 109, 126, 161, 223, 255 culture  246, 247 demographic growth  42 industrialization  41–2 political mobilization  39 population  220 regional variations in development  58 religion  44 Technical Institute  69 Treptow colonial exhibition (1896)  318, 319 unwillingness to cede Alsace-Lorraine  215 Victory Column  242 Berlin Africa Conference of 1884–5  314, 315 Berlin Cathedral  241 Berliner Politische Wochenblatt  40 Bethmanns Bank  65 Biedermeier style  89–90, 94 Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (Images from the German Past) (Freytag)  97 Bildung (education, cultural formation)  82–4, 94 Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle classes)  85, 244 Bildungsroman  82, 94 Bismarkian Germany  143–67 domestic politics  157–9

Subject Index foreign policy  154–6 outsider  123–5 political foundations  146–4 Bleichröder Bank  65 Bonner Zeitung  40 Borsig  67 Bosnia-Herzegovina  330 Bourbon policy  12 bourgeoisie  220, 221, 224, 233, see also middle class liberal policies  37 Wirtschaftbürgertum (economic bourgeoisie)  85 Boxer War (1900)  317 Brandenburg-Prussia  80 Braunschweig, unrest  38 Brazil  307 Bremen  54, 62, 109, 227 banking system  66 Hansa ports  71 Zollverein  67 Breslau  50, 54 Breslauer Zeitung  104 Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind) (Schiller)  82 Britain, see England British Bechuanaland  314 British Cape Colony  314 Brockhaus, Heinrich  151 Brockhaus Encyclopaedia  41 Brunswick, agreements on wages and conditions in metal industries  205 budgeting for rent  192 Bulgarian crisis of 1885–7  156–8 Bülow Bloc  226, 322 Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF)  294, 296, 300 Bundesrat  146, 147, 259–61 Bunte Steine (Stifter)  94 bureaucracy Baden  33 Bavaria  17, 34 civilian  259 German Confederation  18, 32–4 Prussia  19, 33, 37, 40 state  64, 74 bürgerliche Freiheit (bourgeois freedom)  18 Bürgerschulen (middle schools)  69 Bürgertum (bourgeoisie)  220, 221, 224, 233 Burgfrieden  258–60, 269, 270 Burschenschaften (student associations)  37–9, 97 Cameroon  313, 320 Campo Formio settlement (1797)  12

Canada  307 capitalist “Bochum” workers, regional origins of  190 capitalist development  72–4 Carlsbad  89 Catholic Centre Party  44, 158, 226–8, 231, 232, 271, 272, 323, 349, 350, 353 Catholicism  22, 45–7, 83, 158–9, 166, 348, 350 Catholic revivalism  45, 46 Catholic Rhineland  44 Catholics  22, 44, 46, 47, 74, 108, 126, 138, 149, 151, 153, 158, 159, 161, 172, 173, 177, 221, 224, 269, 348–50, 352 censorship, German Confederation  31, 38–40, 46 Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith  172 Central Europe  119, 151, 154, 169, 174, 246, 341, 353 centralized production (Manufakturen)  50 Chemnitz  50, 68 Chile  307 China, Boxer War (1900)  317 Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst  231 Christianity, see also Catholicism; Protestantism ‘awakened’ Christians  45 Church of the ‘Prussian Union’  46 city growth  191 city life  219–24 Civil Code of 1900  173 Clarissa (Richardson)  87 Code Civile (Code Napoleon)  17, 18, 332 Cologne  54, 65 exhibition (1914)  250 Cologne Cathedral  241 colonial cultures  318–22 colonial empire, map  316 colonial engagements before 1880s  312–13 colonial expansion  313–18 colonial fantasies  312–13 colonial involvement  322–4 Colonial Office  317 Commercial Code of 1861  228 Communist League  93 Condition of the Working Classes in England (Engels)  41 Confederal Diet  30, 31 Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund)  4, 13, 14, 18, 23 map  29 reforms  16–20 Confederation of the States, see German Confederation (Deutsche Bund) Confession of Augsburg  46 Congress of Vienna  28, 35, 124

377

Subject Index conservatism  22, 34, 40, 44, 46, 109, 145, 147, 160, 252, 338, 344, 345, 350–2 Conservative Party  173 conservatives  9, 17, 19 Catholic  44, 45 German Confederation member states  33, 34, 40 opposition to the state  40 reform programme  17, 22 Rhineland  44 constitutional crisis  224–8 Convention of Reichenbach  11 Conversations-Lexikon  86 counter-revolution (1848–9)  114–18, 127, 337 craft association (Handwerkerverein)  108 Crimean War (1854–6)  126, 331 Crystal Palace, Munich  241 cultural reformers  243–50 culture (Kultur) critics  243–50 Gründerzeit  239–3, 245 national identity  21 political  143–67 Prussia  126–7 trends, German Confederation  81– 100, 237–53 Customs Union, see Zollverein Daheim (At Home)  87 Dantons Tod (Danton’s Death) (Büchner)  92 Darwinism  94 social  151 Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus (The Earliest SystemProgramme of German Idealism)  93 Das belletristische Ausland (Belles Lettres from Abroad)  87 Das Ganze Haus  72 Das Kapital (Marx)  93 Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (Radkau)  213 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (Gouges)  279 demographic growth  169–210 Denmark German Confederation  28, 103, 115 industrialization  174 war (1863–4)  129–31 war of 1866  133 Der Blaue Reiter  252 Der moderne Kapitalismus  223 Deutsche Bundesakte  102, 114 Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society)  323 Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung (Germany in Her Deep Humiliation)  21–3

