Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860-1930 9781442684522

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LO C A LISM, LAN DS CAP E, AN D TH E AM BIGUI TIE S O F PL A C E : G E R M A N - S PE A K I N G C E N TR A L E U R O PE , 1860–1930

G E R M A N A N D E U R O PE A N S T U D I E S General Editor: Jennifer Jenkins

Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930 Edited by David Blackbourn and James Retallack

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © David Blackbourn and James Retallack, 2007 Printed in Canada ISBN: 978-0-8020-9318-9

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Localism, landscape, and the ambiguities of place : German-speaking central Europe, 1860–1930 / edited by David Blackbourn and James Retallack. (German and European studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9318-9 1. German – Civilization – 19th century. 2. Germany – Civilization – 20th century. 3. Nationalism – Germany. 4. Landscape – Symbolic aspects – Germany. 5. National characteristics, German. 6. Germany – History – 1871–1918. 7. Europe, German-speaking – History. I. Blackbourn, David, 1949– II. Retallack, James N. III. Series. DD220.L62 2007

943.08

C2007-901543-3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction 3 davi d b l ac k b o u r n a n d ja m e s r e ta l l ac k PART ONE: PLACING CULTURES, MOVING CULTURES 1 Music in Place: Perspectives on Art Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany 39 c e l i a a p p l e g at e 2 Heimat Art, Modernism, Modernity jennifer jenkins

60

3 ‘Native Son’: Julian Hawthorne’s Saxon Studies jam e s r e ta l l ac k

76

PART TWO: POLITICAL CULTURES 4 From Electoral Campaigning to the Politics of Togetherness: Localism and Democracy 101 thomas kühne 5 The Landscapes of Liberalism: Particularism and Progressive Politics in Two Borderland Regions 124 e r i c kur l a n d e r

vi

Contents Acknowledgments

PART THREE: LANDSCAPES 6 ‘The Garden of our Hearts’: Landscape, Nature, and Local Identity in the German East 149 davi d b l ac k b o u r n 7 The Nature of Home: Landscape Preservation and Local Identities 165 thomas m. lekan PART FOUR: LANGUAGE BORDERS 8 Constructing a Modern German Landscape: Tourism, Nature, and Industry in Saxony 195 ca i t l i n m u r d o c k 9 The Borderland in the Child: National Hermaphrodism and Pedagogical Activism in the Bohemian Lands 214 tar a z ah r a 10 Land of Sun and Vineyards: Settlers, Tourists, and the National Imagination on the Southern Language Frontier 236 pieter m. judson Select Bibliography Contributors Index

269

265

259

Acknowledgments

This volume arose from a conference held at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto on 12–14 May 2005. That conference was organized in conjunction with the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies – a partnership between the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the University of Toronto. We are indebted to other sponsors who also made the May 2005 conference possible: the University of Toronto’s History Department and its chair, Lorna Jane Abray; the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and its chair, John K. Noyes; and the Jewish Studies Program and its director, Derek Penslar. Logistical help in organizing and hosting the conference was provided by Mark Laszlo-Herbert with assistance from Katherine Glaser, Edith Klein, Leanne Pepper, and Cecilia Rossos. The preparation of this collection would have been impossible if the authors of individual chapters had not been willing to undertake revisions of their conference papers and meet our deadlines, always in a spirit of collegiality and goodwill. Indispensable research assistance was provided by Krystyna Cap in Toronto. We are grateful to the members of the editorial board of the series in German and European Studies at the University of Toronto Press for assessing the manuscript and to the Press’s anonymous peer reviewers for suggesting ways to improve the book. Our editor, Len Husband, has been helpful every step of the way. For assistance in compiling the index we are grateful to Dan Bullard. Our introduction draws upon the prepared commentaries on the papers presented in May 2005. Like the paper-givers, whose revisions were guided in part by those commentaries, we are grateful to James

viii Acknowledgments

Brophy, Alon Confino, Pieter M. Judson, Richard S. Levy, and Thomas Zeller for stirring debate and helping us see connections among the papers included in this volume. Colleagues and members of the general public who attended the conference also stimulated ideas that found their way into our introduction and the chapters that follow. We regret that papers by Robin Judd and Simone Lässig, which evoked lively discussion in May 2005, were not available for inclusion in the volume. But we are particularly pleased to include Celia Applegate’s keynote address, revised and expanded for publication, as chapter 1. Cambridge, Massachusetts Toronto, Ontario September 2006

L O C A L I S M , L A N D S C A PE , A N D T H E A M B I G U I T I E S O F PL A C E : G E R M A N - S PE A K I N G C E N TR A L E U R O PE , 1860–1930

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Introduction david blackbourn and james retallack

What makes a person call a particular place ‘home’? Does this ascription, this attachment, follow simply from being born there? Is it the result of a language shared with neighbours, or of a sense of rootedness in a particular landscape – the hills and valleys of your homeland, say? Why does a piece of music or a work of art or a journey abroad evoke emotions that capture the essence of home? And what about the feelings of belonging that are forged by political attachments, by civic rituals, by people celebrating familiar holidays or wearing familiar uniforms? Each of these stimuli can be a marker of identity when people think about the place they call home. But all are ambiguous too. Language can be vexed if you or your children speak more than one tongue, especially when state authorities or nationalists insist that you opt for only one. Your place of birth acquires a different meaning if, like a growing number of people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, you have moved on and now live somewhere else. The music and the landscape and the ‘feeling’ of home then take on different, more elusive, meanings. As for politics, no one doubts that civil rituals and uniforms have the power to command emotional allegiance. But both rituals and uniforms can change. Indeed, they can change more than once in a lifetime. Nowhere is that more true than in German-speaking Central Europe between the 1860s and the 1930s. This is a book about the German nation state and the German-speaking lands beyond it during roughly eight decades of tumultuous social, cultural, and political change. The essays that follow are concerned with a variety of subjects: music and art, elections and political festivities, the celebration of landscape and nature conservation, tourism, and language struggles in the family and the school. What all of them have

4 David Blackbourn and James Retallack

in common is a concern with the ambiguities of German identity in the age of the nation state. These essays do not assume the primacy of national allegiance. Nor do they portray as a story of failure the detours and deadends of identity-construction in smaller realms. Instead, they examine the impact of local attachments, landscapes, ways of thinking, and institutions on a sense of Germanness that was neither self-evident nor unchanging. By considering history at different levels of scale, the authors open up historical trajectories and perspectives that may have fallen from view because they did not become part of what we take to be ‘modern Germany,’ but which seemed crucial at the time. As these essays demonstrate, contemporary Germans used a variety of strategies both to experience their emotional home as a place on a map and to imagine their chosen place as a natural home. In assessing these experiences and imaginings, the intention is not just to complicate the way we think about national history, but to use the sense of place – especially its kaleidoscopic, protean qualities – as a prism that allows us to view German identity in new ways. Historians of Germany know very well that the country they study is hard to pin down. ‘Germany’ has taken on many shapes during the modern era. In the eighteenth century it was both a nation of many states (the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation) and a state of many nations (the polyglot Habsburg lands). As Goethe and Schiller asked in the 1790s: ‘Germany? But where is it? I don’t know how to find such a country.’1 Over the following two hundred years the political entity called Germany was so protean that German-speaking Europe seemed almost to serve as a laboratory for testing out different forms of state: Holy Roman Empire, German Confederation, Second Empire, Weimar Republic, Third Reich, Federal and Democratic Republics. Over that same period, the borders of Germany moved in and out like a concertina. Divided, united, divided again, united again, no European nation state has been more chameleon-like. The ‘Lesser Germany’ (Kleindeutschland) created in 1871, with which most of the chapters in this book are concerned, gave one kind of answer to the question posed by Goethe and Schiller. The German Empire was now a nation state within clear boundaries. It had an emperor (Kaiser) at its head and a nationally elected parliament, the Reichstag. Other German-wide institutions followed: the Audit Office, Statistical Office, Railway Office, Post Office, new Supreme Court in Leipzig, and the German Navy. The new German nation state also had a new capital city,

Introduction 5

Berlin. This particular novelty should not be passed over as too obvious to mention, for the 1848 revolution had produced a dozen different proposals as to where to locate the national capital, and Frankfurt, home of Germany’s first national parliament in 1848–9, remained the seat of the loose German Confederation that continued in existence until Lesser Germany was created. By the 1870s, aspiring Goethes and Schillers would have known where to look to find Germany. It was also in that first decade after the process we call ‘unification’ that Goethe and Schiller themselves were unequivocally enshrined in the canon of German national literature, for that was when the first professor of German literature was appointed to a university chair. Imperial Germany was a nation state in ways the German Confederation it replaced was not. But it also bore the signs of its violent origins. The decisive foundational moment of the new Germany came at bayonet point: the Prussian defeat of Austria and most of the other mediumsized German states in 1866 led to the establishment of the North German Confederation, forerunner of the German Empire. The inclusion of southern states such as Bavaria and Württemberg within the empire in 1871 followed in the wake of another military conflict, the Franco-German War. What we call unification therefore began with an act of secession by Prussia2 and ended with the reluctant accession of states3 that had been defeated by Prussia on the battlefield just five years earlier. Should we therefore speak of the Wars of Unification in the 1860s at all, or did this decade see the last of many German civil wars?4 Whatever the answer, Germany was ‘made’ in 1871 by excluding the German speakers of Austria – a group that figures prominently in the last section of this book – while including within its borders significant minorities of people whose first language was Polish, Danish, or French. The way the German Empire came about meant that it bore a heavy Prussian imprint. Historians have argued for generations over whether the empire warrants the hyphenated appellation Prussia-Germany or whether (as we believe) the connection between the whole and the parts was more complicated than that. The kingdoms, grand duchies, and other territorial states that made up the German Empire continued to exist after 1871; their kings, grand dukes, and other territorial rulers remained in place. The largest of these federal states continued to exchange ambassadors with each other right down to the dissolution of the empire in 1918. Throughout those nearly fifty years, the shifting balance of power between empire and states, between institutions that were ‘national’ and those that were

6 David Blackbourn and James Retallack

‘federal,’ constituted the backdrop against which German politics was played out. An older, rather metaphysical approach to modern German history liked to view Germany as a ‘latecomer’ and a perennially ‘unfinished’ nation.5 More down-to-earth appraisals acknowledge that the German Empire created in 1871 was no more than an outline plan for a new political structure. It left many questions about how the political system would actually work unanswered and many paths of institutional growth open-ended.6 What we have sketched so far is a description of the formal, ‘external’ reality of the German Empire – its boundaries, institutions, and constituent parts. This says nothing, of course, about the attitudes, assumptions, and expectations of those who lived within the borders of the new nation state. To what extent did they identify, or come to identify, with this work-in-progress called Germany? Did they (at least those who were German speakers) feel themselves to be German rather than something else, such as Catholic, or socialist, or Saxon? Another way to pose the question, recognizing that few people consider themselves to be wholly one thing or another, would be to ask how the various possible forms of collective identification – national, regional, religious, ethnic, political – were combined in the minds of individuals. Were they overlapping or cross-cutting, intertwined or antagonistic? And how did they evolve between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1930s? In some ways, these are questions that historians have pursued for a long time.7 It is, for example, a commonplace that Catholics were reluctant participants in the new Germany that was two-thirds Protestant. The persecution Catholics then faced during the Kulturkampf (cultural struggle) of the 1870s drove them to adopt a kind of siege mentality, which dissipated only slowly and incompletely in subsequent decades. While many Protestant Germans celebrated Sedan Day, the national holiday, Catholics remained ostentatiously aloof.8 Any number of official and everyday slights to Catholic self-esteem kept alive a sense of being second-class citizens, and with it the continued cultivation of a prickly, defensive Catholic subculture of self-sufficiency. Yet parallel with this sentiment, which was nurtured by a dense Catholic associational network, another one grew in strength, especially among the educated and economically successful: the feeling that Catholics should ‘come out of the tower,’ cast off their own sense of inferiority, and assert themselves as adherents of Rome who were also good Germans. A similar development characterizes the history of the Social Democratic labour movement. Its members were persecuted in the

Introduction 7

early decades of the German Empire, and thereafter they were frequently treated as pariahs or ‘rogues without a fatherland.’ But from this self-consciously sealed-off society within a society, too, assertions of thwarted patriotism were voiced – by trade unionists and by Social Democrats sitting in municipal, federal, and national parliaments. Social Democrats were good Germans, ran the refrain, if only an authoritarian ruling elite would let them show it. The Jewish minority of Imperial Germany offers a third example. Jews were formally emancipated after 1869, yet they were discriminated against when it came to civil service and university appointments or army commissions. Assimilated yet accused by antisemites of being an ‘alien’ presence on German soil, Jews formed a self-defence organization with the telling name League of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. Rates of conversion and marriage outside the faith remained low, but that was not inconsistent with a powerful sense of identification with Germany, which the father of sociologist Norbert Elias and others proudly displayed by sporting an upturned Kaiser Wilhelm moustache.9 All three examples offer a vantage point on the circumstances faced by tens of millions of people in Imperial Germany – and, as we shall see, in other parts of German-speaking Europe – who found themselves juggling more than one identity. Historians writing in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s often presented these cases as examples of the strains produced by an illiberal society – the poisoned fruit of a ruling elite that deliberately used ‘friend-foe’ divisions as an instrument of policy. There is truth in this, but it is an argument that focuses too narrowly on the ‘aberrant’ character of Imperial Germany, as though strained or divided loyalties arise only where ‘normal’ patterns of modern social and political development have been derailed. In the last fifteen years or so, historians have been more likely to start from the assumption that multiple or hybrid identities are the norm – that nation, religion, and class are only starting points. Historians have learned that they need to bring the histories of in-groups and out-groups under the same interpretative lens – for example, by studying Jewish history not as something ‘apart’ but rather as integral to German history, or by examining the socio-political divide between socialist and non-socialist Germans.10 It is now clear, moreover, that we can only view Catholic, Jewish, or Social Democratic Germany (not to mention Protestant, gentile, and bourgeois Germany) through a glass darkly if we do not consider gender – the places occupied by men and women, the role of the family, and how specific notions of the ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ infused

8 David Blackbourn and James Retallack

these milieus. The same might be said of age, the generational variable, and of ethnicity. What difference did it make to be German and Catholic in an area such as Silesia or the Ruhr where there were also Polish Catholics? The same question might be asked of German Catholics and Jews in Alsace, or of German workers in localities and regions inhabited by large numbers of non-German immigrant workers such as Dutch, Italians, or Slavs. Class, religion, ethnicity, gender, generation – all have a place in the essays that follow, all are interwoven with each other and with notions of Germanness. But the primary focus of this book falls elsewhere. We are interested above all in the question of scale. What happens when you place a national history, defined as what takes place within the borders of the nation state, within a constellation of histories conceived on a different scale? If we widen the lens by putting Germany in a European or even global frame, new and interesting connections immediately become apparent. After all, Imperial Germany not only acquired colonies and aspired to pursue Weltpolitik (world policy); it was also linked to a larger world through markets, railway, steamship, and telegraphic communications, emigration and immigration, international organizations and agreements, tourism, ethnographic discoveries, and a wide variety of other cultural exports and borrowings. These ties connecting Germany to the world beyond its borders inevitably had their effects on everyday life within those borders. They influenced what Germans ate (and how much it cost), the clothes they wore, where they travelled, the music they listened to, the paintings they bought, the languages they studied, the discussion evenings they attended, and much more besides. In fact, it is difficult to think of many German experiences, hopes, and fantasies that were not influenced by extra-territorial connections such as those just listed. Exploring their historical impact provides the promise of German history in the transnational mode, as it has recently begun to be practised.11 In this book, though, we want to alter the scale in exactly the opposite way. Instead of widening the lens, we zoom in on German history at the subnational level. Our focus is on the numerous internal borders and divisions within the nation state and on its borderlands. Our concern is with the feelings of belonging that were found there, and with the ambiguities of place those feelings generated. For as Germany’s external borders became solidified and were given priority in nationalist dis-

Introduction 9

course, the rich diversity that characterized life in Germany’s subnational spaces became more, not less, disturbing for contemporaries. Germans discovered that frontiers of opportunity and sovereignty had not been ‘straightened out’ quite as neatly as liberals liked to claim. We try to read these contemporary discourses against the grain, to understand how natural landscapes, political fields of force, and mental maps all eroded, and yet also persisted, in interesting and often unpredictable ways. To do so we have chosen the terms ‘localism’ and ‘the local’ deliberately, because each is elastic. Each can be applied to the considerable range of subnational units within Imperial Germany, among which at least three kinds can be identified. First, there were broad zones within Germany roughly comparable to the ‘sections’ that loomed so large in nineteenth-century U.S. history. ‘Southern Germany,’ for example, comprised the states south of the River Main that joined Germany only in 1871 and were notable for their pronounced anti-Prussian sentiments. The area of Prussia east of the River Elbe (‘East Elbia’) was demographically, economically, and politically distinct from western areas of Germany, whether Prussian or non-Prussian. In both cases, more than a geographical designation was at issue.12 These were regions of Germany whose inhabitants saw themselves, and were seen by others, as having a quite distinctive character. In neither case, however, should the reputation (or self-estimation) of distinctiveness be taken at face value. Indeed, one might argue that historians have failed to consider how regions in central Germany – Thuringia, Hanover, Lower Saxony – could be equally resistant to centralizing and polarizing trends. From this perspective the Kingdom of Saxony, because it lay athwart the Elbe and had affinities with both the northern and southern sections of Greater Germany, becomes less interesting as part of a ‘Third Germany’ and more interesting insofar as it forces historians to reconsider the north-south and east-west paradigms that have constrained the writing of German history for so long. As the essays in part four of this volume suggest, both Saxony and the Habsburg lands lying south of it lay at the heart of nationalist discourses about what it meant to be German and how ‘good Germans’ could best defend their homeland. Thus, it is possible to explore underresearched areas of Germany as frontier zones and as heartlands simultaneously. The second and most easily defined group of subnational entities within Imperial Germany consisted of the individual federal states that together made up the empire. They ranged from substantial kingdoms,

The German Empire, 1871 - 1918

NORTH SEA SchleswigHolstein LÜBECK HAMBURG

O M

MECKLENBURGSCHWERIN

BREMEN Hanover

OLDENBURG

SCHAUMBURGLIPPE

MECKLENBURGSTRELITZ BRUNSWICK

Saxony

H

Berlin

PRUSSIA Brandenburg

LIPPE

ANHALT

Hanover

Westphalia

Saxony

WALDECK

Dresden

Hessen-Nassau

Rhineland

HESSEN

HessenNassau

THURINGIAN H STATES S S

SAXONY

HESSEN

O

BAVARIAN PALATINATE

Karlsruhe

BAVARIA

ALSACELORRAINE

Stuttgart

WÜRTTEMBERG Munich BADEN

HohenzollernSigmaringen

The German Empire, 1871–1918 © James Retallack / German Historical Institute,

BALTIC SEA

East Prussia Pomerania West Prussia KINGDOMS Prussia Bavaria Saxony Württemberg

Poznan

GRAND DUCHIES Baden Hessen Mecklenburg-Schwerin Mecklenburg-Strelitz Saxe-Weimar* Oldenburg DUCHIES Brunswick Saxe-Meiningen* Saxe-Altenburg* Saxe-Coburg-Gotha* Anhalt

Silesia

PRINCIPALITIES Schwarzburg-Sondershausen* Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt* Waldeck Reuss, Older Line* Reuss, Younger Line* Schaumburg-Lippe Lippe

O M S H

Prussia Prussian provincial border Belonging to Oldenburg Belonging to Mecklenburg-Strelitz Belonging to Prussian Saxony Belonging to Hessen-Nassau 0

50 Miles

Washington, DC

100

HANSA CITIES Lübeck Bremen Hamburg IMPERIAL TERRITORY Alsace-Lorraine * Thuringian States

12

David Blackbourn and James Retallack

such as Prussia and Bavaria, through mid-sized grand duchies like Baden in the southwest and Oldenburg in the northwest, to small principalities like Schwarzburg-Sondershausen and Reuss (divided between younger and older lines) and to the Free Hansa Cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. Unlike southern Germany or East Elbia, these were political units with long histories and all the trappings of independent statehood: ruling dynasties or senates, capital cities laid out as princely residences, local nobilities, courts, armies, even representative assemblies. Thus, Württemberg boasted a state parliament, or Landtag, dating back to the middle of the fifteenth century. These states, which both pre-dated and survived the creation of a unified nation state, asserted their rights within the federal constitution of Imperial Germany. But we should beware making an absolute distinction between venerable, historically rooted states on the one hand and a new Germany on the other.13 The tremendous territorial flux in Germanspeaking Europe during the century preceding Bismarckian unification meant that many ‘historic’ states were in fact quite novel. Wartime gains and losses, dynastic marriages, and the exchange or purchase of territory created states with substantially different boundaries and populations in 1871 than had been in place three or four generations earlier. The period of Napoleonic dominance in Germany produced especially dramatic effects, reducing the size of certain states (such as Saxony), making others (such as Baden) much larger, and in some cases doing both in turn, as in the case of Prussia. For almost every German territorial state, the period after 1815 was one of purposive state-building, as rulers and their bureaucrats came to terms with a new world and often with new subjects. Far from subsiding after the shock of revolution in 1848–9 or as liberal advocates of national unity became more vocal and better organized (for example, in the National Association, founded in 1859), these processes of consolidating subnational dynasties actually gained strength in the immediate pre-unification era. Yet they also perpetuated old anxieties, and generated new ones, about whether the German Empire and its builders were really up to the task of consolidating unity on terms acceptable to nationalists themselves. Forging a German empire out of sovereign states, in other words, was not a matter of dynamic historical forces shaping inert (subnational) materials in (nationally) inexorable ways; rather, it was the interaction of two sets of dynamic forces that preceded unification, shaped unification, and continued long after unification.14 As the chapters in this volume suggest, the results of this interaction contributed to the willingness of certain

Introduction

13

groups within unified Germany to distance themselves from minority groups defined as lying ‘beyond the pale.’ That they thereby also diminished themselves was not lost on contemporaries: quite the contrary, it constituted one aspect of the ambiguities of place. The third group of subnational entities is by far the most numerous and the hardest to define. It consists of regions that took their identity from some combination of geography, topography, history, religion, dialect, and economics. Some of these regions were the provinces or administrative units of large states – East Prussia, for example, or Upper Swabia, the Catholic area of predominantly Protestant Württemberg that lay south of the River Danube. As it happens, both East Prussia and Upper Swabia were considerably larger than some German states such as the tiny principalities of Waldeck, Lippe, and Schaumburg-Lippe. Other regions cut across the political borders of the state, such as the Allgäu and the Black Forest in the southwest, or the Vogtland, which spanned the border between Bavaria and Saxony. Some regions were defined by a river, such as the Upper Rhine, or by the unifying characteristic of a hilly or mountainous terrain, as in the case of the Eifel and the Sauerland in western Germany and the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) between Saxony and Bohemia. Sometimes the marks of regional identity seemed to include a curious grab bag of factors: everything from topography, settlement patterns, and trade, to famous forebears, gastronomy, and folklore. In other cases – the coalfields of the Ruhr and Saarland come to mind – it was a locally dominant form of production and the way of life it created that provided the primary marker of region. At this point the reader may ask: is this book not concerned with localities rather than regions? The answer is that it is concerned with both, and also with the nation. We see little profit in drawing a strict line between large localities and small regions.15 Nor can questions about nature and the environment be neatly categorized into discrete groups, with one bundle of questions centring rigorously on exclusively local concerns (for example, tree-planting on an individual estate or the famous Green Hill that Richard Wagner chose for his Bayreuth stage) and a second bundle considering only larger regions defined principally by topography, including the Erzgebirge or the flatlands (Börde) near Magdeburg. We also feel that historical scholarship on nationalism in Germany has made such impressive strides in recent decades that localism now deserves its due, not principally to make up lost ground – though the metaphor seems appropriate – but because

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David Blackbourn and James Retallack

localism promises to generate new scholarly questions or to recast ones that have been addressed tangentially, if at all, from national perspectives. For all these reasons, this book asks, Why did localism become a theme of public concern at particular moments in time, in specific places, and as part of larger discourses that also turned on the meanings of the regional and the national? Why, at these times and places, did Germans embrace particular definitions of the local and not others? We are also interested in the ambiguities of place, which both frustrated and invigorated Germans between 1871 and 1918. Such ambiguities gave rise to personal dilemmas that cannot be reduced to simple or ‘objective’ questions of scale: using callipers and yardsticks is not the best way to slip between their horns. They can be better analysed by considering the complicated, subjective ways in which contemporary Germans thought about where they lived, about how they came to live there, and about why they stayed put or moved on. Thus, the focus of these chapters falls on groups of people ‘living betwixt and between,’ in two senses. The first sense establishes the minor key of this study: the slowness of change, the feeling of embeddedness, the preference for one’s homeland. The major key, however, is one of movement: movement by people who felt unmoored, adrift, at sea, and movement by people whose principal identity did not remain constant from birth to death but grafted with others to create something new – which in turn was reseeded, cultivated, and uprooted all over again. The dynamic, malleable aspects of identity have generated metaphors whose physicality demands that we locate people in places. Three might be highlighted. The first is the metaphor of hybridity. If hybridity becomes a comfortable skin to wear for many of the Germans in these chapters, it is a skin that changes in outward appearance as its bearers cross cultural frontiers. What face will I put on today? Against what opponent will this particular face give me an advantage? The second metaphor is diffusion. If identity is an attribute that is misread in certain geographical settings, we need to remember that such misreadings occur when cultures come in contact or, as Salman Rushdie has put it, ‘bleed into each other.’16 This issue of diffusion can hardly be overemphasized, because it also helps determine how relatively uniform cultures, business networks, even families intermix and become hybrid. As one historian has recently posed the question: ‘How far afield does it make sense to cultivate continuous contacts? What degree of proximity enables a density of communication that may tie particular and lasting memories to a specific ‘there’: the distance one can travel

Introduction

15

in a single day, perhaps?’17 Third, if the German nation can be read from subnational Germany, then we are not likely to get at it by peeling back the layers of something to find its essence or core. A better strategy is to take apart the pieces of a well (or not-so-well) integrated whole so that we can see how they came together (or didn’t).18 In the Second Empire, Germans were able to embrace what Benedict Anderson has termed ‘long-distance nationalism.’ Nevertheless, these chapters emphasize the hybrid identities, displacements, and cross-cutting processes of national aggregation that also forced Germans to imagine home in unfamiliar ways.19 After 1871 Germans learned the art of verifying the new nation as though gazing back at the home they left while at the same time groping to find a way forward. Their engagement with the ambiguities of place thus pried open the national paradigm without abandoning it altogether. While the changing face of the local is an essential component of our analysis, the stories told in these chapters do not flow smoothly and evenly, like the irresistible current of a broad river. But they do not slow down and silt up either: they never stand still long enough for us to say we are ‘remapping’ Imperial Germany. Rather, both dynamic and fixed elements constitute the story of how German histories flowed within and across internal borders. Spatially, our leap beyond Germany’s borders is most often inward, even though the last three chapters demonstrate the merits of moving beyond a kleindeutsch perspective. But methodologically it involves an attempt to move beyond conventional ways of thinking about German identities to recover other symbolic spaces in which Germany’s historical dramas unfolded. To understand how Germany’s borders seemed artificial to contemporaries at certain times and natural at others, we want to examine the ambiguities of place by embracing the ‘play of scales’ ( jeu d’échelles) that was practised by Germans living in the Second Empire and today inspires historians of other nations.20 All scales need some kind of calibration, and we believe that ‘localism’ and ‘the local’ are the most appropriate keywords to use: they bind these essays together and link them to aspects of German history that merit reconsideration. Two dangers await historians interested in localism and local identity. One is to assume that what happens in localities and regions is necessarily more small-minded and cramped in spirit than what takes place on a larger and airier national stage. This was the mantra of nineteenthcentury nationalists, especially liberal nationalists, who praised the

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nation state, which they regarded as modern and dynamic, because they thought it transcended the pettiness of smaller states and regions. The inhabitants of such subnational regions, liberals believed, were resistant to change and obsessed with parochial navel-gazing. Liberals described this obsession with varying amounts of venom as cultural backwardness, political particularism, or insufficient national pride. Firmly believing that history was on their side, they aspired to bring the unenlightened regions up to the mark. A trace of this nationalist view can still be found, although much challenged in recent decades, in historical accounts that make the nation state seem like the obvious culmination of a long process of modernization. According to this view of things, the local, the regional, and the national represent horizons of experience and action, arranged in a hierarchy from the small to the large, from the least important to the most grand. The creation of true nations happens when communication and transportation networks, or schools, or conscription drag even the smallest of local worlds, kicking and screaming, into the larger world of nationhood. From this perspective, localism becomes nothing more than a stage of development along a preordained path or a residual category – either something that is overcome or a piece of grit in the machine. This perspective was adopted quite as easily by late-twentieth-century historians as by liberal nationalists living in the age of Bismarck and Wilhelm II.21 The problem with this point of view is that its adherents assume that all of the dynamism comes from the centre and from the top. In fact, as noted already, there was vigorous state-building going on in nineteenth-century Germany even before a nation state was created, and it did not stop in 1871. One might go further and argue that in spheres ranging from political protest to welfare reform, it was Germany’s federal states and municipalities that proved to be the real laboratories for trying out new ideas. There is no reason to assume automatically that the larger the geographical area, the wider the horizons. People living in the nineteenth-century Palatinate – reluctantly Bavarians since Napoleon made them so – were more susceptible to the German national cause precisely because they were unhappy to view themselves as Bavarian. The city state of Hamburg was in many ways closed in on itself when it came to German affairs; its populace did not want to join the German Customs Union even in the 1880s. But Hamburg was also very self-conscious about its position as a German window on the Atlantic world, proud of the networks that linked its citizens to Britain

Introduction

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and the United States of America.22 Local pride and cosmopolitanism were not opposed: they could productively join hands.23 None of this means that Kleinstaaterei – the fetish of small-statehood – or local resentment about a changing world were myths. Whether they should be seen simply as residues of an earlier age is another matter. It could equally be argued that waving the Bavarian or Saxon flag took on a new quality under conditions of national unification. So, too, in the case of localism-as-resentment. When German-speaking Europe was still organized in several dozen separate states and most people lived in the countryside or small towns, the term ‘provincial’ had a pejorative connotation only for Germany’s movers and shakers; millions of other Germans would gladly have accepted the label as a badge of honour, a guarantor of solidity, a marker of genuine Germanness. With unification and the flight from rural areas to large cities, these connotations and the relationship between these two groups of Germans changed. In the late nineteenth century, ‘provincial’ started to become a term of derision, used by those who were convinced that they were part of a dynamic, modern Germany to describe others who were somehow ‘missing out’ or ‘falling behind.’ And so the other group’s outlook changed too: increasingly they wore the label ‘provincial’ resentfully, as a negative badge of identity. We can choose to see this resentfulness as the lingering spasm of a world that was on its way out; or, more plausibly, we can view it as a step in the process of adaptation whereby Germans fashioned identities for themselves that were distinctive – perhaps ill-fitting, but conspicuously new. That brings us to the second snare that awaits historians of localism. The inverse of the first, it might be called the myth of authenticity, and this one, too, has a long provenance. From Justus Möser in the late eighteenth century, to the ethnologist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl in the mid-nineteenth century, to the practitioners of a saccharine Heimat literature around 1900, writers praised the local diversity of German-speaking Central Europe. According to these observers, it was the sheer unending variety of landscapes and farmhouse types and social customs and dialects that constituted the true strength of Germany. For them, the local constituted a miniature nation, a summary and an endorsement of its diversity. Level local differences in the name of uniformity or progress, they argued, and you destroy the authentic fabric of Germanness, place by place.24 Still shared widely at the beginning of the twentieth century, arguments like these had much in common with the views expressed by the

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contemporary French conservative Maurice Barrès, who distinguished between the pays réel and the pays légal: the ‘true,’ ‘authentic’ France of the provinces and the purely legal-political France of the Third Republic. Love for one’s homeland – the kernel of the Heimat concept25 – was tainted under National Socialism and its ‘blood and soil’ ideology, but quickly resurfaced after 1945, at least in western parts of Germany and among the millions of German émigrés from the east. Even more striking is the fact that, beginning in the 1980s, Germans with impeccably progressive credentials sought to rehabilitate the idea of Heimat and dress the idea of an ‘authentic’ local Germany in new political clothes. For some practitioners of a new kind of regional history, which was theorized as a less stuffy variation on territorial history,26 as well as for those who flew the banner of the history of everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte), it was only by getting down to the local level, where the smallscale was threatened by corporate power and bureaucratic uniformity, that ‘real life’ was to be found. To make that argument, however, is simply to repeat the old shibboleth about the narrowness of local horizons and to cast it as a virtue rather than a vice. It is misleading in either version. We have no doubt about the value of the microhistorical level of enquiry; but the idea that the pursuit of history on this scale reveals something more ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ is illusory. As the essays in this volume suggest, localities and regions are mental constructs no less than nations are. If the nation is an ‘imagined community,’ the same is true of the subnational spaces discussed in this book.27 Few historians today accept the account presented by so many nationalists that nations ‘grew’ or ‘evolved’ – biological metaphors suggesting that they were natural things possessing organic qualities. There is no good reason to accept that such a view is any more plausible for a region like the Rhineland or the Erzgebirge either. It is therefore not enough to note that the local is both embedded in the nation and distinct from it. Germany was constructed in and through the local, via processes that resulted in the transformation of both. Nor is it sufficient to accept uncritically other metaphors that abound in the literature: for example, the local is a building block of the national edifice, the local is a ‘natural junction’ that leads towards ‘the heart of the nation,’ or the local is a source of affection for a community that flows into ‘true national love.’ Metaphors like these mask two important points. The first is that the local, like the nation, is open to multiple uses, which helps explain its appeal to contemporaries and historians alike. The sec-

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ond point is that we should not overemphasize the degree to which nineteenth-century Germans accepted the binary divide that pits a modernizing centre against a traditionalist periphery. Instead, we should recognize that promise and innovation were inscribed as clearly on one side of modernization’s Janus face as were resentment and tradition on the other. When contemporary Germans were forced to consider the ambiguities of place, they realized that a concern with the local was not a lost cause; quite the contrary, it often created an expertise or a niche that had not existed before. Thus, they found that they could claim local memories as markers of erudition or as inspiration for commercial entrepreneurship, even as they also shared in national memories (or hopes) of grandeur.28 Keeping such successes in view allows us to sidestep untenable teleologies; it also helps us map specific opportunities for identity-building among Germans onto the general openness of history itself. This book is centrally concerned with culture. But where is culture? Homi Bhabha has suggested that we seek ‘the location of culture’ by studying how people have scattered and gathered in times and places that figure in larger stories of how nation states come about.29 In this book we examine subnational and transnational gatherings – of Germans who felt perfectly at home but also of real or potential émigrés, exiles, and refugees who found themselves on the edge of what others defined as German culture. Consistent with our belief that local history can bring together stories about a sense of place and a sense of time,30 we want to suggest that studying Germans’ local experience of culture can reveal new facets of identities that were neither fixed nor stable. It is no accident that many of these chapters deal with what Bhabha termed ‘the uncanny fluency of another’s language.’ Historians have been examining German collectivities for a long time now by unearthing the myths and reworking the memories that have constituted German national identities.31 But this work too often leaves us confronting ‘space without places, time without duration,’ as Louis Althusser once put it. The traces of Germany’s ‘shattered past’ that have received most attention are the shards of Germany’s built environments: crumbled monuments, ruined shrines, breached walls.32 Historians have turned their gaze less often on German natural landscapes, even though German forests are beginning to yield their secrets and German waterways offer new points of departure. But natural landscapes are never quite what they seem. The Germans who appear in the

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following chapters were actively traversing zones of control and resistance, trying to balance dependence and exclusivity on the one hand with contingency and marginality on the other. In this volume, our study of the ambiguities of place does not dwell on autonomist or separatist movements. Instead, we ask how nature, environment, and physical boundaries interacted with ethnic diversity, social conflict, and political borders. In this exercise, referring to centreperiphery conflicts seems both insufficient and potentially misleading. For one thing, it inadequately reflects the lived experience of in- and out-migrants to a locality, a region, or the nation.33 Second, overemphasizing people’s geographical marginality to some real or imagined centre makes us think that people are wholly trapped or wholly liberated by their spatial circumstances. But this is no zero-sum game: in fact, ‘a sense of place’ usually constrained and liberated Germans at the same time. Keeping this in mind helps us resist seeing ‘peripheral’ communities always in a passive relationship with a controlling centre. Third, by focusing on people’s historical reactions to the ambiguities of place we are better equipped to understand how individuals and groups were able to adjust to a variety of challenges simultaneously. In this volume we encounter many Germans who, like Bismarck, turned Germany’s territorial diversity to their advantage: like him, they could ‘sniff among the odours of adversity the perfume of opportunity.’34 Whereas adversity might at one moment favour integration – for example by highlighting local landscapes as ‘symbols of national longevity’35 – at another moment it might reinforce differentiation. By studying the nature of such choices and Germans’ ambivalent responses to them, we can recover what Celia Applegate has termed contemporaries’ ‘intriguingly performative commentary on their own times.’36 The chapters in part four of this volume take the reader to GermanAustrian borderlands in south-eastern Europe.37 These regions, which can alternatively be construed as heartlands of the Habsburg Empire, barely fell within the conceptual horizons of many German nationalists. But they were regions with stark ethnic and linguistic divisions that left little doubt in the minds of Germans actually living there – or so it seemed – about where the frontier stood between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Here we encounter children, families, voluntary organizations, administrative networks, and ethnic groupings that defied any unmediated definition of what it meant to be German. Here, regions spanned political frontiers, urban and rural spaces penetrated each other, linguistic

Introduction

21

and ethnic communities intermixed in people’s quotidian experiences – every day and everywhere. In these chapters, Germans often reach but then move beyond what are called ‘frontier posts of life.’ They move in and out of cultural contact zones; they seek consensus or provoke conflict according to their own material and social needs; and they regard borders as blighted or benign according to ever-changing circumstances.38 These portrayals of scattered and gathered groups also remind us that artificially cultivated images of some German ‘essence’ were usually precisely that – images, not reality. Claims about a uniform German identity begin to look very different once the fine details of local identity (schooling, work, religious observance, military service, for example) are examined. How do people react when the speed or direction of such change seems to be too slow or getting out of hand? In each of these chapters, we find local inhabitants motivated by visions of their present and future communities.39 Some of those visions are defined by inclusion and transparency; others are predicated on exclusion and opacity. But they all draw on strategies for survival that have been created by specific locations of culture. In Pieter Judson’s chapter, a kind of historic Germany of the south – the only place where Germans could experience the sun and light more characteristic of the Adriatic – is seen to be slowly and tragically receding in the face of Slovene encroachment. Judson’s Germans in the south are convinced that only they know how to read the benefits of productive labour in the lay of the land. Only they can truly cultivate – bring culture to – a barren land. Judson’s corner of Greater Germany shares features also recognizable in Caitlin Murdock’s: in each case, the inhabitants’ main worry is that while ‘northern’ Germans will visit the southern Heimat they revere, they will do so in ways that fail to appreciate its true significance (though tourist spending will help). Whereas Tara Zahra analyses struggles to appropriate children’s lives, and tongues, in linguistically mixed regions, in Judson’s study we find that the colonization programs and propaganda of the Südmark association provide a rallying point for larger campaigns to defend or import a particular variant of Deutschtum in German-Austrian lands. The outcome of such struggles, in both cases, becomes uncertain when family preferences, the law, and nationalist pressures pull local inhabitants in different directions. Zahra uses physiological metaphors to suggest how the national struggle manifested itself in the lives of individual Germans, while

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Murdock analyses a different kind of national struggle erupting in the folded mountains and valleys of the Erzgebirge region. Zahra wants us to see for ourselves what effects that struggle had for children, families, and communities. As she observes, local inhabitants could blithely ignore nationalists who insisted that they remain loyal to one, and only one, national community. In Murdock’s chapter we also encounter ‘marginal’ Germans with surprising stores of will and initiative. To be sure, Saxons’ enthusiasm for the beauty of their homeland and their hopes for its future prosperity waxed and waned as tourism and other forms of commercialization made headway or slowed to a crawl. To a remarkable degree, a sense of Saxonness was inscribed in consumer goods and services that were subject to the vagaries of economic development and dislocation. But as Murdock demonstrates, it was not just Saxons’ hopes for the future that underwent these transformations: the landscape itself and its symbolic meaning for Saxons were each ‘pulled between nature and industry, leisure and work, national importance and isolation.’ Because the region was itself fractured and also cut across a hardening border, it created cultural spaces where common identities and mentalities prove to be as revealing as the divisions between groups. The chapters in part three remind us that Germany’s ‘natural’ landscapes, like its linguistic and ethnic landscapes, were not as natural or unchanging as they seemed. In the nineteenth century, Germans discovered their rivers, scaled their mountains, and traversed their plains in ways that reinforced relations of subordination and domination found in other spheres of life, and those practices of discovery and reflection were anything but static. In a second sense, too, these ‘natural’ landscapes were not natural at all. They were created – ‘willed’ into and out of existence – by botanists, geologists, and engineers, by steamship entrepreneurs, hiking clubs, and cross-border merchants, and by armies. David Blackbourn’s Germans are not trying to recover some ‘lost innocence’ or to embark on a journey into the unknown – at least not for the sake of the journey itself. For Thomas Lekan’s Germans, belief in the power of landscape to shape the German homeland spurs early attempts at environmental reform; but few are willing to stop there. In Blackbourn’s chapter the key that unlocks the secure image of an unchanging east is the mystique, and then the brutal reality, of German colonization. When Blackbourn’s pioneers speak of an untamed ‘wilderness’ and ‘empty spaces’ in the east, they have already begun to remove the indigenous inhabitants mentally from the landscape – a pre-

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lude to removing them in fact, for reasons that Murdock’s, Zahra’s, and Judson’s Germans would have understood well. In Lekan’s study, though, this polarity is consciously blunted. As Lekan suggests in clear contrast to Blackbourn’s wilderness/garden metaphor, environmental protectionists articulated ‘a less dichotomous view of nature and culture,’ a ‘middle ground that provided a more effective language’ for understanding, protecting, and actively shaping the landscapes of modernity. The larger point found in both Blackbourn’s and Lekan’s analysis is that the architects of the nation state – so familiar from the work of Benedict Anderson, Eugen Weber, and others – were usually hard at work locally too. These were the schoolteachers, Heimat writers, military recruiters, devotees of antiquarian territorial history (Landesgeschichte), town councillors, and newspaper editors who helped to stitch together a sense of belonging among people who had no direct contact with each other. These nation builders had little need or inclination to deal directly with dynasts and administrators in faraway capital cities, with national political leaders, or with speakers of uninflected High German. Did they also contribute to a new, identifiably national sense of belonging? No doubt. But precisely because such people did not endorse the new nation unequivocally, they proved able to preserve the reality of the local while enriching the symbolic power of the national. This relationship between localism and nationalism has been addressed from many perspectives in the past fifteen years. Celia Applegate was in the vanguard conceptually with her ‘nation of provincials,’ and Alon Confino contributed the idea of the nation as a local metaphor.40 It is not incidental that both authors chose regions – the Bavarian Palatinate and Württemberg, respectively – as a base camp from which to launch their expedition towards the heart of national sentiment. But Applegate has argued that local and regional politics are constitutive, not imitative, of the politics of the nation state. Thus, to say that national politics had a local face to it or that it gazed at its reflection in the regional mirror is ultimately not to say much at all.41 James Brophy has made a similar point about German politics: When we try to connect feelings of socio-cultural differentness to their articulation in a national forum like the Reichstag, our goal is not to search only for loyalties that lie like sedimentary layers in the bedrock of nationalism. The local, regional, and national are ... not a nest of discrete bowls, nor are they accurately rendered as a stratified hierarchy of an ascending scale of political visions and needs. The term hybridity initially seems apt, but one

24

David Blackbourn and James Retallack must not assume that regional and national elements are so discretely different as to constitute cross-breeding. Rather, the local and national reinforce one another insidiously; they are the warp and weft of the same political cloth, whose threads are so interwoven that prying apart the web of this fabric is virtually impossible.42

The two chapters in part two of this volume test theories about this interpenetration of political cultures in Imperial Germany. Eric Kurlander’s chapter suggests that German politics was subject to a kind of re-regionalization in this era. Thomas Kühne goes further, discovering a marked localization of politics in Imperial Germany even as ‘politics in a new key’ (Carl Schorske) and as a ‘political mass market’ (Hans Rosenberg) emerged after introduction of universal manhood suffrage in 1867. Both authors address questions that are found throughout this book. What is the local? Who wants whom to represent it, and why? In what contexts and circumstances do people invoke the local, and to what ends? But both authors situate questions about identity and agency within histories of Imperial Germany’s political parties. Kurlander and Kühne extend the findings of previous scholars whose interest in party politics has grown since Thomas Nipperdey in 1961 stressed the continuing influence of local notables well into the age of ‘mass’ politics.43 Yet each adopts a novel perspective, bypassing legitimately mainstream issues about a national German electorate to fish more deeply in the well-stocked waters of local and regional identities.44 What these authors pull out is open to multiple interpretations. We learn from Kurlander that the political complexion of liberalism in Schleswig-Holstein had as much to do with pan-European racial-ethnic discourses as it did with any identifiably ‘particularist’ identity among inhabitants of the provinces themselves. In Kühne’s chapter we discover that a Reichstag deputy’s ‘duty’ to secure a local railroad connection for his constituents involved double labour. It demanded local pork-barrel politics, but it had wider significance. While Reichstag deputies served distinctive local needs, they also participated in debates about the national economy and integrated local ‘peculiarities’ into the administrative and political structures of the new nation state.45 The same double labour was undertaken by veterans associations and other nationalist organizations, as they organized local communities of sentiment and interests but also directed their adherents’ gaze towards Germany’s national and imperial goals. Thus, Kühne argues that the ‘face’ of local politics on the one hand, and the policies or institutions that

Introduction

25

bore the imprint of local preferences on the other, allowed Germans to practise democracy but constrained them at the same time. In suggesting that democratic practices could go either way after 1918 – in the direction of liberal democracy or towards ‘totalitarian democracy’ – Kühne concludes that local politics and symbolic politics do not occupy separate worlds. As these chapters demonstrate, a dizzying array of variables contributes to the political ambiguities of place. These include the shifting definitions and significance of regional party bastions; differences of historical experience, of ethnic composition, and of religious faith within the territories under consideration; and the greater or lesser degree of authority exercised by party leaders in local, regional, and national contexts.46 And lest readers draw the conclusion that only the ethnic and linguistic diversity of regions examined in parts two and four of this book produced strange political bedfellows, one has only to glance at recent work on other ‘in-between spaces’ of Europe – Catalonia provides a good example47 – to recognize the extent to which ‘place’ is always available for politicians trying to meet the challenge of rapidly expanding political participation. Place serves as a touchstone of identity and as a space for managing the mobilization of new political forces and as a stronghold for specific stakeholders (local constituents, lobbyists, party functionaries) determined to claim political power for themselves. The first three chapters of this book take us from the abandoned halls of Harvard in post-Civil War America, to the small colony of painters at Worpswede after 1890, to the grandiosity of Richard Wagner’s vision to inscribe a new national myth on small-town Germany in the 1870s. In each case the local serves to fire the imagination of artists who travel, observe, and compare. When James Retallack follows Nathaniel Hawthorne’s son Julian from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Saxon capital of Dresden, he explores how national stereotypes were acted out and questioned at the same time. Retallack is not principally concerned with local and national identities as such. Like other contributors to part one, he finds cross-fertilizations to be more interesting, as they grow into hybrid identities and seed new artistic genres. Also, like the other essays in part one, Retallack’s chapter takes the time to follow a protagonist who is constantly on the move, trying to portray local beauty or grubbiness from new perspectives. Julian Hawthorne fancies himself as a passionate pilgrim. But as he tries to acquire self-knowledge and develop a distinctive artistic style, he receives both accolades and affronts.

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In Jennifer Jenkins’s chapter we learn that Heimat art (Heimatkunst) was experimental, too, and hybrid. It spanned urban and less urban themes and genres, and it privileged modern over traditional styles; but that made it no less local. When Jenkins writes that Heinrich Vogeler’s art was located, grounded, and rooted in the life he chose to live at Worpswede, her focus on culture complements Kühne’s argument about the local roots of modern politics. Jenkins observes that Heimat art and early modernism both ‘focused on the detailed renderings of everyday life and the individuality of places.’ Thus, the local provided a theme and a style as well as a structure to the artists’ colony at Worpswede. Celia Applegate’s soundings also reveal subterranean movements in the world of German high culture. Applegate’s ‘side-stories’ are about musicians on the move, no less than Jenkins’s and Retallack’s peripatetic protagonists and other contributors’ movers and shakers. In all these cases, side-switchers and shape-shifters are as protean as the idea of Germany itself. Applegate’s chosen subject is not the passive, static music that historians have chained to ‘this or that country or city or court,’ but rather the music that received new meaning in each new place. The Bayreuth story embedded in Applegate’s chapter reminds us (as does Judson’s contribution) that by looking at actual places it becomes possible to separate the ‘German’ experience that Wagner (or German nationalists in South Styria) hoped to achieve from the one that was actually built, and lived, and can still be recovered by historians. In Wagner’s case, the choice of Bayreuth was a choice against provincialism and internationalism. It was also a reaction against the capital cities in which Wagner had experienced an oversupply of revolutionary fervour and an undersupply of rich patrons. Wagner’s selection and subsequent transformation of Bayreuth for his new music held within it the same bold pronouncements, but also the same ambivalence, found elsewhere: this place was to be close but separate; a heartland but isolated; one modest locale where Germans could experience one big thing – Wagner’s art. But Bayreuth makes sense only within the larger context of an emerging German identity: institutionally disparate and geographically dispersed, modern and functional and already obsessed with the next big thing, but retaining ‘provincialism of the highest order’ nevertheless. Applegate’s artists, like Vogeler and Hawthorne, were constantly seeking new vantage points, new cultural clay to mould into shapes that would reveal the contours of real people’s experiences of small-town and rural Germany. For these artists, geographic mobility and cultural

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independence brought with them an incommensurability of genre and marginality. Even the towering figures among this group – Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms – learned to live ‘situational’ lives, not national or naturalized ones. And yet itinerancy was double-edged: here, artistic sensibility and genius might be sharpened by isolation; there, it might be dulled by the feeling of being too comfortably ‘at home.’ As Applegate demonstrates, to be creatively satisfied, famous, or adequately remunerated, German musicians generally had to explore and cross the borders that serve as markers of identity, thereby undermining the efforts of Wagner and others bent on canon formation. But this does not negate the delight these artists found in discovering new locales, unfamiliar light, or previously unimagined tonal qualities. If Wagner had been composing, Hawthorne observing, and Vogeler painting somewhere else, their visions of Germany and Germanness would have been different – not necessarily larger or smaller, but different. Applegate sets the stage and attunes us to the thematic development of this volume when she concludes her tour d’horizon by returning to a particular site of memory – one built in granite, and one that reverberates for Americans particularly, but not only for them. ‘With or without a Mount Rushmore of great composers,’ Applegate observes, music itself was inscribed on the landscapes of German-speaking Europe. In part four we find inscriptions of blood, language, ethnicity, and consumer cultures. In part three the marks on the land could hardly be more tangible: they cut deeply. In part two the local not only inscribes but refuses to let go of national politics. In part one, pointillisme is not really the point: daubs of local colour never disappear on a larger canvas, and local variations on a national theme sound long after Wagner’s bombastic chords have faded to silence. No contributor to this book would argue that Germany is easy to sound, to sketch, to pin down. Nevertheless, considered together, these chapters suggest that, unlike Goethe and Schiller, Germans living in Central European lands were able to find such a country after all – and often it was less far from home than historians have imagined.

NOTES 1 Xenien und Votivtafeln (1797), in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke. Weimarer Ausgabe, 143 vols. (Weimar, 1887–1919, repr. Munich 1987–1990), I, 5.1: 218.

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2 Between April and June 1866 Prussia challenged the legitimacy of the German Confederation so fundamentally in the Frankfurt Diet that Austria, together with its allies among the German states, felt compelled to declare war on Prussia in mid-June to prevent it from seceding from the Confederation. 3 After the decisive French defeat at the Battle of Sedan on 1–2 September 1870, it required all of Bismarck’s negotiating skills, including the outright bribery of Bavaria’s King Ludwig II, to bring the southern German states into the unified empire proclaimed in the Versailles Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871. 4 This question will be examined in Robert Beachy and James Retallack, German Civil Wars: Nation Building and Historical Memory, 1756–1914 (Oxford and New York, forthcoming). 5 The classic text is Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation. Über die politische Verführbarkeit bürgerlichen Geistes, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1966). 6 For an introduction see Theodor Schieder, Nationalismus und Nationalstaat, ed. Otto Dann and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1992), pt. 2; Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Imperial Germany, 1867–1918 (London and New York, 1990), chaps. 1–3; John Breuilly, ed., The State of Germany: The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of a Modern Nation-State (London and New York, 1992); and Dieter Langewiesche, Nation. Nationalismus. Nationalstaat in Deutschland und Europa (Munich, 2000), chaps. 4, 7, 8. Other appraisals include David Blackbourn, ‘New Legislatures: Germany, 1871– 1914,’ Historical Research 65 (1992): 201–14; Andreas Biefang, ‘Der Reichsgründer’? Bismarck, die nationale Verfassungsbewegung und die Entstehung des Deutschen Kaiserreichs (Friedrichsruh, 1999); and Winfried Becker, Das Bismarck-Reich – ein Obrigkeitsstaat? (Friedrichsruh, 2000). 7 See James J. Sheehan, ‘What Is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography,’ Journal of Modern History 53 (1981): 1–23; also Otto Büsch and Sheehan, eds., Die Rolle der Nation in der deutschen Geschichte und Gegenwart (Berlin, 1985). The literatures on German nationalism and national identity have grown so vast since the 1980s that they cannot be cited here. 8 Many non-Prussian and working-class Protestants, too, preferred to celebrate dynastic birthdays, May Day, or local traditions instead of the new and unfamiliar national holiday. On the resonance of this contentious issue in Saxony, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, and for recent literature, see Siegfried Weichlein, Nation und Region. Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich (Düsseldorf, 2004), 350–70; Erwin D. Fink, ‘Region and Nation in Early Imperial Germany: Transformations of Popular Allegiances and Political

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10

11

12

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Culture in the Period of Nation Building,’ PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2004, 283–355; and Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1987), chaps. 3–4. Norbert Elias, Reflections on a Life (Oxford, 1994), 11. Unfortunately, two colleagues who delivered papers in Toronto in May 2005 were unable to contribute to this volume: Robin Judd, ‘Relocating the Cultural Code: Antisemitism and Local Kosher Butchering Debates,’ and Simone Lässig, ‘Being Jewish, Becoming Bourgeois: Sociability, Identity, and Power in the City.’ On recent efforts to integrate the histories of Germans, German Jews, and the bourgeoisie, see Till van Rahden, ‘Jews and the Ambivalences of Civil Society in Germany, 1800–1933: Assessment and Reassessment,’ Journal of Modern History 77 (Dec. 2005): 1024–47; see also Andreas Gotzmann, Rainer Liedtke, and Till van Rahden, eds., Juden, Bürger, Deutsche: Zur Geschichte von Vielfalt und Differenz 1800–1933 (Tübingen, 2001); Simone Lässig, Jüdische Wege ins Bürgertum. Kulturelles Kapital und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2004); Helmut Walser Smith, ed., Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800–1914 (Oxford and New York, 2001); and Uffa Jensen, Gebildete Doppelgänger. Bürgerliche Juden und Protestanten im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2005). Catholic antisemitism and Protestant antiJesuitism have also received scrutiny in recent work. In Imperial Germany, a second meaning of bürgerlich, besides bourgeois, was non-socialist (or even anti-socialist). Thus, all political parties except the SPD were commonly referred to as ‘the bürgerlich parties.’ See Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Das Kaiserreich transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 2004); GunillaFriederike Budde, Sebastian Conrad, and Oliver Janz, eds., Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen, 2006); Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich, 2006). On ‘histories in place,’ ‘geographies in time,’ and disciplinary hybridity as a source of intellectual diversity and strength, see the thoughtful arguments in Alan R.H. Baker, Geography and History: Bridging the Divide (Cambridge, 2003). See Dieter Langewiesche, ‘Föderativer Nationalismus als Erbe der deutschen Reichsnation: Über Föderalismus und Zentralismus in der deutschen Nationalgeschichte,’ in Föderative Nation. Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Langewiesche and Georg Schmidt (Munich, 2000), 215–42; and Alon Confino, ‘Federalism and the Heimat Idea in Imperial Germany,’ in German Federalism: Past, Present and Future, ed. Maiken Umbach (Basingstoke, 2002), 70–90.

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14 Abigail Green, Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in NineteenthCentury Germany (Cambridge, 2001); Green, ‘Intervening in the Public Sphere: German Governments and the Press, 1815–1870,’ Historical Journal 44, no. 1 (2001): 155–75; Green, ‘The Federal Alternative? A New View of Modern German History,’ Historical Journal 46, no. 1 (2003): 187–202; Brian Vick, Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 2002); Umbach, ed., German Federalism; Weichlein, Nation; Fink, ‘Region.’ Also relevant are John Toews, Becoming Historical: Cultural Reformation and Public Memory in Early NineteenthCentury Berlin (Cambridge, 2004); and Susan Crane, Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ithaca, 2000). 15 See Raymond Williams, Keywords (London, 1983), 264–6, ‘Regional’: ‘There is an evident tension within the word, as between a distinct area and a definite part. Each sense has survived, but it is the latter which carries an important history. Everything depends, in the latter sense, on the term of relation: a part of what?’ 16 Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown: A Novel (Toronto, 2005). Consider also Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches (Chicago, 1980), 6: ‘To know cultures in contact is to know the misreading of meanings, the transformation of meanings, the recognition of meanings.’ 17 Thomas Mergel, ‘Mapping Milieus Regionally: On the Spatial Rootedness of Collective Identities in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830–1933, ed. James Retallack (Ann Arbor, 2000), 77–95, here 92. 18 See Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, 2005), 3. 19 See Helmut Walser Smith, ‘The Boundaries of the Local in Modern German History,’ in Saxony, ed. Retallack, 63–76, esp. 68–75; Thomas Kühne, ‘Imagined Regions: The Construction of Traditional, Democratic, and Other Identities,’ ibid., 51–62, esp. 59–60; and Alon Confino, ‘On Localness and Nationhood,’ Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, London 23, no. 2 (2001): 7–27, esp. 26. 20 See, inter alia, Stéphane Gerson, The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 2003); Gerson, ‘Une France locale: The Local Past in Recent French Scholarship,’ French Historical Studies 26, no. 3 (2003): 539–59; Adrian Lyttelton, ‘Shifting Identities: Nation, Region and City,’ and other contributions to Carl Levy, ed., Italian Regionalism: History, Identity and Politics (Oxford, 1996), 33–52 and passim; Oliver Zimmer, A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891 (Cambridge, 2003); Robert Geraci, Window on the East: National

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23

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and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, 2001), esp. 8–12; Allan Pred, Place, Practice, and Structure: Social and Spatial Transformation in Southern Sweden, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1986); and John Dickie, Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900 (London, 1999), chaps. 2 and 3. On the Habsburg Empire, see works cited by Murdock, Zahra, and Judson in this volume. On Europe see Anthony D. Smith, ‘Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations,’ and other essays in Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford and New York, 1999), 163–86 and passim; Oliver Zimmer, Nationalism in Europe, 1890–1940 (Basingstoke, 2003); and Zimmer and Len Scales, eds., Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge, 2005). A salutary corrective is provided in Weichlein, Nation. Of course this problem is found not only in Germany; see Gerson, ‘Une France locale,’ 539–40. See Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910 (Oxford, 1987), 5–6; and Katherine Aaslestad, ‘Remembering and Forgetting: The Local and the Nation in Hamburg’s Commemorations of the Wars of Liberation,’ Central European History 38, no. 3 (2005): 384–416, esp. 404–5. Myriad other local cases have been examined, as in Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Politische Topographie und Nationalismus. Städtegeist, Landespatriotismus und Reichsbewußtsein in München 1871– 1914,’ in Hardtwig, Nationalismus und Bürgerkultur in Deutschland 1500–1914 (Göttingen, 1994), 219–45. The complementarity of localism and cosmopolitanism has come to the fore in recent studies of German anthropology and colonialism; for a sense of the range of such studies, see inter alia H. Glenn Penny and Matti Bunzl, eds., Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire (Ann Arbor, 2003); Penny, ‘Fashioning Local Identities in an Age of Nation-Building: Museums, Cosmopolitan Visions, and Intra-German Competition,’ and other essays in Saxon Signposts, ed. James Retallack (special issue of German History 17, no. 4 [1999]: 489–505 and passim); Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Chicago, 2001); Nancy Reagin, ‘The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in Imperial Germany,’ Journal of Modern History 73 (2001): 54– 86; papers presented at the conference ‘Cosmopolitanism and Colonialism’ at the University of Toronto, 17 Dec. 2004; and the symposium report by Deborah Neill and Lisa M. Todd, ‘Local History as Total History,’ German History 20, no. 3 (2002): 373–8. See Jonathan B. Knudsen, Justus Möser and the German Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1986); Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, The Natural History of the German People, ed., trans., and intro. David J. Diephouse (Lewiston, NY, 1990); and

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David Blackbourn and James Retallack Celia Applegate, ‘The Mediated Nation: Regions, Readers, and the German Past,’ in Saxony, ed. Retallack, 33–50. Gerson, ‘Une France locale,’ 544–5, notes that ‘a tactile encounter with the past’ can ‘feed a hunger for authenticity.’ See the pioneering study by Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990); also Confino, Nation; and Elizabeth Boa and Rachel Palfreyman, Heimat – A German Dream: Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture, 1890–1990 (Oxford, 2000). On early tensions between Landesgeschichte and Regionalgeschichte, see Peter Steinbach, ‘Zur Diskussion über den Begriff “Region” – eine Grundsatzfrage der modernen Landesgeschichte,’ Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 31 (1981): 185–210; Steinbach, ‘Territorial- oder Regionalgeschichte: Wege der Modernen Landesgeschichte. Ein Vergleich der “Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte” und des “Jahrbuchs für Regionalgeschichte,’’’ Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11 (1985): 528–40; for further literature see James Retallack, ‘Politische Kultur, Wahlkultur, Regionalgeschichte. Methodologische Überlegungen am Beispiel Sachsens und des Reichs,’ in Modernisierung und Region im wilhelminischen Deutschland, ed. Simone Lässig, Karl Heinrich Pohl, and Retallack, 2nd ed. (Bielefeld, 1998), 15–38. It is less easy to subscribe uncritically to the assertion that nations and national traditions are ‘invented’ tout court – as suggested by a German publisher’s decision to give Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (London, 1983) the translated title Die Erfindung der Nation (Frankfurt a.M., 1988). On all the national and subnational traditions that were not invented in 1866–71, see Dieter Langewiesche, ‘Was heißt “Erfindung der Nation”? Nationalgeschichte als Artefakt – oder Geschichtsdeutung als Machtkampf,’ Historische Zeitschrift 277 (2003): 593–617. See also Ronald Speirs and John Breuilly, eds., Germany’s Two Unifications: Anticipations, Experiences, Responses (Basingstoke and New York, 2005). The preceding observations draw on parallel developments in France, as outlined in Gerson, ‘Une France locale,’ esp. 544–9, and Gerson, Pride, esp. 3– 15 and chap. 2. Homi Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation,’ in Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York, 1994), 139–70, here 140. See Roger Friedland and Deirdre Boden, eds., NowHere: Space, Time and Modernity (Berkeley, 1994); and David Blackbourn, A Sense of Place: New Directions in German History, The 1998 Annual Lecture of the German Historical Institute London (London, 1999), esp. 5–6. Pierre Nora, ed., Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur

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34 35 36

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Goldhammer, 3 vols. (New York, 1996–8); the original French edition was Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols. (Paris, 1984–92). See also Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Nationalismus, Regionalismus, Lokalismus: Aspekte der Erinnerungskultur im Spiegel von Publizistik und Denkmal’ and other contributions to pt. 2 of Lieux de mémoire, Erinnerungsorte, ed. Étienne François (Travaux du Centre Marc Bloch, cahier no. 6) (Berlin, 1996). See Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870–1990 (Berkeley, 2000); Greg Eghigian and Matthew Paul Berg, eds., Sacrifice and National Belonging in Twentieth-Century Germany (College Station, Tex., 2002); Konrad H. Jarausch and Michael Geyer, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton, 2003); and Peter Fritzsche, Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History (Cambridge, Mass., 2004). Thus, we hope to avoid the criticism levelled against Pierre Nora’s ‘sites of memory’ project, namely, that it neglects the experience of French immigrés when it falls back on ‘the narrow Hexagonal confines of traditional French nationalism.’ Suzanne Citron, cited in Steven Englund’s review essay, ‘The Ghost of Nation Past,’ Journal of Modern History 64 (1992): 299– 320, here 315n43. Compare the introductions to the two groups of essays on the themes of ‘Reich’ and ‘Zerrissenheit’ in Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, ed. Étienne François and Hagen Schulze, 3 vols. (Munich, 2001), 1:25–6, 469–70. Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1990), 2:210. See Thomas Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 5. Applegate, ‘Mediated Nation,’ 36; see also Applegate, ‘Integrating the Histories of Regions and Nations in European Intermediate Areas,’ in Regionale Bewegungen und Regionalismen in europäischen Zwischenräumen seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Philipp Ther and Holm Sundhaussen (Marburg, 2003), 261–5, esp. 264. It is impossible to convey the richness of even that part of the literature on German-speaking Austria that speaks directly to the themes of this volume; among the most important English-language works, see Pieter Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor, 1996); Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit, eds., Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (New York and Oxford, 2005); Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002); Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Kafka’s Fin de

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39 40

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David Blackbourn and James Retallack Siècle (Berkeley, 2000); Gary Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton, 1981). Each author in part four has a forthcoming monograph that will add to this literature. See Victoria E. Thompson, ‘Telling “Spatial Stories”: Urban Space and Bourgeois Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris,’ Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): 523–56, esp. 523. Emerging ‘national’ narratives are examined with subtlety in Brent O. Peterson, History, Fiction, and Germany: Writing the Nineteenth-Century Nation (Detroit, 2005). Three sessions were devoted to ‘Visualizing Space and Place in German Literature’ at the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association in Philadelphia, 27–30 Dec. 2006. See also ‘Österreich und Sachsen in der Geschichte,’ thematic issue of Dresdner Hefte. Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte 23, no. 83 (March 2005). Applegate, Nation; Confino, Nation; see also Applegate, ‘Heimat and the Varieties of Regional History,’ Central European History 33, no. 1 (2000): 109– 15; Jan Palmowski, ‘Mediating the Nation: Liberalism and the Polity in Nineteenth-Century Germany,’ German History 18, no. 4 (2001): 573–98; and Confino, ‘Localness,’ 18. Although written from a different perspective, Rudy Koshar’s Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1986) illuminated ‘organizational ecology’ and the ‘dance of local power relationships’ (1–2). It did so by traversing the subdisciplinary boundaries of social, cultural, and political history and by stretching the analysis to include neighbourhood and nation within a single frame. Applegate, ‘Histories,’ 265. James Brophy, in his prepared commentary for the session at the May 2005 Toronto conference that included preliminary versions of the chapters by Kurlander and Kühne. Thomas Nipperdey, Die Organisation der deutschen Parteien vor 1918 (Düsseldorf, 1961). For more recent reflections on the slow decline of the politics of notables (Honoratiorenpolitik), see James Retallack, The German Right, 1860– 1920: Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination (Toronto, 2006), esp. chaps. 2 and 8. Jonathan Sperber, The Kaiser’s Voters: Electors and Elections in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, 1997); Brett Fairbairn, Democracy in the Undemocratic State: The German Reichstag Elections of 1898 and 1903 (Toronto, 1997); Kühne directly addresses the provocative insights found in Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 2000). Besides works by Green, Weichlein, and others noted previously, for an earlier period see Katherine Aaslestad, Place and Politics: Local Identity, Civic Culture, and German Nationalism in North Germany during the Revolutionary Era (Leiden and Boston, 2005); and Robert

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Beachy, The Soul of Commerce: Credit, Property, and Politics in Leipzig, 1750– 1840 (Leiden and Boston, 2005). 45 See also Mergel, ‘Mapping,’ 78: ‘The relationship between regional socialization and the formation of national milieus [is] a strained relationship, not one in which a “before” evolves into an “after.’’’ 46 This and the following remarks draw on Applegate, ‘Histories,’ esp. 261– 5. 47 See Josep R. Llobera, Foundations of National Identity: From Catalonia to Europe (New York and Oxford, 2004).

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PART ONE Placing Cultures, Moving Cultures

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1 Music in Place: Perspectives on Art Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany celia applegate

Over recent decades, historians of Germany have done much to complicate and otherwise confound the sweeping effect of narrative, its ability both to soar above the devilish details of life at ground level and to gather this detail into manageable, if inevitably distorted, general statements. This volume of essays continues to make life difficult for the narrative historian; localism and landscape both provide ample opportunity for the exploration of particularity, diversity, incommensurability, and digression, all enemies of a briskly developing story. With its attention to microhistory and the history of everyday life, the ‘new cultural history’ lurks behind this volume as an important, perhaps the most important, theoretical justification for attending to side-stories, counter-stories, submerged stories, and forgotten stories.1 But if we revert to an older way of thinking about culture, not in broad anthropological ways but more as the ladies of the opera society or Matthew Arnold thought about culture (‘the best that has been thought and said in the world’), then we will notice that the study of arts and art culture has remained aloof from the process of dismantling and complicating the stories we tell.2 Relatively few works by German historians, working in the discipline of history itself, have much to say about the vast store of cultural treasures that have accumulated over the centuries. As a result, a number of conventional assumptions about the forward march of artistic innovation and the like remain in place, awkward companions to what are by now significantly reconstructed narratives of political, social, and economic development. This essay will make a gesture towards the renovation of the study of so-called high culture or, more accurately, art culture through examples from the history of

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music, understood here as a cultural activity shaped in significant and intriguing ways by the places in which it sounded. Place and space both have been oddly neglected in the study of music and musical culture. David Blackbourn has observed that ‘space is too often a hidden dimension’ in our efforts to understand the past, and this holds just as true for the history of music as for other aspects of the past.3 To be sure, one can find many histories of music in this or that country or city or court, but place in these works is passive in its relationship to the music-making, leaving one curious about how our understanding of music in nineteenth-century society would change if we consistently attended to the where of it – where people heard it, what kind of places these were, what cultural, political, and social connotations they carried, and so on. We have often been content to restrict our consideration of the where of music culture to descriptions of concert halls and opera houses, the survival of which into our own times has somehow worked to obscure the particular positions they occupied in earlier times and places. Once one looks for the ways that music and place interacted in the nineteenth century, each giving meaning to the other, the more one finds these interactions, some hidden in unexplored corners of musical life, many others hidden in plain sight. The geographer Robert Sack has called us ‘place-makers,’ always in the process of transforming the physical reality we encounter into meaningful space.4 Our capacity to make sound and to listen to sound is a crucial aspect of this. The appropriation or claiming of space is a matter of sound, something that is quite obvious in, say, the household, where sounds like refrigerators turning on and off, door hinges squeaking, people talking, stereos playing, make this space familiar and known to us. And although it may be a conceptual leap to move from that to an orchestral concert or a band playing in an outdoor pavilion, yet we ought to make that leap and ask both how those sounds affected people’s experience and interpretation of these places and, contrariwise, how these places shaped the sounds heard in them. Both of these perspectives on music in place might teach us something about how these human communities worked. Walter Benjamin famously observed that ‘even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’5 When he wrote that he was, of course, interested in art in the age of ‘mechanical reproduction’ and not thinking about music. What, one then wonders, might a history of

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musical aura, before the age of mechanical reproduction, possibly include? The interest of musicians and musicologists in music and place has tended to cluster at either end of the chronological spectrum of serious music in the Western tradition, medieval and Renaissance music on the one hand and twentieth-century experimentalism on the other. For instance, as is well recognized, in the Middle Ages a close relationship that was more than just acoustic developed between music and the Gothic cathedral; both were expressions of the medieval concept of cosmic order. Medieval philosophers thought of the universe in terms of Pythagorean ratios, called musical consonances, and in recognition of this theory, churches like St Denis, of seminal importance to medieval architecture, were proportioned according to these same consonances. Thus, the church stood as a microcosm of the universe, and the liturgical chant sounded in it was the reverberation of the spirit animating this order. Here, then, was aura in its most obvious form, a kind of human magic the loss of which Benjamin associated with modernity. Fast-forward about eight hundred years, from the twelfth to the twentieth century, and one finds many efforts among twentieth-century composers to recreate the close, organic relationship between music, man, and place often associated with the origins of music itself. Much of this twentieth-century work was intended as a direct rebuke to the music of the nineteenth century, allegedly cut off from any meaningful relationship to the world around it. It took as its polemical starting point the notion that nineteenth-century music lacked connectedness, lacked context, lacked place. In the words of R. Murray Schaefer, a contemporary Canadian composer who coined the term ‘soundscape,’ ‘in the western tradition music is an abstract entertainment for the pleasure of the ears alone ... In order to achieve this purity it was necessary to separate music from the soundscape. The soundscape is a plenum. The music room is a vacuum.’6 The suggestion that art music has existed in a kind of vacuum, starting, as Schaefer implies, with the construction of the first concert hall, comes through in one of the few cultural studies explicitly concerned with music’s relationship to place and space, a recent collection of essays on global and indigenous popular music cleverly called Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity, and Place. ‘Popular music is spatial,’ write the volume’s authors, Australian musicologists John Connell and Chris Gibson; it is ‘linked to particular geographical sites, bound up in everyday perceptions of place, and a part of movements of people, products, and cultures across space.’7 But they have nothing to

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say about art music, as though exempting it from the earth-bound fate and worldly relevance of popular music and musicians, as though the harmony of the spheres still sounded in the concert halls of Europe. To be sure, nineteenth-century music critics and theorists must bear some of the blame for this distorted view of musical life in the nineteenth century. So eager were many theorists, especially German ones, to raise the prestige of instrumental music in a social world dominated by opera that they developed an ideology of ‘absolute music,’ or music freed from earthbound meaning and purpose. Such was the success of their efforts that the musical public, first in Germany and England and soon across Europe, began to form a reliable, paying audience for concert and chamber music performances, to an extent unprecedented in the previous century. Yet the idea of absolute music was more a conceit than a description of actual musical practice in the nineteenth century. When twentieth-century musical writers take it as a description, they inadvertently contribute to our neglect of the context of music so designated. Speaking very generally, then, much of the great quantity of art music composed between 1700 and 1900, together with the musical practices that realized it, needs to be better placed. Art music was spatial too, the music room was not a vacuum. To paraphrase Connell and Gibson, it is and was linked to particular geographical sites, it is and was bound up in everyday perceptions of place, and it is and was a part of the movements of people, products, and cultures across space.8 A few years ago Terry Eagleton posed the question ‘What is it that connects culture as a way of life and culture as artistic creation?’9 For musical culture, the easiest way to illustrate how we might approach this question is briefly to consider Richard Wagner’s Bayreuth. The sounds of the music at this particular geographical site so obviously included the reverberations of a broader cultural space that one has no excuse for regarding it as a vacuum (much as some might have wished to seal it off from the rest of society). But Bayreuth also points beyond its overdetermined singularity in two directions, first to art music’s complicated relationship to German provincialism and second to its equally intricate intertwining of nationalist and internationalist tendencies in European cultural life. Wagner shaped the so-called Bayreuth experience against both these aspects of his native musical culture, the provincial and the international, with ambiguous success. The Bayreuth story is a familiar one, since properly told it reflects every step of Wagner’s troubled passage through the nineteenth cen-

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tury – and few people’s steps have been more closely followed than his.10 Nevertheless, it is worth reviewing in order to emphasize Wagner’s acute and unusual awareness of the role of places in the shaping of musical meaning and experience. Whether or not we consider this attention to place visionary, Bayreuth can be seen as the result of his sustained engagement with place, the culmination of his efforts to reengineer the settings in which people experienced the musical arts. His choice of Bayreuth was, first of all, a reaction against the capital cities where he had suffered (Paris, Dresden, Munich, et cetera) and against everything they represented in cultural and political life. His writing on the failings of metropolises as sites for music goes back before the 1848 revolutions, and his views did not change even after he gave up revolution for Schopenhauer.11 In brief, the trouble with music in cities was that people arrived at the theatre after stressful days spent in pursuit of profit, too distracted really to listen, too weary to be anything but amused or asleep. Concerts were designed for the short attention span; people spent the intervals drinking and further dissipating their mental energy in mindless chit-chat. All of this was disastrous for music and prevented people from achieving the kind of transformation through music that he always believed to be its highest purpose. As his thinking developed about the kind of place that would be most effective for the artistic experience he believed people desperately needed, he proposed a number of outré ideas, each of which attests to his sense of the impossibility of finding appropriate space in society as it existed. For instance, having completed the libretto for Siegfrieds Tod (ultimately Götterdämmerung) in 1850, he told a friend he wanted it to be performed once only, in a temporary structure in the fields outside of Zurich, which would then be burned to the ground in the finale of the opera. He also imagined it performed in a temporary structure along the banks of the Rhine or on a floating theatre on Lake Lucerne, and in any case (in a letter to Liszt) in a ‘beautiful quiet place far from the smoke and disgusting industrial smell of our urban civilization.’12 The preface to the published edition of the Ring libretto, which came out in 1863, proposed the building of a temporary, wooden theatre in a small town. Then, finally, after a lengthy episode of scandal and extravagance in Munich between 1865 and 1869 (when his erstwhile revolutionary friend Gottfried Semper drew up elaborate plans for a custom-built Wagnerian opera house in Munich, only to be dumped and bilked and forced to resort to lawyers), the town of Bayreuth finally emerged in 1871 as a possible site for the theatre of the future – ‘my instinct’s great-

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est success,’ he told Nietzsche.13 The cornerstone was laid in 1872; the theatre opened in 1876. Wagner, of course, intended to create at Bayreuth something that Germany lacked, that is, one central place to which all Germans could come to experience one common thing – his art, which he understood as the culmination and embodiment of all previous German art, musical and otherwise. Much about the placeness of Bayreuth and how he appropriated it reveals this conception. He considered it to be geographically in the heart of Germany, not in a borderland, yet isolated enough to be a place without distractions – in that sense, like the fields outside Zurich. In the town itself, he settled on a spot not in its centre but off to the side and up on a hill, hence also in that sense close yet separate. And while other buildings of that era dedicated to art were distinguished in the midst of their busy cities by means of decorative gestures evocative of cathedrals and palaces, Wagner deliberately eschewed architectural references to the sacred or the splendid in favour of functionality. Bayreuth thus emerged as distinct in every way (architecture, ambiance, environs) from its exact contemporary, the Paris Opéra of Jean-Louis-Charles Garnier, opened in 1875. It had more in common with a spa than an urban temple of art. Even the means of getting there (a long train journey) and the daily rhythm of a visit (walks, leisurely meals, and episodes of mentally demanding, physically uncomfortable healing) evoked the atmospherics of the magic mountain far more than the metropolis. The only thing the Festspielhaus did share with the Paris Opéra was an implicit aspiration to singularity and centralization in national culture – one place, über alles. But in that, Bayreuth failed. It easily became the centre of a cultic Wagnerism, which was certainly consequential for German culture as a whole. But it did not become the vital centre from which national cultural life emanated, nor did it become the touchstone for authentic Germanness, even though a belief that it embodied both these things bound together Wagner and his followers. National cultures are not so easily manipulated, and German musical culture in particular resisted both centralization and nationalization, in ways that Wagner and the Wagnerians either misunderstood or refused to acknowledge. When he designed the Bayreuth experience, Wagner was not just in the grip of anti-urbanism, but also of anti-provincialism, and thus fell, seemingly unconsciously, into the old trap of wanting Germany to be more like France. He tried to create in Bayreuth an artificial centre for a nation that had no centre, to take the provinciality out of the place. Instead he

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created a kind of limbo, a musical Neverland, well suited to the demands of the music with all its mythological abstraction but ill suited to the everyday interaction between people and art. It is somehow not surprising to find that one of Wagner’s most impassioned opponents in this effort was that tireless defender of German particularism, the conservative folklorist and cultural historian Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl. Riehl was a Bavarian citizen and a resident of Munich. He also described himself as ‘the longest-standing opponent of Wagner,’ set against him ‘since the esteemed Royal Saxon Court Capellmeister stood behind the barricades in Dresden.’ Generally not shy about publicizing his disapproval, Riehl nevertheless stayed silent on the subject of Wagner until 1873, when the latter’s appeals to the German people and German honour and German genius to help save the faltering Bayreuth project were making daily headlines, especially in Munich. Although he deplored Wagner’s display of base ingratitude to a royal patron in 1848, Riehl’s objections went more to the kind of musical culture he saw Wagner foisting onto a susceptible German public. For Riehl, Germany was ‘a land and a people at once homogeneous and unified and also polymorphic and disparate,’ and the challenge of his times was to preserve the diversity while achieving unity. He thought that Wagner’s Bayreuth experiment, and Wagner’s claim to leadership of German musical life altogether, were too singular, too grand in their claims, and as a result far too dismissive of the cultural diversity of German life. ‘As a friend of freedom and fairness,’ he declared, ‘I could never become a follower of Wagner, even if I held his art in the highest esteem. The kingdom of art is republican, aristocraticrepublican, if you will; it does not tolerate the dictatorship of one individual, and Wagner is an art-dictator, as none before him.’14 Bayreuth was, in his eyes, a circus, and just as he rejected any notion that one composer could encompass or inherit or represent all of German music, so too did he dismiss the possibility that one place could be the site of its deliverance. For him the essence of German musical life resided not just in theatres (though he was an opera-lover and theatre-goer), but in thousands of churches, concert rooms, public halls, and above all, his most constant theme, in the German home. German musical life was, in other words, a geographically dispersed phenomenon and as such a perfect mirror of German life. The ‘artistic greatness’ of the German nation – or any nation, he argued – never rested in a single great individual ‘but rather in the combination of

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all, and the more diverse its parts, the richer and more powerful the whole.’15 Riehl thus draws our attention from particular geographical sites or particular individuals to the second of Connell and Gibson’s concerns: how music is bound up in everyday perceptions and experiences of place. To turn to this is necessarily to consider the more geographically diffuse phenomena that are often encompassed in vague phrases like ‘the role of music in German life.’ Riehl and Wagner were in agreement on one point at least, as were any number of travellers to Germany in the nineteenth century: in thinking that one of the most noticeable aspects of German life was the ubiquity of organized music making in every corner of the land, much of it taking place below the notice of the more widely read music periodicals. The German always remains a provincial, wrote Wagner with both affection and exasperation in 1840, and we know Riehl agreed with him on this. To illustrate the point, both conjured up similar images of an intimate group of musicians: in Wagner’s telling, ‘a father and his three sons, at a small round table in their home; two play the violin, a third the viola, the father the cello,’ playing a quartet composed by one of them; in Riehl’s, a group around a piano, one playing, others singing, another playing the violin.16 But the two observers drew different conclusions about what the phenomenon meant. For Wagner, such scenes were symptomatic of a very serious problem – the lack of a single, national public for German musicians. Already in 1840, in his essay ‘De la Musique Allemande,’ published in the Gazette Musicale in Paris, Wagner sought to distinguish the German musician from the French variety (a virtuoso, a creature of society life) and the Italian one (a singer, a lover). The German musician was purely a musician, ‘capable of writing music merely for himself and friends, uncaring if it will ever be executed for a public – the desire to shine by his creations but rarely seizes him and he has no idea how to make it happen.’ The reason for this state of affairs lay in the ‘political barriers’ which ‘obstruct him from publicity’: ‘his fatherland is cut up into a number of kingdoms, electoral principalities, duchies, and free towns.’ The musician cannot shine in a small town, because it has no public; if he seeks a public nevertheless, he will move to the residential city of the duke but there he will find so many good musicians competing for so little work that he will give up, or grow old and die searching for that elusive German-wide fame. All that is left for the talented German musician is to ‘choose a trade to earn a living and give oneself to music with all the greater zest in one’s leisure hours; to refresh oneself,

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to grow nobler by it, but not to shine.’ Moreover, take this musician out of his home, out of his small-town concert hall or his regional music festival, put him ‘before a full-dress audience in a crowded salon,’ and he falls apart. He sounds mediocre, his native musicianship is ruined, denatured, his talent is for naught. ‘A great national work of music,’ wrote Wagner, would never come about until ‘this mournful chapter in the history of German music’ was brought to a close.17 Riehl, as is hardly surprising, was far more worried about the disappearance of this provincial musician than his failure to win acclaim in the salons of Europe. As far as he was concerned, the best, most essential German music and musicians were ‘einfach, frisch, sinnig und innig’ (simple, fresh, ingenious, and sensitive), not the first adjectives that come to mind in describing Wagner or his music. Riehl showed particular concern for the fate of the amateur musician, whom he felt had been increasingly ill served by German composers since the era of Mozart and Haydn. Their genius, he thought, had welcomed the participation of the amateur, but Beethoven, the hero of German music, had composed works increasingly difficult for the amateur to play or even to understand, thus driving a wedge through the middle of musical social life. His late compositions were ‘a musical necessity and in technical terms a great leap forward,’ but for the ‘education of society’ they brought about a ‘painful regression.’18 By the 1870s and even more so in the decades after Bayreuth, Riehl saw himself surrounded by soulless music-making in artificial places, while music in the home, of the ‘good old German masters,’ seemed discouraged and overwhelmed. Still, Riehl’s polemical mission, to combat a public infatuation with all things Wagnerian – and ‘Slavic,’ a close relation – tended to make him oblivious to the actual state of provincial music-making. There is little to suggest that provincial and domestic music-making were atrophying, or that Bayreuth or Wagner had much of an impact on the shape and conduct of such activities. Instead, one finds a dramatic expansion in the music-publishing business, the bread-and-butter of which was music for home and amateur performance.19 Music publishing involved making available both the work of famous composers, in particular those like Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, and Beethoven who essentially enjoyed no copyright protection – indeed, there was something of a ‘classics boom’ after 1867 and the introduction of offset lithography. But publishers also became active recruiters of people who could churn out, in industrial fashion, works that were easy to learn, entertaining, and graced by a modest

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amount of virtuosic display – faux fireworks, as it were, usually little more than some right-hand trilling and scales, along with the occasional glissando or crossing-over the left hand, which was, for its part, consigned to infinitely repeatable accompaniments of chordal boomchuck-chuck or simple arpeggiation. Arrangements of operatic favourites, sentimental songs, and instructional pieces rounded out the home repertory. The explosive increase in the amount of printed music reached a highpoint around 1910, gradually receding thereafter in response to the advent of sound recording and broadcasting, and German firms like Schott, Simrock, and Breitkopf & Härtel were the dominant players in this commercial market, both in Germany and abroad. The period of the Second Empire thus coincided with the high point of music publishing, and the market for its products consisted of players and consumers of music in every city and small town of Germany. There was a similar rise in the numbers of people participating in amateur music associations, regional music festivals (which bore no relation to Bayreuth), and city orchestras and theatres. After the Second World War, a great outpouring of local historical volumes recounted the musical history of one’s town or region – from the accounts of Gymnasium choruses to exhaustive lists of every local musical organization. No other European nation has a similar body of writing about its musical life; nor does the United States, even though amateur musical groups established themselves prominently across the British Isles and the United States. But in Germany, the phenomenon became linked to national identity, even national mission, in a way it did not in other countries. And although we can certainly regard the commemorative and antiquarian writing as a post-war search for continuity, it also speaks to a longer-standing pride in local and regional music-making. It documents the phenomena to which music-publishing records point – that below the level of high-profile music centres like Vienna and Berlin, art music was cultivated and practised in a steady, everyday kind of way, along with a hard-to-classify mixture of other, simpler music. The city of Ludwigshafen, for instance, had twenty or so amateur choral groups, like the Singverein Ludwigshafen, whose director, the grammar school teacher Jakob Gutwein, kept them on a steady diet of ‘folk songs and the easier art songs.’ He rehearsed them to ‘stand up to the most exacting criticism’ and, like Riehl, showed a particular partiality for Mozart and Schubert.20 Moreover, in the nineteenth century, no other country demonstrated the kind of serious compositional attention to this level of music-

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making as did the Germans. The music historian Carl Dahlhaus (a lover of paradox) has gone so far as to call most of Schumann’s oeuvre ‘provincialism of the highest order’ and ‘Hausmusik for cognoscenti.’21 The same could be said for much of Brahms’s work; he wrote quantities of music for amateur choir or private performance at the parlour piano, including waltzes, Hungarian dances, and simple religious motets. Even his great symphonies were written in expectation of an audience of people who would have enjoyed his other music in the home. Art was for him part of the social fabric, not removed from it, and the fabric was German, provincial, dispersed across place. Even Wagner wrote a song cycle, the Wesendonck Lieder, intended mainly for private singing and indeed little performed in recital halls, then or now. Although the full social and cultural contexts of this music-making remain somewhat obscured in histories of music, overshadowed as they are by the forward march of great composers and their works, the density and distribution of such music-making across German-speaking Europe contributed to the vitality of local and regional cultures. In the course of the nineteenth century, music-making became one of the most public expressions of local pride and solidarity, with every town boasting of its musical offerings, however meagre, and regions and cities competing with each other in the choral festivals that became a common part of the musical landscape from the 1820s onward. Through the planning and carrying out of such activities, both amateur and professional musicians forged networks among localities and regions, reinforced by the presence of music in schools and homes. Music, to put it another way, formed an important experiential bridge between these places of everyday life, crossing over from public to private and back again without much ado. Moreover, as already noted, the evidence of local musical life suggests considerable diffusion of art music or serious music, in various adapted forms, across a fairly broad spectrum of social classes and local milieus. Even industrial cities had factory-based brass bands, wind ensembles, and singing groups, which inherited both the town-musician repertoire and adaptations of the concert hall and opera house repertoire.22 A great deal of Wagner, for instance, proved especially adaptable to the brass band. Finally, military bands and orchestras were ubiquitous in Germany and well integrated into local life, often providing musical back-up for the more numerous choral groups (good instrumentalists being a bit rarer than singers, as is still the case). This is an instance where musical practices have something to teach us about military-civil relations. What is known suggests

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the vital function of military bands in ‘maintaining the aura’ of the military in civil society: as Ute Frevert writes, ‘Hardly a memoir written by contemporaries of the Wilhelminian era, whatever their gender or class, fails to mention military parades or music, and always with a positive connotation.’23 Finally, a significant portion of the serious or classical music of nineteenth-century Germany was, of course, sacred music or church music, which, starting in the 1820s, began to be performed outside of churches to a significant degree, sometimes in concert halls, often in regional music festivals. One of the major types of amateur musical associations in the nineteenth century, the choral society whose prototype was the Berlin Singakademie, dedicated itself largely to the cultivation of sacred music. Much of the repertoire of such groups came from the ‘museum’ of the musical past, from Palestrina to Schütz to Bach, Handel, and Mozart. The event that, more than any other, signalled their arrival on the German cultural landscape was the 1829 Berlin revival of the Bach’s St Matthew Passion, in a secular hall and under the auspices of the Berlin Singakademie. By the 1840s, major regional choral festivals, usually featuring oratorio performances, were an annual event across Germany, and by the 1870s, most cities and towns included at least one performance of Messiah or the St Matthew Passion, or preferably both, as part of the Easter season. Contemporary composers wrote for this growing market of choral societies. Brahms, for instance, composed a series of Marienlieder for his Hamburg women’s choir, a wholly secular organization that nevertheless held its rare performances in a church.24 The characteristic feature of all these groups, their intermixture of the sacred and secular, expressed itself most clearly in the miscellaneous character of the spaces in which they practised and performed, from backrooms of music stores to choir rooms of churches. The very unpredictability of their placement in urban culture reflected a significant, long-term redefinition of space within German communities and across the complicated confessional geography of Germany itself. Our consideration of confessionality in nineteenth-century Germany needs to draw music into the conversation. It was a fundamental aspect of religious expression in Germany and provides strong, if complicated, evidence for Lucian Hölscher’s ideas about the transformation of religious practices and piety in the nineteenth century. Hölscher has argued that the late eighteenth century saw the virtual disappearance of a powerful integration of church and society, the visible sign of which had been ‘regular and communally enforced participation in all

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the religious festivals and services.’ This process of ‘Entkirchlichung’ or de-churching created a more metaphorical religious community and a ‘modern piety,’ just as widespread but less church-centred. The nineteenth century, in other words, saw belief made individual and religious experience made private.25 It was marked not by the decline of religious belief but by the free-floating of piety outside traditional sacred spaces. If the visible demonstrations of this modern piety were Bible-reading in the home or charitable good works in the community, its audible demonstration was heard in the strains of the local choral society at its weekly rehearsal in some town hall or upper room in a local restaurant. Between music in the parks and music in restaurants, music in the parlour and music in the concert hall, music in schools and music in factories, the German who disliked the sound of it would have found few places in which to escape it completely. But beyond music’s connection to particular places and infusion into everyday life, Connell and Gibson mention a third aspect to the geography of music – its participation in the movements of people, products, and cultures across space. This was, arguably, the dominant feature of art music from the eighteenth century onward, or so, at least, the circulation of musicians across borders and the cross-currents of compositional styles and genres would seem to demonstrate. No clearer evidence for the cosmopolitanism of court culture in central Europe can be found than the diverse origins of court musicians and the common repertoires of court performance. Musicians did not cease to travel in the nineteenth century, even as court culture became less prominent, but with the increasing importance of nation-states and national markers of identity, the significance of travel changed along with the affect, the conduct, and the meaning of the travelling musician. In the first place, the motive force behind musicians’ travel became the tremendous expansion of the market for concert performers. Moreover, the enormous commercial potential of the middle-class concert public lay at least as much in the provincial centres as in capital cities, with their permanent but often limited musical institutions. For the performers who made their living from this demand, a measure of independence, of control over one’s career, was its happy consequence, but independence came at the price of a kind of social marginality, the marker of which was their itinerancy, their lack of settled place. It came also at the price of a kind of ambiguous, or hybrid identity. To be a well-known figure was to have crossed the

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boundaries of the national markers of identity that were becoming so overt in the public life and consciousness of people in the nineteenth century. Fame meant hybridity, with very few exceptions. Unless one died young, as did Franz Schubert, or started late in life, as did Anton Bruckner, a successful musical career demanded that the performer or the composer cross borders. One can grasp how varied were the ambiguities of identity yet how ceaseless was the movement inherent in the musical career by considering briefly the very different careers of Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms – a profoundly antipathetic pair in musical terms yet sharing, at least, the restlessness of musical internationalism. Born on the Esterhazy estates near Raiding (in a German-speaking part of Hungary), Liszt had a Hungarian father and a German mother. He never learned Hungarian, initially spoke German, and became fluent in French as a teenager. As a boy of prodigious musical talent, he attracted the attention of several Hungarian noblemen who financed his studies in Vienna. He and his family then moved to Paris, whence his career as pianist and composer really took off – tours of Europe that reached from Russia to Turkey to England, turbulent affairs, and extraordinary, unprecedented fame. In 1842 he accepted a position as Kapellmeister in ausserordentlichem Dienst (Kapellmeister in extraordinary service) in Weimar, where to everyone’s surprise he settled, effectively making the small town a centre for avant-garde music (what came to be called, significantly, the New German School). But he eventually tired of provincial life, even provinciality of the highest musical intensity, and moved to Rome, where he hoped to reform church music. He began to spend more time in Hungary, continued to travel a great deal in Europe, made another major tour to Great Britain, and in 1886 died and was buried in, of all places, Bayreuth. Brahms, by contrast, spent his entire life lamenting his state of exile from his native Hamburg, from which he departed at age twenty, on a fledgling concert tour with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi, to make his way in the world. He kept coming back to Hamburg his whole life, and he wrote constantly in his letters about his homesickness: ‘I yearn for Hamburg perpetually and I pass my favourite, albeit melancholy, hours sitting alone in the evening and reminiscing’; ‘In a somewhat old-fashioned manner I am suffering from homesickness’; ‘Here I sit, somewhat homesick for Hamburg.’26 In 1853, in what he framed as the greatest setback in his life, the Hamburg Philharmonic passed him over as conductor, which unleashed a storm of anguish. In

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a letter to Clara Schumann he wrote, ‘How seldom do people like us find a fixed abode, and how I would have liked to find it in my native city. Here [in Vienna] I will always feel that I am a stranger and can find no peace.’ Clara responded, laconically, ‘To which artist was it ever given to be able to establish hearth and home in his native city?’27 Brahms came to see himself as condemned to vagabondage. Although he ostensibly had a permanent home in Vienna, his apartment was spartan, lacking the usual gew-gaws and furbilows and excessive furnishings so characteristic of the nineteenth-century home. It spoke of transience, lack of rootedness, displacement, exile. He is said always to have had his suitcase packed, and indeed his basic schedule, repeated year after year throughout his adult life, was to travel for performances and visits in the autumn, to spend the winter months in Vienna, the spring travelling again, and the summer in some resort village in the Austrian or Swiss Alps or in Lichtenfeld outside Baden-Baden. In those places, he would register with the local authorities as ‘itinerant musician,’ a typical Brahmsian joke, all irony and self-mockery. Certainly Brahms moved in a much more confined geographical space than Liszt (Italy and the Netherlands are the only non-German-speaking countries he ever visited), but as a famous composer and sometime performer, he was a border crosser and hybrid persona nevertheless. His career mapped out a kind of amalgamation of, even reconciliation between, Austria and the Germany of 1871, and his music was received, feted, and performed far outside the confines of Germanspeaking Europe. One could find versions of these journeys throughout the ranks of professional musicians, yet the meaning of all this moving about and consequent confusion of identity remains obscure. The case of Liszt’s reception is the only one for which we have a careful study, by the musicologist Dana Gooley, who shows how the virtuoso ‘was constantly and insistently mobilizing, destabilizing, and reconstituting borders.’ Liszt was especially adept at exploiting whichever aspect of himself was appropriate for wherever he happened to be. Gooley describes this process as a mutual one between Liszt and his audiences, who sought to ‘naturalize’ him, closing off ‘the gap between his uprooted, cosmopolitan identity and the national or regional spirit of the local community.’28 In 1844, midway through his amazing career, a French music critic accused Liszt of being a chameleon: ‘Posterity will be ... baffled at the location of Franz Liszt’s real country. Everywhere the great pianist appears he receives homage as a compatriot, as a local

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glory … He goes to Russia? Franz Liszt is a Muscovite of pure blood; he has slaves and has knout distributed to them. He goes to Berlin? He becomes a merciless Prussian, he intones arch-teutonic and anti-gaulish couplets. Is he at Marseilles? There’s Provençal in his soul and he fraternizes with the bouillabaisse ... He molds himself to every zone and takes the mold of all patriotisms.’29 Throughout his life, no one was ever sure of what he was, but neither did they ever find the question of his identity unimportant or uninteresting. Looked at from the perspective of their consumers, that is, the audiences that sustained their careers through ticket sales and music purchases, the nationality of musicians mattered, their place of origin mattered, in short, their placeness mattered. At the same time, the virtuosity of Liszt’s place-shifting might also be somewhat misleading, because people did not expect, as the Parisian critic sarcastically put it, that every visiting musician be ‘a local glory,’ though certainly that could be a selling point. Rather, the musicians who travelled from city to city and country to country had a larger-than-life, symbolic function in the places where they performed, embodying not just art but national identity. They taught people the meaning of difference. One aspect of this has long been recognized as a feature of ‘exoticism’ in music. Audiences responded with great approval to musical gestures that evoked Spanishness or Hungarianness or gypsyness or Turkishness.30 But this kind of artificial exoticism existed within a larger societal experience of music that tied it firmly to places on the map, even as it allowed it free passage, as it were, across borders. As Wagner inimitably put it in 1840, ‘People have begun to demolish the barriers which are destined perhaps eternally to sever the nations themselves, yet should never separate their arts.’31 The case of Liszt is thus once again helpful in the effort to understand how the incessant movement of art and artists across national borders nevertheless contributed to the process of nation-building. Gooley tells us that, starting in 1840, Liszt put his mind to becoming German. He did so not with a single dramatic gesture, as in the infamous Budapest sabre incident of 1840, but ‘by force of accumulation, by giving a little bit for the nation in each of the locales he visited.’32 And what was true for Liszt was also true, with variations, for other travelling musicians, whether they were elaborately manipulating nationality, as in the case of Liszt, or embodying it in less deliberate ways. One must remember that concerts featuring soloists from outside the community were not everyday happenings outside major cities – they took place perhaps

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three to four times a year and were therefore much remarked upon and remembered. Further, as we know, most Germans travelled only within the narrow compass of their region; the kind of travel that Brahms undertook annually – from Vienna to Munich to Karlsruhe to Leipzig to Düsseldorf to Berlin, criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country – was very unusual.33 Given such a context, we might speculate that the effect of the circulation of musicians was an intensified version of the effect of national newspapers or literature, in so far as these travellers provided a kind of enactment of the reality of the nation, as they moved from one city to the next, linking them all in a common musical culture. Beyond that, they had a larger-than-life function, bestowing distinction on the places they visited and helping to sustain a locality’s pride in its musical sophistication, that is, its participation in the larger worlds to which it belonged. The most transitory of the arts, even if the most German, music disappeared into the imagination when the last note of the concert ceased to sound, yet in community after community we can find evidence of the impulse to recapture the moment and somehow make it permanent, as part of daily life. This evidence consists not only of piano transcriptions of the symphony just heard, or easy keyboard versions of the virtuoso piece well beyond the capacity of most amateurs. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, it consists also of a lively trade in photographic images of composers. Brahms’s correspondence has a number of references to his views (mainly unfavourable) of commercial photographs for which he had just sat. Music stores sold such things along with the music or in conjunction with ticket sales for an upcoming performance. Then there were the bronze or marble or plaster busts of famous composers and performers, a product of the commercialization and diffusion of classical music in the nineteenth century that lingers into the twenty-first in the form of student recital favours and middle-brow aestheticism.34 A whole material culture of musical life – print reproductions of Hans Sachs at his cobbler’s bench, postcards of Brahms’s birthplace in Hamburg, ashtrays formed out of the head of Beethoven – came to clutter the bourgeois parlour, along with the piano, of course. And on a more imposing scale was all the monument building. Even just the visit of a famous musician could be memorialized by at least a plaque, and performance spaces, grand and humble, came to bear the names and images of the men who had passed through and whose music would, presumably, still sound in that place. Of course, not all travelling musicians were German, but even the

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non-German ones, especially when in Germany, spread the gospel of German music, of Germanness in music, of German superiority in all things musical. Whether Hungarian or Russian or Norwegian or English, the core of what they played was German, with some other works thrown in for the usual exoticist reasons of colour and contrast. In the course of the nineteenth century, performing in Germany had indeed become something like a pilgrimage for non-German musicians, a phenomenon demonstrable in the biographies, memoirs, and letters of these famous men and women but the impact of which on German audiences needs further study. For example, Anton Rubinstein, whose career as an international pianist spanned the latter half of the nineteenth century (from his first European tour as an adult in 1854 to his death in 1894), was born and raised in Russia, but received much of his musical training in Berlin and Vienna. In his marathon concerts, their length both a wonder and a torment for his audiences, he often performed entirely German works. Back in Russia, he became an important, sometimes controversial leader in musical life, calling for what amounted to the Germanization of Russian musical training and composition and more or less explicitly granting universal status to German music alone.35 In Germany, his passionate and reckless style of playing surrounded him, almost immediately, with the legendary aura of Beethoven. People regarded him as the reincarnation, possibly even the illegitimate son, and certainly the musical heir to this figure already well established as the hero of German music. People who had known Beethoven well, like the pianist Ignaz Moscheles, helped to sustain such middle-class fantasies. ‘Rubinstein’s features and short, irrepressible hair remind me of Beethoven,’ said Moscheles, and Liszt referred to him as ‘Van II.’36 It has long been recognized that the nineteenth century saw the canonization of a symphonic and instrumental repertoire dominated by the works of Germans, but the mechanisms of this canon’s formation are less well studied than its deleterious effects on those composers and performers on the periphery of this great centre. Studying the way these increasingly canonical works circulated, the meanings that audiences attached to the performances and the performers in particular places, and the everyday practices of art-music appreciation provides us with the possibility of looking at canon formation as a process that involved not just critics, patrons, and other taste-makers but also a mutual interaction of audience and performer. Robert Schumann wrote of Beethoven in the 1830s that Germans should ‘take a hundred cen-

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tury-old oak trees, and write his name with them in giant letters. Or carve his likeness in colossal proportions, like Saint Borromaeus on Lake Maggiore, that he may gaze above the mountains, as he did when living; and when the Rhine ships pass, and foreigners ask the name of that giant form, every child may answer – it is Beethoven, and they will think it is the name of a German emperor.’37 Perhaps it is unfortunate for Germans that the civic activists of the Rhine Valley took on their Germania project instead; but with or without a Mount Rushmore of great composers, music was inscribed on the landscape of Germanspeaking Europe, not literally but in musical practices that have outlasted a good many nineteenth-century monuments. Our own expectations of the sound of serious music and its meaning derive from what developed in concert halls, opera houses, and music rooms in the course of the nineteenth century. In their evolution as sites of musicmaking, and in the musical practices they made possible, we may also glimpse many of the tensions that marked European society in the nineteenth century and gain some sense of how people understood the distinctions between public and private, sacred and secular, between confessions and classes, between local, national, and international identities. Seen this way, the music room was indeed a plenum, not a vacuum, a space entirely filled with matter and meaning.