378

Deutsche Michel  107 Deutscher Bund, Carlsbad Decrees  97 Deutsche Staats-Wörterbuch (Bluntschli)  292 Deutsche Turnbewegung (German Gymnasts’ Movement)  97 Deutsche Werkstätten (Schmidt)  248 Deutschland ein Wintermärchen (Heine)  92 Die Brücke  252 Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Women under Socialism) (Bebel)  294 Die Gartenlaube  88 Die Gesellschaft  245 Die Journalisten (Freytag)  95 Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Goethe)  82 Die Neue Generation (The New Generation)  296 Die schöne Müllerin (Schubert)  84 Dieses Buch gehört dem König (Arnim)  92 Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten (Temperaments on the Loss of a Lover) (Weber)  83 Die Waise von Lockwood (The Orphan of Lookwood) (Birch-Pfeiffer)  95 Die Welträtsel (The Riddles of the World) (Haeckel)  94 Diskonto-Gesellschaft Bank  65 division of labour, regional  50 ‘Does Germany need colonies?’ (Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien?)  313 Dom (Berlin Cathedral)  220 domestic politics  157–61 Dorfgeschichten (Auerbach)  95 Dortmund  169 Dresden  22, 50, 83, 90, 96, 98, 117, 239 Duden  81 Durlach  59 Düsseldorf  52–3, 260 Düsseldorfer Monatshefte  114 Earth Spirit (Wedekind)  250 East-Elbian Prussia  34 Eastern Europe  266, 270, 272 Economic Consequences of the Peace, The (Keynes)  123 economy capitalist  41 growth  51–8, 72, 74, 125 liberalism  41, 44 Prussia  33 education Bavaria  45 German Confederation  7, 37, 40, 68–70, 85 Nationalerziehung (national education)  22 Prussia  20, 33 public  194 reforms  16, 19

Subject Index Eiffel, regional variations in development  58 ‘eine Art Nationsanwärter’  103 Elbing  59 Electoral Hesse  28, 35, 38 Elektropolis  220 elementary education  70 elementary schools (Volksschulen)  69, 290 England  33, 82, 119, 120, 125, 129, 146, 215, 216, 218, 265, 314, 317, 341 Arts and Crafts movement  247 constitutional system  227 economy  125 industrialization  175 migration  308 pig iron production  201 English East India Company  312 enlightened absolutism  7 enlightened rationalism  7 Enlightenment Catholic  45 German (Aufklärung)  7, 18 Entente cordiale  216 equality  18, 35 Erfurt Program  165 Essen  59, 169 Europe  11, 27 contest  4 crisis of the late 1840s  43 state system  80 European Union  32 Evangelische Kirchenzeitung  40 famine (1840s)  43 Farmers’ League, The  350 Federal Act of 1815  30 Federal Council  147–9 Federal Diet (Bundesversammlung)  13, 28, 30, 31, 35, 133 federalism  62, 109, 152, 225, 227 Federal Office of the Interior  262 female employees by sectors  198 female labour force, structure of  197 feminism  344, 351 feudal rights  34 abolition of  10 feudal agrarian system  34 ‘Final Act’ (Wiener Schlußacte) of 1820 Article 2  30 Article 26  31 financial revolution  16 First Industrial Revolution  175 First Moroccan Crisis  228 First World War  178, 179, 213, 226, 228, 255–77, 306, 307, 329, 339 broader war  265–7

German home front, mobilization of  258–65 maps  257, 273 polarization and collapse  269–75 social impact of  267–9 Florence  102 Flottenpolitik  216 Foreign Office  215, 216, 225, 317 foreign trade  54, 61 ‘Forty-Eighters’  307 Fourteenth Army Corps  260 France  82, 115, 116, 118, 146, 154, 158, 215, 216, 218, 265, 266, 305, 317, 336, 342, 344, see also French Revolution administrative system  17 charte constitutionnelle of 1814  102 constitutional system  227 Crimean War (1854–6)  126 département system  17, 18 economy  125 German states relationship  10–14 July Revolution (1930)  102, 336 pig iron production  201 revolutionary wars, and end of Holy Roman Empire  10–14 Revolution of 1789  103 state policy  63 war with Prussia  137–40 Franco-German war of 1870–71  255 Franconia  135 Franco-phobia  97 Frankfurt  14, 17, 28, 31, 39, 40, 59, 102, 105, 109, 115, 120, 153, 291, 336, 340 Frankfurt am Main  62, 161 Frankfurter Zeitung (Frankfurter Zeitung)  153, 229 Frankfurt, Free City of  31 Frankfurt Investigation Authority  31 Frankfurt National Assembly  108–13, 291 Frauenbildungsverein (women’s educational association)  293 Frauentaschenbuch (Fouqué)  87 Frauen-Zeitung  287 freedom of trade (Gewerbefreiheit)  53–5, 63 Free Thought Movement  74 Free Trade Union movement  294 French Revolution  299, 305 impact on Germany  8–10 July Revolution of 1830  38, 40 of 1789  3, 21, 24, 27 Friedensordnung (a peace-preserving order)  4 Friedrichshain  220 Friedrichswerdersche Kirche (Schinkel)  98 ‘Friends of Light’ (Lichtfreunde)  46, 47 Frühromantik  83