NOTES 1 Among other state-of-the-field manifestos, see Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History: Essays (Berkeley, 1989); and Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, 1999). 2 Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Cambridge and New York, 1996), 6. 3 David Blackbourn, A Sense of Place: New Directions in German History, The 1998 Annual Lecture of the German Historical Institute, London (London, 1999), 5. 4 Robert Sack, A Geographical Guide to the Real and the Good (New York, 2003), 4. 5 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1969), 224. 6 R. Murray Schaefer, ‘Music and the Soundscape,’ in The Book of Music and Nature, ed. David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus (Middletown, 2001), 58. 7 John Connell and Chris Gibson, Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity, and Place (London, 2003), 1.

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8 Two exceptional studies of how place might be integrated into the history of musical culture take Paris as their place: James Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, 1995) and Anselm Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theatre in Paris in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Chicago, 1998). 9 Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Oxford, 2000), 20. 10 The best guide to the Bayreuth festival is Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven, 1994). 11 See, for example, ‘Art and Revolution’ (1849), ‘The Artwork of the Future’ (1849), ‘A Communication to My Friends’ (1851), ‘Opera and Drama’ (1852), and ‘A Glance at the German Operatic Stage of Today’ (1873), all available in the William Ashton Ellis translations at the Wagner Library website, http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/index.htm (accessed 21 Feb. 2006). 12 Cited in Matthew Wilson Smith, ‘Bayreuth, Disneyland, and the Return to Nature,’ in Land/Scape/Theatre, ed. Elinor Fuchs and Una Chauduri (Ann Arbor, 2002), 254. 13 Quoted in Spotts, Bayreuth, 41. 14 Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Kulturgeschichtliche Charakterköpfe, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1892), 447, 453. 15 Ibid., 448–9, 453. 16 Richard Wagner, ‘Über deutsches Musikwesen,’ in Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (Leipzig, 1871), 1:152; Riehl, Kulturgeschichtliche Charakterköpfe, 480. 17 Wagner, ‘Über deutsches Musikwesen,’ 152–4. 18 Riehl, Kulturgeschichtliche Charakterköpfe, 514, 480–4. 19 On the explosion in publishing for home performance in the decades of the 1860s and 1870s, see Andreas Ballstaedt and Tobias Widmaier, Salonmusik. Zur Geschichte und Funktion einer Bürgerlichen Musikpraxis, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, Beihefte, vol. 28 (Stuttgart, 1989). See also Irmgard Keldany-Mohr, ‘Unterhaltungsmusik’ als soziokulturelles Phänomen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Untersuchung über den Einfluss der musikalischen Öffentlichkeit auf die Herausbildung eines neuen Musiktypes (Regensburg, 1977); Karl Gustav Fellerer, Studien zur Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts, 4 vols., vol. 1, Musik und Musikleben im 19. Jahrhundert (Regensburg, 1984); and Thomas Christensen, ‘Public Music in Private Spaces: Piano-Vocal Scores and the Domestication of Opera,’ in Music and the Cultures of Print, ed. Kate van Orden (New York, 2000), 67–94. 20 Wilhelm Jakob Jung, Musikgeschichte der Stadt Ludwigshafen am Rhein vom Jahre 1850 bis 1918, ed. Siegfried Fauck (Ludwigshafen am Rhein, 1968), 84.

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21 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley, 1989), 151. 22 See Monica Steegmann, ed., Musik und Industrie. Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Werkschöre und Werksorchester (Regensburg, 1978). 23 Ute Frevert, A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society, trans. Andrew Boreham with Daniel Brückenhaus (New York, 2004), 211. 24 Sophie Hutchinson Drinker, Brahms and His Women’s Choruses (Merion, Pa., 1952). 25 Lucian Hölscher, ‘Die Religion des Bürgers: Bürgerliche Frömmigkeit und Protestantische Kirche im 19. Jahrhundert,’ Historische Zeitschrift 250 (1990): 595–630. 26 Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, ed. Styra Avins, trans. Josef Eisinger and Styra Avins (New York, 1997), 250, 258, 448. 27 Ibid., 258–9. 28 Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge and New York, 2004), 199. 29 Ibid., 199. 30 See, for example, Jonathan Bellman, ed., The Exotic in Western Music (Boston, 1998). 31 Richard Wagner, ‘On German Music’ (1840), trans. William Ashton Ellis, available at the Wagner Library, http://users.belgacom.net/ wagnerlibrary/prose/wagongm.htm (accessed 21 Feb. 2006). 32 Returning to Hungary for the first time since childhood, he publicly accepted the sabre of honour from Magyar nationalists at his first concert, thus bringing down upon himself a storm of criticism in the French and German press, where he was accused of having repudiated his French and German loyalties in favour of narrow, backward-looking militarists. Gooley, Virtuoso Liszt, 157. 33 On the regional compass of most travel, see Siegfried Weichlein, Nation und Region. Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich (Düsseldorf, 2004). 34 ‘Busts of composers provide a great addition to the room of any musician or person who appreciates good music ... Mozart busts are one of the most popular items in the bust gallery ... If Mozart is not your style, perhaps a Beethoven bust would better suit.’ See http://www.statue.com/composerbusts.html (accessed 21 Feb. 2006). 35 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (New York, 2004), 467–8. 36 Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists (New York, 1963), 253. 37 Quoted in Paul Henry Lang, Music in Western Civilization, with a new foreword by Leon Botstein (New York, 1997), 776.

2 Heimat Art, Modernism, Modernity jennifer jenkins

Heimat is one of the German language’s most complex, ambiguous, and opaque terms. While the idea of a homeland, or home place, has a universal emotional currency, the deep connections that Heimat has had to Germany’s troubled national history have often given the word a powerfully negative resonance. The idea of Heimat, as articulated in the mid-nineteenth-century writings of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, celebrated the pre-industrial rural culture of the Volk and its cultural and racial embeddedness in the natural landscape. Intellectual and cultural histories written since 1945 have explored the instrumentalization of this idea by political conservatives after 1890 and its use in anti-urban and anti-modern diatribes.1 These histories outlined one aspect of the keyword. There were others. ‘I realize that the word has a bad reputation,’ remarks a character in Siegfried Lenz’s post-war novel Heimat Museum (1978), ‘that it’s been so seriously abused that one can hardly use it nowadays ... But couldn’t we try to rid the word of its bad connotations? Give it back a sort of purity?’2 Recent studies of the Heimat idea and the Heimat movement in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany have revealed its instrumentalization by political conservatives to constitute only one of its several histories. Pried loose from its position in völkisch ideology, Heimat becomes a term without a fixed or dominant meaning. For the residents of the Rhenish Palatinate described in Celia Applegate’s A Nation of Provincials, Heimat was a mediating term that reconciled local particularity with national abstraction. Through the concept of the Heimat the residents of towns and villages negotiated the lived reality of modernization as it transformed their local environments. Likewise, in Alon Confino’s The Nation as a Local Metaphor, the term played a mediating role in his description of the ‘nationalizing’ of Germans through local spaces and idioms.3

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Studies such as these reversed the social and political valences of the term. They highlighted aspects that were pro-capitalist and bourgeois rather than antimodern and reactionary. Implicit in these studies was the larger point that Heimat democratized authority over the past and was itself the product of a period of mass political mobilization. Yet one area in which this rethinking does not seem to have had a strong effect is art and culture, specifically in what is meant by Heimatkunst (Heimat art) and the relationship between Heimatkunst and modern German culture. This relationship is most often conceived as antagonistic; Heimatkunst and modernism are commonly understood as each other’s opposites. One of the most interesting recent surveys of imperial German culture still positions Heimatkunst as a locally generated and locally rooted art-form, defined primarily through the blood-and-soil fantasies, rural idylls, and tales of heroic farmers created by men such as the writers Friedrich Lienhard and Adolf Bartels.4 Although Matthew Jefferies has incisively explored the wider meanings, including the modernist meanings, of the Heimat movement in his earlier work, his recent survey introduces Heimatkunst as only ‘an earthy new German literature and art, rooted in the diversity of regional cultures and dialects.’5 Modernism, by contrast – which is discussed in a different section of his book – was the work of a ‘multifaceted avant-garde,’ located in Germany’s cities, connected to international art markets, and motivated by new sensibilities fired by urban development and technological change.6 In this formulation, the two have nothing to do with each other. Heimatkunst was local and rural; modernism was urban. Heimatkunst looked backward, modernism forward. Static in presentation, Heimatkunst was old-fashioned in its aesthetic strategies. It moved only within local art markets, and its painters and writers spoke to local audiences in traditional artistic languages. Modernists, by contrast, were urban creatures, international in their sensibilities and bent on breaking with aesthetic convention. Engaged in new techniques of aesthetic representation, modernism tended towards disengaging art from life; it had, in the opinion of some, a fateful urge towards aestheticism. Heimatkunst, on the other hand, was proclaimed as populist, German, and authentic, embedded in biological and historical life-worlds. In typical anecdotes illustrating the ‘fate’ of modernism in imperial Germany, Heimatkunst makes its appearance as modernism’s aggrieved and resentful opponent. The protest in 1911 by the north German artist Carl Vinnen against the purchase of a Vincent Van Gogh painting by the Bremen Art Museum sounded all of these notes. Vinnen’s populist and nationalist protest against what he called

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‘French’ art for a long time was taken as evidence of the strength of conservative nationalism and ‘cultural pessimism’ in German society before 1914. It supposedly illustrated the essential dissimilarity between Heimatkunst and modernism. Such a reading, however, reveals only part of the picture. After emerging into the glare of national publicity, Vinnen’s protest remained largely unanswered. The Bremen Art Museum continued to purchase the most modern art of the time; exhibitions of Van Gogh’s work drew artists of all sorts, local as well as modernist, and Germany’s art scene remained as complex and differentiated as ever. Reading the episode as evidence only of modernism’s weakness says more about how German modernism has been written about – how its history has been shaped – than it does about the historical development of modern art, and a modernist public culture, in Germany from the 1880s onward. This is a notoriously complex issue and one that has been dominated by normative conceptions of both art and politics.7 Modernist art movements are often politically complex, but this political complexity could not be acknowledged in the aftermath of the Second World War. The project of claiming an untainted and ‘usable’ cultural heritage for the Federal Republic involved simplified readings of national culture.8 The ‘National Socialist past has imposed many limitations, silences and taboos on the cultural-historical debate,’ writes Irit Rogoff. This included the construction of a canon of modernist culture that was at odds with the history of the arts themselves.9 Andreas Huyssen and David Bathrick have likewise pointed to the narrowness of much writing on German modernism. In their volume Modernity and the Text they explicitly take issue with post-war readings, which they see as largely ahistorical. Arguing for opening the study of modernism to a variety of readings, they state decisively that it cannot be understood as a closed canon or as a single set of aesthetic principles. Rather it was ‘a widely heterogeneous field of discourses and practices,’ whose history could not be forced ‘into a relatively rigid framework of categories and concepts.’10 Cultural production in Imperial Germany was active and diverse, particularly in Germany’s provincial cities, and arguments that focus on dividing the ‘modern’ from the ‘antimodern’ repeatedly twist our understanding of what German modernism actually looked like and the meanings it projected to its audiences. In keeping with the focus of this volume, one could say that a defining characteristic of Germany’s modernist culture was its locatedness, the particularity of its responses to changes in local environments and ways of life as these were trans-

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formed by powerful processes of modernization. In this sense the early phases of German modernism – namely, naturalism and impressionism in painting, literature, and drama – shared many characteristics with Heimatkunst, as both movements focused on the detailed rendering of everyday life and the individuality of places.11 Before 1914 artists who saw themselves as Heimatkünstler often also understood themselves to be modernists. The writer Ilse Frapan, with her naturalistic descriptions of an urbanizing Hamburg in her novel The Burden, would be one example. The playwright Gerhart Hauptmann, with his connections to circles engaged in both Heimatkunst and modernism – such as the Munich arts journal Die Gesellschaft and its editor Michael Georg Conrad – would be another. Moreover, throughout Europe, and not just in Germany, local motifs, symbols, and landscapes became the ground of formal artistic experimentation, particularly in painting. The local environment was the terrain upon which new visual languages were thought out. T.J. Clark has masterfully documented this phenomenon for the case of French Impressionist painting and the interplay between the focus on the transformation of Paris and its environs and the development of new languages of expression. Griselda Pollock has likewise analysed this dynamic in the work of Vincent Van Gogh, showing the iconographic modernist’s foundation in Dutch regional painting.12 If one thinks of modernism as a set of artistic responses to modernization, as Clark has claimed, then these responses are necessarily local. They are bounded by and located in particular material contexts. In the German case this would illustrate what Bathrick and Huyssen have called ‘the largest truth about modernism itself – namely the plurality, the heterogeneity of its response to the maelstrom of modernization.’13 Historical studies of Germany’s modernist culture have demonstrated this plurality, pointing towards the regional contexts in which cultural life flourished before 1914.14 Organized and funded through many types of institutions, the arts drew on multiple sources of support.15 The decentralized character of public culture created many possible places where modernism could and did flourish. This happened more often in the provinces than in the capital. Regional museums such as the Hamburg and Bremen Art Museums or the Folkwang Museum in Hagen often provided stronger institutional support for cultural experimentation than did institutions in Berlin. Regionalism was, in addition, a theme as well as a structure. For the museum directors Hugo von Tschudi and Alfred Lichtwark, both strong supporters of modernist art, it was the locatedness of artistic work, its detailed ren-

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dering of particular places in ways that stretched the boundaries of artistic expression, that contributed to its modernity. As the organizers of one of Imperial Germany’s largest and best publicized national art exhibitions – the Centennial Exhibition of German Art in Berlin in 1906 – they explicitly placed regionalism at the centre of the program. In so doing they turned an exhibition of national art into a display of regional landscape painting. Rejecting both academicism and historicism as characteristics of official and established French art, Tschudi and Lichtwark showcased regional and local art as both particularly German and as the source of modern developments in painting.16 Heimatkunst and modernism had many points of connection. These become apparent when artists, and their artworks, are placed into their detailed material contexts – the social, political, and regional contexts – that surrounded and enabled the production of their art and its reception by multiple audiences. The artist Heinrich Vogeler wonderfully illustrates such connections. Vogeler’s life and work drew together the local and the modern in exemplary fashion. One of Imperial Germany’s celebrated artists – he was nationally known as a leading practitioner of art nouveau as a graphic artist, painter, interior designer, book illustrator, and architect – Vogeler emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1931 and died in exile in Kazakhstan in 1942. He confounds many of the categories we use to discuss German modernism. Vogeler believed, like many artists at the time, in the interrelatedness of the aesthetic, the social, and the political. His wish to have art and life speak to one another – a goal of progressive reformers of all sorts – made him a reader of William Morris and a member of the German Garden City Movement.17 It motivated his creation of a highly developed artistic life at his home, the Barkenhoff in the artists’ colony Worpswede, and it drove his utopian socialist ideas. Vogeler began his artistic career as a founding member of the Worpswede colony, located in a moorland village 25 kilometres north-east of Bremen. The members of the colony thought of themselves as practitioners of local art. Works on Vogeler often find it difficult to deal with his multiple identities. They split his life in half, preferring to speak either of the artistic Vogeler before 1914 or the political Vogeler after 1918, the member of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council in Osterholz (the town closest to Worpswede), the active Communist and promoter of social programs for children. The First World War divides these two worlds, even more so as Vogeler spent the end of the war in a mental hospital in Bremen for having sent a pacifist fairy tale –

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the ‘Fairy Tale of a Loving God’ – to the emperor and to his commanding officer. The war was clearly a transformative experience, radicalizing and directing Vogeler’s previous artistic and social commitments onto definite political paths, although he would often be as uncomfortable with the Communist party as it was with him. Yet the war was not a break in a strict sense; the dream of merging art with life coloured both periods of his life.18 Vogeler himself saw his life as a continuous process of struggle. Its beginnings – both artistic and political – lay in the milieu of the local, in Heimatkunst and landscape painting. Born in 1872 as the oldest son of a merchant family in Bremen, Vogeler had the good fortune to be born to parents who understood their son’s creative leanings. He was released from the responsibility of running the family business and was sent to study art at the academy in Düsseldorf in 1890. Signs of rebellion came early. Rejecting the academy’s conventional training, he complained of its historicism, particularly its reverence for Greek culture. The ‘endless sketching of plaster models of ancient artworks,’ he wrote later in his autobiography, ‘made me angry, it offended me ... I also could not generate much enthusiasm for the art historical lectures.’19 Early on he sought a more contemporary and vital art, which he believed to have found in the plein air works of the French landscape painters from Barbizon. ‘A visit to the Louvre filled me with a yearning for my own artistic vision [Sehnsucht nach eigener Gestaltung],’ he wrote during a visit to Paris following his studies, ‘and it was the men from Fontainebleau, [Jean-François] Millet and [Gustave] Courbet above all who stood close to me, as if they showed me both the direction and the goal.’20 He was not alone in his enthusiasm. A generation of German Impressionists shared this source of inspiration. The most famous among them, Max Liebermann, had trained with Millet. For Vogeler, landscape painting, together with the applied arts, was an early interest. Upon leaving Düsseldorf in 1894 he joined a friend from Bremen, the landscape painter Fritz Overbeck, in the moors of north-western Germany. They moved to a small village in the Teufelsmoor, an area populated by poor peat farmers. Here, in a landscape of marshes, bogs and birch forests, Vogeler founded – along with Overbeck and the landscape painters Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, and Hans am Ende – the artists’ colony Worpswede. The colony’s members focused primarily on landscape painting. The goals of this genre had brought them to the area. Fritz Mackensen was the first to move to the Teufelsmoor, drawn by what he saw as the artistic beauty of the landscape. ‘How beautiful it is here,’ he wrote to Otto

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Modersohn in 1887, ‘I have no words to describe it to you ... I saw a row of birch trees as a Rousseau has never been able to paint them.’21 The reference to Theodore Rousseau is significant. Although often referred to as practising a form of Heimatkunst pur, the Worpswede painters emulated experiments taken from the French Barbizon painters, choosing their motifs from everyday life and their methods from the close observation of nature. Painting outdoors in natural light was a declaration of distance from the academy and academic art, which at this time dominated artistic production in Germany.22 Everyday scenes, in contrast to classical scenes or stylized historical tableaux, were defined as more ‘real,’ more ‘authentic.’ Through depicting the everyday life of ordinary people in local material settings, the Worpswede artists believed they would approach nearer to expressing art’s true ideals.23 Artists across Germany, including Max Liebermann, also a student of the French Barbizon painters, followed this impulse.24 When one reads Henri van de Velde’s comments on how landscape painting was taught in the art academies of the 1880s – ‘landscape painting was taught in a studio, in which dried-up trees of diverse sorts were stuck into sand and, depending on the season, hung with green or with yellow leaves ... For a winter landscape cotton balls would be hung on the branches and plaster strewn across the floor!’25 – it is easy to understand how the decision to move one’s easel outside was seen as radical. Concentrating on landscape painting and choosing scenes from the labouring lives of the farmers of the area, the group’s work blended the close focus of Heimatkunst with the artistic goals of impressionism. They explored the particularities of the landscape and paid special attention to the play of light across it. In their choice of motifs, their perspective on the lives and work of local people, and their claim that these expressed an essential authenticity, they engaged in a socially conscious art practice. Paula Modersohn- Becker, a later member of the group, would place the lives of local women and children at the centre of her artistic vision. The Worpswede artists did not stay unknown for long. Finding an early supporter in the Bremen Art Museum, the group’s paintings won national acclaim in 1895 at an exhibition in the Glass Palace in Munich. Publicity and patrons soon followed. Vogeler was initially one of the group’s lesser-known members. He learned landscape painting from Fritz Mackensen and composed numerous paintings with regional motifs: the flat fields transversed with canals, the sunshine playing through flower-strewn meadows, the pale light of a birch forest. He painted scenes of local labour and trans-

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port – boats carrying grain down the canals – and many images of the home he built at Worpswede. Initially a dilapidated farmhouse, the Barkenhoff, which Vogeler purchased in 1896, soon left all traces of its humble past behind. He rebuilt and renovated the building, fired by a vision of creating a special artistic world inside of its walls. In its later grand state, surrounded by an extensive garden, it became the group’s social centre. But beyond landscape painting and work on the Barkenhoff, it was the techniques of the graphic arts and artistic reproduction, which he learned from Hans am Ende, that claimed his attention.26 With the group’s purchase of a press, Vogeler began to immerse himself in graphic art. This work revealed his developing and hybrid style; his paintings and etchings (Radierungen) were highly decorative, experimental in their combination of lush art nouveau decoration, the spare beauty of the moors, and motifs drawn from sagas, local stories, and fairy tales. In 1898 this work brought him to the attention of a group of patrons and writers in Munich, who aimed to found a self-described ‘modern journal’ for literature and the arts. This undertaking resulted in the journal Die Insel, which counted Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Julius Meier-Graefe, and Richard Dehmel among its contributors. Distributed broadly, it made Vogeler nationally known as an illustrator and book designer.27 Through Die Insel Vogeler came into increased contact with designers, and he began to design objects, furniture, and interiors and to take a broader interest in the aesthetic transformation of environments. For Die Insel’s owner, Alfred Walter Heymel (a Bremen native who had moved to Munich), he created a dining room and a salon. With his belief in the complete interrelation of art and life, Vogeler recreated all aspects of the room: furniture, wall decoration, rugs and doors, lighting fixtures, table china, and silver.28 Back in Worpswede his art nouveau enthusiasm found an outlet in fulfilling contracts for wealthy patrons. His belief in the interrelation of art and environment also found expression through his work in local Heimat organizations. Vogeler co-founded the Association for Lower Saxon Culture (Verein für niedersächsisches Volkstum) in 1904 and served as chairman of the Worpswede Beautification Association (Verschönerungs Verein Worpswede) from 1904 to 1912.29 His painting and art objects made him famous in his home town of Bremen. He began receiving commissions from wealthy clients and art patrons to design their homes and redesign their interiors. In 1905, as a result of his growing local reputation, Vogeler was invited to redesign the Güldenkammer at the Bremen Town Hall. He redid the neglected sev-

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enteenth- century hall as a vision of historicism as overtaken by art nouveau. The imposing furniture and heavy walls of the room were transformed through decorative wallpaper and wood panelling covered with the curving lines of birds, plants, and flowers. Organic lines enlivened the sombre surfaces. Ceremonial and grand, the Güldenkammer in Vogeler’s hands became also soft and playful; it was Bremen tradition as channelled through a Jugendstil sensibility.30 His way of combining the local and the modern was popular with forward-thinking clients. ‘The ruling Lord Mayor of Bremen, Dr. Markus,’ wrote Vogeler, ‘whom Bremen has to thank for the regulation of the Weser river and the technical modernization of the harbour, was very interested in my work.’ Markus and his wife were so taken by Vogeler’s work that they visited Worpswede and ended up purchasing a summer residence there.31 A combination of the modern and the vernacular characterized his projects in general. For Dr Emil Löhnberg, a progressive Jewish doctor from Hamm whom he met on a trip to England with the German Garden City Association, Vogeler designed a home in the Sauerland. Carefully placed within its physical setting, the house was constructed from local stone and drew its water from a local source. It was also technologically modern, with central heating and indoor plumbing.32 In his descriptions of the house one sees how Vogeler idealized the idea of a located modern art. ‘The natural building material that was used,’ he wrote, ‘in a short time gave an impression of embeddedness in nature which would make everyone think that the house had been there forever and the landscape was not thinkable without the house.’33 Throughout, he worked against a conservative idea of Heimatkunst as a set of traditions untouched by time. His work showed that Heimatkunst was open to interpretation and updating. Together with his brother Franz he began to design and manufacture furniture with Heimat motifs. Their small business, the Worpsweder Werkstätten, a furniture factory at the end of the rail line at Tarmstedt, tried, like the Dresdener Werkstätten, to mass-produce quality furniture according to artistic guidelines and for a reasonable price.34 When local authorities gave Vogeler the commission to design train stations along the regional rail line, he insisted that the stations not be built in a uniform style. Each should be slightly different and express the ‘character of the place’ (Charakter der Gegend). In this he worked against the spread of the socalled ‘Hanover Gothic,’ which was the favoured style of local officials for ‘schools, train stations and the homes of large farmers.’ Through

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this work Vogeler became a type of local architectural authority, for his promotion of an alternative local style, he said, ‘only worked when I reworked, at my own cost, every building plan that was shown to me. I did this in order to preserve the character of the area in which we lived.’ Eventually he acquired the authority from local building officials to oversee all pending building plans. This drew the ire of local conservatives. From ‘reactionary elements’ he encountered ‘strong resistance.’35 Vogeler made sure that the new train station he designed for Worpswede had a restaurant and veranda to handle its growing traffic in visitors.36 The moors that had attracted Fritz Mackensen with their remoteness had become the site of artistic pilgrimages for many. In Vogeler’s telling the moor that became his home was anything but uniformly quiet. It was crisscrossed with travellers, visitors, projects, labour, and transport. Mackensen attracted a number of students, including Clara Westhoff and Paula Becker. The latter became the wife of Otto Modersohn; the former married the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, one of Worpswede’s most famous visitors and occasional residents. Worpswede became a site where modern ideas, particularly ideas about sexuality and sexual norms, could be lived out. Paula Modersohn-Becker and Otto Modersohn went on painting trips to the woods, in which she posed nude. The Barkenhoff became a centre of cultural activity, with artistic discussions, musical evenings, and outdoor theatre in which local poets read from their first plays.37 From his seat in the supposedly remote Teufelsmoor Vogeler used the post and Worpswede’s daily transportation to Bremen to send his work to exhibitions and enter it into competitions. When he won the small gold medal for an exhibition of graphic art in Vienna, the news came by post.38 In fact, the moors that appeared so far away in Mackensen’s descriptions were for Vogeler a piece of what he considered his Heimat, his home town of Bremen. In his autobiography he mentions that he could see the Weyerberg, the large hill below which Worpswede was located, from an upper-storey window in his parents’ home. The importance of travel to Vogeler, whether from Bremen to Worpswede or further afield, is clear in his memoirs. His journeys constitute one of its narrative threads. One of his trips to Munich carried him further south to Florence, where he met the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in 1898. Rilke visited Vogeler in Worpswede several times and became a close personal friend. During an extended stay from May 1901 to August of 1902 Rilke wrote studies of both Vogeler’s art and the landscape painting of the Worpswede artists.39 His assessment of Vogeler’s art emphat-

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ically sounds the doubled notes of locality and modernity. Published in a special issue of the journal Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration in April 1902 (a previous special issue had been dedicated to Vogeler in 1899), Rilke’s study took the interrelation of artistic experimentation and the particularities of place as emblematic. He defined Vogeler’s life and work, its combination of the new and the located, as displaying both the most authentic and the most modern impulses to be found in German cultural life.40 Here was ‘a so-called “modern artist” [ein sogenannter “Moderner”], a Worpsweder,’ wrote Rilke, whose art expressed a particular way of seeing and feeling. ‘If our time moves towards bringing art and life together (a synthesis that will succeed, perhaps, in a far-off future),’ he continued, ‘it is typical that it does not see the true artist among the imposters, the true artist who, in a somewhat smaller format, as in a metaphor, unintentionally and continuously connects art and life in a daily fashion – the time cannot see Heinrich Vogeler, who would be a fulfilment for it, if it were at all capable of such realizations.’41 As Rilke described it, the bringing together of art and life was central to Vogeler’s modernity. This was an art, moreover, that was grounded and rooted in life at Worpswede, particularly at the Barkenhoff. The vital new way of seeing that Vogeler presented and Rilke admired was defined as organic to the particular environment of Worpswede, specifically the Barkenhoff’s artistic world. In his text Rilke unfolded artistic worlds within worlds, moving from one Heimat to the next in ever-narrowing circles. At its centre was Vogeler’s garden. In his narrative Rilke equated the growing and blossoming of Vogeler’s garden with the development of his art. In the process he enshrined an ideal of the artist as a personality in communion with nature. The artist and the gardener were the same creative being. ‘A very strange gardener came to this garden,’ Rilke wrote, ‘a poet, who set the beginning of his poem in the garden and let nature take it over and develop it further after he had set the rhythm, and a painter, who was inspired by the poem growing wild and made a picture of it in which it was represented.’42 In a non-linear and looping fashion, Rilke described Vogeler’s modern art, and his ideal of modern culture in general, as something that drew its power from location, from locatedness. Clearly he thought that Germany’s new, modern art should be an expression of art’s ‘eternal’ values. But he defined the source of the ‘eternal’ differently from Imperial Germany’s conservative patrons of art. Eternal did not necessarily mean something that was divorced from

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its time and place, ahistorical and abstract. Rilke defines art as located in time and place; in fact it embodied and expressed time and place, and through this particularity its eternal contours were revealed. Rilke wished for the new art to be a vital, even a vitalist, art with a strong connection to the conditions and particular languages out of which it arose. Idealizing the interplay between art and life, he pointed towards Vogeler’s work as its embodiment. In Rilke’s descriptions of Vogeler, the story of his life and the story of his art become the same story. Both were described as poetic expressions of a life force, a transcendent power. Heimatkunst and modern art were not necessarily antipathetic to each other. The two could be brought together, as Rilke recognized. ‘Out of Heinrich Vogeler’s life comes an art that is connected to it,’ he wrote. ‘It is dependent on the land of his Heimat; it has good and bad years; it needs his diligence, his trust and the strength and love of his hands as if it were his field and he were the sower and harvester of it.’43 Much as the term might seem contradictory, it was an organic modernism that Rilke praised. A paradigmatic modernist, Rilke idealized an art grounded in the particular conditions of particular places. He idealized a located art. Despite recent historical works on Heimat that reveal the many meanings clustering around the term, Heimatkunst is still taken to refer primarily to reactionary cultural movements.44 However, as the example of Vogeler shows, self-conscious Heimat artists could also be at the forefront of modern artistic developments. Of course this was not true for all of them. Just as Heimat took on numerous political and social meanings – there were conservative articulations of Heimat and liberal, socialist, and Marxist versions – Heimatkunst also referred to a wide range of cultural practices. This diversity mirrors the regional, social, and political diversity of Imperial German society. When Vogeler referred to himself as a Worpsweder, he pointed to what he considered to be the source of his art, its embeddedness in his life, its time and its place. This embeddedness, or locatedness, signals what many German artists saw as special to their work. It did not detract from its modernity. Rather, its locatedness, combined with its experiments in artistic expression – the harmonious combination of the new and the old – constituted its modernity. When we write the histories of German modernism from the bottom up, the complexity of the topic immediately becomes apparent. Just as regionalism was both a framework for Ger-

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man modernism and a theme, so regional museums in provincial cities gave many artists institutional support and audiences for their work. Modernism did not happen just in Berlin, Hamburg, or Munich, and it had a social depth and resonance that is little known. Further regional studies of modern art will contribute to seeing the intertwined nature of Heimatkunst and modernity.

NOTES 1 Karlheinz Rossbacher, Heimatkunstbewegung und Heimatroman. Zu einer Literatursoziologie der Jahrhundertwende (Stuttgart, 1975); George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (New York, 1964). 2 Siegfried Lenz, Heimatmuseum (Hamburg, 1978). 3 Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990); Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor (Chapel Hill, 1997). See also William Rollins, A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904–1918 (Ann Arbor, 1997); Matthew Jefferies, Politics and Culture in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Industrial Architecture (Oxford and Washington D.C., 1995); and Thomas Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 2004). 4 Matthew Jefferies, Imperial Culture in Germany, 1871–1918 (New York, 2003), 208–10. 5 Ibid., 208. 6 Ibid., 34–5; Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy (Oxford and New York, 2002), 202–3. See also Wolfgang Mommsen, Bürgerliche Kultur und künstlerischer Avantgarde 1870–1918 (Frankfurt a.M., 1994) and Thomas Nipperdey, Wie das Bürgertum die Moderne fand (Berlin, 1989). 7 In the immediate post-war period formalistic conceptions of modernism, which divorced the study of artworks from their historical and social contexts, joined with a particular reading of German ‘modernity’ that connected modernist culture to progressive politics and for which the Bauhaus became the preferred symbol. A selective cultural heritage from the ‘Weimar modern’ was defined as the cultural foundation for the Federal Republic. On post-war constructions of the history of modernism see Francis Frascina, Pollock and After: The Critical Debate (New York, 1985) and Paul Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2004). 8 On the construction of a ‘usable past’ in the Federal Republic see Robert

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10

11 12

13

14

15 16 17

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Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001). Irit Rogoff, ‘The Divided Heritage – Themes and Problems in German Modernism,’ in The Divided Heritage, ed. Rogoff (Cambridge and New York, 1991), 6. David Bathrick and Andreas Huyssen, ‘Modernism and the Experience of Modernity,’ in Bathrick and Huyssen, Modernity and the Text: Revisions of German Modernism (New York, 1989), 3. Jennifer Jenkins, Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Finde-Siècle Hamburg (Ithaca and London, 2003). T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (Princeton, 1984); Griselda Pollock, ‘Van Gogh and Holland: Nationalism and Modernism,’ reprinted in Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed, ed. Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock (Manchester, 1996), 103–14; Michelle Facos and Sharon L. Hirsch, eds., Art and National Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Cambridge, 2003). Bathrick and Huyssen, ‘Modernism,’ 8. Clark’s argument about modernism and modernization is powerfully expressed in his Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (New Haven, 1999). Jenkins, Provincial Modernity; Meike Werner, Moderne in der Provinz. Kulturelle Experimente in Fin-de-Siècle Jena (Göttingen, 2003); Peter Jelavich, Munich and Theatrical Modernism: Politics, Playwriting and Performance (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). Ekkehard Mai and Stephan Waetzoldt, eds., Kunstverwaltung. Bau- und Denkmalpolitik im Kaiserreich (Berlin, 1981). See Hugo von Tschudi, Ausstellung deutscher Kunst aus der Zeit von 1775– 1875 (Munich, 1906). On reform movements in Wilhelmine Germany see Kevin Repp, Reformers, Critics and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-Politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 2000) and Diethart Kerbs and Jürgen Reulecke, eds., Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880–1933 (Wuppertal, 1998). The latter is an indispensable source for any study of Imperial German reform movements and the question of modernity. For this view of Vogeler see Eley, Forging Democracy, 210. Eley calls the war a ‘pivotal experience’ for Vogeler and brings the two parts of his life together. Bernd Stenzig’s Worpswede Moskau. Das Werk von Heinrich Vogeler (Worpswede, 1989) likewise analyses and explores the relationships between Vogeler’s art and his politics rather than separating them. Of several published works on Vogeler, Rena Noltenius’s Heinrich Vogeler 1872– 1942. Die Gemälde, ein Werkkatalog (Weimar, 2000) offers a comprehensive

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19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Jennifer Jenkins and detailed reading of his life and work. It is the most complete account of his artistic output. Other works include David Erlay, Worpswede – Bremen – Moskau. Der Weg des Heinrich Vogeler (Bremen, 1972); Werner Hohmann, Heinrich Vogeler in der Sowjetunion 1931–1942 (Fischerhude, 1987); and the volume of essays edited by the Barkenhoff-Stiftung Worpswede, ‘In erster Linie Hausbau ...’ Heinrich Vogeler und die Bremer Reformarchitekten (Oldenburg, 2002). For a sample of Vogeler’s writings on art and politics, see Dietger Pforte, Heinrich Vogeler: Das Neue Leben. Ausgewählte Schriften zur proletarischen Revolution und Kunst (Darmstadt, 1972). Heinrich Vogeler, Werden. Erinnerungen (Fischerhude and Berlin, 1989), 18–19. Ibid., 27. Fritz Mackensen to Otto Modersohn, as quoted in Guido Boulboulle and Michael Zeiss, Worpswede. Kulturgeschichte eines Künstlerdorfes (Cologne, 1989), 51. Robin Lenman, Artists and Society in Germany 1850–1914 (Manchester, 1997). Bernd Stenzig, ‘Nachwort,’ to Rainer Maria Rilke, in Rilke, Heinrich Vogeler (Worpswede, 1986, reprint of the text from 1902), 88. Rilke’s writing on Vogeler is a re-issuing of material taken from Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 5 (Frankfurt a.M., 1965). Jenkins, Provincial Modernity, 177–216. Van de Velde, cited in Boulboulle and Zeiss, Worpswede, 53. Vogeler, Werden, 33. On Vogeler’s work with Die Insel, see ibid., 43–50. Ibid., 74; Karl-Robert Schütze, ‘Frühe Raumausstattungen,’ in Heinrich Vogeler und der Jugendstil, ed. Cornelia Baumann and Vera Losse (Cologne, 1997), 156–9. Stenzig, Worpswede Moskau, 9–11. Schütze, ‘Frühe Raumausstattungen,’ 156–7, 166–9. Vogeler, Werden, 91, 94. Ibid., 136–8. Ibid., 138. Stenzig called it ‘stark von der Heimatkunst beeinflussten Serienmöbel’; Worpswede Moskau, 13. Vogeler, Werden, 135. Ibid. Ibid., 152. Ibid., 42. From May 1901 to August 1902 Rilke lived in Westerwede, a village close to Worpswede, with his wife, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, and their daughter

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Ruth, and from this vantage point he wrote about Vogeler’s art and his creative process from close up. Rilke, Heinrich Vogeler, 5. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 16. Jefferies’s earlier work itself broadens the term. See his Politics and Culture, 53–100.

3 ‘Native Son’: Julian Hawthorne’s Saxon Studies james retallack

Fated to stand in the shadow of his gifted father Nathaniel Hawthorne, Julian Hawthorne (1846–1934) might be forgiven for attempting to ‘go native’ when fortune took him to Dresden, capital city of the Kingdom of Saxony. Near the end of an undistinguished period of professional training that began in 1869 and dragged on until 1874, Hawthorne wrote a misanthropic tome entitled Saxon Studies.1 First published serially in the Contemporary Review, the book weighed in at 452 pages when it appeared in 1876. It may well have contributed to Hawthorne’s British and American publishers going bankrupt a few weeks later: the only copies that exist today are those sent out for review purposes. Hawthorne claimed that he set out to write an objective, candid appraisal of Saxon society. But if this was a ‘warts and all’ study, the face of Saxony quickly turned into caricature. Soon one saw nothing but warts. Saxon Studies fits into no literary or scholarly genre: it is part autobiography, part travelogue, part social anthropology avant la lettre, and part Heimat romance (stood on its head). Hawthorne did not seem to acquire much self-knowledge or even enlighten his readers about the local society in which he had, with some initial enthusiasm, immersed himself. Or did he? To address this tantalizing but ultimately unanswerable question, in this chapter I want to pursue three others: Where did Hawthorne think he was coming from, so to speak, when he set himself up as an authority on Saxon society? Where did the reviewers of his book imagine that his Dresden sojourn had taken him? And why did the self-awareness that Hawthorne cultivated in choosing to explore Saxons’ ‘national’ character contribute only marginally to his own self- knowledge? These questions help chart our journey to a faraway land. The Wanderlust that

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took Julian Hawthorne to Dresden, the road that forked when Saxon Studies was caustically reviewed by Henry James, the literary Sonderweg that ran parallel with travel accounts written by other foreigners – these are the paths that lead through this chapter. Along the way readers will discover that Julian did not inherit his father’s universalizing vision. Everyone in America knew his father, and Julian Hawthorne was no Nathaniel. Contemporary reviewers panned Saxon Studies. In Hawthorne’s text, local colour is presented with little of the wit or craft that made Mark Twain’s impish Innocents Abroad (1869) the first and best exemplar of the not-so-innocents-abroad genre. In Hawthorne’s not-so-nimble hands, Twain’s wry twists and self-deprecation become twists of the knife and ugly-American haughtiness. Nevertheless, reviewers did not fully understand the hybrid identities that shaped Julian’s lived experience in Dresden. Personally, and in his authorial voice, Hawthorne had more ironies in the fire than his critics knew. His self-doubts about why he was writing the book in the first place, and his self-distancing from the local society he depicts, may have gone over their heads. Therefore, lest we close the book on young Hawthorne too quickly, let us join the author and the little American colony in Dresden with an open mind, to discover for ourselves how Saxon Studies offers a novel perspective on local identities, cultural transfers, and the kinds of literary cross-fertilizations that either incubate or break down essentialist national stereotypes. Saxon Studies It is impossible to follow Julian Hawthorne on all his rambles to expose the foibles of Saxon society.2 But three aspects of Hawthorne’s analysis set it apart from other accounts of travel in nineteenth-century Saxony: his special interest in interiors and exteriors, the frequency with which Hawthorne pauses – both literally and figuratively – to contemplate Saxon landscapes, and the way Hawthorne forces ‘modern’ and ‘notmodern’ aspects of Saxon life into close proximity. Hawthorne’s portrait has been aptly described as ‘dissonance abroad.’3 Just as we savour early passages from Twain’s Innocents Abroad that are ‘a tad broad, proffering more burlesque than inspired satire,’4 it may be permissible to select dissonant passages from Saxon Studies with a nose for effect. After all, landscapes viewed with an unremittingly jaundiced eye or served up as a rhetorical screed quickly become flat and wearying. Attention to rhetorical effect is important for

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another reason. Julian Hawthorne in 1876, like Mark Twain in 1869, was on the threshold of his first major success: his authorial voice was just starting to emerge. Yet Hawthorne’s voice never gathered the assurance or force of Twain’s. It never insinuated itself, as Twain’s has, into how Americans spoke in the late nineteenth century and still speak today. It may be coincidence, but more than one critic has ascribed this difference to the question of forebears. ‘At least for an American writer,’ Roy Blount Jr has written, it is impossible ‘to parody Mark Twain. It would be like doing an impression of your father or mother: he or she is already there in your voice.’ That is not at all true of Hawthorne. Therefore we should not let incongruities in Hawthorne’s craft overawe or mislead us: sometimes a dissonance is just a dissonance. Hawthorne travelled to Dresden with his mother, not his father (who had died a few years earlier); the more important point is that Julian was determined to experiment with new artistic styles. Tellingly, the first lines of Hawthorne’s Saxon Studies provide a selfimposed, pre-emptive leave-taking, in this case from the Saxon capital. As Hawthorne sets out for Dresden’s environs, the city’s charm ‘lurks’ behind him only in the towers of its churches and palaces. ‘The capital of Saxony,’ Hawthorne writes, ‘improves, like the Past as we walk away from it; until, seen from a certain distance, it acquires a smack of Florence. But cross this line in either direction, and the charm begins to wane’ (11). As Hawthorne climbs out of the Elbe River valley, his mood initially brightens. Like Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl before him, he has laced up stout walking shoes and he is determined to hike and hike and hike.5 ‘I refuse at the outset to be hurried,’ Hawthorne writes, ‘or to stick to the main road when the by-path looks more inviting’ (15). Soon, though, those by-paths have trapped Hawthorne into an excursus on modernization – again, not unlike Riehl.6 Hawthorne reads the contrast between modernity and the not-modern both from the landscape and on the piteous faces of the first peasants he meets. ‘The ignorance of the average Saxon peasant is petrifying,’ he writes. But Hawthorne’s analysis immediately broadens out to include Saxons in general: ‘The Saxon mind is capacious of an indefinite amount of information; but its digestion is out of proportion weak. There is not power to work up the meal of knowledge into the flesh and blood of wisdom. I have observed in the faces of the learned an expression of mental dyspepsia, – bulbous foreheads and dull pale eyes’ (15–17). In chapter 2, more than fifty pages are required to squeeze every drop of meaning from the travel genre’s mandatory examination of German

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drinking customs. Dresden is a beer-lake, ‘of which the breweries are the head-waters ... The fishes are the Dresdeners themselves, who, instead of swimming in the lake, allow it to swim in them’ (89). Exteriors and interiors meet in other ways too: ‘[The beer] draws a transparent screen between us and our mental processes,’ we read, as Hawthorne begins to identify with his Saxon comrades more than he wants to. Soon both he and they are engorged with feelings of superiority and complacency. We see them as foreigner and native, but they view each other across facing pages of Saxon Studies. On one side is Hawthorne, sitting ‘full-orbed and complete’; there, on the next page, we survey the rest of the room. ‘Who calls the Saxon cold?’ asks Hawthorne. ‘I like to hear him call for his beer – as though he had been wrongfully separated from it, and claimed it as his Saxon birthright’ (80–2). But the Saxon is caught out when he imagines that he has a higher purpose in life. With enough drink in him, writes Hawthorne, the Saxon ‘will sling his mug at anybody; and it is instructive to observe, when once his victory is secure, how voluble, excited, and indignant he becomes.’ These are not exactly Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations (1873–6). Yet the chronological fit is uncanny. In Hawthorne’s study we encounter ‘the same Saxon in his beer-saloon as at Sedan!’ Hawthorne was in good company when he depicted the German philistine, drunk with victory, becoming ‘implacable and over-bearing towards his foe’ (88). Subsequent chapters provide the inevitable treatises on German scholarship, German music, and German love of authority. In each case Hawthorne feels bound to demonstrate that if German professors, shopkeepers, students, and other citizens are a bad lot generally, they are nowhere worse than in Saxony. The section on music is typical. ‘The Saxons have a less correct ear for music than any people with which I am acquainted,’ Hawthorne blares. The average Saxon orchestra and the typical group of young students singing together are alike in that each is ‘exhaustively and indefatigably trained. Bismarck and Wagner are at the bottom of it’ (116). The ubiquitous beer tent is also to blame. The Saxon ‘is continually doing things false in harmony ... Who but he can sit through a symphony of Beethoven’s, applauding its majestic movements with the hand which has just carried to his lips a mug of beer, and anon returns thither with a slice of sausage’ (55). For Hawthorne, the philistine Saxon is everywhere, and his training begins early. ‘A Saxon baby ... is stiffened out in swaddling-clothes: moving only his pale bluish eyes and pasty little fingers ... I am credibly informed, that they must be dashed with cold water in order to bring

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their lungs into action. A dash of cold water would be apt to produce a spasm in a Saxon of whatever age’ (49–50). And so the ‘habit of following authority and precedent in all concerns of life grows with them. ... They swim everywhere in the cork-jacket of Law; and, should it fail them, flounder and sink’ (50–1). Imagining Germans Hawthorne’s book provided sufficient kindling to light a fire of protest under every group of Saxons who might have rallied in the name of political correctness. What Mordecai Richler said of Innocents Abroad also applies to Saxon Studies: were it to be released today, it would probably ‘be banned in schools, the author condemned as a racist, and possibly, just possibly, [find] himself the subject of a fatwa.’7 In trying to embed Hawthorne’s book within primary and secondary literatures about American views of nineteenth-century Germany, one must take into account the inconsistent and fluctuating assessments of local and regional German cultures. Recent analyses focusing on nineteenth-century American accounts of travel in Saxony claim that Americans praised almost everything about German life and letters.8 Such travellers allegedly never forgot to accentuate the positive.9 They offered upbeat assessments of the Germans’ military firepower, their expert civil service, state support for the arts, local self-government, Bismarck’s social-welfare schemes, and German accomplishments in higher education (particularly science and technology rather than literature and philosophy).10 Such appraisals were not drawn from ignorance. From 1815 Americans had been invading Göttingen, Heidelberg, and other German university cities to study, tramp about, and hang out. This well-heeled elite, disproportionately from New England, was predisposed to praise Germany as the embodiment of academic ideals and high culture. American journals such as The Nation and U.S. diplomats such as George Bancroft enthused about how well Germans had learned about the separation of powers and other features of American republicanism.11 On one level Hawthorne’s assessment ran with the grain of these reports. When he was writing in the 1870s, Americans still appreciated German (especially Protestant) support for the Union cause during the American Civil War. Having barely held their own nation together in the 1860s, Americans praised German unification in 1871.12 Yet the agony of the Civil War was a fresh memory. Therefore, the whole issue

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of states’ rights, federalism, and the preservation of local customs was not only underplayed in American commentaries of the 1870s; it became almost taboo. American diplomats believed they had good reason to side with a strong state and a strong executive authority in Germany. They did so not to repudiate Germans’ own efforts to achieve greater individual liberty, still less to slow down Germany’s advance towards American ideals of Western civilization. Rather, they saw a strong, unitary, ‘modern’ constitution as the only framework within which individual liberty could flourish.13 ‘The emperor is the point of union’ – this was how American constitutional experts affirmed that a unified and militarily secure state precluded the ‘despotism’ of parliament, of the masses, or any secessionist threat.14 Thus Hawthorne, writing ten years after the end of the Civil War, wanted to explain what was progressive and what was retrograde about Saxon society, but he was relatively uninterested in Saxony’s role within Germany’s federal system or, indeed, in German politics at all. But not all American commentators admired German styles of governance. A tendency to lump Saxons, Prussians, and other Germans together into a unitary ‘drilled nation on furlough’15 had already begun when Hawthorne was writing Saxon Studies. We can date the genesis of this trend fairly precisely to the autumn of 1870, when the Germans encircled, bombarded, and attempted to starve Paris into submission in the final phase of the Franco-German War.16 By the time the new German Empire was proclaimed in January 1871, Walt Whitman spoke for many when he noted: ‘As the case now stands, I find myself now far more for the French than I ever was for the Prussians.’ Whether positive or more critical, rarely did American observers inject into their accounts any ironic or critical self-distancing – exactly those devices on which scholars in the field of imagology have focused their attention.17 In most appraisals written by foreign travellers in Germany one finds neither the accidental nor the intentional ‘false images’ (Trugbilder) that are such a valuable source for scholars trying to distinguish between image and reality.18 What do we mean by ‘false images’? One might cite the German middle-class manager in David Lodge’s novel Nice Work (1988), who clicks his heels in a way no bourgeois German of his day would do. Or the middle-ranking official, ‘Herr Rat,’ in Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘Germans at Meat’ (1911), who allegedly – but implausibly – ‘fixed his cold blue eyes upon me with an expression which suggested a thousand premeditated invasions.’ These false images are as intriguing as they are perplexing. Their mul-