379

Subject Index full-time primary school teachers  197 Fürstenbund  147 Gartenlaube (Garden Bower)  87, 88, 99 Gastein Convention of August 1865  130 gender orders/disorders  279–303 class matters  287–9 early feminists  285–7 power struggle  281–3 romantic project  283–5 sexual reform, law and science  295–7 social and political order  279–81 suffrage  291–5 women’s movement  289–91 General German Workers’ Association (ADAV)  349 German Cameroons  312 German Catholicism  45 German Catholic movement  46, 336 German Catholics  46, 47 German Colonial Association (Deutscher Kolonialverein)  313, 322 German Colonial League (1887)  151 German Colonial Society for South West Africa  314 German Confederation (Deutsche Bund)  119 bureaucracy  4, 32, 33–5, 36, 40, 46 defence policy  30–1 Federal Diet  13, 28, 30, 31, 35 French Revolution, impact of  8–10 lands before 1815  3–24 liberals  31, 35–40 map  29 modernizing state  32–5 political mobilisation  35–40 population  24, 28, 37, 41–3 religion  44–6 restoration and pre-March  27–48 social question  41–3 state reform and renewal  14, 16–20 German Customs Union (Deutsche Zollverein)  30, 32–4 German East Africa  313, 321, 323 German Enlightenment (Deutsche Aufklärung)  7, 9, 18, 19, 21 German Federal Republic  47 German Garden City Association  248 German home front, mobilization of  258–65 German House  242 German Jacobins  10 German nationalism  4 Wars of Liberation and  20–3 Germanic National Museum, Nuremberg  97 German National Assembly  110, 113, 116, 120, 336, 345

380

German Peace Society  259 German Renaissance  240, 241, 247 German Second Empire  1, 2, 305, 330, 357 labour force, composition of  359 population  359 proclamation of  144 German society, age structure of  205 German South West Africa  313, 314, 320, 321, 323 Gerschenkronian model  51 Gesamtkunstwerk  95–7, 244, 252 Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (LaRoche)  86 Gesindeordnung (the Servants’ Law)  74 Gewerbesteuer (trade tax)  54 global uncertainty  214–19 Glyptothek (Klenze)  90 GNP, see gross national product (GNP) Goethezeit (Goethe era)  81 Goosepluckers, The (Liebermann)  246 Görlitz  59 Gotha Program  160 Göttingen  85 governmental revolution (1848–9)  112–14 grammar schools  69, 70 Grande Armée  332, 334 grass roots revolution (1848–9)  104–6 Great Britain, see England Great Depression  160, 174 Great Exhibition (1851)  89 Greek clubs  38 Grenzboten  152 Griechenvereine  38 gross national product (GNP)  174 Gründerzeit culture  239–43, 245 Gymnasium (middle schools)  69 Gymnasts’ Movement (Turnbewegung)  32 Habsburg Empire  32, 124, 125, 307, 345 unitary state, creation of  7 Haiti  305 Hambacher Fest (Hambach Festival)  31, 39, 98 Hamburg  54, 62, 161, 227 banking system  65 regional variations in development  59 social changes  71 social policy  232 unrest  17 Zollverein  67 Hanover  61, 152, 224 administrative reform  63 agreements on wages and conditions in metal industries  205 agricultural reforms  52 Catholic minority  137

Subject Index German Confederation  28, 32 political mobilization  35 revolution (1848)  114 Hard Labour Law  231 Hecker revolution (1848)  113 Heidelberg  83, 85 Heiligendamm  89 Henschel and Son  67 Herero–Nama war (1904–7)  321, 322 Hermann Monument  242 Hermannschlacht (The Battle of Arminius) (Kleist)  97 Hermannsdenkmal (Hermann Monument)  98 Hesse  16 agriculture  177 regional variations in development  58 Hesse-Darmstadt education  69 German Confederation  28 political mobilization  35 revolution (1848)  113 unrest (1830)  38 Zollverein  66 Hesse-Kassel  13, 23 Hessen  224 Hessischer Landbote (Büchner)  92 higher education, students in  194 Hindenburg Peace  272 Hindenburg Programme  264, 265, 268, 274 historiography  18, 20 Holy Roman Empire  3, 4 Historisch-politische Blätter  218 Historisch-Politischen Blätter für das katholische Deutschland  46 History of Social Movements in France from 1789 to Our Own Day (Stein)  41 Hohenzollern dynasty  146, 148, 179 Hollandgänger  309 Holy Roman Empire Austria relationship  12 Austro-Prussia relationship  10–14 in the eighteenth century  4–8 end  3, 10–14, 21 federal states  61 German states reformation  14–20 historiography  3, 4 map  6 princes  7, 10–14, 16, 23, 35 regional variations  7 revolutions  8–9 war with France  91 Hottentottenwahlen  322 home front mobilization  258–65 hours of work per week  201 human capital  68–70 Hungary  119, 120

ICI, see Institut Colonial International Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (Schelling)  93 illegitimate children  56, 72, 73, 173, 296 illiteracy rates, among military service recruits  194 imagined communities  351 imperial administrator (Reichsverweser)  116 Imperial Constitution of 1849, Article 188  111 ‘Imperial Culture’  237 imperial engagements before 1880s  312–13 Imperial Grain Corporation  262 Imperial High Court, Leipzig  241 individuality  21 industrialization  41, 51–53, 58, 71, 74, 103, 169–210, 219–20, 222–3, 297 Industriestaat  351 industry schools (Industrieschulen)  69 infant mortality  54, 56, 187–8 inhabitants  183–4 Inner Council (Engerer Rat)  28 Institut Colonial International (ICI)  317 intellectual trends, German Confederation  81–100, 237–53 International Workingman’s Association (the First International)  160 Interpretation of Dreams, The (Freud)  252 Italy  102, 103, 115, 229, 330 migration  309–11 Jacobins  10, 20 Japan  265 Meiji restoration  352 Jena  85, 239 Battle of, 1806  13 Jews, German Confederation  30, 43, 45, 89, 145, 148, 153, 154, 172, 173, 221, 269, 274, 284, 311, 312, 340 joint-stock banking system  65 Journal des Luxus und der Moden (Journal of Luxuries and Fashion)  87 Jugend  247 Jugendstil  247, 248 July Revolution (1830)  38, 40, 102, 336 Junges Deutschland (Young Germany) movement  92, 96, 99 Jungfrauenverein (young women’s association)  108 KaDeWe  220 Kaiserreich  161, 213, 214, 219, 225, 227, 232, 233, 237, 309, 313 colonial discourse in  318–22 Kalisch Declaration  333 Karlsbad Decrees  31, 38 Karlsruhe, engineering industry  65

381

Subject Index Karlsruhe Polytechnic School  69 Katzenmusik (rough music)  115 Kelheim  98 Klassik (German classicism)  82–4 Kleindeutsch tradition  4 Kleist-Retzows  44 Klose: Die Bauakademie von Schinkel  91 Kodak  250 Kölnische Volkszeitung (Bachem)  153 Kölnische Zeitung (DuMont)  151 Königliche Gemäldegalerie (Royal Picture Gallery) (Semper)  90 Königsberg  54 Königgrätz, Battle of  134–7, 143 Konversationslexikon (Meyer)  86 Kreditbanken (universal banking system)  65 Krefeld  50 Kriegervereine  118 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason) (Kant)  93 Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) (Kant)  93 Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement) (Kant)  93 Krupp, cast steel factory  59, 60 Kulturkampf (the struggle for culture)  158, 159, 172, 173, 226, 227, 348–9 Kulturnation (cultural nation)  81, 96, 226 Kunstvereine  240 Kurhessen, Zollverein  66 Kurmark Brandenburg  50 Kut-al-Amara  266 labour force in occupational groups, structure of  198, 200 Länder  330 Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel  13 Landrat (rural administrative officer)  64 Landtag  137, 337 Landwehr (reserve army)  128 Latin America  120 League for the Protection of Mothers (Bund für Mutterschutz)  296 League of German Workers’ Associations (VDAV)  349 League of Princes (Fürstenbund)  80, 342 Lebensreform  248 Lebensreformbewegung  248 Lebensreformer  250 Leier und Schwert (Körner)  96 Leipzig  50, 85, 153, 161, 239 Battle of, (16–19 October 1813)  23 Imperial High Court  241 Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung (Brockhaus)  151 Leipziger Arbeiter-Zeitung (Otto)  287

382

Lemberg  50 Lenkung  152 Leonce und Lena (Büchner)  92 Lesehunger  85–7 Leuchtturm (Lighthouse)  99 Lex Heinze  250 liberal, definition  36–7 liberalism  36, 37, 39–41, 135, 137, 152, 159, 165, 238, 244, 337, 343–5, 347–8, 350, 351 economic  41, 44 and radicalism, compared  40 liberal press laws  31 liberals  37–40, 108, 109, 127–9, 145, 149, 150, 158–61, 226, 227, 229, 231, 248, 285, 291, 292, 299, 335, 344–8, 352, 353 distinguished from radicals  39 National Liberals  137–9, 152, 158, 160, 228, 231, 232, 271, 322 Lichtenberg  220 Liechtenstein, German Confederation, 28 Lieder (Weber)  83 Lied von der Glocke (‘Song of the Bell’) (Schiller)  279, 281, 299 Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy (Sterne)  86 Literacy, see education Literary Society  44 literature, German Confederation  91–6 local horizons  219–24 lockouts  206 Lombardy  127, 330, 357 London  340, 344 London und Paris (journal)  87 Lübeck, Free City of  35, 62, 227 Lucinde (Schlegel)  83, 283–5 Luddite, unrest  103 Lunéville, Treaty of, 1801  12 Lutheran Protestantism  46 Lutherans  46 Luxembourg  31 Maffei  67 Magdeburg  54 Magdeburger Börde  58 Mainz Central Investigative Commission  31 Maji-Maji war  321 Malthusian trap  42 Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (Manifesto of the Communist Party)  93 Man of Straw (Mann)  241 Man without Qualities, The (Musil)  338 Margrave of Baden  13 Marne, Battle of the  258 Marxism  165, 350 Märzforderungen (March demands)  102, 108 Maschinenfabrik Esslingen  175