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tiple alterities can leave us in a hall of mirrors – though one quite different from la galerie des Glaces in the Versailles Palace where a ‘unified’ Germany was so pompously – and prematurely – proclaimed on 18 January 1871. And so the question arises: what does this interpretative landscape offer to historians seeking reliable description and insight, not simply reinforcement of existing national stereotypes and polarizing rants?19 Imagology as a field of scholarly inquiry – mainly literary inquiry – is distinct from older forms of national stereotyping. It first gained currency among French scholars after the Second World War who tackled the topic of ‘how one nation sees the other.’20 Such scholars were concerned not only with the origins and meanings of alleged national characteristics as portrayed in literature, but also with the ‘motivations and the effects of our habit of thinking, speaking, and writing in the form of prejudices, stereotypes and clichés.’ Since the 1980s, under the influence of cultural, postcolonial, and other studies, imagology has helped scholars explain how ‘thinking, judging, writing in the form of images reflects fundamental conditions of perception, imagination, and representation.’21 It would explode the bounds of this chapter to do more than note the symbolic investments that patriots have made in such national figures as the German Michel, John Bull, Uncle Sam, William Tell, or Don Quixote. However, other touchstones can help us determine why Julian Hawthorne attempted to sum up attitudes and attributes that together constituted ‘Saxonness.’ Did he see Saxonness as something fixed, expressing itself in the same way from generation to generation or village to village? Or did it appear more protean and malleable than that? Was Hawthorne claiming to reveal eternal truths about Saxony, or Germany, or the human condition? Or was he satisfied to provide only glimpses of personal and societal behaviours in local settings? Before we turn to contemporary reviews of Saxon Studies to seek answers to these questions, we should point out that Hawthorne’s caustic dismissal of Saxon society does not stand as far outside the mainstream of the genre of travel literature as both contemporary reviewers and recent historians have suggested. An instructive example is provided by Henry Mayhew’s German Life and Manners as Seen in Saxony, which appeared in 1864. Lest rhetorical excess be regarded as something on which Julian Hawthorne took out a patent in 1876, one line from Mayhew’s conclusion sets the record straight: ‘Never was such a lanthorn-jawed, sallow-faced, hollow-eyed, herring-gutted,

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spindle-shanked, gôitre-necked, sore-mouthed, sad-looking, half-clad, tatter-demalion race of people, as the working population of Saxony, seen in any other part of the civilized world.’22 The ‘Native Son’ Henry Mayhew’s book received much more positive reviews than did Hawthorne’s ten years later. Henry James’s review of Saxon Studies suggests why. James’s review is a thing of beauty: concise and cutting, a slap where a slap is needed.23 The opening line sets the tone: ‘Mr. Hawthorne is decidedly disappointing.’ The second line states the obvious: the son is not up to the father’s craft. Julian Hawthorne, we read, writes with ‘vigor and vivacity,’ but ‘the reader’s last impression is of a strange immaturity of thought.’ Henry James’s critique can be summarized under three points. First, Hawthorne’s depiction of Saxon society is criticized as mean-spirited. The lack of generosity towards a foreign people strikes James as unfair: Hawthorne seems to have been motivated by ‘the simple desire ... to pour forth his aversion to a city in which, for several years, he had not been able to guard himself against being regrettably irritable and uncomfortable.’ Therefore, Hawthorne’s humour is ‘acrid and stingy.’ His ‘reveries are ill-natured.’ His ‘ingenuity is all vituperative.’ Second, James objects to the method of the book. ‘It gives us the feeling,’ he writes, ‘that the author has nursed his dislikes and irritations in a dark closet, that he has never put them forth into the open air, never discussed and compared and intelligently verified them.’ This approach does not make for ‘good literature.’ Third, James feels that Hawthorne ‘has quite violated’ the canon. Exactly what canon, we are not told. One can surmise, however, that such a canon would certainly include Mark Twain. Indeed, according to James, Hawthorne did not understand why the tone he adopted is ‘not a rational, or a profitable, or a philosophic, or a really amusing one.’ Thus, Saxon Studies is ‘a brooding book, with all the defects and none of the charms of the type.’ James hints at the kinds of questions that imagologists might pose to Hawthorne had they the chance. He first quotes one of Hawthorne’s bolder denunciations of the Saxons’ ‘national’ and ‘individual’ character. ‘This is a sweeping but an interesting charge,’ James writes. The reader, he continues, would have profited if the author had gone a little further ‘into the psychology of the matter.’ But instead Hawthorne pulls up short in every chapter: he provides no verifiable social obser-

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vations of private manners, public morals, opinions, conversations, or ways of life. In James’s view, Hawthorne is also silent on German theatre, literature, the press, and the arts. Implying that Julian’s father would not have missed the same opportunity, James charges that the son has failed to write a book that sees the large things and ignores the very small things. Saxon Studies, he concludes, is the kind of book that a very young man might write ‘in a season of combined ill-humor and conscious cleverness; but it is a book which most young men would very soon afterwards be sorry to have written.’ Was Julian Hawthorne sorry he wrote Saxon Studies? We return to that question later. His publishers were certainly sorry. Both Straham in England and Osgood in America went bankrupt immediately after the appearance of the book. Other reviewers were also sorry. None of them put the knife in quite so delicately as Henry James had; but many compared Saxon Studies unfavourably with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s English Traits (1856) and with Mayhew’s German Life and Manners (1864). The latter, it was said, provided a more mature, a more compelling, a less capricious picture of Saxon society, because it was ‘factual,’ not impressionistic. In fact, Mayhew and Hawthorne tackled many of the same topics – absurd place-names, the mendacity of Saxon servants and journalists, army and police regulations, and Saxon men who made their women work harder than horses and cows.24 Hawthorne’s ‘lively spirit of observation’ drew some praise from reviewers. But most wondered why he seemed so ‘unaccountably angry.’ Why, they asked, had he allowed his book to become so infected with the spirit of gratuitous denunciation and petulance? No one knew. Opinion was more divided as to whether Hawthorne had caught any sense of the Saxon people’s ‘characteristic’ and ‘national’ traits.25 Most agreed he had not. One reviewer warned readers of The Academy that they could not expect to commune with nature in Saxony or be inspired by Dresden’s architecture without being caught in the downdraft of Hawthorne’s peevishness and his ‘misleading’ conclusions. For this reviewer, the caricatures Hawthorne drew were so unlike the real inhabitants of Dresden that the work might as easily have been entitled Siberian Studies. Dresdeners, other Saxons, and allegedly even Kaiser Wilhelm I gave the book a rancorous reception, as did a reviewer for the Dresdner Nachrichten.26 It is important to know that this newspaper represented the far Right in Saxony: its snobbish, antisemitic, and chauvinistic rhetoric perfectly mirrored the views of Dresden’s conservative elite. Yet the

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two anonymous reviews of Saxon Studies that appeared in the first week of February 1876 ‘crackled with resentment,’27 as the reviewer challenged Hawthorne in the name of all aggrieved Dresdeners. Hawthorne of Boston, we read, ‘has perpetrated an outrageous libel on Dresden.’ But the reviewer does not stop there. The calumnies being hurled by this ‘pretentious American,’ this ‘snobbish blockhead,’ this ‘clownish upstart,’ we read, are actually aimed at Saxony and the whole of Germany. Did Hawthorne really expect that all Saxons should live ‘in the same style as wealthy people on Fifth Avenue in New York?’ asks the reviewer. Four days later, the reviewer directs his anger not only at Hawthorne but at all Americans – those ‘Yankees’ who offer ‘refuge to all the oppressed of the world’ but do so with ‘bombastic phrases.’ To nail this argument the Nachrichten’s reviewer hits Hawthorne where he thinks it will hurt most: by citing his father. Thus, he quotes the following lines from Nathaniel’s English Notebooks: ‘Nothing is so absolutely odious as the sense of freedom and equality pertaining to an American grafted on the mind of a native of any other country in the world. A naturalized citizen is hateful. Nobody has the right to our ideas, unless born to them.’28 Here the reviewer observes: ‘Certainly one can expect no just estimate of Dresden, Saxony, and the Germans from a son who has learned from his father that freedom and equality are a monopoly of Americans.’ Lastly, this critic claims that Julian Hawthorne’s emphasis on the least cultured and least attractive elements of Saxon society is the natural result of having failed to gain admission to high society in Dresden – or even the higher ranks of the American colony in its midst. Now, it may be true that there is no more disgruntled outsider than the uninvited American.29 But the Nachrichten’s reviewer is too confident that he knew the score on this point. How can we test the validity of these charges – that Hawthorne had rationalized accumulated personal irritations, frustrated social climbing, and an antipathy towards foreigners inherited from his father? We can do so by examining Hawthorne’s own circumstances during his years in Dresden and by following clues he provides in the opening and closing pages of Saxon Studies. Mr Hawthorne Sees It Through Our task is not to sleuth out disguised literary merit or to save Hawthorne’s book from historical oblivion. But it would be worth knowing what Hawthorne was up to in Dresden. What axe did he have to grind?

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Was his father the only family member to provide the chip that rested not-so-lightly on his shoulder? If Twain’s Innocents Abroad is America’s classic ‘coming-of-cultural-age’ book,30 can we shoehorn Saxon Studies into a personal coming-of-age story? And can we find for Hawthorne a place in the historical and literary contexts of the late 1860s and 1870s – when, as the Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock once noted, ‘of American literature there was much doubt in Europe; of American honesty, much more; of American manners, more still.’31 When Julian Hawthorne first visited Dresden in 1869, he was hardly a stranger to foreign travel.32 In 1853, at the age of seven, he had accompanied his parents to Italy and France. One wonders what early lessons Julian learned on that trip from his father, a man who habitually lived within himself (and seemed to find no better society, as Julian once remarked). Ten years later Julian entered Harvard. But he spent more time on rowing and other athletics than in the classroom. Eventually, in the same year that the Saxons met their match at the hands of Prussia in the Battle of Königgrätz (1866), Julian met his too: he was expelled from Harvard for neglecting his studies. Two years later he began to train as a civil engineer at the Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel’s old friend, was induced to give young Hawthorne some tutoring in German – what Julian described as ‘the mollifying of my barbarism.’33 However, Julian’s subsequent stays in Saxony were most likely hampered by an inadequate preparation in the German language, rendering him incapable of Twain’s joyful grapplings with German grammar and syntax.34 Julian Hawthorne set out for Germany with his mother and sisters in October 1868. His first impressions were uniformly positive. He remarked on the pleasant German cafés and their ‘most excellent Bier’ served ‘in very large glass tankards, with covers.’ Hawthorne observed that not only the prices, but everything else, was ‘much better than in America.’ The first winter living in Dresden was a mainly happy one, spent visiting galleries, frequenting ‘hospitable kellers and breweries,’ and rhapsodizing at length about Raphael’s ‘divine’ Madonna and Child in Dresden’s Art Gallery. Thus, Julian would have dismissed the notion that his account of life in Saxony was immature, unschooled, or superficial. Nor were American and German reviewers of Saxon Studies correct in assuming that Hawthorne had mixed only with lower society or that he was perpetually angry with Dresden and its inhabitants. Later, for example, in the winter of 1872–3, we know that the Hawthornes joined happily in the social events that were de rigueur during the ‘sea-

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son.’ An American friend who visited around this time found that the Hawthornes’ house at Waisenhausstrasse 13 was ‘one of the best houses on one of the finest streets in Dresden, amid luxurious surroundings.’35 For almost a year after his arrival in 1868, Hawthorne put off taking up formal studies at Dresden’s Realschule – a training academy for civil engineers. So he certainly had the time to indulge in a congenial mix of socializing and observation. It was decided that Julian should attend a few lectures at the Realschule to prepare himself for the technical terms he would encounter in the lecture hall. However, by the time he could formally be admitted, in October 1869, Julian confided to his journal that he wanted above all to ‘get through by next fall and go home.’ We remain unsure exactly where Julian Hawthorne was during the next two years. After a semester or two of unaccomplished attendance at the Realschule, Julian returned to New York. There he was temporarily stranded by the outbreak of the Franco-German War in July 1870. And there he married May Amelung (‘Minne’) in November. Soon Hawthorne gained employment as a hydrographic engineer under General George B. McClellan in the New York department of docks. It was at this point that Hawthorne turned to writing full time. But before long he was back in Dresden, where he remained until September 1874. While there he published two novels, Bressant (1873) and Idolatry (1874). The mixed reception that greeted these novels helps explain why the author turned away from fiction when he conceived his Saxon Studies. Hawthorne later conceded that Bressant was ‘a good book spoiled’: ‘were it not for the consideration of lucre,’ he wrote, ‘I would suppress the edition at once.’ Instead, Hawthorne gradually became comfortable with a style he used to good effect in a short piece entitled ‘A Golden Wedding in the Best Society.’36 This scornful sketch described the golden wedding ceremonies of Saxony’s King Johann and his wife, which lasted for six days in November 1872. It prefigured the sharp, dismissive tone of Saxon Studies. Amid the ‘dangers, turmoils, and revolutions of the nineteenth century,’ wrote Hawthorne, here in Saxony this aged royal couple ‘have been living their royal little lives, doing their formal little duties, making their stiff little visits, enjoying their sober little glories, suffering the unimportant little misfortunes, worshipping according to the tenets of their bigoted old religion.’ Around the same time ‘A Golden Wedding’ was written, loutish German officers and other villainous caricatures began to populate Hawthorne’s short stories. Sometimes the author provided shrewd insight. As Maurice Bassan has

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written, when Hawthorne looked down from his window or mingled with Dresden’s crowds, he was ‘a keen if not impartial observer.’37 Nevertheless, in most of the fiction he wrote during this period, Hawthorne consciously avoided realism and preferred to poke fun at romantic stereotypes. The ‘fun’ we find in Saxon Studies is sparing. But we should not be deceived that Saxon Studies was ever meant to be a travelogue or a chronicle. Reliability and good faith were never Julian Hawthorne’s strong suits. Given that The Nation’s reviewer skewered Bressant as containing ‘a morbid fingering of unclean emotions’ and that the journal completely ignored Idolatry, perhaps Julian got off lightly with Henry James’s review of Saxon Studies. But these negative reviews help explain why Hawthorne was eager to turn from the racy, pseudo-philosophical, and unappreciated styles he had adopted in these two novels, preferring the richer material that a study of contemporary manners in a faraway land might provide. Saxons into Germans We now know enough about Julian Hawthorne’s situation in Dresden to interpret his intentions in writing Saxon Studies in a new light. This does not entail reading between the lines so much as sensitizing ourselves to the opportunities for ironic detachment that Hawthorne sought in tackling this subject. Doing so, it is not difficult to find passages in Saxon Studies where the outsider-as-insider-as-outsider speaks to the themes of localism, landscape, and the ambiguities of place. Let’s start with geese. Geese, writes Hawthorne, ‘constitute a goodly proportion of the village population’ in any given Saxon locality – and ‘they are invariably at home.’ This goose-Gemeinschaft reveals something important about Saxon social relations, believes Hawthorne. ‘How happens it, now, that there should be so many geese in Saxon villages? ... I fear there must be an occult vein of sympathy between them and their owners, … some mutual consciousness of similar dispositions’ (47). While not overly prideful of their military accomplishments, for Hawthorne these Saxons reflect a German tendency to over-organize everything and thereby privilege the needs of the community over the rights of the individual.38 It is a hateful ordering of priorities, Hawthorne implies – one that conjures up notions of enraged geese: ‘There is something very human in their hiss.’ Hawthorne is equally disenchanted with Saxons for the choices they

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make about how to appreciate and manage nature. After visiting the majestic Bastei rock formation in the Saxon Switzerland, Hawthorne inverts the usual American wonderment at the beauty of the region. Because the Bastei contrasts so sharply with the rest of Saxony’s landscape, Hawthorne stresses that it is anomalous – literally and symbolically. Whereas German literature has produced ‘cloud-capped giants’ that give the land its reputation, Hawthorne asks: ‘Why so flat and tedious, O Saxony?’ The author is not talking just about wastelands and hollow men: he is disappointed that the march of moral progress has not yet reached Saxony. ‘Is there any remedy?’ Hawthorne asks. ‘I see none, short of a general eruption, whereby the whole surface might be broken up in volcanoes, and become a Switzerland indeed ... Mountainous tracts are generally inclined to freedom’ (62–3). Saxon forests, too, are to blame: Hawthorne can’t escape them. We are not in a position to say precisely why Hawthorne sought refuge in the dark Saxon woods or what sort of artistic inspiration he hoped to find there. But we can understand his peevishness about the German obsession with Ordnung by parsing his words describing the oppressiveness of the Saxon forest: ‘Who but a hypocrite would pretend to lose himself in a forest, all whose trees were numbered? ... We may find them set forth in the forester’s book thus: “No. 27. Oak. Heinrich the Stout.” “No. 28. Elm. Karl the Long-legged.” What is to happen to a people who can do such things as this?’ (57). The brush with which Hawthorne tars the Saxon character is not so broad that it cannot render detail in portraying the built environment and daily customs. ‘When I read of a country unknown or only slightly known,’ wrote Mrs Alfred Sidgwick, the author of Home Life in Germany (1912), ‘I like to be told all the insignificant trifles that make the common round of life.’39 Hawthorne agrees. Indeed, the details of everyday life become programmatic for him. This helps explain why the ‘trivialities’ that reviewers of Saxon Studies dismissed so readily hold value for historians. In a chapter titled ‘Sidewalks and Roadways,’ for example, Hawthorne takes on the mantle of a social anthropologist. At other points in the book he seeks to portray the relationship between the unique and the universal in the manner of a political scientist – albeit with more facetiousness than either travel writers or scholars generally endorse. In the following passage, Hawthorne examines Germany’s fragile unity in the early 1870s with uncharacteristically broad humour – which may explain why it was never cited by contemporary reviewers.

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Despite his avowed interest in unwrapping ‘a romantic and poetical enigma,’ Hawthorne’s analogy is more explicitly political than any other in the book. It turns on the question of where encroachments on local brewing customs might ultimately lead. This liquor [German beer] can be neither brewed nor exported beyond the Father-land; nay, a journey of but a few miles from its birthplace impairs its integrity ... Now, the Berlin Government seems desirous of proving ... that people living, no matter how far apart and under what different circumstances, may be united in mind, sentiment, and disposition as one man. To this end, what method more effective than to ordain a universal beer, and forbid the brewing or drinking of any other? ... Two alternatives suggest themselves at once. The first, to create a uniform climate, soil, and water, throughout the Father-land ...; the second, to brew the beer nowhere save in Berlin, to be drunk on the premises ... If, as is believed, Germans are Germans by virtue of the beer they drink, if all drank the same beer, of course they all would become the same Germans. Moreover, if this may be done with the nation, why not apply the principle to the individual? ... If a nation may be concentrated at a single point, as Berlin, why not concentrate the persons composing it into a single individual, as Bismarck? Having swallowed his countrymen, the prince could thereafter legislate to please himself, and might ultimately proceed to swallow himself into a universal atom (76–8).

Hawthorne’s logical but intentionally absurd conclusion is that the ‘life-blood of the country’ must remain local, not national. Otherwise, he suggests, the last iota of sub-national identity will disappear into the Black Hole of Bismarck’s centralizing tendencies.40 Leave-Taking, or: The Death of the German Cousin Hawthorne was more than ready to bid farewell to Dresden in the autumn of 1874. In the final analysis, we cannot know whether he had gone to Dresden as a passionate pilgrim, to escape looming disappointments in New York, or because of the lure of ‘lucre.’ Nor can we know precisely what affronts he suffered in the Saxon capital. Hints in the text (23–8, 411–15) suggest the possibility that Hawthorne became either infatuated or actually involved with a Saxon woman while his wife was pregnant with their third child. From one venomous passage directed

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against Saxon merchants, we can surmise that Hawthorne was cheated by local tradesmen (211–13). He may even have been the unnamed American who bled profusely (but who ultimately bettered his German opponent) in the requisite duelling scene (308–10). In any case, Hawthorne’s world travels and personal calamities did not end in 1874. In 1896 he began work as a journalist and was soon filing reports from India and Cuba. In 1908 Hawthorne became involved in a fraudulent scheme to sell shares in a Canadian mine: investors bought up some $3.5 million in shares but received no dividends. In March 1913 he was sentenced to a year in a federal penitentiary for fraud. During the First World War he moved to California, and in 1923 he began writing for the Pasadena Star-News, which he continued until his death on 14 July 1934. To the end of his career, Hawthorne and his art were fascinating but shallow: neither succeeded in working the kind of magic that reveals all. Nevertheless, in the preface to Saxon Studies, which so baffled Henry James, Hawthorne may have come closer to that goal than any reviewer knew, claiming ‘that his interest in Saxony and the Saxons is of the most moderate kind, – certainly not enough to provoke a treatise upon them.’ But the ‘plan of his work’ required ‘some concrete nucleus round which to group such thoughts and fancies as he wished to ventilate.’ Therefore, he is not the least bit worried that a critic might discover nothing essentially Saxon in Saxon Studies: on the contrary, writes Hawthorne, he would ‘insist upon thinking such a verdict complimentary’ (3–4). Hawthorne claims that he has also intended Saxon Studies to be a book that examines local environments and customs; but he is not presuming that he can improve either one. Hawthorne states boldly that he has no wish to be seen as a ‘patcher-up of dilapidated manners and morals’ (5). Indeed, his misanthropic appraisal of Saxon society and his determination ‘to speak home truths on this subject’ are motivated ‘by reason of the mawkish tendency, very observable of late, to make Germans of all people in the world, and Saxons with them, objects of sentimental hero-worship.’ Everything he includes in Saxon Studies, claims Hawthorne, errs on the side of being too mild rather than too severe (4). As historians, we may accept or reject Hawthorne’s pronouncements about the backwardness or modernity of Saxon society and about the centralizing or centrifugal tendencies in German politics. We may also doubt the accuracy with which he sketches the look and feel of Saxon villages, towns, and cities. But to dismiss Hawthorne’s book as inept caricature is to miss other, richer ways of seeing the local in literature. Hawthorne’s personal disappointments are also reflected in the final

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lines of Saxon Studies. As he takes leave of Dresden, Hawthorne wants the reader to know that his stay has not been a fleeting one. He has taken the time to learn some hard lessons about Saxon life – about life itself. The bookends of Hawthorne’s analysis emphasize that the allure with which Dresden envelopes the unwary traveller is deceitful. ‘[Dresden] charms at first sight – at a distance – or mirrored in the glass of the imagination.’ Nearer study, Hawthorne writes, ‘dispels all illusions: we discover various unlovely traits, intrinsic no less than accidental.’ At first sight this verdict seems unequivocal. ‘The place is in bad hands,’ the author writes. ‘It is impossible to enjoy [Dresden’s] beauties apart from its defects: the latter are innate, the former purely superficial.’ Therefore Dresden is all the more disappointing now that it is time to bid it farewell. Its initial promise was great. That promise, like the author’s own, remains unfulfilled. Hawthorne has neither lost himself in a distant land nor fully come to terms with the expectations that continue to rest upon his shoulders years after his father’s death. ‘The parting disappointment is the saddest of all,’ writes Hawthorne, precisely because ‘so few and slight regrets attend our last farewell!’ (451–2). But is this in fact the final impression Hawthorne wants to convey? Mr Hawthorne’s Secret Some final musings about Hawthorne’s aims as an innocent abroad will help us to address this question. Two scholarly observations on the power of Mark Twain’s writing may apply here. Arthur Miller once wrote that we keep reading Twain because he ‘wrote much more like a father than a son.’ Miller continued the thought: ‘[Twain] doesn’t seem to be sitting in class taunting the teacher but standing at the head of it challenging his students to acknowledge their own humanity, that is, their immemorial attraction to the untrue.’41 Saxon Studies was condemned because it was so patently untrue – so taunting. But was true learning from someone standing ‘at the head of the class’ the gauntlet that Hawthorne threw down to his readers? Or was he more interested in the ‘attraction of the untrue’? The second observation springs from Bobbie Ann Mason’s suggestion that Mark Twain ‘relied on the punch of plain words’ to show nineteenth-century American writers how to move beyond the ‘wordy romantic rubbish’ that still predominated in the New World fiction of the day. As Mason put it: Twain was ‘one of the first writers in America to deflower literary language.’42 Hawthorne did no such thing. On the

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contrary: as he revealed in his Confessions and Criticisms, he prized imagination too highly, and he scorned ‘the rush of rational knowledge’ and the touchstone of scientific truth too consistently, to embrace plain language. Hawthorne was the spiritual son of Coleridge and Emerson: the imaginative process must begin in nature and refuse to distort it. Yet for Hawthorne, art depended not upon literal fact but upon perception of what he once called ‘the underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenomenal and imperfect shadow.’43 Thus, the authorial voice towards which Hawthorne was groping in Saxon Studies fans out to cover a variety of meanings. Some sixty years after Saxon Studies was published, close to the end of his long life, Hawthorne reminisced about his Sturm und Drang period of the 1870s. He disagreed with Henry James that Saxon Studies was the kind of book a young author would come to regret. Indeed, he claimed that it ‘was the best book I ever wrote.’ Oh dear, we shudder. Nevertheless, Hawthorne’s expression of delight that the Dresdner Nachrichten’s reviewer had demolished his book, like his proud claim that ‘the German emperor was moved to issue an edict forbidding its circulation in his dominions,’ indicate just how ironic the book was meant to be and just how playful he still felt about it decades later.44 To be sure, one cannot dismiss the likelihood that Hawthorne was making a virtue of necessity. The book had been panned, and he needed to put the best possible face on a bad business. But if we delve deeper, an alternative interpretation presents itself. The clues are all there. The 1932 article in which he wrote about Saxon Studies was entitled ‘Recalling Heinrich Heine.’ In it Hawthorne explained that in 1876 he had arranged to have the Dresdner Nachrichten review translated and fixed to the fly-leaf of the book. As he put it, the German reviewer had ‘repaid me for the labor of composition and satisfied me that I had not done amiss.’ It was precisely the Nachrichten’s rant, not his own, that would ‘put the Anglo-Saxon reader in tune with my little satire.’ This half-twist did not have the intended effect when his publishers went bankrupt: ‘fate was too swift for me,’ Hawthorne remembered, and ‘the circulation of the “Studies” was naturally small.’45 But as historians we must not be fooled by smallness or fate. Hawthorne, at any rate, was pleased by the little splash his little book made. To reach this conclusion we have not so much retraced Hawthorne’s intellectual journey as taken a separate path to the same point of discovery he reached. We have learned that identity ‘is not about one’s given place, but about one’s chosen position.’46 Hawthorne’s identity at

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the time he wrote Saxon Studies was hybrid, but it held at least a kernel of universality within it – in a manner suggested by Walt Whitman in Song of Myself:47 Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Hawthorne’s view of himself in the 1870s was still fragile and in flux; his journey to self-knowledge would continue for many years. He thought Dresden looked best when seen in the nineteenth-century equivalent of a rear-view mirror. Therefore, the close-up grubbiness he portrayed was intentionally unattractive. To the extent that he took a realistic approach at all, that realism was narrow and reductive, derivative and strained. But Hawthorne had discovered, and we along with him, that familiar objects can indeed be larger than they appear in reflection. At the time Saxon Studies was written, Hawthorne probably surprised even himself in the degree to which he transcended, fleetingly, those barriers to artistic creativity that plagued him throughout his life. W.H. Auden once wrote that a poet can hope for no more than ‘to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized everywhere.’48 Hawthorne’s final leave-taking from Dresden at the end of the book is in fact more brooding than poetic. But we should not ignore the author’s genuine expectation that Saxon Studies would be more popular than his novels. More important still, we must not disregard Hawthorne’s personal delight that he had successfully disguised his modest book’s satirical premise and its hidden ironies. Can Saxon Studies be seen as an important moment in America’s literary discovery of Europe? Does it deserve a place ‘in the Americanabroad genre of jaundiced realism’?49 The jury is still out. But one suspects that Julian Hawthorne would have agreed with Montreal’s irascibly hybrid Mordecai Richler, who once noted that to become a tramp abroad is to rediscover how even our most jaded senses are heightened by ‘all things counter, original, spare, [and] strange.’50

NOTES For critical comments on a draft of this chapter I am grateful to David Blackbourn, Alon Confino, Andrea Geddes Poole, and John Zilcosky.

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1 Julian Hawthorne, Saxon Studies (Boston, 1876). Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in 1804, had died in 1864, four years before his son departed for Germany. 2 Compare Henry Mayhew, German Life and Manners As Seen in Saxony at the Present Day, 2 vols. (London, 1864), esp. 1:361. Mayhew (1812–87) was a founder and one of the first editors of Punch magazine. See also Sidney Whitman, German Memories (London, 1912), 16; and Whitman, Imperial Germany (Leipzig, 1890), 73. 3 George Knox, ‘Dissonance Abroad: Julian Hawthorne’s Saxon Studies,’ Essex Institute Historical Collections 96 (Apr. 1960): 131–9. 4 See Mordecai Richler, ‘Introduction,’ in Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (orig. 1869), ed. Shelley Fisher Fischkin (Oxford, 1996), xxxi–xlv. 5 See Celia Applegate, ‘The Mediated Nation: Regions, Readers, and the German Past,’ in Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830– 1933, ed. James Retallack (Ann Arbor, 2000), 33–50, esp. 42–3. 6 See Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, The Natural History of the German People, ed., trans., and intro. David J. Diephouse (Lewiston, NY, 1990), 63–77 and passim; this is an abridged edition of a German work that appeared in four parts between 1851 and 1869. 7 Richler, ‘Introduction,’ xxxvi. 8 Eberhard Brüning, ‘Sachsen mit amerikanischen Augen gesehen. Das Sachsenbild amerikanischer Globetrotter im 19. Jahrhundert,’ Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte 67 (1996): 109–31; and Thomas Adam, ‘Germany Seen through American Eyes: George and Anna Eliot Ticknor’s German Travel Logs,’ in Transatlantic Cultural Contexts: Essays in Honor of Eberhard Brüning, ed. Hartmut Keil (Tübingen, 2005), 151–63. 9 See inter alia Bayard Taylor, Views A-Foot or Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff (orig. 1846), rev. ed. (New York and London, 1892), 204; Charles Loring Brace, Home-Life in Germany (orig. 1853) (New York, 1856); Johann Georg Herzog zu Sachsen, ed., Briefwechsel König Johanns von Sachsen mit George Ticknor (Leipzig and Berlin, 1920), esp. 135; and Price Collier, Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View (Toronto, 1913). 10 See John G. Gazley, American Opinion of German Unification, 1848–1871 (New York, 1926); Peter Krüger, ‘Die Beurteilung der Reichsgründung und der Reichsverfassung von 1871 in den USA,’ in Liberalitas, ed. Norbert Finzsch and Hermann Wellenreuther (Stuttgart, 1992), 263–83; Clara Eve Schieber, The Transformation of American Sentiment toward Germany, 1870– 1914 (New York, 1923, repr. 1973); David E. Barclay and Elisabeth GlaserSchmidt, eds., Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776 (New York and Cambridge, 1997); Konrad H. Jarausch, ‘Huns, Krauts or Good Germans?: The German Image in America, 1800–1980,’ in

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12 13 14 15

16 17

18

19 20

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James Retallack German-American Interrelations: Heritage and Challenge, ed. James F. Harris (Tübingen, 1985), 145–59; and Henry Cord Meyer, Five Images of Germany (Washington, DC, [1960]). See Bancroft’s report to the U.S. Secretary of State on the constitution and political institutions of the North German Confederation; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md., Record Group 59, M44, reel 14, unfoliated, report of 1 Nov. 1867. See Schieber, Transformation, 19. See George Bancroft writing in October 1870, cited ibid., 11. Cited in Krüger, ‘Beurteilung,’ 280. Peter Pulzer, ‘Special Paths or Main Roads? Making Sense of German History,’ Elie Kedourie Memorial Lecture, Proceedings of the British Academy 21 (2003): 213–34, here 219. Cf. W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘The Present Condition of German Politics (1893),’ Central European History 31 (1998): 171–87. See Schieber, Transformation, 27. For example, Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, 8th ed., 2 vols. (Boston, 1877), 2:479; cf. the stinging barbs in The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, ed. George William Curtis, 2 vols. (New York, 1889), 1:149–52. See Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock, ‘Trugbilder: Zum Dilemma imagologischer Forschung am Beispeil des englischen Deutschlandbildes 1870– 1914,’ in Anglia 113, no. 3 (1995): 303–29, esp. 303 for the following passages. See also Keith Robbins, Present and Past (Göttingen, 1999); and Robbins, Protestant Germany through British Eyes (London, 1993). See Müllenbrock, ‘Trugbilder,’ 322–4. See William W. Stowe, Going Abroad (Princeton, 1994); Holger Klein, ‘Zerrspiegel? – Bilder von Preußen-Deutschland in englischer Prosa, 1890– 1914,’ 71–101, and other essays in Europa und das nationale Selbstverständnis, ed. Hugo Dyserinck and Karl Ulrich Syndram (Bonn, 1988); Hugo Dyserinck, ‘Zum Problem der “images” und “mirages” und ihrer Untersuchung im Rahmen der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft,’ in arcadia 1 (1966): 107–120; Dyserinck, ‘Comparatistische Imagologie jenseits von “Werkimmanenz” und “Werktranszendenz,”’ Synthesis 9 (1982): 27–40; M.S. Fischer, Nationale Images als Gegenstand Vergleichender Literaturgeschichte (Bonn, 1981); Peter Edgerly Firchow, The Death of the German Cousin (Lewisburg, 1986); and Gerd Dose, ‘“The Soul of Germany.” Bemerkungen zum angloamerikanischen Deutschlandbild vor und zu Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges,’ in Images of Germany, ed. Hans-Jürgen Diller et al. (Heidelberg, 1986). See the project outline (2005) for Imagology: A Handbook on the Literary Repre-

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33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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sentation of National Characters, at http://cf.hum.uva.nl/images/dtory/ outline.html (accessed 22 Aug. 2006). See Mayhew, German Life, 1:viii–ix and 2:612; M.E. Humble, ‘The Breakdown of a Consensus: British Writers and Anglo-German Relations 1900– 1920,’ Journal of European Studies 7 (1977): 41–68, esp. 48. Originally in The Nation 22 (30 Mar. 1876): 355–8, repr. in Henry James, Literary Criticism, vol. 1, Essays on Literature. American Writers. English Writers, ed. Leon Edel (New York, 1984), 300–2. Cf. e.g. Mayhew, German Life and Manners, 1:4, and Hawthorne, Saxon Studies, 29–30. For the following, see Knox, ‘Dissonance Abroad,’ 133–4. Dresdner Nachrichten, 1 and 4 Feb. 1876, cited ibid. Knox, ‘Dissonance Abroad,’ 136. Passages from the English Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Sophia Hawthorne, 2 vols. in 1 (Boston, 1871), 137 (2 Nov. 1854). Knox, ‘Dissonance Abroad,’ 137. Richler, ‘Introduction,’ xlv. Cited ibid., xxxii. Julian Hawthorne, The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne, ed. Edith Garrigues Hawthorne (New York, 1938), esp. 179–87; Maurice Bassan, Hawthorne’s Son (Columbus, Ohio, 1970), esp. 46–53, 70–1, 89–91, 98–101. Hawthorne, Memoirs, 182; see also 187. Mark Twain, ‘The Awful German Language,’ in A Tramp Abroad, intro. Dave Eggers (New York, 2003), 315–31. Bassan, Hawthorne’s Son, 91. Appleton’s Journal 19, no. 189 (4 Jan. 1873): 49, cited ibid., 70. Bassan, Hawthorne’s Son, 70–1. Cf. Humble, ‘Breakdown,’ 49; Collier, Germany, 599. Mrs Alfred Sidgwick, Home Life in Germany (New York, 1912), 2. While we have no evidence that Hawthorne had read Riehl’s Natural History, in this regard they proceeded from the same premise. Cited in Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ‘Foreword’ to Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, xxii. Bobbie Ann Mason, cited ibid., xx. Cited in Bassan, Hawthorne’s Son, 175. See Bassan, Hawthorne’s Son, 99, 101; Knox, ‘Dissonance Abroad,’ 138. These retrospective claims are cited in Knox, ‘Dissonance Abroad,’ 131. This and other points raised here draw on the unsigned essay ‘Identity’ found on the website of the Imagology Handbook, cited in n. 21 above.

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47 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (orig. 1855) (Oxford, 1998), 78. 48 W.H. Auden, ‘Shorts II’ (1976), cited in Elizabeth Knowles, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th ed. (Oxford, 2001), 35. Günter Grass and Robert Frost, among others, have made the point that to be truly universal one must also be provincial. 49 Knox, ‘Dissonance Abroad,’ 139. 50 Richler, citing Gerard Manley Hopkins, in ‘Introduction,’ xxxi.

PART TWO Political Cultures

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4 From Electoral Campaigning to the Politics of Togetherness: Localism and Democracy thomas kühne

In May 1910 Kladderadatsch, a widely read German satirical magazine, entertained its readers with a cartoon about parliamentary politics in Imperial Germany. In the cartoon, a member of the Prussian state parliament, the Landtag, has just returned to his rural constituency for the summer recess. The politician looks sad; in fact, he is weeping. When a local policeman asks why, the Landtag deputy replies: ‘I didn’t succeed in picking up a railway in Berlin, as promised.’ What he meant (and what all readers would have understood) was that his job had been to ensure that a branch railway line would be built leading to his home town; but his lobbying in the capital had failed.1 This Kladderadatsch cartoon mirrors one aspect of those centre-periphery conflicts that shaped Imperial Germany’s political culture in fundamental ways, but which have been largely excluded from recent scholarly debates about pre-1914 Germany’s political dynamism (or lack thereof). These debates currently revolve around two issues: the democratic practices and the democratic potential of the authoritarian state, and whether Germany’s constitutional monarchy could have evolved towards a parliamentarian regime with ministerial responsibility. These issues are related but distinct. As the British model of constitutional development shows, parliamentarization and democratization do not necessarily evolve on parallel tracks or in lockstep. Indeed, in Britain, the task of establishing a stable parliamentary regime seems to have been made easier because the British system was not burdened with the sudden expansion of the suffrage or the sudden onset of mass participation in politics; there, the suffrage was only gradually extended, most notably by reform acts in 1832, 1867, 1884, and 1918. In Germany, by contrast, the introduction of universal manhood suffrage

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for elections to the Reichstag of the North German Confederation in 1867 – and four years later for the German Empire – effectively ‘democratized’ politics overnight. One can go further and suggest that the gradual, piecemeal widening of the suffrage would have challenged the traditional, authoritarian nature of politics in Imperial Germany at least as much, and perhaps more, than the relatively sudden inauguration of the principle of ‘one man, one vote.’ Previous scholarship on these interlocking issues has suggested that a marked socio-cultural ‘pillarization’ occurred in Imperial Germany because of these developments. According to this view, the sudden expansion of the electorate, combined with the lack of true parliamentarism, contributed to Germany’s political parties becoming ‘pillars’ that relied on relatively well-defined and unchanging socio-cultural milieux; this pillarization then prevented parties from compromising in parliament and from challenging monarchical rule. More recent research focuses on grass-roots politics: the activities of local party functionaries, ordinary voters, and non-voters.2 In her book Practicing Democracy – the most thorough and most sophisticated contribution to this research – Margaret Lavinia Anderson has argued that universal manhood suffrage after 1867 enmeshed male adults ‘in ever more procedures and practices’ that contributed directly to ‘the growth of an increasingly democratic culture in the decades before 1914.’3 Anderson’s book might be seen as the culmination of more than twenty-five years of (mainly) Anglo-Saxon research that stresses the decisively ‘modern’ contours of Imperial Germany’s political culture. David Blackbourn’s study of political Catholicism in Württemberg and Geoff Eley’s study of radical nationalism, both published in 1980, represented early and important contributions to this line of argument, signalling a revisionist challenge to the older notion that Wilhelmine Germany lacked democratic values. Previously, this lack had been taken to explain why Germany was not able to cope with the democratic constitution introduced after the First World War.4 Remarkably, though, this revisionist scholarship has paid scant attention to the impact of localist traditions on domestic politics in Germany, despite the fact that most of these revisionist scholars are based in countries with strong localist and regionalist traditions: the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.5 This trend continued through the 1990s, as seen in the important studies published in 1997 by Brett Fairbairn and Jonathan Sperber and in 2000 by Anderson.6 There were, of course,

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divergent perspectives too, including James Retallack’s research on the Kingdom of Saxony.7 Taking the spatial dimension of politics seriously challenges the ‘optimistic’ view of Imperial Germany’s political development as presented in this literature. Germany’s federal structure, because of the hegemonic accent provided by Prussia’s size and influence, worked as a strong barrier to both democratization and parliamentarization. The Prussian Landtag and most other German state parliaments were based on suffrages that were significantly less democratic than the Reichstag’s voting law. As a result, the politics of these state parliaments was much less progressive. Few of their members were interested in reforming the constitutional foundation on which the Second Empire rested, for two reasons: they were afraid of what democratization would mean for their own parties at the state level, and they were well aware that the delicate federal balance of power worked out in 1867–71 would be put at risk by constitutional reform generally and parliamentarization in particular. Neither of these potential reform trajectories – towards democracy and towards a parliamentary system – overcame the roadblock represented by the Prussian Landtag, whose upper and lower houses were steadfastly conservative (and often reactionary).8 This chapter does not focus on the role of federalism or its impact on contemporary debates about constitutional change in Imperial Germany. Instead, it considers how local orientations and local politics shaped, enabled, and limited the ways Germans actually ‘practised democracy’ between 1871 and 1914. No comprehensive consideration of this topic is possible in a brief essay; instead, I ask how ‘localism’ related to ‘democracy’ in these years. I begin by differentiating between two meanings of ‘localism’ as it was understood by middle-class and upper-class elites that dominated liberal, conservative, and Catholic Centre party politics in Germany’s rural areas, villages, and small towns.9 One meaning of the local was ridiculed by the Kladderadatsch cartoon mentioned at the outset when it offered a sceptical view of railway politics in Imperial Germany; the other meaning is to be found in the subtext of that cartoon. The first has to do with the content of parliamentary politics, whereas the second turns on the question of where such politics is discussed by ordinary people. In that cartoon, the Landtag deputy and the policeman are discussing an issue of clear economic importance to the town, although it is impossible to separate economic from social and cultural ‘interests.’ But they are doing so in a particular

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place: at home, in a familiar setting, and their tone is typical of the sort of relaxed, informal manner in which members of local communities usually discussed such issues. Thus, the localism that Kladderadatsch presented in image and text had two distinct facets. One reflected policy choices and political agendas: how would the interests of local citizens be represented in ‘faraway’ parliaments? (Although literal proximity to Berlin was not inconsequential, the fact that both the Prussian Landtag and the Reichstag met there could make them each seem ‘distant.’) The second facet of localism reflected social and cultural practice – the manner, style, tone, and location in which such policies were debated. Exploring these complementary meanings of localism in Imperial Germany can shed light on what democracy and democratization actually signified for Germans before 1914. To anticipate my conclusion, it can be argued that ‘practising democracy’ had the potential to strengthen the cultural foundations on which representative democracy was built, and a new government was installed, in 1919. But it could potentially foster a contrary outcome, leading to the establishment of a state based not on formally guaranteed and individually exercised political participation through elections, but rather on symbolic and collective participation in public festivals and torchlight parades – the kind of state that was installed on 30 January 1933.10 Such a state, with a government that exercises almost unlimited power at home based on its own interpretation of the people’s ‘general will’ (Rousseau), has been labelled a ‘totalitarian democracy.’ This term is not without its flaws and deficiencies; but its contentiousness represents a strength, for it attunes historians to the ambiguous meanings and potential of political mobilization in Germany (and other nations). Increasing popular participation in national politics was not preordained to yield the ‘good’ outcome of representative democracy; it also held the seed of authoritarian or fascist states based on mass acclamation. Thus, both ‘totalitarian democracy’ and its converse, ‘liberal democracy,’ fall within the range of meanings attached to the notion ‘democracy.’ The family resemblance between these two species of democracy may be slight, but conceptually they belong to the same genus.11 Localism and Electoral Campaigning Railway lines and railway stations facilitated the participation of smalltown Germans in regional and national affairs: by carrying passengers

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and freight, including newspapers and post, railways were part of a large and expanding communicative network that linked the local to the national. But their specifically local significance and value should not be forgotten: often they brought rising real estate prices and, more generally, an improvement in local infrastructure. The second bundle of issues was actually more important than the first, at least as far as we can judge from the debates in the Prussian Landtag to which that Kladderadatsch cartoon alludes. Why is this so? The Prussian Landtag was based on a three-class voting system that decisively favoured local economic elites. Those elites were not necessarily very wealthy, and they were not restricted to the upper (first) class of voters who constituted approximately 5 per cent of the enfranchised population. Rather, they often belonged to the local middle class: teachers, lawyers, independent craftsmen, and shopkeepers, who would usually be included among the second voting class (constituting roughly 15 per cent of voters). Rarely would they vote in the third class.12 For those who voted in the first or second class in Landtag elections, localism was not only about railway politics. It also concerned the administration of forestry resources, the location of a new court house or an elementary school, and many other everyday issues of immediate concern.13 An electoral candidate in rural and small-town Prussia was always well advised to emphasize two things: first, if he was an incumbent, what he had already done for his constituents, and second – whether incumbent or challenger – what he would do to improve the infrastructure of his constituency, thereby improving the material lives and increasing the assets of his supporters. For example, even though District Governor Friedrich von Zander was well known as a true-blue conservative in Lower Saxony, he lost his re-election bid in 1876 because his constituents believed he had failed to ‘deliver the goods’ in his role as a realestate tax assessor.14 Who would best represent local interests? The answer to this question decided who would win elections in rural and small-town Germany. There, posters and speeches typically focused on the lobbying abilities of a candidate. Johann Victor Bredt campaigned in 1911 in the northern Hessian constituency of Marburg by promising that there was no one better able to represent local interests in Berlin than himself. For Bredt, representing local interests meant directing federal and state aid into local projects.15 During the election campaign of 1903, the peasants in Wetzlar (a town in southern Hesse) were concerned that distant administrators were meddling with regulations that applied to cattle

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breeding. This issue was not going to be debated in the Landtag or in the Reichstag: it would be settled at the regional government level. However, the peasants did not much care which tier of government was ultimately responsible. They were hoping to breed a new cattle stock, and they needed approval to do so. More precisely, they needed a parliamentarian who would help them obtain such approval. The liberal candidate manoeuvred himself out of contention by not addressing this urgent matter at all. Other liberals in Wetzlar, however, were able to learn from this mistake. In the next electoral campaign, they focused on local railway politics and the canalization of the nearby Lahn River.16 Sometimes discontent with insufficient lobbying on behalf of local interests led to the rise of new parties, though typically on a regional basis. Baron Octavio von Zedlitz-Neukirch, later leader of the Free Conservative Party in the lower house of the Prussian Landtag, found himself challenged in 1888 by a separatist movement – one that demanded more decisive railway lobbying in favour of Zedlitz’s constituency in Thuringia.17 By contrast, ten years later a Free Conservative association challenged the German Conservative incumbent who represented a Brandenburg constituency in the Landtag.18 In Prussia, special constituency organizations typically facilitated local agreements to avoid such conflicts. Most of the Landtag constituencies of the older provinces (those that were part of Prussia before 1866) were actually constructed in 1860, when a liberal majority prevailed in the Landtag. The liberals at that time were concerned with how to avoid and even undermine the local orientation of electoral campaigns in the medium and long term, for they believed that localism favoured conservative candidates. To achieve this goal, the liberals advocated the introduction of plural seat constituencies, which would include not only one administrative district (Landkreis) but two or three; such plural constituencies would correspondingly elect not one deputy but two or three. The idea was to neutralize those influential political, social, economic, and cultural hierarchies that were conditioned by the structure of the local administrative district. If the voters and local elites in two or three districts had to negotiate over candidate selection and campaign strategies, local dependencies – so the liberals hoped – would eventually disappear.19 But political practice did not conform to liberal hopes. Neither local elites nor local voters approved the ‘appropriation’ of national politics or the exclusivity sought by their leaders in Berlin. They wanted to keep local politics local, and in this they succeeded. The plural constit-

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uencies did not block the establishment of structures that institutionalized compromise and avoided rivalries between administrative districts; instead, they actually facilitated them. This outcome can be explained quite simply: In a constituency that included two administrative districts, where two members of parliament would be elected, each of the districts would nominate one candidate, and both would be confirmed easily. Such agreements worked best in the various parties’ electoral strongholds; but they also functioned in disputed constituencies, sometimes in combination with a coalition agreement between parties who saw an opportunity to cooperate in order to defeat the candidate of a third or a fourth party. For instance, National Liberals and Conservatives might agree to nominate each other’s candidate in a two-member constituency: one of these candidates would be nominated to represent constituency A and the other to represent constituency B. In fact, in 1908, almost two-thirds (61 per cent) of all plural Prussian Landtag constituencies were divided on the basis of this arrangement, which we might term a kind of proportional representation based on localism. By contrast, in 1876 only about two in five (41 per cent) constituencies had adhered to this pattern.20 The significance of this trend reached far beyond the plural constituencies and the proportional representation that was practised there. It helped parties and local elites more generally to avoid political conflicts and mutually debilitating rivalries. To be sure, many electoral constituencies in Imperial Germany were not organized according to the system of plural representation. In southern Germany, for instance, Landtag constituencies usually were formed as single-member districts, and the same is true for Reichstag elections. Nevertheless, the desire of local voters to support candidates (and parliamentarians) who would serve as strong advocates for their own local interests did not decrease over time. On the contrary: it increased, despite some significant differences between the various parties and between the procedures for Reichstag and Landtag elections. Thus, almost everywhere in rural and small-town Germany, the popular evaluation of parliamentarians was shaped by corporative traditions. Despite constitutional theories and parliamentary rules that said the opposite, the typical parliamentarian understood his job in the context of an ‘imperative mandate’: he was to serve as the agent of ‘his’ local voters. Such a deputy usually lived and worked in his own constituency or at least had been born there. Proof of his localist credentials was provided by his familiarity with the local ways of life and its material conditions. If he was

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sufficiently familiar with these things, he was ‘one of us.’ If he was not, he was unlikely to win election. Thus in Württemberg, for example, any candidate without a strong Swabian accent immediately ran into difficulty.21 The same was true in the Prussian province of Pomerania: if he did not speak the local low-German dialect, he was a ‘foreigner,’ and his chances of being nominated, let alone elected, were correspondingly slim. Localism versus Democratization During the Bismarckian era, three-quarters of all members of the Prussian Landtag were thus ‘rooted’ in their constituencies by birth, occupation, land ownership, or residency. After 1890 this figure did not decline; it rose, to about 80 per cent. However, there were significant variations among the main parties. Throughout the imperial period, the highest proportion of locally rooted deputies was always found among the members of the German Conservative Party: the figure was almost always 90 per cent or more. Next came the Free Conservative and National Liberal Parties and the left liberals (about 70–80 per cent). The Catholic Centre Party stood at around 60 per cent. Only the Polish Party usually recruited fewer than 50 per cent of their deputies from the constituencies themselves. And the trend was equally clear. At least in the Prussian Landtag, the Polish Party was the only one with a decreasing proportion of localist deputies. All other parties featured rising percentages of deputies with local ties.22 The Prussian Landtag, of course, cannot be taken as typical of all parliaments in Imperial Germany. Other Landtage, as in Württemberg, showed similar rates of locally rooted deputies; but the Reichstag was shaped much less by the local affiliations of its deputies. In the Wilhelmine era, 65 to 77 per cent of deputies in the Württemberg Landtag were locally rooted in their constituencies, whereas this was the case with only about 50 per cent, or fewer, of Württemberg deputies sitting in the Reichstag.23 Unfortunately we lack reliable or sufficiently differentiated figures for the entire Reichstag.24 Nevertheless, Heinrich Best’s research has shown that, on average, more than one-half of all Reichstag deputies – excluding those representing the SPD – were recruited locally.25 Like the Polish Party in the Prussian Landtag, the Social Democrats in the Reichstag did not care as much about the local ‘rootedness’ of their candidates and deputies as did the Conservatives, the liberal par-