Subject Index Mecklenburg  35, 50 serfdom, abolition of  64 Mecklenburg-Schwerin  227 Meiji restoration  352 Mendelsohn Bank  65 mercantilist principle of state direction (Direktionsprinzip)  61 Meyer  86 middle class Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle classes)  85 lifestyle  87 Mietskasernen  170 migration  170, 186, 189–90, 220, 232, 306–9 and negotiation of German citizenship  309–12 overseas  57–8 seasonal  59 militarism  343 military reform  19–20, 22, 23, 128, 130, 138, 139 Minden  58 Minden-Ravensberg  42 Moabit  220 modernism/modernization  4, 70, 145, 238, 247, 249, 252 conflict with tradition  27–48 modernizing state  32–5 monarchy, 1848–9 revolution  114–18 Mönchen-Gladbach  59 Monumenta Germaniae Historica  97 mortality rate  186, 188 Munich  85, 109, 115, 223, 255 Crystal Palace  241 culture  239, 247 Munich  239 music, German Confederation  91–6 Musterkolonie (model colony)  315 Nachsommer (Stifter)  94 Naples  102 Napoleonic period, German Confederation  20–3, 28, 139, 330, 357 Napoleonic Wars  70, 337 narrow particularism  62 Nassau  16 parliament  36 political mobilization  35 reforms  17 Stein’s memorandum  19 Zollverein  66 Nationalerziehung (national education)  22 Nationalgeist  20 national identity, Napoleonic period  20–3 nationalism German Confederation  4, 20–3, 31–2

students’ nationalism, political implications of  37 nationalist associations, membership of  210 National Liberal Party  137, 158 National Liberals  137–9, 152, 158, 160, 228, 231, 232, 271, 322 national question  96–9, 345 Nationalstaat (nation state)  226 National System of Political Economy, The (List)  66 Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Natural History of Creation) (Haeckel)  94 Navy League (1898)  151, 224, 271 Neckarhausen  73 Netherlands, German Confederation  7, 28, 309 Neue Preussische Zeitung  153 Neue Wache (New Guardhouse) (Schinkel)  90 new German state  140–1 New Zealand  265, 307 Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung  152 Norddeutscher Reichstag  292 Norderney  89 North America  56, 341 North German Confederation  62, 134, 135, 137–40, 146, 153, 311–12, 330, 338 number of children per marriage  185–6 Nuremberg Germanic National Museum  97 Gründerzeit culture  240 railway construction  67 nutritional standards  175, 177 Oberpräsident  259 occupation tax (Gewerbesteuer)  63 Oertzens  44 Oldenburg  109 ‘Old Lutheran’ movement  46 Opera House  90 Origin of Species (Darwin)  94 Osnabrück  58 Ottoman Empire  120, 266 Pamela (Richardson)  86 Pandora’s Box (Wedekind)  250 Pan-German League (1891)  151, 224, 271, 353 pan-German student movement  37–8 Paris  340, 344 Parliamentary Council  120 parliamentary revolution (1848–9)  109–12 party politics  224–8 Patent Law  229 pater familias  223 Path to Victory of Germandom over Judaism, The (Marr)  154

383

Subject Index Patriotic Club in Support of the Free Press (‘Press Club’)  39 Patriotic Women’s Associations  299 pauperism/pauperization  41, 103 ‘Peace Resolution’  272 peasant dress (Tracht)  70 Peasants into Frenchmen (Weber)  352 Penthesilea (Kleist)  91 Persia  266 Pfennig-Magazin der Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung gemeinnütziger Kenntnisse (Penny Magazine of the Society for the Distribution of Useful Knowledge)  87 Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit) (Hegel)  94 philhellenism  102 Piedmont  102, 125 Piedmont-Sardinia, Kingdom of  117 Pinakothek (Klenze)  90 Plenary Diet (Plenum)  28 Poetic Realism  95 pointillism  339 Poland  11, 258 Polish nationalism  351 politics campaign (Feldzug)  116–17 German Confederation  35–43 culture  143–67 order, gendering  279–81 revolution (1848–9)  106–9 Political Catholicism  345 Politik  224 Pomerania  224 Poor Office, Cologne  42 population Alsace-Lorraine  183, 189 Austro-Hungary  308–11, 359 Baden  56, 169 Bavaria  56, 169 Berlin  220 density  56, 189 in different-sized communities  191 German Confederation  24, 28, 37, 41–3 growth  42, 43, 54–6, 75, 183 Prussia  42, 49, 124–5, 196, 358 Reich  223 Württemberg  56 Posen  224 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)  179 poverty, German Confederation  27, 41–3, 47 power struggle  281–3 ‘pre-March’ period  27–48 Pressburg, Treaty of, 1805  13 Press Club  39 Preußengänger movement  310