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ties, and the Centre Party. This observation is not as self-evident as it might appear. At first glance it seems surprising that the right-wing and centre-right liberal parties – the most decisive advocates of the German nation and of nation-building – should have adhered to localist traditions much more steadfastly than did those political movements that represented the Left or linguistic minorities, namely, the Centre Party, the Polish Party, and above all the Social Democrats, each of which had been stigmatized since Bismarck’s Kulturkampf and his antisocialist laws as the enemies of the German empire (Reichsfeinde). Yet the correlation is clear: the more a party had been stigmatized as nationally unreliable, the less it cared about the local dimension of electoral politics. In fact, having been so stigmatized, these latter parties became all the more accepting of non-local candidates, and their ‘central’ party agencies had a correspondingly greater impact on the selection of candidates (even though, in a strictly formal sense, it was still the party leaders or a circle of notables within the constituency that made the decision). Again, it is the trend that is the most astonishing thing of all. This localist orientation of German parliamentarism did not disappear as a national electorate and a national political culture acquired more recognizable contours. Instead – at least among bourgeois parties and especially at the level of state parliaments – it became more pronounced and more significant over time. What, then, is the place of localism in Imperial Germany’s electoral culture (Wahlkultur) specifically and its political culture more broadly? How did localist outlooks fit within the long-term political trends that are debated as nationalization and democratization? One answer is provided by scholars who depend on modernization theory – a theory whose history is as long as ‘modernization’ itself. These scholars echo the views of liberal parliamentarians who as early as the mid-nineteenth century belittled what they called the Kirchturmshorizont of ordinary voters – their inability to look beyond the local church steeple. The Kladderadatsch cartoon cited at the outset is just one example of this criticism. In this genre, localism means much the same thing as traditionalism. Nation-building, by contrast, is modern, and whatever impedes this secular development is aged, dated, and traditional. Thus, scholars of Imperial Germany have long regarded the marked local affiliation of parliamentarians as proof of the backwardness of German political culture.26 Such a view is not entirely wrong, but it is too simple, for it masks the ambiguity and complexity of the interwoven processes we (often uncritically) label ‘democratization.’ Insofar as democratization involved the

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transformation of parliaments, parties, and the practice of elections, this process was strongly conditioned by the division of the political landscape into four socio-cultural milieux (sometimes referred to as sociomoral milieux). These milieux were based on the congruence of various social denominators such as class, religion, and, not least, region.27 These socio-cultural milieux hampered the ‘modernization’ of authoritarian Imperial Germany because they checked the willingness and ability of competing parties to strike compromises that would have driven meaningful reform. Again, these parties include principally the Social Democrats, the left liberals, and the Centre. The party leaders and parliamentary deputies drawn from these parties became exclusively concerned with how to please their voters – voters, that is, from specific, discrete socio-cultural milieux. As localism persisted within the narrow ‘church-steeple’ horizon of party politicians, it hampered the development of political pluralism on a larger scale, too: local issues took precedence over concerns that stood above class, religious, or party interests. De facto proportional representation – whereby local interests were represented in plural constituencies – allowed politicians to sidestep debilitating party rivalries. But it did little to encourage a broader vision of the national interest or to foster genuine statesmanship. Nevertheless, there is another way to interpret the same political structures and trends. This explanation holds that it was precisely these four socio-cultural milieux that enabled and even accelerated the democratization of German society from the bottom up. This kind of democratization should not be taken as synonymous with constitutional reform – the transformation of political institutions at the top. Rather, it reflected new political practices observable in smaller social settings. When Germans discussed the degree to which a candidate was rooted in his constituency or familiar with his constituents’ economic needs and ways of life, they were actively translating high politics into the language of everyday experience.28 Thus, localism served as a starting point for building up cohesive, durable party apparatuses, even when there was no consensus about what local interests actually entailed. Thus, too, the significance of proportional representation in plural constituencies was not limited to agreements about local interests. For example, members of the Catholic milieu took such agreements as a starting point for other kinds of political compromise, often designed to dampen rivalries and tensions within the milieu. The Centre Party was able to use plural constituencies to build bridges between different classes or social interests: between the rural and urban parts of

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a constituency, for instance; between blue-collar workers and the bourgeoisie; between craftsmen and intellectuals; and so on. In a long-term perspective, these intra-party agreements about how to represent different social interests proportionally might be seen as a step towards inter-party coalition-building, even if this did not happen in a systematic way before 1914. In general, then, localism does not necessarily stall democratization or movements towards parliamentary rule, as we see clearly in the two ‘classic’ models of the United States or Great Britain. The critical point is to decide what kind of democracy we are dealing with and what we really mean when we use terms like democratization. When we set out to evaluate Imperial Germany’s political development and its democratic potential over the longue durée, problems arise from the fact that there is no single meaning of democratization (just as there is no uniform definition of localism or nation-building either). Togetherness and Symbolic Politics Neither members of the Reichstag nor those who sat in the Landtage of Prussia or Württemberg or any federal state were solely concerned with railway politics. They had plenty of other things to debate. Germans throughout the empire were busy reading and talking about the Fatherland, about its colonies and its military, about constitutional and legal reforms, about social and cultural policy. Even discussions of customs duties and other financial issues went well beyond local and personal interests. Nevertheless, the clear desire for deputies rooted in their own constituency mirrored a double concern shared by many, and perhaps most, middle-class voters in rural and small-town Germany: marginality and its twin brother, alienation. Because such voters were so often made to feel that they resided on the periphery of an increasingly urbanized, industrialized national life, they needed ‘one of their own’ to operate on both sides of a two-way street, as it were. On the one hand, their deputy had to lobby for their interests at the fulcrum of political affairs; but on the other hand, he could not neglect the task of translating what was going on far away into the language of ‘us.’ This language of ‘us’ was shaped not so much by what was going on in the nation at large, but rather by the everyday struggles of peasants, shopkeepers, teachers, and other members of both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ middle class. It was shaped, moreover, by the manner in which such struggles were communicated towards ‘the centre’ by those whose spe-

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cial charge it was it to enhance social life and community building – not at the national level but in the local community. The regular gatherings at the local Stammtisch – this was where the local community really made politics and where Germany fashioned itself as a community of citizens. Those ‘regulars’ did not talk exclusively of railways. From about 1900 onward, Germany stepped much more quickly along the path that might be called nation-building. The agents that guaranteed this continual building of the German nation, however, were not primarily the parliaments or the political parties or even the local electoral committees. Increasingly it was left up to a variety of extra-parliamentary movements to accelerate Germany’s ‘inner’ nation-building. Among such movements we can include, first of all, the veterans associations (Kriegervereine); then come the various nationalist and imperialist associations – for example, the Navy League, to mention only the most successful of these groups. The veterans associations represented an early form of mass movement in Wilhelmine Germany, one with a distinctive conservative and nationalist hue. It is often forgotten that these associations had become very popular before the Agrarian League (Bund der Landwirte) was founded in 1893, even though in their early stages they varied greatly across regions in the degree to which they were able to mobilize former male soldiers. After 1899 these associations were united in the ‘Kyffhäuser’ movement, and by 1913 they included almost three million members – far more than the socialist trade unions. As Robert von Friedeburg has shown for some villages in the Prussian province Hesse-Nassau, typically about one of every five households would have a male family member who belonged to a veterans association; in some municipalities, this proportion neared 50 per cent, whereas in others it stood at only about 10 per cent. More interesting still is the question of who actually joined these associations. Not surprisingly, the leadership typically was represented by members of local economic and political elites – affluent peasants, nobles, mayors, judges, teachers. ‘Ordinary’ members, on the other hand, represented a broader spectrum of social origins, once again with significant local and regional variation depending on the social structure of the respective village. A high proportion of these ordinary members were relatively poor: ‘small’ artisans and tradesmen as well as day labourers and other elements of the rural lower classes. As Friedeburg has argued, in rural areas where class divisions were sharp, a relatively high proportion of poor people would join the local veterans association.29

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What did ‘joining up’ (for the second time) mean to these veterans? What were they looking for when they became members? The first thing to mention is that they did not join just to tell war stories to each other. Most of them had no such stories to tell, because from the 1890s onward most members were too young to be able to boast about their wartime deeds, heroic or not.30 They were more able to tell stories about their time in military service. To tell such stories was not only a duty; it was a privilege. Thus, the veterans associations provided rural and small-town Germans with a place to socialize. But even more important, it provided them an opportunity to demonstrate that they belonged to a community of true men. This was an image that members of the associations instinctively and intentionally wanted to convey: they represented ‘true German manliness.’31 This male bonding, in other words, involved making claims about one’s rightful place in an exclusive society – not one that was organized according to hierarchies of economic power, but one that held the promise of social equality among comrades. This (potential) levelling of social distinctions contributed to the willingness of veterans from the lower classes to challenge the authority of wealthy peasants or local officials when it came time to decide who would be chosen to lead a local branch. The veterans associations thus provided a forum in which it was possible to renegotiate ‘civil’ (or civilian) social hierarchies that were not unlike those still found in Prussia’s three-class voting system. That this renegotiation often took place in an alcoholic atmosphere made it easier to emphasize comradeship and downplay socio-political conflict. The paradox here is that veterans associations dispensed status as well as (potentially) taking it away. When a day labourer or an artisan joined such an association, he almost always raised his status based on what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would have called cultural capital. Quite apart from joining a new network that might enhance his social capital, new members of veterans associations enjoyed an elevated position in two other respects. First, they had risen higher in the hierarchy defined by the modern gender order: their maleness had been confirmed and their elevated position over women had been endorsed.32 Second, having completed one’s military service meant having fulfilled the most prestigious national duty one could perform in Imperial Germany. A man who had done so – and who proved this by joining a veterans association – had earned the right to raise his voice when it came to deciding the political fate of the nation.33 One might argue that when the veterans associations became a forum in

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which this special kind of political participation was played out, they gave preference to collective performance over individual agency. However, one must not forget that this participation was practised in the midst of local society, on a local stage. Thus, when veterans met around their local Stammtisch, they were ‘practising democracy’ in ways that involved the levelling of social differences and symbolic acts of political participation. That levelling and that participation had very little to do with either the unequal system of voting for Landtag deputies or the equal suffrage for Reichstag elections. Neither sort of electoral activity provided Germans with a feeling of national togetherness comparable in strength to those feelings cultivated in the veterans associations that sprang up in thousands of local communities from the late 1880s onwards. The Kriegervereine were not the only voluntary associations that provided Germans with an equal-opportunity forum for cultivating feelings of national togetherness on a local level. Sedan Day – the anniversary of the decisive German defeat of the French army on 2 September 1870 – never became an official holiday in Germany. Nevertheless, local celebrations were supported by the Prussian government and encouraged by parades initiated by Kaiser Wilhelm I in Berlin. Even though local festivities varied from region to region and never merged into an identifiably ‘national’ cult, they translated an event of great importance in the realm of national and military affairs into a local idiom. Such local festivities provided Germans who organized and participated in them another opportunity to take part in and belong to the new nation. Once again, this happened not in a formalized and rational way, but mainly in symbolic and emotional ways. After he ascended the throne in 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II lost interest in Sedan Day and abandoned the splendid parades in Berlin. But for the most part, local associations and municipalities continued to celebrate it, even though Sedan Day became only one among many possible occasions on which to organize marches, dedicate monuments, or otherwise celebrate heroic events.34 These celebrations have been labelled ‘folkloric militarism’ by Jacob Vogel. They did not revolve around militarist ideology and propaganda; nor were they meant to demonstrate obedience to the authoritarian, monarchical state. Rather, they constituted a means to enact and celebrate political togetherness in a socially non-hierarchical way. Politics in this mode was built not on mainly associative but rather on communal relationships, corresponding to Max Weber’s famous distinction

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between social action based ‘on a subjective feeling of the parties, whether affectual or traditional, that they belong together,’ on the one hand, and a relationship based on ‘rational agreement by mutual consent,’ on the other.35 Moreover, this symbolic mode of political participation was not just ephemerally local; it was predicated on the idea of building a nation by bringing together people from all social strata in their own communities.36 Claims that the German nation could be built in this way were not just propaganda. To be sure, socialist members of the working classes rarely turned out for Sedan Day celebrations, but they did not boycott them en masse either. And even if such socialist participation remained the exception, non-socialist Germans tended to argue that any participation at all demonstrated the potential capacity of political festivals, marches, and other kinds of gatherings to overcome class division.37 The successes achieved by the veterans associations in their effort to mobilize artisans and peasants in Germany’s rural areas and villages was paralleled by the efforts of the nationalist pressure groups – including the Pan-German League, the Colonial Society and, most successfully, the Navy League – to mobilize educated middle-class and lowermiddle-class Germans in larger towns and the cities. Sometimes these nationalist pressure groups participated in election campaigns, most notably in the Reichstag campaign in the winter of 1906/7.38 But electoral campaigning was not their main field of activity. Rather, their members, like those organized in the veterans associations, placed far more importance on debating and socializing. More active local branches of the Navy League, such as the branch in Duisburg, met monthly or fortnightly to discuss the latest communications from the League’s central office, to maintain contact with the local press, and to prepare popular festivals. Such festivals, which might include music, tableaux, gymnastic displays, and other forms of entertainment, could attract hundreds or even thousands of members and other interested participants.39 In this way, the practice of debating national politics and apolitical socializing did not run on parallel tracks that never met; they met and, often, they merged. Most Germans who were prepared to lead, to help organize, or to participate in associational meetings and public festivals probably also participated in party politics and cast their ballot in elections as well. But generally, the latter forms of participating in national events rested on the foundation of associational sociability and participation at the local level. If the average German found a place where he (and sometimes she) could experience feelings

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of community and political harmony, that place more likely stood ‘just down the street’ and ‘around the corner,’ as it were, than in the realm of formal politics: the latter realm continued to be circumscribed by the hierarchical division of classes, as in Landtag voting, or by the individualizing experience of casting a Reichstag ballot according to the provisions that made it universal, equal, and secret. The Ambiguities of Democratization As the diverse forms of associational activity coalesced around meetings, festivals, celebrations, and other kinds of public activities that had little to do with parliamentary rules and debates in far-off Berlin, they trained Germans in forms of political participation that tended in the direction of democracy. But this was not democracy based on parliamentary elections; it was a kind of ‘democracy’ that drew its distinctive élan from political marches, rituals, and particular kinds of community-building. It was premised, in other words, on the vitality and excitement that local experience and local forms of activism provided, not on anonymous election procedures and not on arid parliamentary debates. The local Stammtisch around which nationally-minded German men gathered and the national celebrations in which they took part represented the utopia of a national community as envisioned by German patriots before 1914. This was to be a national community that had left behind class divisions, religious conflict, and party struggles.40 Such struggles shaped Reichstag elections – increasingly so from the 1890s on. The rising competition between parties and platforms, however, produced profound uneasiness among the conservative and liberal middle classes, especially in the countryside. A local official in rural Germany voiced this unease around 1890 when he condemned the democratic Reichstag suffrage by suggesting that ‘it might be better if we all renounced that suffrage, as its only result is nothing but useless excitement and mutual embitterment.’41 Elitist and census-based suffrages such as the Prussian three-class voting system, though they have a reputation for contributing to predictably dull voting practices, did not banish excitement and competition from the local political arena. On the contrary: in both rural and urban areas, when delegates (Wahlmänner) met to decide who would represent the district in the Prussian Landtag, violent conflicts often erupted.42 Such face-to-face conflicts were very different from what ensued during Reichstag campaigning, where the parties largely took over. Indeed, they more closely resem-

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bled the wrangles that might break out at the Stammtisch or in the regular meetings of local associations. Typically, though, those more traditional subnational voting procedures, because they privileged the middle and upper classes, guaranteed more consensus than did Reichstag elections, if only by suppressing minority positions. Thus, in contrast to the assemblies of delegates, the first round of voting in Prussia (the Urwahlen) were usually completed on the basis of unanimity, at least in rural areas, and sometimes this consensus carried over to the election of the member of parliament.43 In this way, state elections based on restricted or unequal suffrages – and especially those that combined these features with public voting – prolonged traditional, corporatist political styles well into the era of ‘fundamental democratization’ (Karl Mannheim). The procedures governing these state elections were not fully compatible with the rules of liberal democracy and parliamentary representation. Instead, by helping preserve the twin ideals of local consensus-building and togetherness, they provided a welcome bulwark to conservatives who opposed the introduction of an anonymous ‘political mass market’ (Hans Rosenberg), even though it is wrong to suppose that this ‘political mass market’ brought with it a uniform, homogeneous political style or that it was not in flux. Deeply divided and constantly inventing new forms of popular politics, this national sphere both reflected and gave further impetus to the increasing number and sophistication of political parties and pressure groups.44 When measured against these novel forms of political activism, the corporatist style of Landtag elections in Prussia might have appeared as increasingly old-fashioned to many Germans. However, to others, that older style served as a vital link between the old and the new. With the rise of the nationalist and militarist associations and festivals, corporatist politics were gradually edged out by new political styles, but those styles still brought together the local community, now expanded beyond the old exclusive local elite of notables to include a broader public of middle-class and lower-middle-class Germans. These Germans were now no longer concerned primarily with localist issues such as railway stations. Instead, with their gatherings, festivals, and marches, they debated and performed the nation – that is, the utopia of national community beyond class and party struggles, a kind of local democracy open to everyone and freed of formal privileges, rights, and duties. The gap between formal and symbolic participation in the political life of the nation became larger after the First World War. By 1930, poli-

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tics by symbolic participation had largely triumphed over politics by rational procedure. This development had its origins in Imperial Germany. Well before 1914 the excitement of symbolic politics had moved to the centre of the national political stage, in effect stealing some considerable part of the Reichstag’s limelight. In the final years before the First World War, the German nation was celebrated and understood, staged and experienced, beyond the walls of any parliament. In assessing these understandings, stagings, and experiences, it is important to remember that those who saw a direct connection between localism and democracy preferred symbolic politics because it promised harmony instead of conflict. However, this does not mean that Germany travelled a one-way path from the form of symbolic politics in Imperial Germany to symbolic politics in Nazi Germany. Nor did ‘practising democracy’ by casting a ballot in pre-1914 Reichstag elections lead directly to the parliamentary democracy that was installed in 1919 with the advent of the Weimar Republic. Germans in the Second Empire tested both kinds of practices and explored both tracks of democratization. Which would prevail after 1914 cannot be determined by reducing either local or national variants of democratization to a simple formula.

NOTES 1 Kladderadatsch, 29 May 1910: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/ kla1910/0394 (accessed 22 Aug. 2006); also reproduced in Thomas Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht und Wahlkultur in Preussen 1867–1914. Landtagswahlen zwischen korporativer Tradition und politischem Massenmarkt (Düsseldorf, 1994), 374. I am grateful to James Retallack for his support in shaping the argument and improving the language of this text. 2 See my recent review essay, ‘Demokratisierung und Parlamentarisierung: Neue Forschungen zur politicchen Entwicklungsfähigkeit Deutschlands vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,’ Geschichte und Gesellschaft 31 (2005): 293–316. 3 Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 2000); the citations are from the back cover of the paperback edition. 4 David Blackbourn, Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Württemberg before 1914 (New Haven, 1980); Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor, 1991). 5 Scholars in Germany have always demonstrated a stronger interest in

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8

9

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regional peculiarities; see inter alia Gerhard A. Ritter, Die deutschen Parteien 1830–1914. Parteien und Gesellschaft im konstitutionellen Regierungssystem (Göttingen, 1985); Karl Rohe, ed., Elections, Parties and Political Traditions: Social Foundations of German Parties and Party Systems, 1867–1987 (New York, 1990); Thomas Kühne, ‘Wahlrecht – Wahlverhalten – Wahlkultur. Tradition und Innovation in der historischen Wahlforschung,’ Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 33 (1993): 481–547; and Simone Lässig, Karl Heinrich Pohl, and James Retallack, eds., Modernisierung und Region im wilhelminischen Deutschland. Wahlen, Wahlrecht und Politische Kultur, 2nd ed. (Bielefeld and Gütersloh, 1998). Brett Fairbairn, Democracy in the Undemocratic State: The German Reichstag Elections of 1898 and 1903 (Toronto, 1997); Jonathan Sperber, The Kaiser’s Voters: Electors and Elections in Imperial Germany (Cambridge and New York, 1997); Anderson, Practicing Democracy. James Retallack, ed., Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830–1933 (Ann Arbor, 2000); one of the most impressive local studies published in the 1980s examines continuities from Imperial Germany to the Nazi era: Rudy Koshar, Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880– 1935 (Chapel Hill, 1986). See Bernhard Mann, ‘Zwischen Hegemonie und Partikularismus. Bemerkungen zum Verhältnis von Regierung, Bürokratie und Parlament in Preußen 1867–1918,’ in Regierung, Bürokratie und Parlament in Preußen und Deutschland von 1848 bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Gerhard A. Ritter (Düsseldorf, 1983), 76–89; and Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht. In 1910 almost two-thirds of Germans still lived in communities of fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. These Germans can be divided among three groups: 40% lived in villages of fewer than 2000 inhabitants, 11.2% in towns of 2000–5000 inhabitants, and 14.1% in towns and cities of 5000–20,000 inhabitants. The corresponding figures in 1871 were 86.4% (total number living in communities of fewer than 20,000 inhabitants): 63.9% (< 2000 inhabitants), 12.4% (2000–5000), and 11.2% (5000–20,000). Gerd Hohorst, Jürgen Kocka, and Gerhard A. Ritter, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch, vol. 2, Materialien zur Statistik des Kaiserreichs 1870–1914, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1978), 43. Still stimulating on this subject is George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York, 1975). My understanding of symbolic politics is shaped in large measure by David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, 1984). J.J. Talmon, The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy (Boston, 1952). For a different

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12

13

14

15

16 17 18

19

20 21

understanding of ‘totalitarian democracy,’ see Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures (Boston, 1970), 73. For some recent uses of the term, both popular and polemical, see http://totalitariandemocracy.blogspot.com (accessed 21 Jan. 2006). Georg Evert, Die Staats- und Gemeindewahlen im preußischen Staate (Berlin 1895); Evert, Die preußischen Landtagswahlen von 1908 und aus früheren Jahren (Berlin 1909); Heinrich Höpker, Die preußischen Landtagswahlen von 1913 (Berlin 1916). A particularly thorough (and revealing) document outlining contemporaries’ understanding of the social stratification underlying this voting system is found in the memorandum – over 300 pages long – prepared between 1907 and 1909 by Government Counselor (Regierungsrat) Dr Meineke for the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, ‘Denkschrift über die Reform des preußischen Wahlrechts,’ Zentrales Staatsarchiv II, Merseburg, now the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Rep. 77, Tit. 496a, Nr. 179, Beiakten 1 b; see also Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht, 500–14. On Württemberg, see Blackbourn, Class, 161–4, and Andreas Gawatz, Wahlkämpfe in Württemberg. Landtags- und Reichstagswahlen beim Übergang zum politischen Massenmarkt (1889–1912) (Düsseldorf, 2001), 231–4; on Prussia, Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht, 315–22. See Kreishauptmann Zander’s report on the campaign, 29 Sept. 1876, in Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover, Best. Hann. 122a, Oberpräsidium der Provinz Hannover, Nr. 4, Bl. 41. Bredt was later a founding member of the Imperial Party of the German Mittelstand and minister of justice in Heinrich Brüning’s first cabinet. See Bredt’s description of his strategy in a letter of 6 Feb. 1911; Kommission für Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, Berlin, Nachlaß Johann Victor Bredt, Mappe Reichstagswahl 1913 [sic]. See Horst Romeyk, ‘Die politischen Wahlen im Regierungsbezirk Koblenz,’ PhD diss., University of Bonn, 1969, 171–2, 267–8. Germania, nos. 234/1, 235/1, and 240/1 from 10 Oct., 11 Oct., and 17 Oct. 1888. Report of the district governor (Regierungspräsident) of Magdeburg to the regional governor (Oberpräsident) of Sachsen, 27 Oct. 1898, Staatsarchiv Magdeburg, Rep. C 20 I b, Nr. 198, Bl. 43–4. Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, V. Leg.-Per., II. Session, Bd. IV, 462–3 (report of the constitutional reform committee); see Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht, 215–20. This calculation is based on evidence from a broad spectrum of local campaigns; see Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht, 305–30, esp. 328, fig. 28. Gawatz, Wahlkämpfe, 230–4.

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22 Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht, 313. 23 Gawatz, Wahlkämpfe, 149. 24 Detailed research into parliamentary deputies’ backgrounds and careers has been undertaken by the Cologne-based Center for Historical Social Research; however, the results of this research have not yet become available in electronic or published form. 25 Heinrich Best, ‘Politische Modernisierung und parlamentarische Führungsgruppen in Deutschland 1867–1918,’ Historical Social Research 13, no. 1 (1988): 5–74, esp. 37–9. 26 See, for instance, Best, ‘Modernisierung’; the classic presentation of this point of view is Stein Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Process of Development (New York, 1970). 27 M. Rainer Lepsius, ‘Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur. Zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft,’ in Deutsche Parteien vor 1918, ed. Gerhard A. Ritter (Cologne, 1973), 56–80. For my evaluation of recent criticisms (and misunderstandings) of Lepsius’s model, see Kühne, ‘Demokratisierung,’ 306ff. 28 See Celia Applegate, ‘Democracy or Reaction? The Political Implications of Localist Ideas in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany,’ in Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany: New Perspectives, ed. Larry Eugene Jones and James Retallack (Cambridge and New York, 1992), 247– 66. Applegate gives a thorough account of how contemporary Germans – including conservatives and democrats, scholars and politicians – regarded communal self-administration, self-government, and particularism. 29 Robert von Friedeburg, ‘Klassen-, Geschlechter- oder Nationalidentität? Handwerker und Tagelöhner in den Kriegervereine der neupreußischen Provinz Hessen-Nassau 1890–1914,’ in Militär und Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Ute Frevert (Stuttgart, 1997), 229–44. Much previous scholarship on the veterans associations falls prey to vague sociological analysis, but still useful are Harm-Peer Zimmermann, ‘Der feste Wall gegen die rote Flut.’ Kriegervereine in Schleswig-Holstein 1864–1914 (Neumünster, 1989); Thomas Rohkrämer, Der Militarismus der ‘kleinen Leute.’ Die Kriegervereine im deutschen Kaiserreich 1871–1914 (Munich, 1990). 30 Friedeburg, ‘Klassen,’ 231–2. 31 Ibid., 241. 32 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977); Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, Mass., 1987); Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, 1992). Of course education represents a more prominent dimension of cultural capital in Bourdieu’s sociology.

122 Thomas Kühne 33 Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Sozialmilitarismus und militärische Sozialisation im deutschen Kaiserreich 1870–1914. Desiderate und Perspektiven in der Revision eines Geschichtsbildes,’ Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 53 (2002): 148–64, esp. 163–4; see also Bernd Ulrich, Jacob Vogel, and Benjamin Ziemann, eds., Untertan in Uniform. Militär und Militarismus im Kaiserreich 1871–1914. Quellen und Dokumente (Frankfurt a.M., 2001), 18ff., 85ff., and Ute Frevert, A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (Oxford, 2004). 34 See Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 52ff.; Jakob Vogel, Nationen im Gleichschritt. Der Kult der ‘Nation in Waffen’ in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 1997), esp. 143ff.; Vogel, ‘Military, Folklore, Eigensinn: Folkloric Militarism in Germany and France, 1871– 1914,’ Central European History 33 (2000): 487–504. 35 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, 1978), 40–3. For a more sophisticated elaboration of the meaning of celebrative communities as a utopian anti-structure in modern societies, see Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York, 1982). 36 Ute Schneider, Politische Festkultur im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Rheinprovinz von der französischen Zeit bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (1806–1918) (Essen, 1995), 238ff. 37 See my related argument about the nationalist veterans movement in the 1920s in Thomas Kühne, Kameradschaft. Die deutschen Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges und das 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2006), 51–8. 38 Axel Grießmer, Massenverbände und Massenparteien im wilhelminischen Reich. Zum Wandel der Wahlkultur 1903–1912 (Düsseldorf, 2000). 39 Eley, Reshaping, 133–4; see also Roger Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886–1914 (Boston, 1984), 152–82. 40 See Peter Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (New York and Oxford, 1990), and Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 166–213, both of which focus on these developments in the Weimar Republic. Fritzsche is correct in stressing the differences between Weimar and Imperial Germany; in the 1920s, class distinctions in associational life were much stronger than they had been during the empire. However, nation-building through patriotic associational life had begun well before 1914. See inter alia Koshar, Social Life, esp. 91–106. The following focus mainly on the Weimar Republic: Helge Matthiesen, Greifswald in Vorpommern. Konservatives Milieu im Kaiserreich, in Demokratie

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42 43

44

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und Diktatur 1900–1990 (Düsseldorf, 2000); Matthiesen, ‘Von der Massenbewegung zur Partei. Der Nationalismus in der deutschen Gesellschaft der Zwischenkriegszeit,’ Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48 (1997): 316–29; Frank Bösch, Das konservative Milieu. Vereinskultur und lokale Versammlungspolitik in ost- und westdeutschen Regionen (1900–1960) (Göttingen, 2002); Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933. Die Verschränkung von Milieu und Parteien in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1996). [Georg Berthold et al.,] ‘Handhabung der Bestimmungen betreffend den Verlust des Wahlrechts bei Empfang öffentlicher Armenunterstützungen,’ in: Schriften des deutschen Vereins für Armenpflege und Wohltätigkeit, no. 26 (1896): 23–79, here 39. Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht, 141–164. See the concise account of these procedures by the leader of the Free Conservative Party, Baron von Zedlitz-Neukirch, in the Prussian House of Deputies: Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, XXI. Leg.-Per., III. Session, Bd. II, 1497 (11 Feb. 1910). For a more thorough analysis see Kühne, Dreiklassenwahlrecht, 178–90, 242–3. In roughly one-fifth to one-third of Prussian Landtag constituencies, only one serious candidate was presented; the reason for this was that hopeless candidacies would be withdrawn before the election. This practice nonetheless enhanced the illusion of unanimity. On other aspects of this topic see Thomas Kühne, ‘Die Jahrhundertwende, die “lange” Bismarckzeit und die Demokratisierung der politischen Kultur,’ in Otto von Bismarck und Wilhelm II. Repräsentanten eines Epochenwechsels? ed. Lothar Gall (Paderborn, 2000), 85–118; and Dieter Langewiesche, Politikstile im Kaiserreich. Zum Wandel von Politik und Öffentlichkeit im Zeitalter des ‘politischen Massenmarktes’ (Friedrichsruh, 2002).

5 The Landscapes of Liberalism: Particularism and Progressive Politics in Two Borderland Regions eric kurlander

‘Landscape is a state of the spirit,’ wrote the German-American novelist Frederic Prokosch. ‘It is a constant longing for what is to come, it is a reflection incomparably detailed and ingenious of what is everlasting in us, and everlastingly changing.’1 More prosaically, James L. Curley, the Progressive mayor of Boston, insisted that ‘all politics is local’ in his defence of the Irish poor against the Anglo-Saxon Brahmins.2 Just as Prokosch hardly had politics in mind when he wrote about landscape and the spirit, Curley was no doubt unaware of German concepts like Heimat or Volkstum. But the relationship between progressive politics and ethno-territorial particularity was at least as strong in Wilhelmine Germany as it was in Curley’s America. It is nothing new, of course, to recognize the indelibly particularistic nature of conservative or Catholic politics in Imperial Germany.3 Scholars of Imperial Germany have recently begun to examine liberalism from a local perspective as well. Such work has emphasized the political dynamism, cultural engagement, and electoral strength of liberal parties long ago heaped on the dustbin of history. It has likewise illuminated important aspects of liberal political culture and municipal praxis in large cities like Hamburg, Breslau, and Frankfurt am Main.4 While the cosmopolitan liberalism of the German Weltstadt is certainly worth investigating, however, it offers us only an incomplete picture of progressive politics in the Wilhelmine era. For even as the left-liberal parties relinquished their urban bastions to the Socialists after 1890, they continued to enjoy considerable electoral success in less heavily industrialized provinces such as Baden, Schleswig-Holstein, and Lower Saxony.5 Indeed, few historians have noted the importance of regional particularism – primarily ethnicity (Volkstum) and a sense of rootedness

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in a place (Heimat) – in defining German liberalism before the First World War.6 This chapter therefore examines the important relationship between progressive liberalism and particularism in two borderland regions, Schleswig-Holstein and Alsace. Representing the left wing of bourgeois liberalism, the German progressives experienced multiple national and regional permutations during the Wilhelmine period. In Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost province, there existed in the 1890s three left-liberal splinter groups: the laissez-faire Radical People’s Party, the more imperialist Radical Union, and Friedrich Naumann’s labour-orientated National Social Association. The Radical Union, which enjoyed the greatest regional support, absorbed Naumann’s National Socials in 1903. But the People’s Party refused to entertain a merger with the Radical Union until the latter’s long-time national chairman, Eugen Richter, died in 1906. After four years of negotiation, the two left-liberal parties agreed to join with the South German People’s Party to form the Progressive People’s Party in 1910.7 In Alsace, a former French province annexed by Germany in 1871, the Alsatian Progressive Party and the more centrist National Liberals united to form the Liberal Regional Party in 1903. In 1912 this united party incorporated the Francophile Alsatian People’s Party to become a new incarnation of the Alsatian Progressive Party. Importantly, neither of Germany’s two most imperialist left-liberal parties – the Radical Union and National Socials – ever played a significant role in Alsace. Conversely, the more openly cosmopolitan and democratically inclined left-liberal parties – the Radical People’s Party and the South German People’s Party – enjoyed considerable influence in the province.8 In both regions there existed certain fundamental ideological and sociological traits that helped to distinguish left liberals from the National Liberals to their right and the socialists to their left. Left liberals drew most of their support from the Protestant middle and lowermiddle classes, but also attracted a significant minority of workingclass and upper-middle-class votes. They tended to support free trade, frugality in military spending, and universal suffrage more assiduously than their National Liberal counterparts. But left liberals were more pro-capitalist and sympathetic to imperialism than the Social Democrats, so they generally opposed high taxation, trade unions, and ‘rootless internationalism’ as well.9 As Thomas Kühne has observed, the same national parties might situate themselves very differently in different localities.10 In attitudes to

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national minorities and foreign policy, left-liberal parties varied widely from place to place. For example, in predominantly rural SchleswigHolstein ethnic particularism combined with progressive politics to form what I call ‘völkisch liberalism.’ Equally racialist and reformist in tone, völkisch liberalism helped left liberals to emerge victorious in the last two elections of the Wilhelmine era. Certainly not all SchleswigHolstein liberals imbibed völkisch ideologies. But there can be little doubt that universalist liberals were increasingly marginalized by their völkisch colleagues after 1890. In Alsace a typically South German distrust of Protestant Prussia combined with French Revolutionary traditions to create what I call ‘republican particularism.’ A world view shared by all three Alsatian party groupings – liberals, clericals, and socialists alike – republican particularism helped maintain regional solidarity and universalist values in the face of an increasingly nationalist German Reich. While there were völkisch forces alive in pre-war Alsace, these ideologies could never gain a firm foothold in native soil. Neither of the two left-liberal parties could succeed without appropriating a particularist vocabulary of ethnicity and local roots. But the language of particularism was articulated differently in each region, producing two virtually antithetical strains of Wilhelmine Progressivism. ‘Regional particularities,’ writes Peter Wulf, ‘played a special political role [in Schleswig-Holstein] in relation to the Reich.’ Schleswig-Holstein ‘carried the trait of a certain isolation which expressed itself in the ... singular character of the inhabitants. This local- and ethnically conscious thinking worked ... to create a certain degree of common political views’ among its regional parties.11 Expressed primarily in cultural and linguistic terms before 1890, this locally and ethnically conscious thinking – which I shall refer to as völkisch particularism – was given a strong racial component during the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Schleswig-Holstein art historian Julius Langbehn’s immensely popular Rembrandt as Educator (Rembrandt als Erzieher) set the tone by attributing the greatness of Nordic culture to North Germanic racial superiority.12 The literary historian Adolf Bartels, also a born Schleswiger, followed Langbehn’s völkisch reasoning in drawing connections between Heimat, race, and culture.13 After a brief flirtation with left liberalism another Schleswig-Holsteiner, Count Ernst von Reventlow, became, with Heinrich Class, the standard-bearer of Pan-German nationalism.14 The fact that one of Germany’s least populated states produced three of Ger-

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many’s greatest völkisch ideologues is no coincidence. It suggests rather the extraordinary appeal of racialist thinking in pre-1914 ScheswigHolstein. The völkisch particularism favoured by Langbehn and Bartels was not identical to Reventlow’s völkisch nationalism.15 Völkisch particularism and völkisch nationalism had in common only that both were hostile to the non-Germanic (or ‘non-Aryan’) world. Within Schleswig-Holstein, völkisch particularists favoured their putatively Nordic ethnicity (Volkstum) over the national community of German peoples (Volksgemeinschaft), many of whom were ostensibly ‘mixed’ with Slavic, Alpine, and Gallic races. North German locality, it goes without saying, was deemed more valuable than German territory elsewhere. A national community that valued blood and soil (Blut und Boden), völkisch liberals argued, must enjoy a greater affinity to Germanic peoples of the same ethnic background, rooted in the same homeland (Heimat). Echoing Prokosch, the völkisch liberal writer Gustav Frenssen thus declared of one of his literary protagonists: ‘had he lost Heimat in his heart,’ all that was ‘disreputable and destructive in his nature’ would have gained the upper hand.16 According to Frenssen, Schleswig-Holsteiners belonged to that democratic guild of ‘Nordic men and artists,’ whose every word reflected an indelibly North Germanic individualism and right to political and cultural self-determination.17 From a progressive point of view, völkisch liberalism presented interesting paradoxes.18 Völkisch liberals believed in a hierarchy of races, some of whom, like the racially ‘superior’ Danes, deserved the right to determine their own fate. Others, such as the Poles and Czechs, did not. Respect for German nationality, wrote one regional left liberal, ‘means naturally that one has the justification – indeed, the duty – to employ means to remedy sickly limbs or even to permit amputations of abnormal growths’ from the racial body politic.19 In a völkisch liberal context it was therefore preferable that a ‘cancerous’ ethnic minority be eradicated than assimilated. In fact, some Schleswig-Holstein Progressives opposed territorial expansion to the East precisely because unassimilable Poles and Jews might further contaminate the Volk.20 Many traditional conservatives and National Liberals, by contrast, appeared less concerned about völkisch purity. East Elbian Junkers rarely complained about the Poles who provided a seemingly limitless reservoir of cheap agricultural labour. And National Liberals in Schleswig-Holstein seemed genuinely optimistic about the possibility of assimilating both

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Danes and Poles.21 Hence, the left liberals were not only more radical in their support for social and political reform, but also in their endorsement of an ethnically determined Volksgemeinschaft. That is not to say that regional left liberals were unaware of the contradiction between defending universalist values such as individualism, democracy, and equality before the law while at the same time promoting German racial superiority. A regular contributor to the leftliberal monthly Fortschritt, Friedrich Hoffmann, tried to dissociate the economic doctrine of laissez-faire liberalism from the Darwinian metaphors favoured by most völkisch liberals. Another Progressive journalist, G.W. Zimmerli, openly questioned the idea of survival of the fittest by citing scientific studies illustrating how different species assisted each other in nature.22 Finally, an editorial in the left-liberal journal Fortschritt criticized those liberals who were ‘prepared to sacrifice all liberal principles ... in disdain of the universal applicability of the idea of nationality, viewing any oppression of other nationalities within or without the state borders as a patriotic deed.’23 Prejudice towards other races would only ‘lead to war and cannon cults on the one side, and to the disenfranchisement of foreign-speaking citizens on the other.’24 Yet völkisch particularism was clearly the most distinctive aspect of Schleswig-Holstein liberalism, combining a commitment to bourgeois individualism with an ethnocentric defence of regional autonomy. In Schleswig-Holstein, for example, the classic liberal distrust of the Prussian Leviathan state was reinforced by an increasingly racialized conception of Nordic ethnic and cultural superiority. Echoing Langbehn’s apotheosis of North Germanic Volkstum, many left liberals believed that Danes as well as Schleswig-Holsteiners deserved political and cultural autonomy from the ‘half-Slavic’ Prussians. This race-based ‘multiculturalism’ fit well into a left-liberal paradigm of economic self-reliance, political self-administration, and cultural self-determination.25 It also helps to explain the Progressives’ continued support for Danish rights while the more indiscriminate nationalists in the Conservative and National Liberal parties favoured repressing all ethnic minorities regardless of their putative racial origin. Of course völkisch particularism never provided a liberal vocabulary for dealing with ‘racially inferior’ minorities such as Poles or Jews.26 But after many years of ethno-political friction, some völkisch liberals began to view the Danes in a negative light as well. Having defended Danish linguistic and cultural rights since the 1890s, völkisch liberals such as Johannes Schmidt-Wodder and Erick Strackerjan felt betrayed

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by the Danish Party’s association with Poles and Alsatians who lacked a proper ‘understanding’ of Volkstum.27 The First World War only exacerbated these latent ethno-political tensions. An ardent supporter of Danish autonomy before the outbreak of hostilities, the völkisch liberal Johannes Tiedje was profoundly offended by Danish opposition to territorial annexations in solidarity with other national minorities. Perhaps the German government had acted unfairly by insisting on Germanization policies in Danish North Schleswig, Tiedje conceded, but this was no excuse for ‘racial miscegenation.’ In their ‘national fraternization’ with the Poles and Czechs, Tiedje concluded, Danish leaders repudiated their ‘Germanic blood and Protestant religion’ along with the entire ‘Germanic community of interests.’28 In the wake of wartime radicalization and defeat, these ethnic preoccupations would help to undermine Schleswig-Holstein progressivism and push its most ardent supporters towards the völkisch right. During the Wilhelmine epoch, Alsatians were never a minority in the conventional sense. In terms of language, history, and ancestry, Alsace was as ‘German’ as any other region of the new German Reich. Admittedly, like ‘Danish’ Schleswig-Holstein, which was only incorporated into Prussia after 1864, Alsace had been a ‘French’ province for two hundred years before 1871. But Alsace was a member of the Holy Roman Empire until the wars of Louis XIV, and rejoined the German Reich in 1871, the same year as Baden and Bavaria. It also possessed a greater percentage of native German speakers than Schleswig-Holstein or Silesia.29 At least three generations of Alsatians had experienced life in a French republic, however.30 Schooled in republican values, many Alsatians considered themselves to be ‘Germans like none that exist in Old Germany.’31 They had no German ‘national feeling’ but, on the contrary, they held an ‘extraordinarily high estimation of Frenchness’ rarely seen in the other German states.32 This proud sense of Alsatian particularism (or autonomism, as it was often called) was closely linked to liberaldemocratic reform in the Reich. Indeed, even Alsatian clericals embraced this republican conception of Alsatian particularism. The Catholic newspaper Der Elsässer railed against the ‘injustices carried out by the Prussian regime in its newest Polish policy.’ How could the Reich punish Poles merely for honouring their native language and culture, banning Polish-speaking individuals from working in the most rudimentary state jobs? Why did Germans so often compare themselves positively to liberal England, but then emulate Albion’s worst ‘Irish pol-

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icy’?33 Although a clerical paper, the Elsässer praised French liberal traditions, echoing Guizot’s famous assertion, ‘In order to love one’s country, one’s country must be loveable.’34 Or, as the Catholic progressive Heinrich Ruland explained, Alsatians ‘felt French’ not because of any ethnic affinities with the Gauls, but for want of the liberal-democratic political values they associated with the Third Republic.35 Particularist notions of Alsatian identity did not exclude ethnic bigotry. The progressive priest Emil Wetterlé once remarked that, as a son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, his political rival and intermittent party colleague Daniel Blumenthal was ill equipped to represent the ‘national’ interests of native Alsatians. Blumenthal countered by labelling the acerbic priest a ‘Schwob’ carpetbagger because his family originally hailed from Baden.36 Like James Curley’s anti-Brahmin diatribes, however, this kind of localist posturing was less racial than cultural and geographic. Neither Wetterlé nor Blumenthal – lifelong friends and political colleagues – allowed such claims to become transformed into true völkisch doctrines. Neither did their constituencies respond to racist considerations. With Wetterlé’s support the Polish Jew Blumenthal was elected mayor of Colmar, the province’s most clerical and particularist city, in 1908. Hence, unlike völkisch liberalism, republican particularism was constructed to combat the racist and antisemitic typologies that pervaded contemporary German political culture at large. The Francophile progressives Blumenthal, Preiss, and Wetterlé, who were respectively Polish-Jewish, German Protestant, and German Catholic in origin, attacked the Pan-German ideals prevailing in liberal circles across the Rhine.37 Wetterlé harangued his nationalist colleagues in the Reichstag, remarking sarcastically how ‘brilliant’ an idea it was to mobilize ‘a large number of big, strong girls from Brandenburg’ and send them ‘to German farmers in the Cameroons and East Africa’ so that the ‘lordly race would not have to prostitute itself by cross-breeding.’38 ‘It is indeed a rather curious fact,’ the radical priest continued, ‘that in recent years the PanGermans, carrying their theories of racial exclusivism [sic] to the uttermost point, protested with the greatest violence against marriages between the descendants of Germans and women of other races. The Hebrews themselves did not watch over the purity of their race more jealously.’ ‘We do not oppose Germanism in itself,’ Wetterlé concluded, ‘but Germanism as it is manifested with us – that meddlesome, pettifogging Germanism which is constantly fighting against our customs and traditions and which would deprive us of all our liberties.’39

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Wetterlé’s clerical colleague, Anselme Laugel, agreed. Alsace-Lorrainers were German, Laugel conceded, ‘but a German must have the right of being so in his own way, without being obliged in his Germanism to conform to a model proposed to him by an administration too much inclined to want to annihilate it.’ Alsatians did not appreciate the vulgar ‘North German’ who ‘worked on the nerves of the South German with his unending speeches of good Deutschtum and patriotism.’40 German nationalists had to ‘get rid of the roughness of their too narrow patriotism’ and realize that no people prospered by acknowledging merely one ‘single civilizing centre.’ Otherwise, the ‘free exchange of ideas ..., the communal treasure from which all the world may draw,’ would die. The Alsatian was ‘a democrat by temperament.’ Race was not the most important component of regional identity, but the ‘moral culture’ that Alsace would relinquish if her ‘French political sense’ was replaced by the German – if, that is, it were converted from ‘a democratic and modern spirit to a spirit feudal and retrograde.’ Instead of German nationalism, Laugel concluded, it was ‘liberty, holy and fecund liberty that one must invoke and … express … in forms familiar to her genius.’41 Thus, most Alsatian left liberals, whether Francophile or Germanophile, saw their land as a multicultural way station, introducing French ideas of liberty to the rest of Germany while at the same time preserving the region’s ethnic German and territorial particularity. How, then, did these regional particularisms influence the landscape of liberal electoral politics? In Schleswig-Holstein, the twentieth century did not begin well. All liberal parties suffered significant losses between 1898 and 1903. But left liberalism faced a particularly serious dilemma.42 Before 1898 a left liberal could win without employing völkisch typologies. After 1898 this traditional cosmopolitanism began to cost the progressives votes. As the progressives were theoretically in agreement with the socialist SPD on many issues (for example, equal suffrage in Prussia, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, ministerial responsibility, economic liberalization), it was difficult for the liberals to dissociate themselves from the SPD without directly contradicting their reformist principles. Yet the progressives were also a middle-class party that could hardly ignore emerging ethnic preoccupations among Schleswig-Holstein’s rural and small-town Mittelstand.43 Caught ‘between two stools,’ as one liberal put it, the progressives tried allying with the Socialists more selectively in 1903.44 But this tactic only produced a worse showing at the polls. The survival of progressivism as a

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viable political force, it seemed, depended on the liberals’ ability to play not only on middle-class social interests but also upon its burgeoning ethnic resentments.45 Indeed, in ethnically and confessionally homogeneous SchleswigHolstein, liberals could emphasize their deep commitment to social reform, political enfranchisement, and the working class without having to grant Jews, Poles, or Catholics equal rights.46 What reason was there to remain a ‘progressive radical’ drunk on ‘principles,’ one left liberal wrote, when a vigorously nationalist program sufficed? To win, a good liberal need only vote against ‘all enemies of the German race!’47 Allying for the first time with conservatives and antisemites in the Bülow Bloc coalition of December 1906, the liberals emerged from the February 1907 run-off elections with seven local seats in the Reichstag, their highest total in a generation. The progressives alone won five districts, two more than both liberal parties combined in 1903.48 The progressives clearly benefited from their newly articulated völkisch ethos. But the promotion of völkisch feeling alongside social reform set a dangerous precedent for a party that had always defended universalist values.49 In 1912, for example, the Jewish left liberal Felix Waldstein was ordered to downplay his cosmopolitan views in order to garner conservative support in the inevitable run-off.50 Even the Agrarian League’s rabid antisemitism did not prevent the progressives in Apenrade-Flensburg from forging an electoral coalition with the League based on ‘patriotic considerations.’51 By attacking the cosmopolitanism of the left and the social conservatism of the right, the Progressive People’s Party dominated the 1912 election campaign, capturing seven of Schleswig-Holstein’s ten Reichstag seats (eight if one includes the Danish progressive, H.P. Hanssen).52 There were many solidly left-liberal planks in the People’s Party platform. These included cultural autonomy for the Danes, a progressive income tax, democratic suffrage, open markets, and a greater concern for organized labour.53 The last Wilhelmine election made clear, however, that the prerequisites for liberal victory had changed after a quarter century of hyper-nationalism and burgeoning antisemitism.54 More sympathetic to state intervention than a generation before, bourgeois voters had likewise imbibed the völkisch spirit of the 1890s. By integrating these völkisch sentiments into a political program emphasizing Schleswig-Holstein particularism, Pan-German nationalism, and social reform, the liberals had learned how to beat the conservatives at their own game.55 But they also produced a highly ethnicized, potentially exclusionary national and social

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liberalism that, when stripped of its laissez-faire moorings near the end of the Weimar Republic, would increasingly resemble the völkisch– social particularism of the National Socialists. Alsatian progressivism was dependent on particularist sentiments of a different kind. No longer desiring a return to France, most Alsatian progressives embraced the Reich during the Wilhelmine epoch and subsequently sought a closer relationship with mainstream German liberalism.56 But all Alsatian parties remained to varying degrees republican and particularist. Alliances between the Francophile and Germanophile progressives were always possible. In 1898 the Colmar liberals Daniel Blumenthal and Jacques Preiss made headlines by convoking a rally for a liberal-democratic constitution in conjunction with the Catholic autonomist Abbé Delsor and the National Liberal Jean Hoffet.57 These ubiquitous republican tendencies were crucial in facilitating the eventual merger in Alsace between the National Liberals and the left-liberal Radical People’s Party in 1903.58 Yet Alsatian liberalism would remain divided between two major political constellations for the duration of the decade, Georg Wolf’s Germanophile Liberal Regional Party and Blumenthal’s Francophile Alsatian People’s Party.59 The latter demanded full Alsatian autonomy. The former party was, by contrast, composed of patriotic Germans willing to accept parity with the other German states so long as assimilation coincided with a general democratization of the Reich.60 Even these Germanophile progressives, however, emphasized the need for preserving ‘the interests of our narrow Heimat’ (a nod to autonomism), confessional peace, religious freedom, frugality in military spending and constitutional reform instead of naval build-up and imperialism.61 Unlike their colleagues across the Rhine, Alsatian progressives were also more willing to forge strategic alliances with clericals. Ideological and organizational ties between Protestant left liberals and Catholic democrats still existed in 1898, since both groups had fought together against Germany’s annexation of Alsace in 1871.62 Though soon to be renamed the Alsatian Centre Party, the clericals had little in common with the Catholic Centre Party in the rest of Germany.63 Unlike the Socialists, moreover, the clericals targeted primarily Catholic voters, leaving Alsace’s Protestant constituency to the liberals. This explains why the ardent liberal secularist Blumenthal was able to preserve close personal and electoral ties to clerical leaders like Wetterlé.64 Between 1898 and 1903 the republican particularist alliance between liberals and clericals was strengthened by a widespread antipathy to both Navy

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Bills and the liberal-conservative Sammlungspolitik that supported them. Liberal-clerical tensions reappeared after the June 1903 Reichstag elections, however – a direct result of both parties’ political realignment in Alsace and the Reich.65 The clericals painted the liberals as redundant, asking what a liberal candidate would do that a clerical would not. Indeed, many Reich liberals opposed the democratic constitution that the Alsatian clericals supported.66 In response, the left-liberal Radical People’s Party and centrist National Liberal Party decided to join forces, forming the Liberal Regional Party in October 1903.67 Not only did this party unify the two major wings of Alsatian liberalism. It did so on a far more liberal and democratic basis than any previous coalition in Alsace or the Reich.68 Liberal Regional Party demands included a liberal state and a democratic Reich constitution; universal, direct manhood suffrage in Prussia as well as Germany; a progressive income tax; immediate reductions in military expenditures; and the strengthening of international courts of arbitration.69 This combined liberal program smacked of socialism, not the watered-down economic liberalism or warmed-over imperialism of German interest groups like the Hansa League or the National Association.70 Predictably, Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow’s call for Reich liberals to ally with the conservatives in December 1906 met with limited success in Alsace.71 Rather than attack the SPD and Centre Party, as Bülow had hoped, Alsatian liberals praised Social Democratic idealism and the clericals’ commitment to reform.72 Admittedly, Wolf’s Germanophile Liberal Regional Party supported the colonies more strongly than Blumenthal’s Alsatian People’s Party.73 But the success of Catholic and Francophile autonomism in 1907 encouraged the Liberal Regional Party to sharpen its republican-particularist critique of Reich liberalism.74 In 1909 the Regional Party’s co-chairman Georg Wolf published an article linking ‘constitutional reform and the cultural question.’ A ‘solution to the cultural problem’ would occur only on the region’s own terms, Wolf wrote, by granting Alsace-Lorraine an independent constitution. Liberalism meant opposing the ‘enemies of all chauvinism on either side ... For us to be German means … to be tolerant and hold loyal to the ideals of humanity.’75 If, in the place of mutual understanding, ‘Hakatist [radical nationalist] associations ... should create an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and antagonism,’ Wolf warned, then ‘contradictions of the intensity of those seen in North Schleswig and Posen’ were inevitable in Alsace as well.76 Soon after Wolf’s call for liberal solidarity, the rival Alsatian People’s Party joined the Radical Peo-

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ple’s Party, which, in its less radical autonomism, was already closely affiliated with Wolf’s Regional Party in Alsace.77 Ironically, however, Alsatian liberalism would face one last hurdle in its defence of republican particularism: Daniel Blumenthal. Dissatisfied with his colleagues’ ‘Germanophile’ tendencies and the new Alsatian constitution, which he deemed insufficiently democratic, Blumenthal abandoned the Alsatian People’s Party to form the National Association in May 1911. Joined by the charismatic Catholic priest Wetterlé and the renowned Protestant liberal Jacques Preiss, the National Association threatened once again to divide Alsatian progressives into Germanophile and Francophile camps. But this confessionally diverse, ad hoc coalition, thrown together only months before the upcoming Reichstag elections, proved incapable of marshalling enough support to prevent the increasing convergence between the Liberal Regional and Alsatian People’s Parties.78 Heeding Wolf’s admonitions and ignoring Blumenthal’s, the two liberal parties combined forces for the January 1912 Reichstag elections.79 To cement this alliance Wolf sacrificed the last remnants of his German national pedigree, arguing that the loss of a few ‘right-wing liberals’ was well worth the price of a united liberal party.80 At the same time, the now combined forces of left liberalism worked to forge an alliance with the equally republican SPD. While socialism and ‘bourgeoisdemocracy’ might still have to fight it out over the question of capitalism, one Progressive wrote, ‘the conditions in the Reich were unfortunately in such a state that the reaction from the right is the nearer and more threatening danger.’81 By allying with the SPD, Wolf added, progressives would send a message that Alsatian liberalism truly served ‘progressive political development and peace among nations.’82 The unified liberal program of 1912 was as radical as any in the history of the Reich and ‘hardly differed from the Social Democratic program’ in most essential points.83 All ethnic preoccupations were superseded by the push for constitutional reform and cultural autonomy embodied in republican particularism. In Alsace, as in much of the Reich, the true victors in 1912 were the Socialists.84 But the ‘triumph of Social Democracy was celebrated ... by the left liberals as if it were their own,’ René Schickele wrote, because the outcome of the election indicated a ‘general protest against the tyranny of the reaction ... and national provocation.’85 Finally of one mind in their republican-particularist antipathy to Reich nationalism, the Liberal Regional Party and the Alsatian People’s Party formalized their electoral coalition in March

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1912, creating the first truly unified liberal party in German history, the Alsatian Progressive Party. The infamous Zabern Affair in 1913 only hastened Alsatian Progressivism’s drift towards the Third Republic, culminating in Alsace once again becoming a part of France at the end of the First World War.86 To conclude, a preoccupation with ethnicity and place clearly defined local progressive politics in both regions. In Schleswig-Holstein, ethnic particularism coalesced with a classical liberal rejection of state intervention to form völkisch liberalism. After its cosmopolitan traditions began to undermine left liberalism in the 1890s, this völkisch liberal ethos helped to redefine the Progressive People’s Party as the bourgeois party of provincialism, patriotism, and Protestantism, the chief bulwark against the godless Socialists, Slavified Junkers, and nation-less Danes. The tide of war then pushed the Progressives in a more radically völkisch direction, creating a new, increasingly race-obsessed ethos after 1914. While most leading liberals chose to forgo annexations and support the Peace Resolution in the summer of 1917, on a regional level many völkisch liberals ruled out any alliance with the cosmopolitan left. In their minds, liberal-democratic reform would only weaken the German cause by introducing a Western conception of liberal democracy, which fundamentally contradicted Germany’s ethno-national purity. By 1918 the divide between universalist and völkisch liberals had become immense, explaining in great part the disintegration of Weimar liberalism in favour of the völkisch right.87 Thus, just as völkisch ideology gradually united liberals and conservatives in Schleswig-Holstein, it alienated liberals, clericals, and socialists alike in Alsace. Even class and confessional differences could not impede the overwhelming influence of republican particularism in Alsace. A case in point was Blumenthal’s short-lived National Association, in which a Catholic priest, a Protestant liberal, and a Polish Jewish Democrat allied in the name of republican reform.88 Conversely, one need only look at the socially diverse leadership of the Pan-German Fatherland Party to understand the power of völkisch logic east of the Rhine.89 While it cannot be said that the Alsatian Progressives were powerful in electoral terms during the Wilhelmine epoch, the republican values they propagated gained increasing currency, even hegemony, after the breakdown of ‘notable politics’ in the 1890s. In Schleswig-Holstein and many other German regions, quite the opposite held true. Indeed, while völkisch liberalism would decline precipi-

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tously in the decade following the First World War, to be replaced almost everywhere by National Socialism, republican particularism experienced a spectacular resurgence in the 1920s, helping Alsatian liberals to ward off fascism.90 By illustrating the profound differences between particularism and progressive politics in two border regions of the German Reich, these case studies help to explain the plurality of liberal political values in the Wilhelmine epoch. As Thomas Kühne’s contribution to this volume indicates, Wilhelmine parties either reworked or ignored complicated national issues in favour of political positions that were digestible locally. Whereas völkisch ideology played the greatest role in defining Schleswig-Holstein’s political culture, it was republicanism that united political parties in Alsace. In both places, local issues superseded national ones: the North Schleswig question in Schleswig-Holstein, the lack of a democratic constitution in Alsace. That is not to say that liberal constituencies were ignorant of national debates on colonies, the navy, tax reform, or trade negotiations, only that they interpreted such questions through the prism of their own ethno-territorial preoccupations. In Alsace, the political landscape happened to favour republican universalism, even after the Great Depression. In Schleswig-Holstein, ethnic particularism ensured the success of progressive politics for nearly as long. But whatever the effectiveness of völkisch particularism – the emphasis on ethnicity and local roots – in defining Schleswig-Holstein before 1914, it is hard to deny that ethnic preoccupations undermined the viability of German liberalism in the long run. In Alsace, to the contrary, universalist liberalism survived until the Second World War, when the province was once again annexed to Germany.91

NOTES 1 Frederic Prokosch, cited in Pico Iyer, ‘The Perfect Traveler,’ New York Review of Books 51, no. 18 (18 Nov. 2004), 50–4. 2 See James J. Connolly, The Triumph of Progressive Politics: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900–1925 (Cambridge, 1998). 3 Cf. Hans-Jürgen Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik und preussischer Konservatismus in Wilhelminischen Reich 1893–1914. Ein Beitrag zur Analyse des Nationalismus in Deutschland am Beispiel des Bundes der Landwirte und der DeutschKonservativen Partei, 2nd ed. (Bonn, 1975); James Retallack, Notables of the Right: The Conservative Party and Political Mobilization in Germany, 1876–1918

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4

5

6

7

8

9

(London and Boston, 1988); Retallack, ed., Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830–1933 (Ann Arbor, 2000); Rudolf Rietzler, Kampf in der Nordmark. Das Aufkommen des Nationalsozialismus in SchleswigHolstein (Neumünster, 1982); Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1996); Frank Bösch, Das Konservative Milieu. Vereinskultur und lokale Sammlungspolitik in ost- und westdeutschen Regionen (1900–1960) (Göttingen, 2002); David Blackbourn, Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Württemberg before 1914 (New Haven, 1980); Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (Oxford, 1993). Manfred Hettling, Politische Bürgerlichkeit. Der Burger zwischen Individualität und Vergesellschaftung in Deutschland und der Schweiz von 1860 bis 1918 (Göttingen, 1999); Jan Palmowski, Urban Liberalism in Imperial Germany: Frankfurt am Main, 1866–1914 (Oxford, 1999); Alistair Thompson, Left Liberals, the State, and Popular Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 2000); Jennifer Jenkins, Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg (Ithaca, 2003); Oded Heilbronner, ‘‘‘Long Live Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Dynamite”: The German Bourgeoisie and the Constructing of Popular Liberal and National-Socialist Subcultures in Marginal Germany,’ Journal of Social History 39, no. 1 (2005): 91, at http://www.historycooperative.org/ journals/jsh/39.1/heilbronne r.html (accessed 2 Aug. 2006). See Thompson, Left Liberals. See also Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalism in Germany (Princeton, 2000), 128–74; and James J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978), 221–31, 239–71. The two notable exceptions are Heilbronner, ‘“Long Live Liberty,”’ and Thompson, Left Liberals, although both are more concerned with liberal political practice than ideology. Hence, neither investigates the role of völkisch-nationalism, particularism, or antisemitism in much detail. For more detail on the political history of Wilhelmine progressivism, see Ludwig Elm, Zwischen Fortschritt und Reaktion (Berlin, 1968), 3–9; and Sheehan, German Liberalism, 121–77, 204–38. On Schleswig-Holstein in particular, see Ulrich Lange, Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins (Neumünster, 1996), 464–71. For more on Alsatian liberalism in the Wilhelmine epoch, see Hermann Hiery, Reichstagswahlen im Reichsland. Ein Beitrag zur Landesgeschichte von Elsaß-Lothringen und zur Wahlgeschichte des Deutschen Reiches 1871–1918 (Düsseldorf, 1986), 34–73; and François Igersheim, L’Alsace des notables (1870–1914): La bourgeoisie et le peuple alsacien (Strasbourg, 1980), 14–27. Jonathan Sperber, The Kaiser’s Voters: Electors and Elections in Imperial Germany (Cambridge and New York, 1997), 40, 150, 226–58.

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10 See Thomas Kühne’s contribution to this volume. 11 Peter Wulf, Die politische Haltung des schleswig-holsteinischen Handwerks 1928–1932 (Cologne, 1969), 148–149. See also Hans Jörg Zimmermann, Der Kreis Herzogtum Lauenburg 1918 bis 1933 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Wirtschafts- und Sozialstruktur und Wählerverhalten (Neumünster, 1978), 107–108; Mack Walker, German Home Towns (Ithaca, 1998); Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990). 12 Julius Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher (Leipzig, 1890). 13 Adolf Bartels, Aus der Meerumschlungenen Heimat (Wesselburen, 1896); Bartels, Heine–Genossen. Zur Charakteristik der deutschen Presse und der deutschen Parteien (Dresden, 1908). 14 Ernst von Reventlow, Die deutsche Flotte (Zweibrücken, 1901); Reventlow, Die englische Seemacht (Halle, 1906). 15 Ernst von Reventlow, Wertung. Die völkische Eigenart und der Internationalismus, no. 5 (Leipzig, 1910), 11. 16 Oswald Hauser, Gustav Frenssen als niederdeutscher Dichter. Untersuchungen zu Landschaft und Volkstum seiner Heimat (Leipzig, 1936), 33–4; also see Hauser, Schriften der Grenzakademie. Nationalgefühl und Nationalismus; Rudolf Rietzler, Kampf in der Nordmark. Das Aufkommen des Nationalsozialismus in Schleswig-Holstein (Neumünster, 1982), 38–41. 17 Hauser, Gustav Frenssen, 35. 18 No work exemplified this contradiction better than Langbehn’s Rembrandt als Erzieher. 19 ‘Patriotismus und Nationalismus,’ in Fortschritt, 1908, 321–5 20 ‘Liberalismus and Darwinismus,’ in Fortschritt, 1908, 584–9. 21 Berliner Tageblatt, 2 July 1901, as cited in Die Nordmark, 15 August 1901. 22 See articles in Fortschritt, 1908, 321–5, 639–43. 23 Fortschritt, 1908, 321–5. 24 ‘Patriotismus und Nationalismus.’ 25 See Eric Kurlander, ‘Multicultural and Assimilationist Models of Ethnopolitical Integration in the Context of the German Nordmark, 1890–1933,’ Global Review of Ethnopolitics 1, no. 3 (Mar. 2002): 39–52. 26 Lange, Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, 466– 7. 27 Johannes Schmidt-Wodder, Ethische Fragen und Kulturprobleme in Nordschleswig (Vortrag gehalten in Malente am 5. Oktober 1909) (Lunden, 1909), 5– 8; see also Karl Strackerjan, Dänen an der deutschen Front. Nordmark und Weltkrieg, eine Denkschrift (Hadersleben, 1915), 37–8. 28 ‘If our administration commits bloody injustices to the Danes in North Schleswig, the Danes, for their part, commit racial miscegenation [Rassenschande] if they fraternize with the Czechs against us.’ See Tiedje’s article

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30 31

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33

34 35 36 37 38 39

‘Glossen zur neusten Nordmark,’ Litteratur, 20 Jan. 1910, in Landesbibliothek Kiel (hereafter LBK), SHs 220, 63–7. In 1871, there were 140,000 ‘Danish gesinnte’ – culturally and linguistically Danish – in a total population of just over one million. Thus Schleswig-Holstein was at least 13% Danish-speaking. See Leonhart in Fortschritt, 1908, 619–23. In Alsace-Lorraine, under 10% of the population were native French speakers. By 1900, the total for Alsace was under 5%. (In 1900, 11.6% of Lorraine spoke French as a first language; this number fell to 5.6% in Upper Alsace and 3.6% in Lower Alsace.) See Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 40–1; Dan Silverman, Reluctant Union: Alsace-Lorraine and Imperial Germany, 1871– 1918 (University Park, Penn. 1972), 76. See also James J. Sheehan, ‘What Is German History? Reflections of the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography,’ Journal of Modern History 53 (1981): 1–23. Abbé [Emil] Wetterlé, Behind the Scenes in the Reichstag (London, 1918), 51–2. Unlike other Germans, who never looked beyond their borders, Alsatians saw the stark differences between Germans and Frenchmen up close. Only in Alsace was the concept of ‘German’ German and only German, ‘a living essence of flesh and blood ...; we are Germans like none that exist in Old Germany.’ Briefe eines Elsässers. Sonder-Abdruck aus der Täglichen Rundschau (Berlin, 1898), 11, 21–4. ‘The Alsatians were no Germans; they felt like Frenchmen, and indeed as full Frenchmen. We knew well that there was a German language which we also spoke but we knew nothing of Germany. The German language was ... just as little a hindrance to being good Frenchmen as Breton for the Bretons. Germany has received a fully foreign land … that it must win anew.’ Briefe eines Elsässers, 7. Also see Briefe eines Elsässers, 5–14, 21–4. ‘Does Germany want therefore to take for itself England as a model? Does it want to treat Poles and Alsace-Lorrainers as England treats Ireland ...?’ Der Elsässer, 3 Sept. 1898. ‘Afin qu’on aime la patrie, il faut que la patrie soit elle-même aimable,’ ibid. Heinrich Ruland, Deutschtum und Franzosentum in Elsass-Lothringen. Eine Kulturfrage (Strasbourg, 1908). Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 99. Wetterlé, Behind the Scenes, 75–8. Ibid., 94–6, 138. Ibid.; see speech from 28 Jan. 1911, 155. Wetterlé deemed German nationalism an absurd mixture of racism, reaction, and illogic, typified by German Reichstag representatives singing the Deutschlandlied in parliament: ‘These were no longer children chanting the Pan-German hymn, but all the directors of Imperial policy, and on hearing them thus affirm their monstrous

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43 44 45 46

47

48

49 50

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ambitions, in the form of a war song, I realised that the war was near.’ Wetterlé, Behind the Scenes, 92–3, 158–9. Anselme Laugel, L’Avenir Intellectuel de l’Alsace (Paris, 1908), 5–15. Ibid., 19–31. ‘In 1898, an increased proportion of previous voters for the right-wing parties chose the liberals and Social Democrats ... Part of this change reflected a greater cooperation between the Kartell parties [conservative, National Liberal, and Progressive Union].’ Sperber, Kaiser’s Voters, 226. Kieler Zeitung, 27 May 1903, 6 and 11 June 1903. Schleswiger Nachrichten, 3 June 1903; Kieler Zeitung, 27 May 1903. Apenrader Tageblatt, 28 Dec. 1906. Also see Schleswiger Nachrichten, 4 and 6 Jan. 1907. Kieler Neuste Nachrichten, 16 June 1903; Kieler Zeitung, 15 Jan. 1907; Schleswiger Nachrichten, 16 Jan. 1907. A provincial ‘opposition to Prussian conservatism,’ which Rietzler calls the ‘anti-Prussian effect,’ helped to complement Wilhelmine left liberalism in the province and permitted the progressive parties to gain a firm political hold already before the foundation of the Reich. See also Rudolf Heberle, From Democracy to Nazism (New York, 1970), 30–1; Kieler Neuste Nachrichten, 19 Jan. 1907; Itzehoer Nachrichten, 16 Jan. 1907; LBK, NL Frenssen, Cb 21.56.943 (21–8); Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NL Bernhard von Bülow, 1016, Bl. 85; Rietzler, Kampf, 48–51. The National Liberals missed no opportunity in this campaign to sing the national anthem, ‘Deutschland über alles.’ Itzehoer Nachrichten, 19 Jan. 1907; see also Kieler Zeitung, 13 Jan. 1907. Spethmann in Schleswig-Eckernförde; Leonhart in Husum-Tondern; Struve in Plön-Oldenburg; Friedrich Wolgast in Pinneberg; and Heckscher in Lauenburg. Heberle, From Nazism, 30–1. Kieler Zeitung, 5 and 10 Jan. 1912. Waldstein’s experience contrasts significantly with the conclusions of historians who see the persistence of a more tolerant, philosemitic liberalism through the early 1920s. See, for example, Till van Rahden, Juden und andere Breslauer. Die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Grossstadt von 1860 bis 1925 (Göttingen, 2000); Jan Palmowski, ‘Between Dependence and Influence: Jews and Liberalism in Frankfurt am Main, 1864–1933,’ in Liberalism, Antisemitism, and Democracy, ed. Henning Tewes and Jonathan Wright (Oxford, 2001), 76–101. For greater elaboration on the prominence of liberal antisemitism in Schleswig- Holstein and elsewhere, see Eric Kurlander, ‘Nationalism, Ethnic Preoccupation and the Decline of German Liberalism: A Silesian Case Study, 1898–1933,’ The Historian 65, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 95–121;

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51 52

53

54 55 56 57

58

59

60 61

and Kurlander, The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898–1933 (New York, 2006), 31–3, 78–90, 189– 201. Schleswiger Nachrichten, 17 Jan. 1912. Leube in Flensburg; Waldstein in Schleswig-Eckernförde; Blunck in Tondern-Husum; Hoff in Dithmarsch; Titius in Kiel; Struve in Plön; and Heckscher in Lauenburg: all won for the FV. See election reports in Landesarchiv Schleswig (hereafter LAS): Abt. 301, Bl. 59. ‘Heydebrand als Erzieher,’ Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung, 29 Dec. 1911. See also the NLP speech by Wilhelm Görck in Itzehoer Nachrichten, 7 Jan. 1912; and the young Gertrud Bäumer, one of Weimar’s leading liberals, ‘Das neue Jahr der Frau,’ Kieler Zeitung, 5 and 18 Jan. 1912. See Kurlander, Price of Exclusion, 52–60. Zimmermann, Lauenburg, 107. See also Eley, Reshaping, 320–5; and Itzehoer Nachrichten, 3 Jan. 1912. Archives du Bas Rhin, Strasbourg (hereafter AStr), Bureau des Statthalters, 123 AL, Bl. 21; Igersheim, L’Alsace des notables, 31–44. Both of whom ‘sat arm in arm’ in mutual support. In 1898 and 1903 Blumenthal, Riff, and Jerschke, a Progressive from Colmar, ran together with a program that clearly attacked the German government in a consistent and biting fashion. l'Express, 14 and 15 June 1903; Bürgerzeitung, 9 and 10 June 1898, 16 June 1903; Christian Baechler, Le Parti catholique alsacien, 1890–1939, du Reichsland à la République jacobin (Paris, 1982), 664–5. See the Straßburger Post, cited in Martin Berger, Pascal David und die politische Entwicklung Elsass-Lothringens 1882–1907 (Munich, 1910), 100–18, 152–3. Old Germans (Altdeutscher) – as opposed to Old Alsatians (Altelsässer) – were immigrants from the Reich proper who had arrived after 1871. ‘The Elsass-Lothringische Volkspartei of Blumenthal and Preiss ... organized itself on the example of the Deutsche Volkspartei of Southern Germany’; Baechler, Parti Catholique Alsacien, Introduction. See Baechler, Parti Catholique Alsacien, 15–17; Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 289–97. ‘1. In the political sphere, for the maintenance and nurturing of confessional peace, and at the same time against any measure restricting confessional freedom or freedom of conscience and against any prejudice owing to religious confession; against every exceptional law; for full right of association, assembly and the press; against every attempt for the diminution of general, direct, secret and equal [touché SPD] suffrage ...; for the legal confirmation of the two-year military service time; and most of all for the preservation and increase of popular rights.’ AStr 32 AL, Bl. 19.

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62 Scholars differ as to whether Alsace-Lorraine remained a province governed by ‘notables’ until 1918 or perhaps even into the early 1920s. See Igersheim, L’Alsace des notables; Hiery, Reichstagswahlen; and Silverman, Reluctant Union. 63 Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 297–301. 64 Blumenthal spent the Wilhelmine period as a kind of liberal middleman, arbitrating between clerical autonomist and liberal patriotic interests in an effort to bring all ‘democratic’ forces together. 65 See debate in Elsässiche Kurier, 22 Dec. 1904 and Elsässische Volkspartei, 24 Dec. 1904, in AStr: AdI, 65 AL, Bl. 96. 66 Elsässische Kurier, 10 June 1913. 67 Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 99. 68 When criticized for joining the republican Progressives, the Alsatian National Liberal chairman reminded the NLP Reich Central Committee: ‘One cannot ignore that the fundamental tendency of our population is democratic and directed towards the left.’ See the commentary by Goetz in Georg Wolf, Verhandlungen der IV. Vertreterversammlung der Liberalen Landespartei in Elsaß-Lothringen (Strasbourg, 1907), 4–5. 69 For this reason, Blumenthal, ever the maverick, refused to ally his People’s Party with the new liberal organization. Ibid., 152–3. 70 Heinrich Ruland, Elsaß-Lothringen und das Deutschtum (Berlin, 1914), 9–10; Berger, Pascal David, 152–3. 71 See ‘Ein Abrechnung mit dem Kanzler,’ Bürgerzeitung, 2 Jan. 1907. 72 Bürgerzeitung, 16 and 21 Jan. 1907. 73 Ibid., 19 and 24 Jan. 1907; Frédéric Eccard, L’Alsace sous la domination allemande (Paris, 1919), 207. The liberals won not a single seat in 1907. All eleven districts went to either the German Centre Party (4); the clerical autonomists (5); the SPD (1); or the Free Conservatives (1). Jürgen Schmädeke, Wählerbewegung im Wilhelminischen Deutschland, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1995), vol. 2, map 6. 74 See Laugel, L’Avenir Intellectual; Ruland, Deutschtum und Franzosentum in Elsass-Lothringen. 75 G. Erwin Ritter, Die Elsass-Lothringische Presse im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts (Strasbourg, 1934), 179. 76 See Georg Wolf, ‘Verfassungsreform und Kulturfrage in Elsaß-Lothringen,’ Süddeutche Monatshefte, 722–31. 77 Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 286. 78 Ibid. Elsässische Kurier, 9 Dec. 1911. 79 The ‘patriotic’ thing to do was to support progressive forces unconditionally; Bürgerzeitung, 19 Dec. 1911. Even the National Liberals showed trepi-

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80

81

82 83

84

85 86

87

88

89

90 91

dation over the degree to which the national had supplanted the liberal. Strasburger Post, 19 Nov. 1912. See A.G. Oberländer, Der Nationalbund in eigener und fremder Beleuchtung (Strasbourg, 1911); l'Express, 3 Jan. 1912; Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 371–82; Bürgerzeitung, 13 Dec. 1911, 5 Jan. 1912. ‘We demand an expansion of the rights of the popular representation, responsibility of the Imperial chancellor to the Reichstag, approval of the Reichstag for all state treaties and territorial changes, new division of the Reichstag electoral districts.’ l’Express, 8 Jan. 1912. Straßburger Neue Zeitung, 4 Jan. 1912. Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 378. ‘If there was a necessity for Germany to search for new annexations in order to accommodate the increase in her population, is it for annexed Alsatians to say? Must not their activity be limited to the conquest of liberties that have for a long time been refused them?’ l'Express, 2 Jan. 1912. Sperber, Kaiser’s Voters, 258–62. See also Joseph Keppi’s article summarizing 1912 election returns: Centre, Lorrainers, and Conservatives received 48.6% of the vote, SPD 31.7%, and the liberals 19.5%. AStr: 132 AL, Bl. 17. Straßburger Neue Zeitung, 23–4 Jan. 1912. Cf. Kevin Passmore, From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in the French Province (New York, 1997); Samuel Goodfellow, Between the Swastika and the Cross of Lorraine: Fascisms in Interwar Alsace (Dekalb, Ill., 1999); Baechler, Parti catholique alsacien; and Lothar Kettenacker, Nationalsozialistische Volkstumpolitik im Elsaß (Stuttgart, 1973). Theodor Wolff, Tagebücher 1914–1919. Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Entstehung der Weimarer Republik in Tagebüchern, Leitartikeln und Briefen des Chefredakteurs am ‘Berliner Tageblatt’ und Mitbegründers der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei (Boppard, 1984). In Alsace local candidates were known for their individualism, which Hiery feels was linked to a French context – and not their general party affiliations. Hiery, Reichstagswahlen, 24–30; see also Igersheim, L’Alsace des notables, 5–24. Formed in 1917, the Fatherland Party included an erstwhile Social Democrat (Maurenbrecher), Progressive left liberal (Traub), National Liberal (Schaefer), Free Conservative (Class), and German-Social (Reventlow) among its leaders. See Kurlander, Price of Exclusion, 295–346. For more on the trajectory of liberalism in Alsace and Schleswig-Holstein after 1918, see Kurlander, Price of Exclusion, 137–87, 295–346; Kurlander, ‘Republikanischer Partikularismus als elsäßisches Integrationsmodell zwis-

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chen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus,’ in Integrationen des Widerläufigen, ed. Elke Huwiler and Nicole Wachter (Hamburg, 2004), 93–102; and Kurlander, ‘Völkisch Nationalism and Universalism on the Margins of the Reich: A Comparison of Majority and Minority Liberalism in Germany, 1898–1933,’ in Germany from the Margins, ed. Mark Roseman, Neil Gregor, and Nils Roemer (Bloomington, 2006), 84–103.

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PART THREE Landscapes

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6 ‘The Garden of Our Hearts’: Landscape, Nature, and Local Identity in the German East david blackbourn

Travel east from Berlin, and the River Oder is no more than seventy kilometres away. Continue another fifty kilometres, and you reach Gorzow Wielkopolski. In the Kaiser’s time the town was still called Landsberg and belonged to the Prussian province of Brandenburg. It was just outside Landsberg, on the modest family estate of Gennin, that the now forgotten author Hans Künkel was born in 1896. Künkel served in the First World War and spent most of his life as a teacher. In 1946, ten years before his death, he was ordained a Protestant minister, then founded and ran a school for orphans in Wolfenbüttel. He also wrote throughout his life: works of popular psychology, historical novels, and Heimat fiction that celebrated his native landscape.1 These interests came together in another work, a family saga written in the 1950s and published posthumously. Its main subject was Gennin, which lay on the slopes above the Warthe valley, and those who farmed it over the generations. On the Bare Hills of the New March is an elegy about the coming of ‘new times,’ symbolized by the gospel of profit and the railway, on which passengers with bored faces raced through a countryside they no longer understood. ‘No one,’ Künkel laments, ‘could live apart in the green pastures of the 18th century.’2 Several family members stand out against this brave new world. But the central character is the land itself. The earth of Gennin represents continuity, permanence, and the rhythms of nature. It persists through the vagaries of war and politics. It is there when the local village is razed by Napoleon’s army, when Hermann Künkel returns from Bismarck’s wars, and when the author himself returns from the trenches with a missing arm. There is nothing very original about this story of lost innocence projected onto a beloved landscape. I have taken it as my starting point for

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two reasons. First, because the sense of loss in this case is a double one. Hans Künkel fled west with his elderly mother in 1945, when the German Warthe became the Polish Warta. Künkel says almost nothing directly about this. He died before he could carry the story up to the Second World War. It is the editor of the posthumously published work, a law professor from the Göttingen Research Group that tended the memory of the ‘lost’ German Heimat in the east, who tells us about Künkel’s flight and his two sons killed in the war (although not about his contribution to a book honouring Hitler’s fiftieth birthday). Yet that other ‘loss’ permeates the text, and gives it a larger significance. For the flight or expulsion of some twelve million Germans during 1944–7 generated a huge literature of loss, one in which the landscape played an absolutely central role.3 But what kind of lost German landscape was being mourned: the natural or the cultivated? That is my second reason for starting with Künkel. His book is fairly typical of refugee accounts in suggesting, ambiguously, that it was both. Certainly it celebrates natural beauty, and Künkel applauds those of his ancestors who believed that one should ‘live oneself into the land.’4 But that celebration of the natural is more than offset by praise for how the land had been cultivated. Künkel’s great-grandfather came originally from the Oderbruch that lay along the western bank of the River Oder, and was driven from a marshland drained by Frederick the Great in the middle of the eighteenth century. The great-grandson writes with conventional wistfulness about that lost world, but mostly he celebrates the new greenery, the arable and grazing land created in the former marshes. And when he writes about the Warthe valley, also drained and settled in the eighteenth century, it is not the former wetlands inhabited by wild duck but the estate of Gennin that provides the emotional centre of his family chronicle. It was not reclamation, but the ‘materialism’ that came later, which Künkel deplored. Hence, like many other German writers, he celebrated and mourned an ‘unchanging’ landscape that was not really unchanging at all.5 One very poignant place of memory in the book underscores this fact. There was a meadow at Gennin that became Künkel’s favourite retreat when he came home broken from the war. Triangular in shape, it was well shaded by trees, rich in wild flowers and butterflies. And how had this strangely shaped meadow been created? By the criss-crossing lines of the drainage ditches dug when the Warthe marshes, too, were drained in the eighteenth century.6 Many refugee writers after 1945 described a similarly ambiguous lost

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landscape in the east. They evoked the natural beauty of lakes and forests, the breakers and dunes along the Baltic coast, winter snows and the sweet smelling linden trees in spring, the bison and elk of East Prussia. But they always emphasized that Germans had tamed the land and made it fruitful. When Paul Fechter conjured up the ‘magic’ of the east he juxtaposed the wild Drausensee (a ‘paradise for birds’) and the ‘wide, green flat Dutch landscape of pastures’ on the Lower Vistula.7 Writing in the 1951 anthology German Homeland without Germans, Karlheinz Gehrmann made the point more directly. The ‘miracle’ of the German relationship with the land in East Prussia was that it ‘became cultivated land yet remained entirely natural. Here civilization and the natural existed side by side without one damaging the other.’8 The refugee writers wanted to have it both ways: Germans possessed a special feeling for nature, yet they also had a special talent for shaping the land. Both arguments were dubious. But the suggestion that Germans had a singular ability to shape the land was especially important for asserting German moral claims on the east. In this self-serving narrative, Germans had found a ‘wilderness’ and made it bloom. When wilderness appears in these works, it is invariably negative. ‘Uniform grey’ has been transformed by the industry of German settlers into ‘sparkling colours’ and living green.9 No one endowed these sentiments with more pathos than Agnes Miegel, the poet who came to be known as ‘Mother East Prussia,’ one of the most anthologized refugee writers (and another contributor to the book that honoured Hitler’s birthday). She saw herself as a child of the ‘green plain,’ a recurring motif in her work.10 An autobiographical essay lovingly evoked the ‘fresh green’ land – the drainage canals along the Pregel, barns and bridges, a mill race and the blooming apple trees remembered from a family walk at Whitsun.11 In works like ‘In Commemoration’ and ‘There was a Land’ Miegel mourned the ‘green Heimat land’ as a place of fruitfulness.12 The east, in short, had been turned by German efforts into a green garden; and the refugees’ homesickness for that land had made it – in Lutz Mackensen’s words – ‘the garden of our hearts.’13 So far I have presented a snapshot. It shows how a particular group of Germans at a particular moment imagined a land from which they had been expelled: a German pastoral that made local landscape a badge of identity. There are several directions in which it would be possible to take the argument from here. One could ask whether this construct was really so distinctive. After all, as William Rollins has pointed

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out, there is an English version of the pastoral that strikes a similar note. He quotes John Ruskin’s Unto this Last: ‘No scene is continually and untiringly loved, but one rich by joyful human labour; smooth in field; fair in garden; full in orchard; trim, sweet, and frequent in homestead.’ Ruskin, too, grants the importance of the ‘natural’ alongside what humans have created – ‘the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle.’14 But the emphasis is on the fruitful beauty of the cultivated. Or consider, earlier, that great visionary William Blake. Where did he want to build Jerusalem? – ‘In England’s green and pleasant land.’ The phrase still has the power to move, even (perhaps especially) now it is clear that executive housing and shopping malls are the only things that will be built in England’s no longer so green or pleasant land. The point is that these ideas are politically multivalent. Conservatives could and did appropriate Ruskin’s pastoral vision – think of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s bucolic version of the nation in the 1930s, or the Conservative Party’s improbable appropriation of Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ as the anthem of its annual party conference. There is no need to cross the Channel, however, to find counterparts to this German pastoral of the east. Similar celebrations of the local Heimat land were widespread in other parts of Germany in the years after 1945. As Thomas Lekan and Celia Applegate have shown, in the Rhineland an idealized landscape of home served as a form of post-war emotional solace.15 The Bavarian nature conservationist Otto Kraus later wrote that, with German cities reduced to rubble, ‘nature and landscape alone remained as an essential basis of our existence.’16 As that plaintive comment suggests – and it was typical of the time – identification with the landscape had another psychological function: it allowed Germans to see themselves as victims. So I do not want to suggest that the refugee writers’ identification with the land had nothing in common with what we find in western or southern parts of Germany. I do want to argue that the eastern pastoral had distinctive features. These derived from the particular topography and hydrology of the east; its ethnic composition; long-term patterns of German colonization; and how Germans there saw themselves in relation to the rest of Germany. These were the raw materials. How and when they were fused together is a historical question, to which the remainder of this chapter tries to provide an answer. The mystique of German colonization in the east is the key. That was, of course, something that went back hundreds of years. It was most

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intense from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, then again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under Habsburg and Hohenzollern auspices. But the idea that these movements of population were interconnected – that they were ‘acts’ in a long-running ‘drama’ – did not take shape until after the middle of the nineteenth century. It was an idea very much linked to German nationalism and assertions about a German mission in the east. The claim that Germans had tamed the land and made it fruitful formed a red thread – or perhaps it should be called a green thread – in this mystique of colonization. Take Heinrich von Treitschke’s history of the Teutonic Knights, published in 1862. As he recounted one episode: ‘A seemingly impenetrable thicket grew above the reeds on the wide marshes between the backwaters of the Vistula and Nogat, until, every spring, came the terror of the country – the floods that followed the break-up of the ice ... [T]he Knights, ... by directing the labour of several generations, tamed the mighty river. A chain of dikes was built across the land.’17 Thus reclaimed and protected, the Lower Vistula had been transformed into a rich granary. Frederick the Great, in Treitschke’s account, was merely returning the land to its earlier German glory with his drainage projects in West Prussia after the 1772 partition, for ‘just as the first German conquerors once rescued the islands of cornland from the torrents, so now the industrious Netzegau arose out of the swamps alongside flourishing Bromberg.’18 Treitschke’s contemporary, Max Beheim-Schwarzbach – now obscure, but still being read in the first half of the twentieth century – drew the same poetic contrast between the ‘new green of German industriousness’ and the ‘swamps and marshes’ of the Poles.19 After the 1870s, when hundreds of books appeared on medieval and Hohenzollern colonization, this contrast became a commonplace, a mental framework for viewing the east. The Germans tended crops and animals; the Slavs stayed close to the water and lived by fishing. ‘Woodland and swampland’ yielded to the ‘advanced outposts of German cultivation,’ achieved by ‘planned drainage measures and dike-building.’ The ‘unhealthy, remote marshy and watery wasteland’ of the Slavs was transformed by the ‘long unflinching work of the settlers’ into the ‘resplendent green of the flourishing meadows.’20 Burgeoning local studies were stitched together by historians with an interest in popularization to create an idiom of German superiority. Karl Lamprecht did this before the First World War, Karl Hampe and Hermann Aubin after it. What they wrote found its way into the accounts of German travel writers, who assured readers that Germans in the east had been Kultur-

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bringer und Befruchter: they had brought ‘culture’ (meaning green fields and meadows as well as towns and guilds) and made the land fertile.21 A familiar set of cultural institutions reinforced this idea of German superiority. Historical societies, Heimat organizations, local museums and their publications: all nurtured the idea that German achievements were inscribed in the landscape. So did the practice of walking the land and admiring the results of German order – as the young Paul Fechter, the later refugee writer, hiked the delta lands of West Prussia and described the fat meadows and fields of corn.22 By the 1880s Fechter could even reach quite out-of-the-way places by train. We should note the irony of the role that modern technology played in sustaining German ideas about these ‘historic’ landscapes – the railway and steamship, photography, mass print culture. Historical and travel writing were not the only conduits of these ideas. A bloated fictional genre of books about eastern colonization told the same heroic tale. So did more considerable works of literature, like Gustav Freytag’s Soll und Haben (Debit and Credit), published in 1855 and a bestseller for the next hundred years. Freytag’s chapters on nineteenth-century Posen offer readers a series of contrasts between Polish wasteland and German cultivation. When the hero Anton Wohlfarth first travels into Posen he is confronted by ‘wilderness’: a sandy and monotonous plain pock-marked by pools of standing water. At the rundown estate he has come to administer, a few beleaguered German families have planted trees and created gardens. Even as he organizes physical resistance against the threatening Poles (the action is set during the 1848 revolution), Anton sets out to repeat the colonizing deeds of earlier Germans who had ‘dug ditches through the moor and planted people in empty land.’ And this is what he looks back on with satisfaction when he returns to the German heartland: ‘He had succeeded in nurturing the green shoots of new life in uncultivated areas; he had helped to found a new colony of his own people.’ Anton is helped by the aristocrat, Fink, who boldly plans to divert a stream and thereby ‘transform the barren sand into green meadowland.’ His vision is realized later in the book by the joint efforts of German engineers and local volunteers, who conjure up ‘water and green meadows in the wilderness’ when they are not helping to fight off Slav insurgents.23 This colour-coding was an intrinsic part of how Germans came to read the landscape. The Slavic colour was grey, the German colour always green. These coded colours were firmly established in German minds before the First World War. They provided a shorthand for the belief

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that, absent Germans, the eastern lands were always too dry or too wet: either arid steppe or ‘Slav flood.’ This conceit (in both senses of the word) betrayed a sense of racial as well as cultural superiority. It also had a gendered element: ‘active’ and ‘manly’ Germans shaped their landscape as ‘passive’ and ‘feminine’ Slavs could not.24 Another component of German thinking about the east also made its appearance in the social-Darwinist climate of the pre-war years: the belief that Germany’s eastern territory was a frontier. There is, of course, one famous frontier thesis in history: Frederick Jackson Turner’s argument, first expounded in 1893, that pioneers’ engagement with the wilderness and the special character of frontier life shaped American values and institutions.25 But this landmark work did not stand alone. Turner’s thesis not only interested contemporary Germans; it owed something to their work. Turner was indebted to Friedrich Ratzel’s writings on the influence of geography on history, and later collaborated with Ratzel’s American student, Ellen Churchill Semple. For his part, Ratzel, who originated the term ‘living space’ (Lebensraum), credited Turner with showing the dynamic effects of American westward expansion.26 An imagined version of the American frontier resonated in Germany because the American west seemed such an obvious analogue to the German east. The same year that Turner first presented his ideas, economist Max Sering wrote a book on German ‘internal colonization of the east,’ the attempted Germanization of Polish Prussia under way since the 1880s.27 Like Ratzel, Sering had visited the United States. His book repeatedly held up North American settlers as exemplars of hardy enterprise, a model for Germans.28 Gustav Schmoller explicitly compared the German east with the American west; Max Weber did so implicitly.29 The fascination with America’s open frontier continued through the post-war years. We find it in economist Theodor Lüddecke’s celebration of America’s ‘endless expanses,’ and in Hitler’s many remarks to the effect that ‘the Volga must be our Mississippi.’30 But there was no simple carry-over of these ideas about the German east from the Wilhelmine period to the years after 1918. The experience of the First World War gave them an extra edge. First, the ideal German landscape was itself mobilized rhetorically behind the war effort. As the Saxon nature conservationist and Heimat writer August Trinius argued in 1916, Germans were called upon to defend the ‘great green garden of Germany.’31 Second, military success in eastern Europe made Germany the temporary master of millions, holding out the prospect of future

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German domination and settlement – until the post-war settlements pushed the borders even further back.32 The huge resentment this created, the feeling of sheer unfairness, gave a new twist to old attitudes. Travellers returned from former German lands in Posen and West Prussia and insisted that it was easy to see where German cultivation ended and Polish neglect began, for it was etched in the land itself. One alleged marker of this ‘frontier of civilization’ was, once again, the contrast between German green and Polish grey.33 A generation of political pamphleteers and scholars complained that Germans had drained marshes, regulated rivers, created fields and pastures, only to find that the Poles were now reducing this German garden to rack and ruin. As historian Erich Gierach put it, in the notoriously völkisch 1926 volume German Settlement Land in the East, ‘the citizenship certificate of the Germans in the east is not a yellowing parchment ... but the laughing meadows and flourishing fields that they have wrested from a wild nature.’34 In a Germany deprived of its colonies and smarting from losses in Europe, a self-styled Volk ohne Raum, the mystique of the frontier was asserted more stridently than ever to underpin German claims in the east. Historians and popular writers attributed the ‘pioneer spirit’ to medieval and early modern settlers, ‘animated by the spirit of conquest, which made the narrowness of their homeland unbearable and moved them to strike out and express their will to live in the wide open spaces of the German East.’35 This was also the master plot in socalled settler novels like Hans Venatier’s best-selling Vogt Bartold of 1939. Venatier’s intrepid German pioneers in thirteenth-century Silesia encounter many tribulations in the ‘endless land of the east,’ but they manage eventually to tame the ‘wilderness.’36 This view of the east was institutionalized in the schoolbooks and political discourse of the Third Reich. After 1939 it became the everyday mental framework for German occupiers in the east. It was applied both to ‘reincorporated’ areas such as the Reichsgau Wartheland, described by landscape planner Erhard Mäding as a ‘wasteland,’ ‘a grey and eerie landscape of the underworld,’ and to areas further east like the ‘grey-dark wilderness’ of the Pripet marshes, eyed by both the General Government and SS as ripe for reclamation and settlement.37 Not all leading Nazis accepted the settlement fantasies of Hitler, Himmler, and the SS planners; Göring and Goebbels were among the cynics, while Hans Frank clashed repeatedly with the SS on jurisdictional issues. But these men shared a common belief that German racial superiority found expression in a capacity to shape the land.

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To refer to ‘wilderness’ and ‘empty spaces’ is, of course, to remove the indigenous inhabitants mentally from the landscape – a prelude to removing them physically. Slavs were cast as fishing people or huntergatherers, Jews as ‘aliens,’ ‘parasitic’ and ‘nomadic.’ In fact, from Hitler to Hans Frank, we find frequent references to Slavs and Jews as ‘Indians.’38 This, too, was a long-standing trope. It can be traced back to Frederick the Great, who likened the ‘slovenly Polish trash’ in newly reconquered West Prussia to Iroquois.39 The German equation of Slav with Indian was commonplace in the nineteenth century, becoming ‘a favourite theme of Prussian politicians.’ As one of those politicians argued, the Poles were as doomed as the ‘American redskins.’ New World Indians were being pushed back into the ‘everlasting wilderness’; the same thing would happen to the Poles as they ‘yielded to Prussian civilization.’40 In the Second World War, Germans planners talked again and again about ‘virgin land’ in the east, a tabula rasa. To make it ready for German settlers, the landscape would have to be made ‘healthy’ – which meant making it green. The rules that went out over Himmler’s signature in 1942 called for a ‘greening’ (Grüngestaltung) of the landscape.41 Planners such as Erhard Mäding, Heinrich Wiepking-Jürgensmann, Herbert Frank, and Friedrich Kann offered variations on this theme.42 Their grand design stipulated the location and layout of new villages, of the farmhouses and communal facilities within them, and how land was to be farmed or grazed. It specified labour-saving farmhouse kitchens, but also tree planting and returning farmland to pasture – the Large-Scale Green Plan (Grossgrünplan). Konrad Meyer, who oversaw the General Plan for the East, referred to a fusion of ‘tradition and revolution, nature and technology.’ Himmler himself called for a ‘design [Gestaltung] of the landscape that is planned and close to nature.’43 Given everything we know about decision-making in the Third Reich, it goes almost without saying that planning for the east was contradictory. If these plans had ever been implemented on a large scale, it is doubtful they would have survived the Geman demand for the greatest possible exploitation of the east’s human and, no less important, natural resources – what Gauleiter Arthur Greiser in the Wartheland called the need for ‘grain, grain and more grain.’44 Then there was the awkward fact that the eastern landscape was a laboratory, shaped in the German image but intended as a template for ‘restoring’ the landscape of the rest of Germany, the so-called Altreich. This raised the question (and conservationists asked it): why had the landscape of the Altreich,

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the green garden of Germany, been allowed to ‘degenerate’? The historian’s answer is that Hitler had placed production above conservation. But the answer that Hitler or Himmler would have given is that former capitalist practices were the cause of such degeneration, whereas sturdy settler pioneers in the east provided the solution. That was exactly the view echoed by Nazi true believers who wrote about the east.45 Of course, the belief in sturdy pioneers hardly squared with the reality of settlers who were brought in by truck only after passing through a battery of racial tests, then ceaselessly monitored by officials. German plans for the eastern landscape rested on an uneasy yoking together of technology and ‘closeness-to-nature.’ They restated the now long-standing view that Germans could both shape the landscape and conserve it better than others. Planners regularly said as much, casting their arguments in well-rehearsed terms. The eastern landscape was either too wet or too dry. The German peasant ‘needs a green village and hates, because he fears, the sandy steppe,’ wrote Wiepking-Jürgensmann.46 But the flood-prone rivers and marshes of the east also needed ordering. That was a blueprint for what was, in fact, extensive hydrological engineering on the Vistula and elsewhere. It was also an obsessive rhetorical trope within National Socialism. Race and reclamation went together. In his first speech as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich developed an argument about ‘Germanization’ that used an extended metaphor of building polders and reclaiming land.47 This is one example among many. When Primo Levi called marshy Auschwitz the ‘ultimate drainage point of the German universe,’ he had thought himself into the heads of his persecutors.48 Hence the ubiquitous image of the German dike against the ‘Slav flood.’ As Agnes Miegel wrote in a 1940 poem:49 The wind sings the eternal song of The green eastern land, the song of the fate-driven Divine mission: To be a bulwark and a dike in the unending plain.

In 1945 the dikes broke on the Vistula, the Nogat, and other rivers of the east. The bitter irony is that it was retreating Wehrmacht soldiers who broke them, flooding the land to impede the advancing Red Army.50 The green land behind the dikes lived on in the minds of post-war refugees and expellees from the east. It was kept alive by writers such as Hans Künkel, Paul Fechter, and Agnes Miegel. The idea of the east-

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ern lands was kept alive even more by the Landsmannschaften, the organizations that claimed to speak for dispossessed East and West Prussians, Brandenburgers from beyond the Oder, Pomeranians, Sudeten Germans, and Silesians. There was a special pathos in these efforts to cultivate the memory of what had gone and present the loss as something that all Germans should feel. For generations, those living in the eastern parts of the Empire had felt that their Germany was too little known and appreciated by their fellow-countrymen. The heroic stories of German eastern settlement that began to take hold in the years of the Empire were offset by the feeling, harboured by many Rhinelanders and Bavarians, that the east was somehow alien – ‘backward,’ ‘Prussian,’ a different country. Even the resentment unleashed by the Treaty of Versailles and the heightened anti-Slav sentiment that followed the First World War did not entirely dispel those negative feelings. It was in the Atlanticist Federal Republic, built politically on the axis of the Rhineland, that the east was finally embraced by other Germans. Refugee politicians enjoyed positions of influence in Konrad Adenauer’s cabinets. From North Rhine–Westphalia to Baden-Württemberg, schools and roads were named after Agnes Miegel, ‘Mother East Prussia.’ The eastern lands had never before been so familiar to other Germans as they became after 1945, now that they were ‘lost,’ thanks to the countless historical works, literary anthologies, memoirs, exhibitions, and political activities of the Landsmannschaften. But the image of the eastern lands they perpetuated was frozen in time, a tableau in which nature was stylized and German cultural achievements were uncritically celebrated through words and photographs. The tableau depicted flourishing delta villages wrested from the swamp, alongside roads, bridges, and steamships on the Warthe, symbols of a landscape marked by German technical prowess. Non-German peoples, like social conflict, had no place. Other refugee writers such as Günter Grass and Richard Härling, who presented eastern landscapes that were more ethnically complex and historically ambiguous, were rejected by the guardians of official memory.51 Only after the Ostpolitik of the early 1970s did things begin to change, and it was the events of 1989–90 that finally led the Landsmannschaften to move after 1990 ‘from confrontation to cooperation.’52 Many individuals found it hard to follow their lead, however. Memoirs and histories still pictured that green land behind the German dike, now gone to ruin.53 Or, like Heinz Csallner’s collection of photographs, Between the Vistula and Warthe, they added a few awkward and token gestures towards candour to what

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remained an otherwise unchanged account.54 In cases like this, we can see how the authorized memory of the German east, frozen for decades, has started to thaw, but unevenly, like one of those eastern rivers in spring about which the post-war refugees, like their forbears, had written so often.