384

primary education  69 princess  7, 10–14, 16, 23, 35 war with France  11, 12 production indices of key industries  201 Progressive Party  137, 153, 158, 159 progressive Universalpoesie  83 Prometheus (Goethe)  82 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The (Weber)  251 Protestantism  46 Protestant revivalism  46 Prussia  1, 3–7, 16–18, 23, 28, 30, 35, 61, 97, 148, 158, 218, 224, 225, 329, 340, 342, 345, 352, 353 age and marital status of female factory workers  198 agrarian reforms  52 agricultural production  52 Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794  179 architecture  90 association law  231 Austria relationship  8, 10–13 average annual net investment in  52–3 banking system  66 bureaucracy  19, 33, 37, 40, 64 child mortality  56 codification of law (1794)  341 Confederal Army  126 conservative politics  40 constitution  8, 16, 18, 19–20, 33, 127 cooperative mortgage associations (Landschaften)  65 crisis in  127–8 culture  126–7 demographic growth  42, 170 diplomacy and war  126 early feminists  286 East-Elbian  34 economy  51, 125 education  16, 19, 20, 69, 70 expenditures  226 female student body, structure of  196 fatal decision to resume hostilities with France  13 food riots  43 high school teachers, physicians and engineers, social origins of  194 historiography  4 industrialization  42, 51, 54, 61, 220 leadership  1 Lutheranism  46 male conscription  292 map  6, 15 migration  308, 310, 311 Ministry of Culture.  158

Subject Index National Association (Nationalverein)  127 nationalism  20 New Era  127 political mobilization  35 population  42, 49, 124–5, 196, 358 public education, patterns of  194 reforms  18, 19, 64, 332, 333, 337 regional variations in development  58, 59 religion  45 revolution (1848)  109, 114, 117, 118 road and railway development  67, 68 Russian campaign of 1812 and  22 1794 campaign, failure of  11 social changes  72, 73 taxation  63 taxpayers, growth of  202 three-class system  149, 291 unification (1871)  124–8 voting system  178 war of 1866  133 Zollverein  66 Prussian Law of Siege  259, 260 Prussian Customs Union  32 Prussian–German nation state  4 Prussian Silesia  34 Prusso-centric view of German history  4 PTSD, see post-traumatic stress disorder public schools (Bürgerschulen)  290 public sphere  84–91 pure reason  93 Pyrmont  89 racial thinking  322–4 radicalism  39, 40, 44, 46, 344, 348, 351 and liberalism, compared  40 political liberalism and religious critique, connection between  46 pre-March  45 radicals  9, 38, 40, 46, 47 distinguished from liberals  39 Mainz  10 railways development  67–8, 337 expansion, indicators of  68 Rastatt conference  12 Realpolitik  102, 146, 215, 346 Realschulen (technical schools)  69 Rechtsordnung (a legal system)  4, 7 regional variations in development, German Confederation  58–60 reform  7, 9, 10, 14–17, 34–5, 104, 125, 133, 137, 145, 149, 150, 178, 229, 232, 238, 294, 317, 332, 338, 341, 342 absolutist  4, 16 agriculture  34, 52, 64 administrative  60, 63

agrarian  52, 58, 63 Austria  17 Baden  16, 17 Bavaria  16–20 bureaucracy  4, 34 clothing  248 constitutional  270, 272 education  16, 19, 49, 231 electoral  102 Hanover  63 housing  248 institutional  348 land  248 military  19–20, 22, 23, 128, 130, 138, 139 Nassau  17 political  60, 165, 166 programme, Conservatives  17, 22 Prussia  3, 18, 19, 52, 64, 332, 333, 337 Reich  8, 14, 228 Rheinbund  16–20 sexual  295–7 state  14, 16–20 Westphalia  17 Württemberg  17 Reich  4, 7, 8–14, 21–3, 28, 214, 218, 239 agricultural units in  204 dissolution in 1806  21 expenditure  225–6 First (see Holy Roman Empire) growth of expenditure  209 ordinary revenue  208–9 population  223 reform  8, 14, 228 Reich Foreign Office  225 Reich Justice Office  225 Reich Navy Office  225 Reich Office for the Administration of the Railways  225 Reich Office of the Interior  225 Reich Post Office  225 Reich Press Law of 1874  153 Reichsdeputationshauptschluß  13 Reichsfeinde  148 Reichsland  150 Reichspatriotismus (imperial patriotism)  8, 21 Reichsverweser  115 Reich Treasury  178, 225 Reinsurance Treaty  157, 215 relative backwardness of Germany, in late eighteenth century  49–50 religion  22, 31 German Confederation  44–7 and resident distribution  195 Rembrandt as Educator (Langbehn)  245 rental barracks (Mietskasernen)  220 resource allocation in households  204

385

Subject Index Restoration period  27–48 Revolution, see also counter-revolution (1848–9); unrest 1848–9  1, 94, 101–21, 152, 153, 329 government  112–14 grass roots  104–6 monarchy  114–18 parliament  109–12 politics  106–9 financial  16 French  10–14 July Revolution (1830)  38, 40, 102, 336 1789  3, 8–10, 21, 24, 27, 103 ‘Revolution Law’ (Umsturzgesetz)  231 Revolution und Contrerevolution (Aston)  94 Rheinbund, see Confederation of the Rhine Rhine  50 regional variations in development  58 Rhineland proto-industrial production in  50 regional variations in development  59, 60 religion  44, 45 revolution (1848)  116, 118 unrest  91 road development  67–8 Romanenwut  86 Romania  229 Romanticism  21, 81–3, 344 romantic project  283–5 Romantik  84 Rome  102 Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe (A Village Romeo and Juliet) (Keller)  95 Rostock, social changes  71 Rothschilds Bank  65 Royal Navy  341 Ruhmeshalle  98 Ruhr  50, 154 bureaucracy  33 demographic growth  169, 170 migration  310 regional variations in development  58, 59 Russia  129, 154, 170, 218, 229 campaign of 1812  22 Dual Alliance  157 economy  125 migration  306, 309, 311 pig iron production  201 Reinsurance Treaty  157, 215 Russo-Japanese war (1904–5)  218 Sadowa, Battle of  136 St. Louis World’s Fair  242 Saxony  61, 63, 90, 152, 225 agricultural property rights  52 banking system  65

386

bureaucracy  65 centralized production (Manufakturen)  50 economy  50 education  69 feudal system  34 German Confederation  28 industrialization  233 Lower  50 political mobilization  35, 38 proto-industrial production in  50 regional variations in development  58, 59 religion  46, 47 social changes  71 trade liberalization  61 unrest (1830)  9, 10, 38 Schaaffhausen Bank  65 Schaafhausen Bankverein Bank  65 Schauspielhaus (State Theatre) (Schinkel)  90 Schleswig-Holstein  61, 115, 155, 329 agriculture  177 Prussia annexation  129, 130, 133 Schlieffen Plan  255–6 Schöneberg  220 Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (Auerback)  94 Second Army Corps  260 secondary education  69, 70 Second German Empire  307, 310, 311, 313, 318 Second Industrial Revolution  174 Second Moroccan Crisis  216–18, 228 Second Reich, see German Second Empire Second World War  144 secularization  12, 13, 16, 18, 23, 28, 44, 45 Sedan Day  242 Seehandlung (Overseas Trading Corporation)  61 Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, A (Sterne)  86 Septennat  147 Servant Improvement Societies (Dienstbotenverbesserungsvereine)  74 Seven Years’ War (1756–63)  7, 341 sexual reform  295–7 Sezessionsstil  247 sickness insurance  206 Silesia  224 famine  103 feudal rights  34 military annexation of  80 political mobilization  43 proto-industrial production in  50 regional variations in development  58 religion  44, 46, 47 unrest  91 Simplicissimus  250 smallpox inoculation  56 Smithian growth model  75

Subject Index Snob, The (Sternheim)  241 sociability  85 social changes, German Confederation  70– 4, 169–210 Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)  153, 160–5, 161, 165, 178, 208, 227–9, 231, 232, 248, 272, 293, 294, 322, 350, 352, 353 membership  205 women in  208 Social Democrats  161, 173, 178, 228, 232, 270, 271, 299, 322 socialism  118, 145, 221, 244, 294, 344, 346, 348–52 social order, gendering  279–81 social stratification  171–2, 219 society  1, 3, 7, 9, 16, 19–21, 24, 27, 32, 33, 46, 47, 84–91 German Confederation  41–3 Literary Society  44 modern capitalist  44 Sonderbundskrieg (War of the Confederation of Seven Catholic Cantons)  102 Sonderfall  4 Sonderweg (special path)  213, 305 Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe)  86 Sparkassen (savings banking system)  65 Spartacus League  272 SPD, see Social Democratic Party of Germany spinning houses  44 Spring Awakening (Wedekind)  250 Staats-Lexicon (Welcker and Rotteck)  285 Staatsstreich  166 state bureaucracies  33 redefining  61–64 role of  60–61 and social policy  228–33 structure  143–67 Statthalter  232 Statuto Albertino  117 Stettin  161 Stralsund  59 strikes  206 students, Burschenschaftler  37–8 Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) (Goethe)  82–4 Stuttgart  109, 153 Subjection of Women, The (Mill)  292 Supreme War Office  264 Swinemünde  89 Swiss Confederation  102 Switzerland  19, 102, 117, 118, 129, 258, 344 state policy  63 Sylt  89 Symphilosophie  83

Taschenbuch (pocket book)  86 Taschenbuch für Damen (Cotta)  87 taxation German Confederation  62–3 Gewerbesteuer (trade tax)  54 technical education  69 Technical Institute, Berlin  69 Technische Hochschulen  230 technological change  250–2 territorial revolution  332 Thaddens  44 ‘third Germany’  80 Thirteenth Army Corps  260 Thirty Years’ War (1618–48)  98, 331 This Book Is for the King (Arnim)  41 Three Emperors’ League  156 Three Essays on Sexuality (Freud)  252 Tiergarten  220 Togo  313, 320 Toward a Theory of Sociable Conduct (Schleiermacher)  284 trade policy (Gewerbepolitik)  61 trade union membership  208 tradition/modernity conflict  27–48 trans-imperial involvements  313–18 transnational perspectives on nineteenth-century Germany  305–27 colonial and imperial engagements before 1880s  312–13 colonial cultures  318–22 colonial discourse in Kaiserreich  318–22 colonial expansion and trans-imperial involvements  313–18 colonial fantasies  312–13 colonial involvement and racial thinking  322–4 immigration and negotiation of German citizenship  309–12 mass immigration  306–9 Treaty of Björkö  215 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk  272, 339 Treptow colonial exhibition, Berlin (1896)  318, 320 Trier Pilgrimage of 1844  45, 336, 344 Tübingen  85 Two Men Contemplating the Moon (Friedrich)  84 Tyrolean peasants  22 ultramontanism  45 unemployment  50, 58, 74, 171, 179, 192, 219 unification (1871)  123–41 Bismarck the outsider  123–5 improbability of Prussian success 1851–62 crisis in Prussia  127–8 culture  126–7 diplomacy and war  126