NOTES 1 See ‘Der Autor, ein Nachruf,’ in Hans Künkel, Auf den kargen Hügeln der Neumark: Zur Geschichte eines Schäfer- und Bauerngeschlechts im Warthebruch (Würzburg, 1962), 10–12. 2 Ibid., 126. 3 Eva Hahn and Hans Henning Hahn, ‘Flucht und Vertreibung,’ in Étienne François and Hagen Schulze, eds., Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, vol. 1 (Munich, 2001), 335–51. 4 Künkel, Auf den kargen Hügeln, 44. 5 See Heinrich Bauer’s almost contemporaneous work on Brandenburg, which also mourned a ‘lost paradise’ superior to the ‘mass civilization’ of the present. See Heinrich Bauer, Die Mark Brandenburg (Berlin, 1954), 47. 6 Künkel, Auf den kargen Hügeln, 37–8. 7 Paul Fechter, Deutscher Osten: Bilder aus West- und Ostpreussen (Gütersloh, 1954), 29–30. 8 Karlheinz Gehrmann, ‘Vom Geist des Deutschen Ostens,’ in Lutz Mackensen, ed., Deutsche Heimat ohne Deutsche: Ein ostdeutsches Heimatbuch (Braunschweig, 1951), 137. 9 Fechter, Deutscher Osten, 20; Gehrmann, ‘Vom Geist,’ 130–7. 10 See the ballad, ‘Die Fähre,’ in Gedichte und Spiele (Jena, 1920); and ‘Abschied vom Kinderland,’ in Aus der Heimat: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 5 (Düsseldorf and Cologne, 1954), 129. 11 Agnes Miegel, ‘Gruss der Türme,’ in Unter hellem Himmel (1936), reprinted in Aus der Heimat, 5:118–25 (here, 118). 12 ‘Zum Gedächtnis,’ in Du aber bleibst in mir, Flüchtlingsgedichte (Hameln, 1949), 14–15; ‘Es war ein Land’ [1952], in Es war ein Land: Gedichte und Geschichten aus Ostpreussen (Cologne, 1983), 206–8. 13 Lutz Mackensen, ‘Einführung,’ in Mackensen, ed., Deutsche Heimat ohne Deutsche, 8. 14 William H. Rollins, A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904–1918 (Ann Arbor, 1997), 61.

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15 Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990), 228–36; Thomas Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 254. 16 Otto Kraus, writing in 1966, cited in Leopold and Roma Schua, Wasser: Lebenselement und Umwelt (Freiburg and Munich, 1981), 167. 17 Heinrich von Treitschke, Origins of Prussianism (The Teutonic Knights) [1862], trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1969), 93–4. 18 Heinrich von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, part I [1879] (Königstein/Ts, 1981), 66. Similar comments ibid., 45, 56–7, 76. The original German term I have translated as ‘islands’ is Werder, an area of higher ground within the marshy delta. The word, now archaic, survives in the name of a leading German football team, Werder Bremen. Its direct English equivalent is the equally archaic ‘eyot.’ 19 Max Beheim-Schwarzbach, Hohenzollernsche Colonisationen (Leipzig, 1874), 423–4, 426. 20 Otto Schlüter, Wald, Sumpf und Siedelungsland in Altpreussen vor der Ordenszeit (Halle, 1921), 2, 7; Dr. Müller, ‘Aus der Kolonisationszeit des Netzebruchs,’ Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte der Neumark 39 (1921), 3. 21 Kurt Freytag, Raum deutscher Zukunft – Grenzland im Osten (Dresden, 1933), 11. 22 Paul Fechter, Zwischen Haff und Weichsel. Jahre der Jugend (Gütersloh, 1954), 294–5, 345. 23 Gustav Freytag, Soll und Haben (Berlin, 1855), 536–9, 681–3, 688, 698–9, 820. 24 Wolfgang Wippermann, Der ‘Deutsche Drang nach Osten’: Ideologie und Wirklichkeit eines politischen Schlagwortes (Darmstadt, 1981). 25 Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History,’ first read at a meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, 12 July 1893, reprinted in The Frontier in American History, foreword by Wilbur R. Jacobs (Tucson, 1986), 1–38. 26 W. Coleman, ‘Science and Symbol in the Turner Frontier Hypothesis,’ American Historical Review 72 (1966), 39–40; Mark Bassin, ‘Imperialism and the Nation State in Friedrich Ratzel’s Political Geography,’ Progress in Human Geography 11 (1987): 479–80, 489; Alan E. Steinweis, ‘Eastern Europe and the Notion of the “Frontier” in Germany to 1945,’ Yearbook for European Studies 13 (1999): 60–1. 27 Max Sering, Die innere Kolonisation im östlichen Deutschland (Leipzig, 1893). On the attempted ‘Germanization,’ see William Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the German East, 1772–1914 (Chicago, 1980). 28 Sering, Die innere Kolonisation, 160, 166, 172–3, 180, 205, 212, 214, 230–1. On Ratzel’s visit to the USA, see Mark Bassin, ‘Friedrich Ratzel’s Travels in the

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29

30

31 32 33

34

35

36 37

United States: A Study in the Genesis of His Anthropogeography,’ History of Geography Newsletter 4 (1984): 11–22. Christof Dipper, Deutsche Geschichte 1648–1789 (Frankfurt a.M., 1991), 26 (on Schmoller); Max Weber, ‘Capitalism and Society in Rural Germany,’ in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London, 1952), 363–85, a lecture on Europe and America first delivered in St Louis in 1904. Theodor Lüddecke, ‘Amerikanismus als Schlagwort und Tatsache,’ cited in Peter Berg, Deutschland und Amerika 1918–1929: Über das deutsche Amerikabild der zwanziger Jahre (Lübeck and Hamburg, 1963), 134; Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (London, 2000), 434. Similar pronouncements by Hitler can be found in Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier: Die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims, ed. Werner Jochmann (Hamburg, 1980), 70, 78, 398–9. Rollins, Greener Vision of Home, 246. See also Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature, 74–85. Vejas J. Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000). See Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1988), 26, citing the geographer Albrecht Penck in 1926; Rolf Wingendorf, Polen, Volk zwischen Ost und West (Berlin, 1939), 89–90 (‘Die polnische Landschaft: Graues Land – graue Städte’). Erich Gierach, ‘Die Bretholzsche Theorie,’ in Wilhelm Volz, ed., Der Ostdeutsche Volksboden. Aufsätze zu den Fragen des Ostens (Breslau, 1926), 151. Articles in the same volume by Hermann Aubin, Rudolf Kötzschke, and Otto Schlüter contain similar arguments. See also Erich Keyser, Westpreussen und das deutsche Volk (Danzig, 1919), 2, 10–12. Udo Froese, Das Kolonisationswerk Friedrich des Grossen (Heidelberg, 1938), 116; Karl Hampe, Der Zug nach dem Osten: Die kolonisatorische Großtat des deutschen Volkes im Mittelalter (Leipzig and Berlin, 1935; 1st ed. 1921), 37; Hermann Aubin, ‘Die historische Entwicklung der ostdeutschen Agrarverfassung und ihre Beziehungen zum Nationalitätsprobleme der Gegenwart,’ in Volz, ed., Der Ostdeutsche Volksboden, 345–7. Hans Venatier, Vogt Bartold: Der grosse Zug nach dem Osten (Leipzig, 1944; 17th ed.), 147, 186, 235, 435. Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Die Liebe zur Landschaft, part III: Der Drang nach Osten: Zur Entwicklung im Nationalsozialismus und während des Zweiten Weltkrieges in den ‘eingegliederten Ostgebieten’ (Munich, 1987), 134; Martin Bürgener, Pripet-Polessie. Das Bild einer Polnischen Ostraum-Landschaft. Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen, Ergänzungsheft 237 (Gotha, 1939), 9.

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38 Hitler, Monologe, 91, 334, 377; Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, eds., Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 1975), 522–3. 39 Heinrich Berger, Friedrich der Grosse als Kolonisator (Giessen, 1896), 54; Reinhold Koser, Geschichte Friedrich des Grossen, vol. 3 (Darmstadt, 1974), 345, 351. 40 L[udwik] P[owidaj], ‘Polacy i Indianie,’ II, Dzennik Literacki 56, 30 Dec. 1864. I am grateful to Patrice Dabrowski for bringing this to my attention and for kindly translating these passages. 41 Allgemeine Anordnung Nr. 20/VI/42 über die Gestaltung der Landschaft in den eingegliederten Ostgebieten vom 21. Dezember 1942, in Mechtild Rössler and Sabine Schleiermacher, eds., Der ‘Generalplan Ost’ (Berlin, 1993), 136–47. 42 Examples include Erhard Mäding, Landschaftspflege: Die Gestaltung der Landschaft als Hoheitsrecht und Hoheitspflicht (Berlin, 1942); Heinrich Friedrich Wiepking-Jürgensmann, ‘Aufgaben und Ziele deutscher Landschaftspolitik,’ Die Gartenkunst 53 (1940): 81–96; Herbert Frank, ‘Dörfliche Planung im Osten,’ in Neue Dorflandschaften: Gedanken und Pläne zum ländlichen Aufbau in den neuen Ostgebieten und im Altreich. Herausgegeben vom Stabshauptamt des Reichskommissars für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, Planungsamt sowie vom Planungsbeauftragten für die Siedlung und ländliche Neuordnung (Berlin, 1943), 44–5; and Friedrich Kann, ‘Die Neuordnung des deutschen Dorfes,’ in Neue Dorflandschaften, 97–102. 43 Konrad Meyer, ‘Einführung,’ in Neue Dorflandschaften; Allgemeine Anordnung Nr. 20/VI/42 über die Gestaltung der Landschaft, 136. 44 Hans-Erich Volkmann, ‘Zur Ansiedlung der Deutsch-Balten im “Reichsgau” Wartheland,’ Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 30 (1981): 541–2. 45 See, for example, Artur von Machui, ‘Die Landgestaltung als Element der Volkspolitik,’ Deutsche Arbeit 42 (1942): 287–305. 46 Heinrich Friedrich Wiepking-Jürgensmann, ‘Dorfbau und Landschaftsgestaltung,’ in Neue Dorflandschaften, 42–3. See also the same author’s ‘Das Grün im Dorf und in der Feldmark,’ Bauen / Siedeln / Wohnen 20 (1940): 442– 5. 47 Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik (Frankfurt a.M., 1991), 102. 48 Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz (New York, 1987), 124. 49 Agnes Miegel, ‘Kriegergräber,’ in Ostland (Jena, 1940), 37. 50 Helmut Enss, Marienau: Ein Werderdorf zwischen Weichsel und Nogat (Lübeck, 1998), 694. 51 See Hahn and Hahn, ‘Flucht und Vertreibung.’

164 David Blackbourn 52 Von der Konfrontation zur Kooperation: 50 Jahre Landsmannschaft Weichsel-Warthe (Wiesbaden, 1999); 50 Jahre nach der Flucht und Vertreibung: Erinnerung – Wandel – Ausblick. 19. Bundestreffen, Landsmannschaft Weichsel-Warthe, 10./11. Juni 1995 (Wiesbaden, 1995). 53 Helmut Enss’s Marienau, published in 1998, is a good example. 54 Heinz Csallner, Zwischen Weichsel und Warthe: 300 Bilder von Städten und Dörfern aus dem damaligen Warthegau und Provinz Posen vor 1945 (Friedeberg, 1989).

7 The Nature of Home: Landscape Preservation and Local Identities thomas m. lekan

In his 1995 essay ‘The Trouble with Wilderness,’ the American environmental historian William Cronon offers a provocative critique of the wilderness idea in modern environmental thought. ‘The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems,’ he writes. ‘Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation – indeed the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history ... As we gaze into the mirror [that wilderness] holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires.’1 The possibility of escaping into national or state parks, Cronon asserts, has exacerbated the dichotomy between nature and civilization, allowing us to shirk our responsibility towards the more humble nature in our backyards. Cronon also argues that the aesthetic tropes that buttress our fascination with wilderness – the sublime and the frontier – reify elitist, colonialist, racist, and patriarchal assumptions about our place in the natural order. Wilderness thus denies modern societies a ‘middle ground’ in which responsible human exploitation and natural processes might attain a balanced and socially just relationship where ‘city ... [and] ... wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word “home.”’2 Cronon’s essay received a hostile reception among environmentalists when it appeared just over a decade ago, for he appeared to be abandoning a linchpin of environmental philosophy: Henry David Thoreau’s dictum ‘In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.’3 Cronon’s work has helped to spawn a broader debate among conservationists, land-use planners, and environmental ethicists about whether the

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obsession with wilderness diverts attention from more pressing concerns about sustainable development, especially in the developing world. Yet few critics have noted how peculiarly North American the wilderness obsession is and how little resonance the wilderness debate has had within environmental writing on ‘developed’ civilizations such as Europe’s. As Mark Cioc has noted recently, the conspicuous presence of over two millennia of human activity in Europe has focused attention on preserving the ‘cultural landscape,’ rather than the wilderness.4 Landscape preservationists in Germany saw this cultural landscape as the aesthetic, cultural, and even biological foundation of Heimat, or homeland, a term signifying an indelible attachment to place amidst the many displacements of modern society: mass migration to industrial cities, transnational commerce, fluid social-class boundaries, and the creation of the German Empire in 1871.5 Such belief in the power of landscape to shape the German homeland spurred the country’s first attempts at environmental reform in the wake of rapid industrialization between 1860 and 1900. New social movements of Naturschutz (nature conservation) and Heimatschutz (homeland protection) drew attention to the dark side of industrial progress, including the destruction of scenic landmarks and historic architecture, the mechanization of the countryside through stream regulation and tree plantations, and the loss of habitat for wild animal and plant species. American conservation movements emerged around the same time, spurring intellectually fertile ‘Atlantic crossings’ about what constituted legitimate uses of the environment.6 In both countries, educated middle-class dissatisfaction with the environmental and social consequences of rapid industrialization – crowded and polluted cities, the economic and aesthetic impoverishment of the countryside, a feeling of personal and cultural alienation, and political unrest among manual labourers and immigrant groups – led to legislative and educational initiatives to beautify cities, protect the countryside and natural resources, and provide ‘healthy’ recreational options for low-income citizens. The belief that nature provided a sanctuary that crossed class, confessional, or ethnic differences had a powerful imaginative hold in both the United States and Germany after the 1860s. German conservationists admired the U.S. government’s decision to set aside large tracts of land as national parks, including Yellowstone in northwestern Wyoming (1872) and Yosemite in California (1890).7 Organizations such as the Nature Park Society argued that Germany and the Austrian lands should follow America’s lead by establishing such

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reserves in Central Europe. The majority of nature conservationists and homeland protectionists, however, prized the unspectacular, humanshaped vernacular landscapes of their regional and local homelands, not remote, sublime wilderness.8 This humble perspective reflected not only the spatial limitations of Central Europe, but also long-standing institutional and cultural patterns of provincial self-determination and localist environmental perception. While many historians have dismissed German landscape preservation and Heimat movements as hopelessly agrarian-romantic, even proto-fascist, Cronon’s interest in an environmental ethic of ‘home’ casts a new light on these groups’ search for a middle ground between human use and ecological vitality.9 Indeed, the cultural landscape tradition and the Heimat movements that embraced it offered a significant historical alternative to the wilderness ethic and the narratives of environmental degradation and nationbuilding that underpinned it. The ‘middle ground’ of Imperial Germany nonetheless remained a shifting and elusive environmental goal, subject to differing interpretations depending on geographic scale, the social status of the preservation organization involved, and an organization’s level of tolerance for the signs of industrialism and consumerism in the landscape. Wilderness in the American Mind American obsession with the wilderness began in the early nineteenth century among upper-middle-class male intellectuals in cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, who formulated a narrative of national development that stressed America’s divine mission and its cultural distinctiveness from the Old World.10 As Roderick Nash notes in his classic Wilderness and the American Mind, Romantic ideals of the sublime and primitivism conferred new value on landscapes once deemed hostile, even morally repugnant, by the country’s Puritan founders. ‘While other nations might have an occasional wild peak or patch of heath,’ writes Nash, ‘there was no equivalent of a wild continent. And if, as some suspected, wilderness was the medium through which God spoke most clearly, then America had a distinct moral advantage over Europe.’11 American elites seized upon wild nature as one of the few bases on which a favourable comparison could be made between the United States and the more civilized countries of the Old World. By the mid-nineteenth century, a torrent of voices participated in a new debate about ‘nature’ and its place in American culture,

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including transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, landscape painters such as Thomas Cole and Thomas Moran, and natural historians and sportsmen who published their views in Nature and American Naturalist.12 As Cole remarked in 1836, ‘Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, it still has features, and glorious ones, unknown in Europe ... The most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive characteristic of American scenery, is its wildness.’13 In addition to glorifying the aesthetic and scientific advantages of their wilderness condition, American commentators found practical reasons for valuing the natural environment. George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature (1864), for example, sounded the alarm about the danger of clear-cutting forests on river watersheds, particularly in the Adirondacks, that served as the headwaters of the Hudson River and New York City’s water supply.14 Marsh, who had spent many years as a U.S. envoy to Turkey and then Italy, believed that forest clearance had transformed the Mediterranean basin from a fertile garden into an arid wasteland and triggered the decline of the Roman Empire. Unless the State of New York stepped in to save the Adirondack woodlands from lumber and mining interests, Marsh warned, New York City’s water supply would be destroyed when the mountains could no longer act as a natural sponge to soak up rain and snow and deliver water downstream to quench the city’s thirst. Marsh noted approvingly that European countries had regulated their timber supply by regulating forest clearance and developing scientific forestry. He urged that such measures be introduced in the United States lest American civilization share Rome’s fate.15 Seven years after the publication of Marsh’s book, the United States became the first country in the world to set aside a large tract of land in perpetuity by designating over two million acres in northwestern Wyoming as Yellowstone National Park. Then, in 1885, a combination of sporting and business interests from New York City persuaded the State of New York to set aside 715,000 acres in the Adirondacks ‘forever as wild forest lands.’16 While the creation of Yellowstone protected the ‘natural curiosities’ in the park from commercial exploitation, the utilitarian motives that drove the Adirondack State Park served as the model for subsequent national conservation efforts. In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service under the leadership of Gifford Pinchot to oversee the millions of acres removed from the public domain by the Forest Reserve Act of 1891.17 Pinchot, who had

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learned the techniques of ‘scientific forestry’ in France and Germany, pioneered the Progressive era’s conservationist or ‘wise-use’ perspective on natural resources. He championed the use of federal power to guide natural resource development and applauded the application of technologies such as roads, rail lines, and dams to enhance access to such resources.18 Pinchot relied heavily on German-trained foresters who had practised ‘sustained yield’ forestry in the woodlands of Prussia and Saxony, including Carl Schenk, who established the United States’ first forestry academy, the Biltmore Forest School, on the Vanderbilt estate near Asheville, North Carolina.19 While wilderness values did not provide the original impetus behind the creation of Yellowstone or Adirondack parks, the 1890s provided a new socio-economic and cultural framework in which wilderness came to dominate environmental thinking about national parks. John Muir, an acolyte of Ralph Waldo Emerson, led the charge to establish Yosemite National Park in 1890 solely on the basis of non-anthropocentric, preservationist values. For Muir, wilderness was no refuge; it was humankind’s true home: ‘Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity.’20 As a member of the Sierra Club, Muir helped to transform the group from a mountaineering club into a lobbying organization with a national network of supporters dedicated to protecting wilderness.21 Muir and the Sierra Club reminded Congress that Yosemite’s ancient sequoias were far older and more intricate than the finest works of European art and architecture; these were ‘God’s First Temples’ and should be shielded from all traces of the ‘Almighty Dollar.’22 Muir’s success in saving Yosemite reflected a growing concern among the American reading public about the negative effects of urbanization on American democracy and the national character. The 1893 essay by the University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner on the ‘closing’ of the American frontier proposed that the confrontation of the frontiersmen with a primitive environment had provided the central drama of the American experience. As immigrant pioneers from Europe confronted America’s wilderness, they shed their former culture, gaining a hardy individualism that was the basis of American democracy. Such a narrative of national development was especially appealing at this time. During the 1890s, the United States was experiencing intense anxieties about integrating immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and knitting together a country still

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divided along regional lines in the aftermath of the Civil War. Without such a wilderness antagonist, Turner suggested, Americans might lose the very essence of their national character.23 Other commentators feared that the frontier’s closing would lead to the same dissoluteness and feminization that plagued European urban civilization. As the 1910 Handbook of the Boy Scouts of America explained, urbanization resulted in ‘degeneracy’ and people who were ‘strained and broken by the grind of the over-busy world’; young boys would have to lead the nation back into the outdoors, where it might rediscover ‘the simple life of primitive times.’ Theodore Roosevelt echoed such fears of emasculation when he commented that only wilderness could promote the ‘vigorous manliness’ necessary to transform European men ‘in dress, in customs, and in mode of life.’24 If it was true that American democracy and masculine individualism depended on contact with a primitive environment, then wilderness protection guarded the very roots of national character. Whereas American conservation historians once celebrated Roosevelt and his compatriots as a ‘pantheon of conservationist prophets,’ more recent work, partly in response to Cronon’s challenge to rethink wilderness, has revealed a ‘hidden history’ of conflict and violence associated with dispossession along the frontier and within the boundaries of national parks. Historians of the American West in the 1990s criticized Turner for his environmental determinism and erasure of Latinos, Asians, blacks, and especially indigenous peoples from his Western drama. As Cronon writes, ‘The myth of the wilderness as “virgin,” uninhabited land had always been especially cruel when seen from the perspective of the Indians who had once called that land home. Now they were forced to move elsewhere, with the result that tourists could safely enjoy the illusion that they were seeing their nation in its pristine, original state, in the new morning of God’s own creation.’25 In Adirondack park, on the other hand, members of New York’s Forest Commission faced a landscape inhabited by Euro-Americans. These rural folk responded to the state’s encroachment on customary land use, including fishing, hunting, and timber gathering, with local acts of trespass, pilfering, and arson guided by a ‘moral ecology’ unintelligible through the simplifying and rationalizing lens of the state.26 Conservation and preservation appealed to Romantic nature as a font of authenticity and an antidote to an overly civilized urban existence, but simultaneously laid the foundation for a thoroughly modern and managerial approach to the natural environment and its human inhabitants.

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Undergirding American conservationists’ desire to create wilderness or forestry preserves with fixed, carefully policed boundaries was a powerful ‘degradation narrative’ about ordinary people and their place in nature.27 Conservationists such as Marsh assumed that nature, when left undisturbed by human beings, retained a state of static harmony. All human impact was therefore deleterious: ‘Man is everywhere a disturbing agent,’ wrote Marsh. ‘Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords.’28 Marsh assumed that indigenous peoples and the inhabitants of the countryside lacked the education and foresight necessary to be stewards of the natural world. In this view, the state, armed with technical and administrative expertise, was the sole body that could guarantee public environmental goods in a society dominated by short-term private gain. Landscape and Homeland in the German Heimat Movement The landscape preservation movements that emerged in Imperial Germany shared Americans’ belief that nature shaped national character and ameliorated social conflict, but did not use ‘wilderness’ as a touchstone of environmental integrity and aspiration. Because scientific forestry was already entrenched in German resource management by the 1880s, discussions about landscape protection tended to articulate a middle ground between conservationist and preservationist positions. More important, preservationist impulses emerged from a diverse array of local, grass-roots efforts in the 1880s and 1890s to protect local natural monuments for reasons of civic pride, small-town sociability, and tourist promotion. Known collectively as the Heimat movement, these organizations proved to be far more accommodating of local concerns than the top-down efforts of American federal and state governments, setting the tone for Germany’s decentralized and landscapecentred approach to environmental reform in subsequent decades. Heimat advocates in Imperial Germany looked back on a rich array of Romantic forerunners in their call for lifestyle reforms based on a return to nature. In the early nineteenth century, for example, poets such as Friedrich Hölderlin and Novalis celebrated the untamed forest as a font of sublime sentiment, while nationalists such as the father of German gymnastics Friedrich Jahn, the playwright Heinrich von Kleist, and the painter Caspar David Friedrich imagined the woodlands as the primeval home of the Germanic tribes. Nationalists proposed that these tribes had once rebuffed the advance of Roman civilization, setting a

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historical precedent for their contemporaries to throw off the yoke of Napoleon’s ‘Latin’ tyranny.29 Other intellectuals, such as Ernst Moritz Arndt, imagined the nation’s origins as fluvial rather than sylvan. In his 1813 tract Germany’s River, Not Germany’s Border (Teuschland’s Strom, aber nicht Teutschland’s Grenze), Arndt countered the French claim that the Rhine was France’s ‘natural’ border by positing the river as the artery of the German national body. For Arndt, the ‘Wars of Liberation’ against France were the first glimmerings of a popular German national consciousness, the latest chapter in the age-old struggle of the Germanic Volk against its hereditary enemy. Whereas Turner’s frontier myth provided American conservationists with national-political reasons for protecting wilderness, Germany’s preservationists looked to regionalist writers such as Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl to anchor their belief in cultural landscape diversity as the key to Germany’s unique national character. Riehl’s multi–volume Natural History of the German People (1853–69) insisted that national character emerged organically from the topography and culture of a particular territory, rather than from abstract declarations of individual rights.30 Riehl’s foil was France, where culture emanated from the Parisian centre into the provinces, whereas he envisioned Germany as a mosaic of culturally and geographically distinctive homelands that made up the whole without losing the integrity of the parts. Following Riehl, many nineteenth-century preservationists recast the aesthetic enjoyment of meadows, rock formations, and especially forests as a form of patriotic devotion. As Riehl once remarked, ‘We must retain the forest not only to keep our stoves from growing cold in winter, but also to keep the pulse of our nation beating warmly and happily. We need it to keep Germany German.’31 Despite the politically conservative origins of Heimat discourse, Celia Applegate and others have noted that the concept has been used in such a diverse array of cultural and political contexts that it is impossible to describe it as inherently reactionary.32 David Blackbourn’s essay in this volume demonstrates that the Heimat ‘sense of place’ could be used to legitimate aggressive expansion into the ‘Wild East’ based on degradation narratives similar to those that guided American conservation thinking. As Blackbourn makes clear, social-Darwinist understandings of the German ‘civilizing’ mission among Slavs in Silesia and East Prussia drew upon an array of racialist and völkisch discourses whose chauvinistic understandings of homeland later found expression in Nazi attempts at ethnic cleansing in the Wartheland. Yet these

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colonialist and xenophobic understandings of homeland coexisted with local, regional, and even democratic meanings, especially in the west-central Rhineland and parts of southern Germany. In these areas, Riehl’s call to discover Germany’s roots in the backwoods of the Fatherland found resonance among Heimat advocates who rediscovered local dialects, vernacular architecture, folklore, and natural monuments to assert the singularity of the local in an era of creeping administrative centralization, political polarization, and urban conflict. Heimat organizations did not challenge Prusso-centric stories of national development emanating from Berlin head on, but offered an alternative, emotionally accessible pathway to national feeling that endowed the nation with the familiarity of the hometown.33 The beautification societies, hiking and alpine clubs, and natural history societies that embraced Riehl’s ideas about ‘land and people’ argued that local nature provided common ground for nurturing consensual social relationships in all spheres of life. These societies worked to improve and render nature accessible by picking up trash in nearby meadows and forests, building and maintaining hiking trails to surrounding woodlands, creating promenades through municipal parks, fixing up familiar castle ruins, or raising funds to build a Bismarck or Moltke observation tower.34 During the 1880s, Germany witnessed a flowering of interest in regional cultures and the natural world; as one observer in the western Eifel region noted, ‘National feeling was awakened and strengthened and with it a more conscious Heimat feeling, which let us recognize and treasure the beauty and uniqueness of our German land and especially the central mountains.’35 For Heimat organizations, nature did not need to be pristine to deserve research and care, for it stood as a material witness to millennia of local culture, folklore, and memory. An example of Heimat environmental sentiment in the Rhine Province was the Beautification Society for the Siebengebirge, founded in 1869. This club dedicated itself to ‘creating and maintaining roads, riding paths, and footpaths, as well as facilities that could contribute to the comfort and convenience of the Siebengebirge’s visitors.’36 The Siebengebirge or ‘Seven Mountains’ region south of Bonn, which contained the Drachenfels ruins where Siegfried slayed the dragon in the Song of the Nibelungen, formed the gateway to the romantic Middle Rhine Gorge. It was already a popular destination for strollers and hikers when, in 1870, national unification renewed interest in the site because of its association with Germanic myths and sagas. The society

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planted trees and shrubs, created thousands of kilometres of walking paths and carriage roads, placed benches and platforms at scenic lookouts, and helped to fund a funicular railway up the side of the mountain that whisked visitors to the Drachenfels summit.37 In 1886 alone, almost fifty trains or steamers stopped at the foot of the Drachenfels each day, discharging hundreds of German, English, American, and Dutch visitors into the woodlands and medieval ruins of the Seven Mountains.38 Whereas the Beautification Society worked to make an already familiar landscape more accessible to visitors, other local societies promoted natural landmarks to turn images of ‘backwardness’ into virtue. In the Eifel region, a landscape of extinct volcanic cores and dense woodlands on the Belgian borderlands, the Eifel Association, founded in 1888, sought to unite a diverse array of local beautification societies with the common goal of dispelling the Eifel’s reputation as the ‘Prussian Siberia.’ Already among the poorest regions in Germany, the Eifel experienced a depression in agricultural prices and poor harvests that necessitated a 1.5 million mark infusion of state and private donations in 1883.39 ‘The Eifel undoubtedly belongs among the regions of Germany that enjoy an extraordinarily bad reputation,’ noted an 1889 article in the journal of the Association of German Tourist Clubs. Nearby residents of Trier and Koblenz were more likely to have visited Switzerland or the Tirol than have ‘placed even one foot’ into the Eifel and were ‘stunned’ when it was suggested they make a hiking tour through the region.40 To lift the Eifel out of its economic and psychological doldrums, the Eifel Association tried to stimulate domestic craft and textile production hammered by foreign competition, modernize agricultural production and forestry techniques, and improve fish hatcheries. But the organization viewed tourism above all as the region’s future. Despite the growing Wanderlust of the 1880s, the Eifel had not managed to attract visitors in the same way as the Harz Mountains or the Thuringian Forest. A new market image for the region was offered as a solution. Like Americans who touted the advantages of their wilderness condition, Eifel Association leaders noted the salubrious effects of pure mountain air in ‘Germany’s lungs’ for urbanites in desperate need of relaxation.41 To heighten the region’s appeal to visitors, the Eifel Association marked trails, built protective huts for hikers, maintained a native-plant nursery, and printed brochures touting the region’s woodlands, natural springs, and castle ruins. These brochures were distributed throughout Germany’s major cities and in foreign countries. The

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Eifel Association also developed regional affiliates in Berlin, Munich, and even Chicago to maintain economic and emotional ties between the region and burgeoning metropolitan areas at home and abroad.42 Rather than rejecting the city and the fruits of urban civilization, therefore, organizations such as the Beautification Society and the Eifel Association pioneered the commercialization of the natural world for urban consumers.43 The Eifelverein supplied visitors from Bonn and Cologne with exact train schedules, it lobbied railway officials to offer more Sunday trains to the region, and it distributed guidebooks pointing out the most important sites to visit and the proper gear for hiking. In place of Teddy Roosevelt’s admonishment to rediscover ‘savage virtues,’ however, the association encouraged restrained, gentlemanly behaviour towards the Heimat, printing brochures describing the Ten Commandments of proper hiking behaviour, such as disposing of trash in appropriate receptacles, not picking flowers, and avoiding carving on trees. The association’s postcards imagined nature as a bucolic, domesticated space, rather than a sublime spectacle. They depicted the Eifel as a land of villages nestled in carefully tended fields and orchards, usually punctuated by church spires or castle ruins, which framed nature as a place of contemplative pleasure and strolling.44 The popular image of the Siebengebirge was also that of a harmonious cultural landscape accessible to the region’s densely populated industrial districts. The Beautification Society called the Siebengebirge a ‘unique garden of God’ with fertile soil, abundant fruit orchards, and vineyards clinging precipitously to the sides of mountains. The stories and legends about the region anchored the Siebengebirge in popular memory, much as Heinrich Heine’s poem ‘Die Lorelei’ had popularized the rocky outcropping further downstream. ‘Thousands upon thousands annually make a pilgrimage [here],’ noted the Beautification Society, ‘to get new energy and new spirit for the strains of their daily occupations on fresh hiking excursions.’45 The society emphasized that nature’s beauties were available to all, regardless of class or confession; it required no special education to enjoy a hike along a Siebengebirge path and relax for a picnic in one of its meadows. Describing nature’s social-hygienic function, the Beautification Society wrote, ‘Especially in our time with its sharp social differences the ideal goods of the nation [such as nature] represent a conciliatory, balancing element.’46 Far from being a wilderness playground for wealthy hunters and recreationseekers, nature in Imperial Germany served as an accessible, comforting site of homeland sentiment.

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The communal sentiment that guided the Heimat movement’s discovery of nature also shaped the inclusive character of the organizations themselves. Though participation required a basic knowledge of local history, folklore, and natural history, membership in local Heimat, hiking, and beautification societies was not bound by class or confession and remained open to all who could pay the modest annual dues. The clubs offered familiar and comfortable forms of local sociability deliberately shielded from the rancorous debate that characterized politics at the national level. Even though the Eifel Association consolidated a number of existing beautification societies in 1888 and had affiliates in Berlin and Chicago, its lifeblood remained local branches in Düren, Monschau, or Andernach, as well as larger groups in nearby Bonn and Cologne. In a similar vein, the Beautification Society for the Siebengebirge included members from as far away as Berlin, but most came from nearby communities such as Königswinter and Bad Honnef. The club attracted highly educated and well-to-do citizens, including several university professors, lawyers, doctors, and financiers, but also drew members with more modest income and educational backgrounds, such as small-business owners, teachers, foresters, and fixed-income retirees.47 Inclusiveness stopped short of manual workers, who formed their own proletarian hiking groups towards the end of this period, as well as women, who usually joined only in conjunction with their spouses. Membership in the Beautification Society nevertheless provided a venue for a broad cross-section of the province’s middle classes to engage in civic-minded activities designed to improve the province’s environment, a far cry from the reactionary ‘cultural despair’ that scholars once used as a label for middle-class Heimat activities.48 Given the economic and symbolic significance of natural landscapes for the Heimat movement, these groups were among the German Empire’s earliest supporters of nature conservation. As activities such as mining, agricultural reclamation, river canalization, waste disposal, and housing construction threatened natural landmarks, local societies often banded together to pressure municipal and provincial officials to designate sites as ‘natural monuments’ or nature parks. When basalt mining ripped open a gash on the side of the Oelberg peak in the Siebengebirge in 1885, the Beautification Society joined forces with local residents to save the region from environmental obliteration.49 These efforts led Prussian officials to approve lotteries in 1898 and 1899 to help purchase land from mine owners. Officials even allowed the society to dispossess proprietors of land that ‘as a consequence of present or expected use might spoil the beauties of the Siebengebirge.’50 Grants from the Rhen-

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ish Provinzialverband (Provincial Association), an organ of self-administration in the Rhine Province, as well as the cities of Bonn and Cologne, helped to secure the core parcels for the nature park. After the campaign’s successful completion, the Beautification Society changed its central goal from promoting recreational development to ‘the lasting preservation and protection of the Siebengebirge against destruction and damage.’51 This combination of state support and private initiative reflected a long-standing tradition in the Prussian provinces of encouraging private organizations’ cultural activities through grants and assistance, rather than direct state financing and administration. Such a private-public partnership offered a significant alternative to the centralized, managerial ethos that led to the creation of the Adirondack and Yosemite parks. Americans who looked to Europe as a model of statist intervention usually missed the vitality of regional interests in Imperial Germany and the continued part that provincial authorities and local interests played in shaping environmental reform. Unlike the New York Forest Commission that created Adirondack State Park, Prussian officials severely curtailed the Beautification Society’s powers of eminent domain. It did not sanction dispossession in cases where ‘expected uses’ did not involve activities that destroyed the area’s aesthetic beauty, such as forestry, or where the Beautification Society could convince owners to restrict their uses voluntarily.52 In practice, the society used its right to eminent domain sparingly (by 1912 it had only dispossessed two owners of parcels totalling less than three hectares) so as not to agitate local businessmen and mine owners who bemoaned declining profits and threatened to file suit against the society. In line with the belief that the cultural landscape was a working environment, the society never sought to root out all economic activities in the region. Mining continued in several parts of the region, viticulture remained a mainstay of the local economy, and the society was among several landowners who practised selective cutting of hardy trees to generate additional income. There was no assumption on the part of the state, in other words, that the Siebengebirge needed to be partitioned off from the surrounding population, or that a local group such as the Beautification Society was incapable of serving as a steward of the landscape. Seeing Like a Province: Nature Conservation and Heimat Protection, 1904–1918 Local efforts to research, advertise, and protect natural areas led to growing pressures on Imperial and Prussian officials to set aside scenic

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or scientifically significant natural areas from economic development. After visiting the Siebengebirge region in 1898, the Breslau schoolteacher Wilhelm Wetekamp, a member of the Prussian parliament, called for a ‘declaration of untouched areas as state parks similar to the national parks of the United States.’53 Wetekamp’s appeal led the parliament to commission botanist Hugo Conwentz, the head of the West Prussian Provincial Museum in Danzig, to publish a report outlining the measures needed to protect the country’s natural landmarks. The result of Conwentz’s three-year effort was The Endangerment of Natural Monuments and Recommendations for Their Preservation, published in 1904 and the establishment of the State Office for Natural Monument Preservation (Staatliche Stelle für Naturdenkmalpflege) within the Prussian Ministry of Culture in 1906.54 The use of the term Naturdenkmalpflege marked this ‘care of natural monuments’ as the ‘youngest child’ of Denkmalfplege, or heritage preservation, which already enjoyed state support in Prussia, Bavaria, and Hessen. Naturdenkmalpflege thus recognized the close association between historic preservation and nature conservation in the cultural landscape tradition.55 Whereas Americans had once looked to Germany as a model of scientific resource management, Wetekamp took his cue from the U.S. experience in calling for the creation of national parks in Germany. Yet Conwentz recognized that large-scale reserves such as Yellowstone were inappropriate given Germany’s economic conditions, size, and population density; this one park alone would have encompassed the entire Kingdom of Saxony. The Nature Park Society, a private organization founded in Stuttgart in 1900, was successful in raising money to secure the first parcels of land for national parks in the Austrian Alps and the Lüneburger Heath, yet promoting such large-scale reserves remained the exception rather than the rule in Imperial Germany.56 Unlike the National Forest Service or the National Park Service, the Prussian State Office was to serve as an advisory agency for a decentralized array of regional and local efforts to secure individual natural objects or smaller conservation regions. In line with localist traditions in German environmental perception, Conwentz argued that a handful of large-scale reserves could never accomplish the broad-based environmental education necessary to secure the country’s natural monuments. ‘It is much more appropriate and feasible,’ he suggested, ‘to preserve in their original state smaller areas with varied characteristics scattered throughout the entire region, preferable in every part of the country ... here an erratic block, a piece of terminal moraine, or a group

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of cliffs, there a small moor, a heath, or a stretch of woodlands.’57 Conwentz also indicated that it was neither practical nor desirable to place all responsibility for environmental preservation in state hands. As the public-private partnerships at the Siebengebirge had shown, uniting municipal governments, private organizations, and individual owners in common cause with the state enabled local entities to identify and protect sensitive areas according to community priorities. Although Conwentz’s report condemned the environmental attitudes and irresponsible land use that destroyed cherished natural monuments, it did not wholly endorse the ‘degradation narrative’ found among American nature conservationists. Rural residents do not appear as culprits in his report, nor did he see contemporary environmental problems as the result of decline from a golden age of environmental harmony. In fact, Conwentz recognized that an exclusive focus on pristine landscapes might lead citizens to ignore the humble nature of their homeland. ‘Here and there the concept [of natural monument] will need to be somewhat broadened,’ he wrote, ‘since completely untouched landscapes, as in other developed countries, hardly exist anymore.’58 Conwentz’s cosmopolitan vision of nature conservation also did not confine itself exclusively to Germany’s native species. He encouraged preservationists to protect the bunchberry, Cornus suecica, which was a rare specimen in German woodlands but widespread in northern Russia, Finland, and Sweden.59 Conwentz’s devolution of environmental stewardship to the communal level achieved some degree of success. The micro-optics of Heimat enthusiasm encouraged residents and visitors to move beyond the distanced, panoramic ways of seeing that were common in nineteenth-century tourist culture. Local environmentalism invited residents to see, feel, touch, and smell the nuanced textures and subtle interdependencies of the vernacular landscape. Hikers in Bad Godesberg, for example, noticed a precipitous decline in the population of local reptiles and amphibians due to the draining of bogs and ponds for agriculture, the straightening of streams for transportation, and the dumping of polluted waste water. Hidden from sight and inhabiting uninviting swamps, bogs, and ponds, these creatures had disappeared in many areas, victims of what the author called a ‘war of destruction against original nature.’ Birds could escape such destruction by flying to a different habitat, but reptiles and amphibians ‘cling to the soil of Heimat to a much greater extent and for them a change in habitat caused by development means in most cases not the signal to migrate, but

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rather certain death.’60 The author suggested that developing an ethical attitude towards frogs, toads, and salamanders required citizens to move beyond their traditional revulsion to these animals’ wet or slimy skins. They could then learn the magic and harmony of a ‘frog concert’ at a local pond, or see that turtles found with wrinkled or destroyed shells indicated that there were deeper disturbances in the balance of nature affecting all species, including human beings.61 The conviction that environmental ethics required the engagement of all the senses led some preservationists to advocate forms of preservation that moved beyond the nature-reserve model altogether. To counteract the ‘disfigurement’ of Germany’s landscape, for example, the music professor Ernst Rudorff founded the German Association for Heimat Protection (Deutscher Bund Heimatschutz, or DBH) in 1904, an organization whose holistic vision of landscape protection included protecting natural and historic monuments, saving the indigenous animal and plant world, promoting regionally distinct architectural styles, and researching folk art, mores, festivals, and costumes.62 With a membership that often included university professors, architects, landscape architects, and high-ranking civil servants, homeland-protection organizations were far more elitist than their predecessors in the local Heimat movement. The fledgling group’s most important nature-protection campaign was the unsuccessful 1904 bid to save the Laufenburg Rapids on the Upper Rhine from a hydroelectric dam. According to one DBH pamphlet, the dam promised to destroy ‘one of the most beautiful landscape scenes in Germany, or indeed the world.’63 The association argued that the benefits of hydroelectric power and the lure of jobs at the electric plant did not outweigh the losses to the area’s tourist industry. Such pragmatic advice was ignored when a regional advisory board approved the dam project in short order and let the rapids be obliterated. The homeland-protection movement had succeeded, however, in putting environmental protection on the national agenda, at least among cultural elites, and moving beyond Conwentz’s conciliatory approach to state and industrial interests. Homeland protectionists’ pressure also helped to bring about legislation that guarded the vernacular landscape, even though the Imperial state remained steadfastly unwilling to infringe upon the rights of property owners. Rudorff was instrumental in the passage of a 1902 Prussian Law Against the Disfigurement of Outstanding Landscapes; soon thereafter, the newly founded DBH tried to expand the law to include areas that were not ‘exceptionally scenic.’ Though the 1907

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revised law fell short of their expectations, homeland protectionists serving on local advisory boards were able to use it to exert behind-thescenes influence on both building and historic preservation projects.64 Despite their limitations, the disfigurement laws went far beyond contemporary American or British efforts to protect the countryside, paving the way for comprehensive landscape planning, or Landschaftspflege, to emerge as a key area of preservation concern in the interwar period. Paul Schultze-Naumburg, who became DBH chairman in 1904, set the tone for the landscape planning ethos in his influential Works of Culture series (1901–17).65 To a far greater extent than Rudorff, SchultzeNaumburg believed that planners and landscape designers could naturalize industrial technologies in the cultural landscape. Using side-byside photographs of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ design, Schultze-Naumburg set out with missionary zeal to reform the entire ‘culture of the visual’: houses, monuments, bridges, streets, forests, machines, even military installations should be merged organically into the surrounding built and natural environments.66 Schultze-Naumburg also disparaged modern farmers’ tendency to eliminate hedgerows in the interests of larger fields, because their removal destroyed the habitat of birds. Anticipating modern ecological arguments about feedback mechanisms in nature, he noted that once these natural insect eaters were exterminated, farmers had to rely on artificial insecticides, to which insects gradually developed resistance, prompting even greater chemical intervention.67 Like Conwentz, Schultze-Naumburg soon realized that homeland protection could best accomplish its goals by devolving responsibilities and activities onto regional affiliates and local clubs, each pursuing its own program of heritage preservation. In the Rhineland, the Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Heimat Protection, founded in 1906, helped provincial leaders to protect the area’s classical antiquities, such as the amphitheatre ruins in Xanten and the thermal baths at Trier.68 Rhenish Association members and travellers viewed these ruins as proof that the eighty-year-old Rhine Province had had ‘civilization’ 1000 years before the rest of Germany, with the river serving as the dividing line between civilized Germans and the ‘Lithuanians’ to the east.69 Following Schultze-Naumburg’s lead, the Rhenish Association embraced a forward-looking approach to environmental management that sought to blend modern structures into their cultural and natural surroundings. In an article on bridge design, for example,

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one Rhenish homeland protectionist claimed it was no longer possible to argue that ‘there can be no railway connection between Remscheid and Solingen because the romantic Wuppertal may be disfigured by a large bridge.’70 The proper question was to ask how the bridge might be constructed as inoffensively as possible by drawing on nearby organic materials and mimicking the forms and textures of the surrounding environment. The German attempt to articulate a ‘middle ground’ that cautiously embraced industrial modernity was difficult to realize in the American case because of the tensions that emerged between conservationists and preservationists. While Muir and Pinchot parted ways in 1897 over the issue of sheep grazing on forest reserves, their debate over damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley in northern California permanently split the ranks of American conservationism. In 1908, Secretary of Interior James R. Garfield approved San Francisco’s petition to dam Hetch Hetchy valley in order to create a drinking-water reservoir and provide hydroelectricity for the city. Hetch Hetchy’s borders lay entirely within Yosemite National Park; the petition thus tested the government’s resolve to set aside certain wilderness areas in perpetuity. Pinchot, whose utilitarianism led him to advocate solutions that offered ‘the greatest benefit to the greatest number,’ favoured the reservoir, and convinced President Roosevelt to support the city’s petition. John Muir and the Sierra Club opposed this infringement of laws protecting the national parks and launched an ultimately unsuccessful public-relations campaign to save Hetch Hetchy. The debate that ensued drove a wedge between conservationists and preservationists, particularly at the national level, which persists in varying degrees to the present.71 By contrast, German homeland protectionists embraced a compromise position that sanctioned certain economic activities and technologies as compatible with sustaining the integrity of the cultural landscape. It enabled Germans to envision, if not always realize, an honourable place for humankind in nature that included using the natural world for utilitarian ends. Even though the DBH did not seek to exclude ordinary people from natural landscapes, however, the organization’s growing hostility to consumerism and commercial culture left increasingly less room for local initiative. Unlike the more populist Heimat movements of the 1880s and 1890s, homeland protectionists in the decade before the First World War clearly saw themselves as part of a ‘domestic civilizing mission’ designed to mould people’s perceptions according to their own aesthetic priorities.72 Rudorff satirized the deci-

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sion of the Beautification Society for the Siebengebirge to build the Drachenfels railway up the side of the mountain as ‘bar-hopping in altered form’ and demanded instead that visitors be mindful of the ‘genuine, living piety for Nature.’73 Homeland protection journals devoted enormous energy to policing the boundaries of good taste by preventing the spread of billboards in the countryside, rooting out kitsch in home gardens and local monuments, and discouraging the ‘disease’ of Bismarck towers. The patronizing tone of such efforts limited the appeal of homeland protection for Germans of more modest backgrounds, which only fuelled members’ misgivings about ‘mass society’ and the democratic aspirations of late Imperial Germany. During the war, homeland protection groups allied closely with the state to bolster sagging morale on the home front, abandoning their roots in the locality in favour of Prusso-German and ethnocentric appeals to homeland as the foundation of ‘Germanic’ character. Scepticism about ordinary people’s behaviour in nature turned into outright hostility during the culture wars of the late Weimar Republic, a time when Schultze-Naumburg concluded that Germans’ lack of environmental conviction stemmed from pernicious ‘foreign’ influences and racial degeneracy. In 1930 he joined the National Socialist party, convinced that only the Hitler movement recognized the biological origins of the country’s national crisis.74 The xenophobic Heimat sensibility that grew out of the war experience and contributed to the ‘Conservative Revolution’ of the 1920s still remained merely an undercurrent of anxiety during the 1890s and early 1900s. During the period of the German Empire, it never successfully displaced preservationists’ localist understandings of homeland rooted in cultural, historical, geographical, and natural-historical understandings of Heimat and nation. The majority of Wilhelmine preservationists remained traditional conservatives who embraced the power of aesthetic training to create better Germans. In the last volume of the Works of Culture, published in 1916, Schultze-Naumburg noted optimistically that environmental destruction had slowed since 1900 and that public edification efforts had achieved noticeable results. ‘One may not say, that it is merely fate and that it cannot be otherwise,’ noted SchultzeNaumburg, ‘we humans are the ones who have caused the transformation of the earth’s surface. It depends on our will to shape it in a different way.’75 Before the First World War, Schultze-Naumburg, like many of his compatriots, remained a ‘child of the nineteenth century’ who believed in the potential of environmental reform to create better citi-

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zens, stimulate lasting attachments to local homelands, and anchor national patriotism. Conclusion A comparison of the American wilderness and German cultural-landscape approaches to environmental protection underscores the cultural vitality and institutional significance of the local in Imperial Germany. This comparison reveals that environmentalists in both the United States and Germany around 1900 drew upon a common framework of Romantic discourse that posited nature as the wellspring of national identity. Cultural anxieties about modernity, rather than ecological concern in a present-day sense, spurred preservationists in both societies to designate particularly scenic or historically significant landscapes as national landmarks. In these areas, aesthetic contemplation or, increasingly, vigorous hiking, camping, or climbing would connect visitors to the roots of their national character and ameliorate the social conflicts, political polarization, and public health concerns that accompanied urbanization and industrialization. These concerns emerged especially in educated middle-class circles, whose humanistic and natural-scientific training enabled them to identify the most scenic and scientifically valuable landmarks. While bourgeois groups applauded the back-tonature ethos of their time, many maintained an ambivalent attitude towards the democratization of nature in their societies and remained sceptical that ordinary citizens could be competent stewards of the natural environment. German homeland protection societies emphasized proper aesthetic training as the solution to the dilemmas of mass nature appreciation; in the United States, politicians and conservationists advocated the creation of reserves separate from population centres and managed by the state. Social class thus provides a critical lens for understanding shared cultural and environmental anxieties about nature and popular politics. Despite these similarities in the social origins and cultural attitudes of landscape preservationists on both sides of the Atlantic, there remained significant differences between how American and German preservationists ‘saw’ the landscape and its inhabitants. On the American side, progressive foresters and wilderness advocates turned to European models of forest control, linked to Prussia’s golden age of enlightened absolutism, to justify and implement a new system of forest reserves and national parks designed to curtail human use. Profes-

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sional expertise, rather than indigenous knowledge or local priorities, guided the development of these reserves. As a result, the United States government created some of the world’s most scenic and biologically significant nature parks, but earned the lasting enmity of indigenous peoples and rural folk for whom enlightened conservation meant dispossession and violence. In Germany, by contrast, nature conservationists and homeland protectionists found nature more readily in their backyards. Heimat organizations proposed that each landscape, be it national, regional, or local, reflected centuries of interaction between an area’s human inhabitants and their natural environment, ideally producing a ‘middle ground’ in which human agriculture and industry emerged organically from the existing local contours of the homeland. The inclusive spirit of Heimat organizations and their local optics of landscape protection emphasized nature as an accessible, public good whose care should emanate from partnerships that included municipal officials, private organizations, local landowners, and interested citizens, not just the national state. The German preservationists who sought to protect their homeland’s natural heritage admired the American national park model, but recognized that Germany had neither the space nor the vast territory in the public domain to create such reserves in their densely populated country. The limitations of space and territory, however, may have produced beneficial results when viewed from our contemporary environmental perspective. America’s network of national parks and forest reserves, often distant from major population centres, created an artificial divide between ‘humans’ and ‘nature’ that impeded efforts to develop sustainable forms of economic development. Too often, notes William Cronon, this dichotomy depicted all human use as abuse, setting too high a standard for what counted as pristine and encouraging individuals to escape the immediate environmental ramifications of their actions in distant preserves of sublime natural beauty. German preservationist leaders, such as Hugo Conwentz and Paul Schultze-Naumburg, recognized the problems of this ‘wilderness hangup.’76 They noted that a network of isolated, large-scale reserves that failed to address the working landscape could not meet the pressing challenges of development or anchor Heimat sentiment across German society. They helped to shape a trajectory of preservation that placed the quotidian landscapes of home, not distant, sublime spaces, at the centre of environmental perception and care. In the long run, this localist strategy boosted the country’s total number of protected areas,

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helped to diffuse their recreational and conservation benefits throughout the country, and increased the overall percentage of the country’s land devoted to nature reserves, nature parks, natural monuments, and landscape protection zones. According to the World Resources Institute, by 2003 Germany had 7607 protected areas, the equivalent of 31.7 per cent of its total land area; in the United States, the comparable figures were 7448 and 15.8 per cent, respectively.77 Even Aldo Leopold, one of America’s leading philosophers of wilderness, recognized that a sustainable land ethic required a serious look at European patterns of land use. By the 1930s Leopold had rejected German game and forest management techniques, which seemed increasingly fascist in their rigid control of nature, in favour of wilderness preservation. But he always saw wilderness as one plank in a larger strategy of regional planning that did not yet exist in the United States outside select East Coast cities. ‘Western Europe,’ he wrote in 1949, ‘has resistant biota. Its inner processes are tough, elastic, resistant to strain. No matter how violent the alterations, the pyramid, so far, has developed some new modus vivendi which preserves its habitability for man, and for most of the other natives.’78 Institutional, cultural, and environmental factors in Imperial Germany helped landscape preservation organizations to build this pyramid of resistance. They articulated a less dichotomous view of nature and culture than the wilderness ethic, a middle ground that provided a more effective language (if not always concrete reforms) for actively shaping the industrial landscapes of modernity, rather than merely compensating for their worst excesses.