387

Subject Index economy  125 population  124–5 new German state  140–51 process  128–40 Germany after Königgrätz  134–7 North German Confederation and war with France  137–40 war against Denmark  129–31 war of 1866  131–4 United Nations  32 United States (US)  120, 146, 274, 341 Civil War  352 migration  307, 308, 311, 324 unrest, see also revolutions eighteenth century  9, 10 food riots (1847)  43 German Confederation  27, 31, 34, 37–9 Luddite  103 revolution (1848–9)  113, 115 Unser Planet (Our Planet)  99 urbanization  49, 50, 54, 58, 71, 169, 219, 222–3 urban population, age structure of  205 US, see United States Vaterland  334 Vaterlandsblätter  46 VDAV, see League of German Workers’ Associations Venetia  132, 133, 330 Venice  102 Verbürgerlichung  90–1 Verkafferung  323 Verteidigungsordnung (a system of defence)  4 Victory Column, Berlin  242 Vienna  102, 103, 109, 111, 126, 130, 143, 239, 246 Congress of  28, 33, 124 imperial courts in  7 Jacobin conspiracy in revolution (1848)  104, 105, 116 war of 1866  133 vocational education  69 Volk  22, 23, 224, 226, 245, 334 Volkspartei  350 Volksschule (primary school)  229–30 Vormärz period  94 Vorwärts  153 wages average annual  203 nominal  203 social changes, impact of  71 Walhalla (Turner)  97, 98 Wally die Zweiflerin (Gutzkow)  92 Wandervögel  248 war Boxer War (1900)  317

388

Civil War  352 Crimean War (1854–6)  126 First World War (see First World War) Franco-German war of 1870–71  255 Herero–Nama war (1904–7)  321–3 Maji-Maji war  321 Prussia  126 Seven Years’ War (1756–63)  7, 341 Wars of Liberation (1813–15)  3, 20–3, 38 without end  255–8 ‘War Raw Materials Section’ (Kriegsrohstoffabteilung)  261 Warsaw  115 Warsaw, Grand Duchy of  13 Wars of Liberation (1813–15)  96 Wartburgfest (festival on the Wartburg castle) of 1817  97 Was ist Aufklärung? (What is Enlightenment?) (Kant)  82, 84, 94 ‘Weavers’ Revolt, A’ (Kollwitz)  246 Weavers, The (Hauptmann)  246 wedding  220 Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (Gay)  237 Weimarer Klassik (Weimar classicism)  83 Weimar Republic  47, 148, 339 Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (World as Will and Representation) (Schopenhauer)  93–4 Weltbürger (world citizen)  96 Weltliteratur (world literature)  96 Weltpolitik  213, 215, 216, 218, 299 Werkbund  248, 249, 252 Werkstätten  247 Wertheim  220 Werther mania  86 Westermann’s Illustrirte Monatshefte (Westermann’s Illustrated Monthly)  87 Westerwald  68 Westphalia  13, 17 agriculture  177 constitution of November 1807  17 higher civil servants, social origins of  193 reforms  17 regional variations in development  59, 60 revolution (1848)  116, 118 Zollverein  66 Wetzlar, imperial courts in  7 whole house  72, 73 Wiener Klassik (Viennese classicism)  83 Wiener Volkstheater (Viennese popular theatre)  95 Wilhelmine Empire  47 Wilhelmine Germany  213–35 city life and local horizons  219–24 global uncertainty  214–19 party politics and constitutional crisis  224–8

Subject Index Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship) (Goethe)  82 ‘will to power’ (‘Wille zur Macht’)  94 Winterreise (Schubert)  84 Wirtschaftbürgertum (economic bourgeoisie)  85 women movement  289–91, 345 in new man’s world  297–300 percentage in major branches  197 role in 1848 revolution  106 in trade unions and SPD  208 workers’ pension insurance  207 Woyzeck (Büchner)  92 Württemberg  12–14, 16–18, 23, 28, 61, 108, 152, 224, 330 agricultural production  51 agricultural reforms  52 economy  58 education  69 high school teachers, physicians and engineers, social origins of  194 industrialization  61 infant mortality  54 modernization of  33, 34

money supply  62 political mobilization  35–6 population  56 regional variations in development  58, 60 revolution (1848)  109, 113, 116 road and railway development  67 social changes  71 taxation  63 Zollverein  66 Würzburg, Battle of, 1796  12 Würzburg, Bishop of  11 Würzburg, Literary Society  44 Zabern incident (1913)  228 Zeitgeist of the Federal Republic  4 Zeitung für die Elegante Welt (Paper for the Beau Monde)  87 Zentrale Märzverein  109 Zionist movement  172–3 Zivilisation  251 Zollverein  54, 66–7, 75, 125, 130, 152, 334–5, 337, 338, 357 Prussia  30, 32–3 Zündnadelgewehr  118

389

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