NOTES 1 William Cronon, ‘Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,’ in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York, 1995), 69–90, here 73. 2 Ibid., 89. 3 For a critique and assessment of Cronon’s work, see the forum in Environmental History 1, no. 1 (1996) and the essays in J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, eds., The Great New Wilderness Debate (Athens, Ga., 1998). 4 Mark Cioc, ‘The Impact of the Coal Age on the German Environment: A Review of the Historical Literature,’ Environment and History 4, no. 1 (1998): 105–24, here 112.

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5 The literature on regionalism and Heimat in German culture is extensive and cannot be cited here in its entirety. Useful works that detail its political history and cultural significance include Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990) and Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory (Chapel Hill, 1997). 6 See Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1998). 7 See Dr Theodor Ahrens, ‘Die Nationalparke der Vereinigten Staaten,’ in Naturdenkmäler. Vorträge und Aufsätze, ed. Staatliche Stelle für Naturdenkmalpflege 3, no. 22 (1919): 4–46. 8 On this environmental ethic of home, see William H. Rollins, A Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904–1918 (Ann Arbor, 1997). On the idea of vernacular landscapes, see John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven, 1984). 9 On Heimat as an expression of anti-modern, anti-democratic, or chauvinistic cultural pessimism, see Klaus Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Grossstadtfeindschaft (Meisenheim am Glan, 1970); Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Die Liebe zur Landschaft, vol. 1, Natur in Bewegung (Munich, 1986); Rolf-Peter Sieferle, Fortschrittsfeinde? Opposition gegen Technik und Industrie von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1984); and InaMarie Greverus, Auf der Suche nach Heimat (Munich, 1979). Jennifer Jenkins’s chapter in this volume offers similar observations about the modernity of Wilhelmine cultural politics in her analysis of Heimat artists’ attempt to bridge modernist experimentation and regionalism in the visual arts. Other contributors, such as Caitlin Murdock and Tara Zahra, explore the tensions that emerged in the ‘middle ground’ between emerging ethnic constructions. 10 Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th rev. ed. (New Haven, 2001), 68–83. 11 Ibid., 69. 12 On the new culture of nature, see Karl Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation (Cambridge, 2001), 12. 13 Thomas Cole, ‘Essay on American Scenery,’ American Monthly Magazine 1 (1836): 4–5. Cited in Konrad Ott et al., ‘Über die Anfänge des Naturschutzgedankens in Deutschland und den USA im 19. Jahrhundert,’ Jahrbuch für Europäische Verwaltungsgeschichte 11 (1999): 1–55, here 37. 14 George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature: or, Physical Geography as Modified by

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15 16

17

18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29

30

Human Action (1864; repr., Cambridge, Mass., 1965). For an excellent recent review of Marsh, see David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation (Seattle, 2000). Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 14. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 108. On the creation of national parks, see also Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln, Neb., 1979). For a good overview of these local, state, and federal conservation efforts in forest conservation, see Richard P. Harmond and Thomas J. Curran, eds., Environmentalism and the Government (Malabar, Fla., 2005), chaps. 1–2. Ibid., 23–4; Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 133–6. See Carl Schenk, Cradle of Forestry in America: The Biltmore Forest School, 1898–1913, ed. Ovid Butler (Durham, NC, 1998). John Muir, Our National Parks (Boston, 1901), 1. Cited in Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 94. Karl Ditt, ‘Naturschutz zwischen Zivilisationskritik, Tourismusförderung und Umweltschutz. USA, England, und Deutschland 1860–1970,’ in Politische Zäsuren und gesellschaftlicher Wandel im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Matthias Frese and Michael Prinz (Paderborn, 1996), 499–533, here 501. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 108–16, 123–60; Ditt, ‘Naturschutz,’ 502. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 145–60; Cronon, ‘Trouble with Wilderness,’ 76–7. These quotes are cited in Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 148–50. Cronon, ‘Trouble with Wilderness,’ 79. See also Mark Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (Oxford, 1999). On the ‘moral ecology’ of rural folk, see Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 3. On the statist attempts to render nature and people ‘legible’ and, hence, controllable, see James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998). On the ingredients of this degradation narrative, see Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 14–15. Marsh, Man and Nature, 29–30; cited in Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 15. On German forest romanticism and national identity, see Michael Imort, ‘A Sylvan People: Wilhelmine Forestry and the Forest as a Symbol of Germandom,’ in Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History, ed. Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller (New Brunswick, NJ, 2005), 55–80. See Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage

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34

35 36

37

38 39 40

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einer deutschen Social-Politik, vol. 1, Land und Leute, 5th ed. (Stuttgart, 1861). Fortunately, Riehl’s work is now available in translation; see The Natural History of the German People, ed. and trans. David Diephouse (Lewiston, NY, 1990). On Riehl and regional identity, see Applegate, Nation of Provincials, 34–41, and Jasper von Altenbockum, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl 1823–1897. Sozialwissenschaft zwischen Kulturgeschichte und Ethnographie (Cologne, 1994). On the contrast between the French Enlightenment’s constitutionalist and German Romantics’ organicist visions of nationhood, see Jonathan Olsen, Nature and Nationalism: Right-Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany (New York, 1999), 53–84. Riehl, Natural History of the German People, 49. Applegate, Nation of Provincials, 4. On provincialism and German national identity, see Karl Ditt, ‘Die Deutsche Heimatbewegung 1871–1945,’ in Heimat. Analysen, Themen, Perspektiven, ed. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung (Ulm, 1990), 133–54; Alon Confino, ‘The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory, and the German Empire, 1871–1918,’ History and Memory, 5, no. 1 (Spring/ Summer 1993): 42–86, here 54–9. Applegate, Nation of Provincials, 61–3; Confino, Nation as a Local Metaphor, 113. Several scholars have argued that the seemingly innocent panoramic vistas offered by Moltke and Bismarck towers symbolized urban leisure class domination over the countryside. See, for example, Joachim Kleinmanns, Schau ins Land: Aussichtstürme (Marburg, 1999). Alfred Hermann, ed., Eifel-Festschrift zur 25. jährigen Jubelfeier des Eifelvereins (Bonn, 1913), 5. Frieder Berres and Christian Kiess, Siebengebirge. Naturpark – Orte – Sehenswertes (Siegburg, 1994), 15, and ‘Satzungen des Verschönerungsvereins für das Siebengebirge,’ 13 Apr. 1899, Archiv des Landschaftsverbandes Rheinland Kulturabteilung (ALVR), Nr. 3733. Verschönerungs-Verein für das Siebengebirge und Obercassel (Bonn, 1895); Winfried Biesing, Drachenfelser Chronik. Geschichte eines Berges, seiner Burg und seiner Burggrafen (Cologne, 1980). Verschönerungsverein für das Siebengebirge, Zur Rettung des Siebengebirges (Bonn, 1886), 5–6. Hermann, ed., Eifel-Festschrift, 5. A. Dronke, ‘Die Eifel,’ in Der Tourist 15 (Feb. 1889): 2–3; cited in Eifelverein, ed., Die Eifel 1888–1988. Zum hundertjährigen Jubiläum des Eifelvereins (Düren, 1989), 196. Hermann, ed., Eifel-Festschrift, 5. Eifelverein, ed., Die Eifel 1888–1988, 254–5.

190 Thomas M. Lekan 43 On the commercialization of nature in the Heimat movement, see Applegate, Nation of Provincials, 63–72. 44 For examples of Eifelverein activities and Eifel iconography, see Hermann, ed., Eifel-Festschrift, and Eifelverein, ed., Die Eifel. Bilder aus 100 Jahren (Koblenz, 1994). On the representation of nature in Heimat literature, see Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor, 162–9, and Rollins, A Greener Vision of Home, 155–216. 45 Verschönerungsverein für das Siebengebirge, Zur Rettung, 5. On this point, see also Applegate, Nation of Provincials, 77. 46 Verschönerungsverein für das Siebengebirge, Zur Rettung, 5. 47 Verschönerungsverein für das Siebengebirge, Geschäftsbericht für das Jahr 1902 and Verzeichnis der Mitglieder 1905, in ALVR 3733. 48 On cultural despair, see George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, 1964) and Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (New York, 1965). 49 Elmar Heinen, ‘Naturschutzgebiet Siebengebirge gestern – heute – morgen,’ Rheinische Heimatpflege 27 (1990): 112–21, here 112. 50 Abschrift vom Ministerium des Innern, 27 Feb. 1899, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter BAK), vol. 245, nr. 185, fol. 225; see also ALVR 3733, fol. 57. 51 ‘Satzungen des Verschönerungsvereins für das Siebengebirge,’ 13 Apr. 1899, ALVR 3733. 52 ‘Petitions-Bericht der Gemeindekommission,’ 1912/1913, BAK, vol. 245, no. 185, fol. 225. 53 Cited in Josef Zimmermann, ‘Die Entwicklung des Naturschutzes, insbesondere in den rheinischen Gebieten, und Gedanken über eine allgemeine Geschichte des Naturschutzes,’ Eifeljahrbuch (1995): 40. On Wetekamp’s efforts see Ott et al., ‘Über die Anfänge des Naturschutzgedankens,’ 24–8. 54 Hugo Conwentz, Die Gefährdung der Naturdenkmäler und Vorschläge zu ihrer Erhaltung (Berlin, 1904). On the creation of the State Office, see Michael Wettengel, ‘Staat und Naturschutz, 1906–1945. Zur Geschichte der Staatlichen Stelle für Naturdenkmalpflege in Preussen und der Reichstelle für Naturschutz,’ Historische Zeitschrift 257, no. 2 (Oct. 1993): 355–99, here 357– 363; and Raymond Dominick, The Environmental Movement in Germany: Prophets and Pioneers, 1871–1971 (Bloomington, 1992), 51–3. 55 On Denkmalpflege efforts, see Charlotte Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum. Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1995); and Rudy Koshar, Germany’s Transient Pasts: Preservation and National Memory in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1998). 56 Wettengel, ‘Staat und Naturschutz,’ 362; Verein Naturschutzpark e.V.,

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61 62

63 64 65

66 67 68

69 70 71

72

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Naturschutzparke. Fünfzig Jahre Verein Naturschutzpark (Stuttgart, 1959); Andrea Kiendl, Die Lüneburger Heide. Fremdenverkehr und Literatur (Berlin, 1993). Conwentz, Gefährdung der Naturdenkmäler, 82. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 8. Dr M. Braetz, ‘Schutz den heimischen Kriechtieren und Lurchen!’ in Naturdenkmäler. Vorträge und Aufsätze, ed. Staatliche Stelle für Naturdenkmalpflege, 2, no. 11 (Berlin, 1915), 5–8. Braetz, ‘Schutz den heimischen Kriechtieren und Lurchen!’ 24. Ernst Rudorff, Heimatschutz: Im Auftrage des Deutschen Bundes Heimatschutz neu bearbeitet von Professor Dr. Paul Schultze-Naumburg (Berlin-Lichtfelde, 1926). On Rudorff and the Heimatschutz movement, see Rollins, A Greener Vision of Home, and Andreas Knaut, ‘Ernst Rudorff und die Anfänge der deutschen Heimatbewegung,’ in Antimodernismus und Reform. Zur Geschichte der deutschen Heimatbewegung, ed. Edeltraud Klueting (Darmstadt, 1991), 20–49. Cited in Rollins, Greener Vision of Home, 141. Ibid., 81, 87–91, 167–70 For a biography of Schultze-Naumburg, see Norbert Borrmann, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, 1869–1949. Maler – Publizist – Architekt. Vom Kulturreformer der Jahrhundertwende zum Kulturpolitiker im Dritten Reich (Essen, 1989), 62. Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Kulturarbeiten, preface to vol. 1, repr. in vol. 3, Dörfer und Kolonien, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1908). Cited in Borrmann, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, 32. Karl Peter Wiemer, Ein Verein im Wandel der Zeit. Der Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz von 1906 bis 1970 (Cologne, 2000), 47–51, 60–5. Karl Baedeker, The Rhine from Rotterdam to Constance: Handbook for Travelers (Leipzig, 1878), xxiii. Stadtbaurat Schaumann, ‘Brücken,’ Mitteilungen des Rheinischen Vereins für Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz 8, no. 1 (1914): 5–21, here 6. For an account of the Hetch Hetchy controversy, see Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 161–81, and John W. Simpson, Dam! Water, Politics, Power, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite National Park (New York, 2005). I am borrowing this term from Warren Breckman’s perceptive essay ‘Disciplining Consumption: The Debate about Luxury in Wilhelmine Germany, 1890–1914,’ Journal of Social History 24, no. 3 (1991): 485–505.

192 Thomas M. Lekan 73 Rudorff’s views on the Siebengebirge are described in Dominick, Environmental Movement in Germany, 26–7. 74 On Schultze-Naumburg’s transformation from cultural reformer to National Socialist, see Borrmann, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, and Thomas Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 163–5. 75 Borrmann, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, 43. 76 On this point, see Rollins, Greener Vision of Home, 269–70. 77 See the country profiles published as part of the WRI’s EarthTrends assessment study found at http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/biodiversityprotected/country-profiles.html (accessed 17 July 2006). The WRI uses the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) categories to designate conservation areas by their degree of protection and previous human impact. Categories I–II include areas with the highest biodiversity and ecological value, including scientific nature reserves, wilderness areas, and national parks; Categories III–V include natural monuments, habitat/species management areas, and protected landscapes/seascapes; and Category VI encompasses areas managed for ‘sustainable use and unclassified areas.’ While the United States has more of its total land in the wilderness Categories I–II than Germany (5.8% versus 3.6%), Germany has a much higher percentage in Categories III–V (28.9% versus 2.8%), a product, in part, of the ‘cultural landscape’ trajectory of preservation discussed in this chapter. More recently, the collapsing GDR’s last-minute decision in 1990 to protect 8.5% of its territory in nature parks and biosphere reserves, much of it former state hunting grounds and depopulated border control areas, helped to boost united Germany’s Category I–II lands almost overnight and contributed to the country’s overall favourable standing in global biodiversity protection. 78 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York, 1949), 219.

PART FOUR Language Borders

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8 Constructing a Modern German Landscape: Tourism, Nature, and Industry in Saxony caitlin murdock

In 1905 Friedrich Löscher used his role as editor of a new journal about the Erzgebirge and the Vogtland, regions comprising part of the southern borderlands of the German state of Saxony, to explain both the role of the journal and the nature of the region it represented: There was a time, not long ago ... when ... people in the lowlands saw the weather-beaten faces of peddlers from the mountains ... One bought something out of pity. But ... our Calendar is a wanderer from the mountains that will no longer be looked down on ... It will not only travel abroad but will gain entry to the homes and hearts of the Heimat and claim its rightful place there ... It ... will evoke the fresh air of the mountain heights and the scent of the spruce trees even for city dwellers and will beckon to them: ‘come up to us in the mountains!1

Löscher understood his new publication as a means of linking the region it championed to the rest of rapidly modernizing German and European society. He suggested that southern Saxony was embarked on the same journey he had outlined for his journal: the mountains could no longer be dismissed as poor and marginal, but would win recognition from both local people and those outside the region as a central place in the modern Saxon, German, and European landscape. Löscher was one of many Germans who participated in clubs and publications dedicated to the celebration and exploration of specific German-speaking regions in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Central Europe. For Löscher and his Saxon compatriots, tourism

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was the means by which Saxons and other Germans were to become familiar with the southern Saxon landscape, comprising the Erzgebirge, the Vogtland, the Saxon Switzerland, and the Oberlausitz. They would appreciate its beauty and understand its significance for Germany, Europe, and the world beyond. Tourists thus became both audiences and muses for local promoters’ efforts at regional development and self-representation. Travel became a new way to connect multiple identities – national, regional, state – to specific geographic places. Travel and travel organizations and publications thus reflected the broad economic, social, and political changes transforming Central European societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as travellers and tourism promoters adapted their ideas and practices to new circumstances. At the same time, tourism promotion became a means of engaging with those changes and shaping larger debates about German regional and national identities. Over the course of half a century, from the 1880s to the 1930s, Saxon tourism promoters changed both their motives and their methods in an active effort to respond to and play a role in shaping the changing fortunes and identity of Saxony and its southern borderlands. Yet for all the changes, certain leitmotifs persisted across the period. Tourism literature portrayed southern Saxony as a landscape pulled between nature and industry, leisure and work, national importance and isolation. Although these characteristics waxed and waned in rhetorical importance, they continued to shape the region’s landscape and society up to the Second World War. The forces that tourism proponents identified as shaping southern Saxony illustrate that the efforts to transform the borderlands into a tourist destination constitute a single story about both a specific region and the larger society of which that region was a part. This story illustrates the ways in which local conditions and local actors played essential roles in shaping conceptions of landscape, modern industrial society, and German identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Promoters sought to use tourism to address bigger questions facing their localities and societies; to connect local identities and traditions to emerging modern states, nations, and international economies; and to reconcile dramatic economic and demographic changes with existing landscapes and communities. Modernity was both the inspiration for the enterprise, and the means by which it was accomplished. Not only did tourism promoters make use of mass media to spread their messages and new modes of transportation to bring visitors to the places

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they championed; they also understood their project as a modern one that brought the city and countryside, nature and industry, national identity and geographic territory together in new and fundamentally important ways. In an era of unprecedented levels of civic and political participation, tourism provided a broad cross-section of the German public with an opportunity to participate in envisioning new relationships among classes, localities, and states, and across the nation. Tourism was a way to make localities part of modern society, and modern society part of the locality. The specific ways in which promoters declared that this would work changed with shifting conditions. What began as an attempt to shape modern cultural sensibilities evolved in the wake of economic changes, political transformation, and world war into what was often a more explicit attempt to shape economic and political relationships. Nevertheless, the basic commitment to using tourism to make connections between the local and the state, nation, and world beyond never flagged. Thus, Saxon tourism promoters demonstrate that localism was neither a pre-modern survival nor a conservative reaction against the sweeping changes that faced European industrial societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but rather a central and self-conscious element of modernity. The Emergence of Large-Scale Tourism in Saxony Between the 1880s and the 1930s, first local Saxon tourists and later visitors from farther afield began exploring the southern Saxon landscape. Local patriots, government officials, and businesspeople enticed them with postcards and descriptions of local landscapes, luring tourists to the region’s villages and hiking trails. But while tourism burgeoned in this period, and tourists engaged in similar activities – hiking, skiing, and exploring local communities – the reasons why tourism promoters worked to draw travellers to the region changed dramatically, as did the travellers’ origins and both promoters’ and travellers’ understanding of the local landscape. Saxony experienced decisive shifts in its position in Germany, Central Europe, and the wider world during the same years that tourism began to flourish in its southern borderlands. In the decades that followed German unification in 1871, Saxony was increasingly assimilated into the German Empire at the expense of its political and economic influence in both Germany and Europe more broadly. It experienced both the rapid expansion of its already well-established indus-

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trial sector and new industrial competition. After 1918 its southern territory constituted the border between Germany and the new Czechoslovak state. Saxons’ and tourists’ understandings of local landscapes reflected and shaped southern Saxony’s shifting position, and tourism promoters learned to think that the region’s landscape, in all its natural and human manifestations, was critical to its identity. Sometimes the landscape represented a source of pride, sometimes the root of regional problems. In either case, local people began to portray tourists as essential witnesses to southern Saxony’s significance as an important German natural, social, and cultural landscape. When the region ran into difficulties during the First World War, tourism promoters’ publications and advertising efforts transformed travellers from mere witnesses into potential economic, social, and political saviours. Although tourists were lured to the area with promises of leisure, health, and beautiful surroundings, they were also made to feel responsible for the region’s economic and national well-being. They were told clearly that where they chose to travel, and what kind of travel they undertook, had a direct impact on communities’ prominence and prosperity. Even the postcards they sent offered the possibility to promote a region or contribute to its neglect. Large-scale tourism first emerged in southern Saxony in the 1880s and 1890s.2 Some middle-class Saxons, like their counterparts elsewhere in the German Empire, advocated the ideas and emerging institutions of Heimat,3 a movement that celebrated the local and regional while connecting it to the national.4 Proponents of the movement came to be known as Heimatler. Saxon Heimatler advocated tourism, urging their fellow countrymen to explore local landscapes as a way of building their local affinities and of understanding themselves in wider national and international contexts. In southern Saxony, such Heimat tourists were to hike through forests, scale cliffs, ski the mountains, and otherwise immerse themselves in the natural landscape of their homeland. To this end, Saxon Heimat organizers created hiking trails and built lookout towers that enabled hikers to admire panoramic views of the countryside.5 They encouraged exploration of regional landscapes from the micro level, such as documenting local bird populations and regional history, to the macro, celebrating the sweeping vistas visible from mountain tops and lookout towers, and declaring their region’s mountains and forests equal in beauty to any in Germany, or indeed in all of Europe. Heimatler argued that late nineteenth-century Saxons needed tangi-

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ble engagement with their natural and cultural environment in order to understand their position in a wider world. At the same time, they repeatedly sought to demonstrate that local developments were connected to such larger contexts as emerging ideas about science or national politics. Articles on the species of snakes native to the Oberlausitz appeared alongside articles on Darwin and Pasteur.6 And in 1886 the journal Lusatia reported on tourists who had joined Sedan Day celebrations in Waltersdorf: ‘The tourists in attendance ... declared themselves delighted that they had not had to pass a day so important to the German nation among strangers, but were able to celebrate it in the company of like-minded brothers.’7 Thus, tourism and a shared sense of Heimat brought Germans together. The participation of specific communities in Heimat activities played a critical role in shaping those ties. But it was also clear that visitors made sense of national community through the local experience that tourism provided. The idea of landscape as a source of identity led late nineteenthcentury Saxon Heimatler and other tourism proponents to develop a somewhat different idea of their home region than that of Heimatler elsewhere in the German Empire. Southern Saxony’s physical location and its economy emphasized the importance of relationships that extended beyond the boundaries of the German Reich. Saxony’s landscape blended into that of northern Bohemia, providing no visual demarcation between the two territories and allowing tourists to gaze uninterrupted across the border. And the region’s industries reinforced ties both to neighbouring Bohemia and to countries and economic markets further afield. Saxon industries used Bohemian labour and raw materials, faced some of their stiffest competition from their Bohemian counterparts, and exported goods to global markets. Industrialization in Saxony had brought people and goods from outside the region and from outside the borders of the post-1871 German state. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century legal changes made Central European political borders more porous, increasing the flow of people and goods, a process that was promoted further by the creation of new roads and railway networks.8 In the 1880s and 1890s these changes helped Saxony’s rapidly expanding industries attract growing numbers of foreign workers, most from Bohemia.9 The region’s industrial and manufacturing products were moving further afield as well. The spread of railways into remote areas in the last decades of the nineteenth century expanded the international markets for southern Saxon industries such as lace-making, embroidery, glove-making, and cabinetry. Better

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transportation made export markets such as the United States, Britain, and Russia more accessible and lent Saxon export industries new international prominence.10 Klingenthal, in the Vogtland, for example, became one of two small German towns to control 70 per cent of the world’s harmonica production. Thus, Klingenthal became a wellknown place in international circles even though it remained remote in Germany.11 Other communities occupied similar niches in international markets. As a result, promoters of Saxon tourism believed that because of its industries and exports, their region held special significance for the German nation as well as for international communities well beyond the boundaries of the German state. They taught tourists to embrace this view by coordinating their efforts with Bohemian Heimatler, publishing guidebooks that treated the territory on both sides of the border as one region, and emphasizing the importance of local export industries to the landscape.12 Southern Saxony’s connections to outside communities and interests shaped the ways in which Saxon tourism promoters imagined their region in the larger contexts of Germany and Europe. This was true whether they referred to neighbouring Bohemian communities that shared the immediate physical landscape or to such distant places as the United States, which bought quantities of Plauen lace, Klingenthal harmonicas, Lauter baskets, and other Saxon products in the late nineteenth century. Heimatler conceived of nature and local traditions as attractions for tourists. But they also understood that the region’s industries and economic ties distinguished it from other parts of Germany, and this consciousness reinforced southern Saxons’ convictions that the region had a role to play outside its immediate geographical and political boundaries. The interconnection of nature and industry emerged as a central theme in the ideas and iconography of southern Saxon landscapes. It was a source of regional identification and an object of interest for leisure travellers from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s (and indeed even today). Southern Saxony offered everything a Heimat enthusiast could hope for: sweeping vistas, vast forests, and rolling mountains. Yet for all the region’s natural beauties, in the late nineteenth century it was one of the most densely populated and highly industrialized landscapes in Europe.13 Saxon borderland residents lived in a dense network of towns and villages, and many communities had to combine agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and industry in order to survive.14 The valleys bristled with smokestacks and mountain

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streams powered lumber mills. It was a landscape whose human and natural characteristics represented a critical moment in Germany’s emergence as a modern industrial state and society. While such economic and cultural complexity is of interest to historians, a landscape riddled with factories and mine tailings does not necessarily leap to mind as a vacation destination. But far from being put off by the industrial realities of their region, Heimatler suggested that southern Saxony was a model for ways in which nature, local traditions, and modern economic growth could, and should, coexist. Images of local people (peddlers, lace-makers, miners) engaged in traditional crafts and industries were standard iconography in Saxon tourism literature – often paired with images of middle-class people relaxing in spectacular natural settings.15 In 1905 an article in the Calendar for the Erzgebirge celebrated the local photographer Dr Eber’s efforts to document the daily lives of people he encountered in the Erzgebirge as well as the physical landscape. The article made it clear that the important landscape for readers was indeed the human one, emphasizing how the people of the region, with their local dialects, industrial spirit, and cultural traditions fit into the larger natural setting.16 That such an understanding of the connection between human and natural landscapes was essential to the editors of the Calendar for the Erzgebirge is illustrated by their explicit policy of printing illustrations that sought to provide multifaceted images of the life of the southern Saxon landscape (Landschaftsleben) rather than portraying that landscape in the old style of ‘dead panoramas and map-like drawings.’17 Such images and descriptions reflected the convictions of Heimat advocates about the beauty of their landscapes; they also sought to teach tourists to enjoy the interplay of nature and human productivity typical of southern Saxony. Saxon tourist literature illustrated that modern technology and changes in the landscape through new technological infrastructure played a vital role in transforming southern Saxony into an integral part of modern German society and assuring wider recognition for its natural beauties as well as its technological accomplishments. As Philipp Weigel asserted in his 1907 dissertation on the Erzgebirge: Until recently the Erzgebirge was considered unworthy of any particular notice ... Yet ... like other parts of the country, the Erzgebirge has undergone development ... Now that government sanctioned railroads have been built linking the highest valleys and villages to the transportation

202 Caitlin Murdock network, debates over the Erzgebirge’s nature, the beauties of its landscape and its economic importance should be laid to rest.18

Weigel suggested that modern development was an essential part of the region that lent importance, as well as access, to its natural landscape. Saxon Heimatler and tourism promoters embraced industry as part of local tradition and modern reality. They reminded people that the region was not only an oasis of fresh air, but also produced goods for markets all over the world. Writing in 1887, P. Kruschwitz spoke for other Saxon Heimatler when he emphasized that tourists’ exploration of their region was itself a fundamentally modern endeavour, rather than an expression of attachment to the past:19 The aspiration for a complete and multifaceted understanding of our home district ... was not always as ... widespread as it is these days. In the past, there was ... more ... interest in what was foreign and distant than in the local ... Indeed, only recently has science recognized the connection between nature and human lives ... The rise of the scientific study of the Heimat is the product of modernity, and an important one at that.20

This modern nature of Heimat tourism reinforced Saxons’ idea that tourism was not in conflict with an industrial landscape. Rather, it offered Germans the opportunity to explore pressing contemporary questions about the nature of society and its relationship to science and nature. Tourism as a Regional Resource Late nineteenth-century Saxon tourist literature reflected an industrial society peculiar to a specific moment in Central Europe’s history. This literature depicted skilled craft production and small-scale industry in apparently peaceful coexistence with a romantic natural landscape. At the end of the century many of the region’s industries were booming as never before, driven by better transportation and expanding markets. Yet by 1900 there were also signs that those small-scale industries and the communities that depended on them were vulnerable. Mechanization was moving production away from cottage industry and mountain villages into factories in the region’s towns. Many producers faced rapidly changing markets and new competition from industries in other German industrial regions such as the Ruhr, or with new international

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producers in such places as Bohemia and Japan. In 1902 an economic crisis in Aue forced four firms to close, putting a thousand people out of work. In the same year, the glove industry in Johanngeorgenstadt suffered a decline as the result of Bohemian competition and new U.S. import laws.21 Many of these changes were to be expected as new economic activities replaced old ones, and as new markets encouraged mass production instead of handwork. Nevertheless, while new markets and economic restructuring reinforced southern Saxony’s reputation for industry in the decade before the First World War, they also contributed to the beginnings of deindustrialization in the region’s valleys and villages. The region’s economic successes and the weaknesses that were beginning to become apparent contributed to Saxons’ thinking about further economic innovation and expansion in the decade before the First World War. While some of this thinking fed into new efforts at industrial expansion, it also led Heimatler and businesspeople to regard tourism as an economic resource. As was the case in other regions of German-speaking Central Europe, this new economic rationale for promoting tourism was initiated by the same Heimat organizations that had already been advocating regional travel. This time, however, the new approach to tourism involved more businesspeople, community leaders, and government officials than in the past.22 The First World War turned hints of economic instability into headlong disaster. The post-war loss of markets, food and housing shortages, unemployment, and political unrest worsened Saxony’s economy dramatically, especially in the borderlands. Industries failed, and unemployment and underemployment skyrocketed. The war further contributed to Saxony losing a significant amount of political and administrative autonomy in the Reich.23 Saxons had to find ways to make their region economically and politically viable. By the early 1920s, those conditions forced Saxons to adopt a new approach, shifting from promoting tourism as a potential financial resource to proclaiming it an economic necessity. To make tourism a new economic engine, Saxons had to attract greater numbers of tourists from outside the region. Promoting tourism in the Saxon borderlands was no longer a matter of guiding local people on the path to self-discovery or helping them connect their regional homeland to a larger nation and world. Instead, it now involved a concerted effort to lure more prosperous visitors from other areas of the Reich. Rather than learning to think of themselves as part

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of a bigger national and international community, Saxons were now trying to capture the attention of other Germans in order to convince them that Saxony was important. Despite the fact that the post-war Saxon borderlands were plagued by revolution, food and housing shortages, and popular unrest, Saxon tourism promoters redoubled their efforts in the 1920s. Communities placed newspaper ads in Berlin and Leipzig, printed postcards showing broad landscapes, and tried to establish local standards for clean and comfortable tourist accommodation.24 In the early 1920s the battle was not only to win visitors. Tourism promoters also found themselves fighting to preserve the landscapes they celebrated. The war and the economic problems that followed had introduced new threats to local landscapes. Coal shortages during and after the war had led local people to harvest firewood in the Saxon Switzerland, contributing to rapid deforestation.25 Economic difficulties and the environmental damage they provoked led to new calls for landscape preservation and the creation of nature preserves. Rather than assuming that it was normal for local people to shape the natural landscape to the conditions of their lives, Heimatler began to suggest that unrestricted use might be undesirable, especially in tourist areas. It was in this period that Heimat protection activists and Saxon officials began drafting proposals to make the Saxon Switzerland an official nature preserve. They urged the state to protect the visual landscape when it built roads there.26 They asserted that the southern Saxon landscape had both cultural and natural significance and needed to be preserved for the good of all.27 This new vision of the landscape claimed to serve all of society, but it highlighted the importance of landscape preservation and recreational uses in a way that left neither symbolic nor physical space for local people to work and live in the very parts of that landscape that were declared most significant. Tourism was understood to bring modern society, local landscapes, and people’s experiences of nature together. And Heimat publications sometimes expressed ambivalence about the nature of that intersection at the same time that they declared it a universal experience. As a 1925 article in the magazine The Trail Companion put it: The tourist who at mid-day on Saturday or on early Sunday morning is among the milling crowds pushing towards the trains to the Saxon mountains, or the hiker who ... climbs to the Bastei,28 ... or even the border guard who comes from the isolated villages of Czechoslovakia and gazes

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in amazement ... at the overflowing steamboats on the Elbe – what is each of these experiencing? Why, tourism!29

The crowding at the train station and the Bastei reflected the downside of modern transportation and mass tourism. Yet, at the same time, the article stressed the importance of the shared experience of railway travellers, hikers, and even border guards as they passed through the southern Saxon landscape. Even as Heimatler had advocated, a broad cross-section of German society got to know southern Saxony through modern tourism. At the same time that tourism promoters stepped up efforts at landscape preservation, they also began to reshape local landscapes for the benefit of tourists. And in the process they rethought what those landscapes and nature itself meant. That rethinking had already begun in a rudimentary way before the war. In 1914 the mayor of Lauter told community leaders that they needed to keep village streets clean and create picturesque ‘natural’ beauty with trees and gardens if they wanted to attract tourists.30 In short, he declared the need to actively reshape the local landscape if it was to appear ‘natural,’ and thus attractive, to visitors.31 In the 1920s such efforts to present the landscape as ‘natural’ intensified. Saxons emphasized the borderlands as pristine natural settings. In contrast to publications from the nineteenth century, inter-war tourist literature downplayed the importance of industry to the landscape or relegated it to the past. As a newspaper in Stuttgart declared in 1934: ‘Whoever once gets to know Saxony has to abandon the idea that because this land is highly industrialized it cannot also be beautiful. One can drive ... the length and breadth of Saxony without having the impression that it is oversaturated with factories.’32 Similarly, in the 1920s and 1930s local tours – such as those that took visitors to artificial flower workshops in Sebnitz or the toy-industry museum in Seiffen – showed local crafts as historical remnants of a withering productive tradition.33 Even attempts to use tourism to sell local products directed attention away from production itself. For example, promoters increasingly pushed the idea of the Erzgebirge as ‘Christmasland’ in an attempt to link the winter landscape with products of the local toy industry. This kind of promotion was found especially in Seiffen, known for its nutcrackers and Christmas ornaments.34 Descriptions of ‘Christmasland’ downplayed images of people actually making ornaments in local workshops; instead, it was the landscape itself that ‘naturally’ evoked a festive

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Christmas spirit. This way of presenting southern Saxony’s uniqueness and importance came through clearly in a 1935 newspaper article about a trip to the borderlands: The participants experienced an unforgettable early Christmas. On a sunny late autumn afternoon ... one had a clear view of dark forests and distant mountains. At our departure from Lengefeld the crescent moon was clearly visible over the black silhouette of the forest. Then suddenly candlelight from the first houses in Pobershau appeared. There were hundreds, thousands; the windows of every house sparkled with shimmering Christmas light!35

This manner of promoting the Saxon borderlands was made possible because the region was already associated with the manufacture of Christmas ornaments. But it was the Christmas spirit and its expression in both the natural darkening forest and the glimmering candlelight of local communities that defined the landscape as Christmasland. Apparently Germans had lost their earlier sense of a landscape in which a balance between nature and human productivity was aesthetically and socially desirable. Nevertheless, even though industry was no longer celebrated as an active part of the contemporary landscape, modernization and technology were still deemed critical for the success of nature tourism. Saxons built new tourist facilities and lobbied for better regional rail connections.36 Saxon government and private interests worked to attract tourists by investing in new infrastructure, more modern accommodations, and recreational facilities. Heimat organizations continued to maintain hiking trails. And communities built new swimming pools, ski chalets, and spas. To be attractive to a national audience, it seemed, nature needed accoutrements. By the mid-1930s southern Saxony had succeeded in becoming a travel destination for tourists from all over Germany. Visitors hiked, skied, and breathed in fresh mountain air as deeply as their nineteenthcentury counterparts had done. But they did so in a landscape whose meaning had changed dramatically. In the 1920s Saxon tourism promoters had embraced tourism as an economic resource. But in the 1930s they began urging tourists themselves to consider Saxony’s economic troubles, industrial decline, and increasingly peripheral status in the Reich as a reason to visit. The Saxon government began making the case to the Reich government and the German public that Saxony was

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an endangered borderland.37 Far from sharing a Heimat with northern Bohemia, southern Saxony was now presented as the last bulwark of the German state and German culture against Slavic eastern Europe.38 This view of the region was further promoted after 1934 when the Nazi Strength through Joy movement made the Saxon borderlands an official destination for their vacation trips.39 Such trips often visited ‘endangered‘ borderlands with the idea of enlisting national support for those regions.40 The Strength through Joy program also helped build the mass tourism that Saxon Heimatler had been working towards for decades, emphasizing the importance of tourism as a shared experience, and using mass transit as never before. But together with other disruptions brought by the Nazi regime, it also eroded the control of established Heimat organizations over borderland tourism – both in its inspiration and in its practice. No better evidence of this takeover could have been offered than when Nazi officials instructed the Erzgebirge Association to replace the ‘Saxon’ greeting of ‘Glück Auf!’ with ‘Heil Hitler’ in its meetings and correspondence.41 In keeping with Nazism’s systematic efforts to bring German society ‘into line,’ a group that had long emphasized regional specificity was forced to adopt the trappings of national homogeneity.42 Conclusion By the mid-1930s Saxony, the landscape of its southern borderlands, and the tourists within that landscape had all changed dramatically in their meaning for local people and for Germany. Saxons increasingly understood their southern border region to be defined by its natural landscape, by the economic needs of its population, and by its increasingly peripheral status as a political border and an economic hinterland. Whereas nineteenth-century Heimatler had been confident that southern Saxony would provide tourists with a model for modern German society as well as a way for Saxons to understand the importance of their locality in broader communities, by the 1930s tourists had been transformed from explorers discovering the riches of their own heritage to patrons of a weakened region. Yet although 1930s tourism promoters de-emphasized many of the aspects of the local landscape, such as factories, that their predecessors had hailed as part of the region’s modern importance, dwelling instead on the region’s natural beauty, their efforts had transformed the physical and cultural landscapes they championed. Rail lines, ski chalets, and hiking trails created a modern

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tourism infrastructure that emphasized the internal landscape’s meaning as a highly managed ‘natural’ and recreational area rather than as a productive one. At the same time, tourists were encouraged to bring their activities, and their understandings of the southern Saxon landscape, into alignment with the German state and nation. All these changes reflected the dramatic transformation of southern Saxony’s economic and political fortunes. Yet the state’s transformation from an economic powerhouse in Germany’s heartland to an impoverished borderland of a centralizing German Empire took on rhetorical significance that outweighed the region’s actual changes. And that rhetorical shift mattered. Saxons’ interactions with the German nation and state, with world markets, and with world war made them reimagine their place in the world. Heimatler and other tourism promoters played a central role in framing the public discussion that guided that re-imagining. Local tourist promoters conceived of their project as both a Saxon and a German one. The rise of large-scale tourism, the centralization of nation states, and the economic transformations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped communities across Europe. But southern Saxony’s situation as a borderland, as an early industrial region, and as the site of economic and demographic decline, led promoters to develop tourism and, by extension, critical elements of modern society, in locally specific ways. And in the process they changed the world’s view of Saxony. Saxons had not invented tourism, Heimat, or a pronounced interest in landscapes. These were movements that blossomed all over Europe in the late nineteenth century. Yet the question remains: how do we embed localism in national histories, including that of Germany? Many of the factors that shaped Saxony in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were transforming other regions as well: the rise of large-scale mechanized industry, the rise of nationalism, the First World War, the political and economic difficulties of the Weimar period, and the Third Reich. But to understand both the Saxon story and that of Germany (or Central Europe) more broadly, we need to understand more than just these big developments, and more than just local conditions. We need to understand the ways in which the national and international interacted with the local, producing something new in the process. The specific characteristics of that interaction varied from region to region. Saxony lost significant regional autonomy and international economic status, and declared itself a borderland. In the Saarland, local conditions combined with German state politics and economic modernization to spark large-scale expressions of Catholic popular piety.43

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Germans in the Palatinate fused republican ideas and regional identity with German national consciousness to negotiate the social and political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.44 German nationalists in Austria found that they had to consider local conditions and concerns in order to build support for their movements in the countryside.45 Each of these regional examples is distinct. Yet collectively they demonstrate that as sweeping social, political, and economic changes took on tangible local forms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Germans across Central Europe sought to shape their impact, to conceive their significance in local terms, and to direct those changes towards local ends. At the same time, they recognized that those changes connected them and their localities to the larger communities of states and nations. And they conceived of their own efforts to shape localities as an important part of the larger effort to create a modern German society. Modern German history is the story of diversity – irreducible to a single state, territory, or identity.46 German regions in the imperial era retained distinct characters and identities – they still do today – but they did so in interaction with each other and with larger state, national, and international developments rather than as the result of persistent isolation. Nor was the nature of that interaction consistent across time and space. At certain historical moments, Saxons perceived their state as a model of modern industrial society. At other moments they understood themselves as worthy objects of aid and compassion from Germans elsewhere. In the late nineteenth century, Saxons described their state as a distinct actor in international markets and communities. By the 1930s they declared it a national periphery. Such evidence suggests that we may benefit from viewing localism in the same way that Rogers Brubaker has suggested scholars should view nationhood,47 as something dynamic. Localism in German history has always enjoyed a complicated relationship with the state, the nation, and the individual, and because of that dynamism and complexity, localism has proved persistently meaningful.

NOTES 1 Friedrich Hermann Löscher, ‘Geleitwort,’ in Kalender für das Erzgebirge und Vogtland (Dresden, 1905). 2 This is the same period in which tourism spread in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Saxony’s close neighbour, Bohemia, and in areas of Ger-

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3

4

5 6 7

8

9 10 11

12

many outside the very earliest tourist destinations such as the Rhine. For Austria, see József Böröcz, Leisure Migration: A Sociological Study on Tourism (Oxford, 1996), 63–6. Both the Erzgebirgsverein and the Gebirgsverein für die sächsisch-böhmische Schweiz were founded in 1878, marking the beginnings of institutionalized Heimat promotion in the region. See Andreas Martin, ‘Der Fremdenverkehr in der Sächsischen Schweiz: Zu offenen Fragen der Entdeckung und Entwicklung einer touristischen Landschaft bis 1914,’ Volkskunde in Sachsen 7 (Dresden, 1999): 90. Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1997); Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990). Lusatia: Organ einer Anzahl touristischer und naturwissenschaftlicher Vereine der Lausitz und der zunächst angrenzenden Theile Böhmens 2, no. 7 (July 1886): 54. Lusatia 1, no. 7 (July 1884): 50; Lusatia 1, no. 11 (Nov. 1884): 82; Lusatia 3, no. 2 (Feb. 1887): 9–11. Lusatia 2, no. 9 (Sept. 1886): 70; Alon Confino has written more extensively about the significance of Sedan Day celebrations of Germany’s unification and their connection to Heimat movements and regional identities. See Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor. For example, see Andrea Komlosy, Grenze und ungleiche regionale Entwicklung. Binnenmarkt und Migration in der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna, 2003), 77–82; and John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State (New York, 2000), 75–92. Erich Berger, ‘Die nationale und konfessionelle Gefüge der Bevölkerung im Königreich Sachsen,’ PhD diss., University of Leipzig, 1912, 27. Philipp Weigel, ‘Das Sächsische Sibirien. Sein Wirtschaftsleben,’ PhD diss., University of Leipzig, 1907, 41–5. Hartmut Berghoff, ‘Harmonicas for the World: The Creation and Marketing of a Global Product,’ in The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War, ed. Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (London, 2000), 322. Lusatia 1, no. 7 (July 1885): 54; Statní okresní archiv D¨ôín (SOA D¨ôín), Turnverein VDF no. 23, June 1910, Feb. 1910, Feb. 1911, June 1911; Nordböhmische Touristen-Zeitung 4, no. 3 (1 Mar. 1889): 48; Saxon and Bohemian Heimatler also compared themselves to one another in order to assess their successes and shortcomings in promoting regional tourism. See ‘Berichte aus unseren Bergen,’ Lusatia 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1885): 5; Kalender für das Erzgebirge und das übrige Sachsen (1909): 69. For inclusion of Bohemia in Saxon tourist guides, see Erzgebirgsverein Chemnitz, Verzeichnis von Sommerfrischen im

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14

15 16 17 18 19

20

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Erzgebirge (Leipzig, 1891); Erzgebirgsverein Ortsgruppe Sebnitz, Vereinsund Wander-Kalender auf das Jahr 1913 (Sebnitz, 1913); Press- und VerkehrsAusschuss des Erzgebirgsvereins, Verzeichnis von Sommer-Wohnungen im Erzgebirge (Schwarzenberg and Schneeberg, 1901); Gebirgsverein für die Sächsische Schweiz, Ratgeber bei der Auswahl von Sommerwohnungen (Pirna, 1902). Guidebooks connecting the Saxon Switzerland to its Bohemian counterpart pre-dated Heimat movements and organized tourism; see H.E. Maukisch, Die Sächsische und Böhmische Schweiz. Ein treuer Wegweiser zu allen Sehenswürdigkeiten dieses Hochlandes (Leipzig, 1841). Rudolf Forberger, Die Industrielle Revolution in Sachsen 1800–1861, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1982); Frank B. Tipton, Regional Variations in the Economic Development of Germany during the Nineteenth Century (Middletown, Conn., 1976), 30–8; Hubert Kiesewetter, ‘Bevölkerung, Erwerbstätige und Landwirtschaft im Königreich Sachsen 1815–1871,’ in Region and Industrialisation, ed. Sidney Pollard (Göttingen, 1980), 91–2, 94, 96. In her work on the Oberlausitz, Jean Quataert has dubbed these people ‘worker peasantries.’ Jean H. Quataert, ‘The Politics of Rural Industrialization: Class, Gender and Collective Protest in the Saxon Oberlausitz of the Late Nineteenth Century,’ Central European History 20, no. 2 (1987): 91–124. Kalender für das Erzgebirge und Vogtland, 1905, 1911, 1914, 1916. Hans Siegert, ‘Verkannte Heimatkunst,’ in Kalender für das Erzgebirge und Vogtland, 1905. ‘Zu unseren Landschaftsbildern,’ in Kalender für das Erzgebirge und Vogtland, 1910: 64. Weigel, ‘Das Sächsische Sibirien,’ vii. Alon Confino discusses Heimat thought in terms of historical memory, suggesting that it was a rethinking of the past in response to changing circumstances; see Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor. Although ideas of history and tradition were central to many Heimat movements, in the Saxon case at least some participants seem to have focused as much on the contemporary circumstances and their region’s future as they did on its past. P. Kruschwitz, ‘Nathanael Gottfried Leske und seine Reise durch die Oberlausitz,’ Lusatia 3, no. 3 (Mar. 1887): 17. Some historians have characterized Heimat movements as critiques levelled by non-industrialized regions against industrialization and modernity. For example, see Siegfried Weichlein, ‘Saxons into Germans: The Progress of the National Idea in Saxony after 1866,’ in Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830–1933, ed. James Retallack (Ann Arbor, 2000), 169–70; and Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Nationalismus – Regionalismus – Lokalismus: Aspekte der Erinnerungskultur im Spiegel von Publizistik und Denkmal,’ in Lieux de

212 Caitlin Murdock

21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32 33 34 35

mémoire, Erringerungsorte: D’un mod°le francais à un projet allemand, ed. Étienne François (Berlin 1996), 57. Siegfried Sieber, Studien zur Industriegeschichte des Erzgebirges (Cologne, 1967), 23, 38–45, 101; Weigel, ‘Das Sächsische Sibirien,’ 89–96. Jill Steward, ‘Tourism in Late Imperial Austria: The Development of Tourist Cultures and Their Associated Images of Place,’ in Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America, ed. Shelley Baranowski and Ellen Furlough (Ann Arbor, 2001), 114. In 1909 tourism proponents in Dresden had complained that businesspeople did not understand the importance of tourism and therefore did too little to attract it. See Stadtarchiv Dresden, 13.13 Fremdenverkehrsverein 1: 41. Sieber, Studien zur Industriegeschichte, 11; Caitlin E. Murdock, ‘“The Leaky Boundaries of Man-made States”’: National Identity, State Policy, and Everyday Life in the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands, 1870–1938,’ PhD diss., Stanford University, 2003, 138–43. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden (hereafter SächsHStA Dresden), Amtshauptmannschaft (hereafter AH) Schwarzenberg 127: 16, 28, 29, 50, 66. Hermann Gebhardt, ‘Naturschutz in der Sächsischen Schweiz,’ in Kalender für das Erzgebirge und das übrige Sachsen (Dresden, 1922), 36. Stadtarchiv Dresden, 13.13 Fremdenverkehrsverein 1: 154. Curt Müller, ‘Der Wald als Natur- und Kulturlandschaft,’ in Kalender für das Erzgebirge und das übrige Sachsen (Dresden, 1925), 23–9. The Bastei is a famous rock outcropping in the Saxon Switzerland. R.H. Viehbach, ‘Zur Entwicklung der Turistik im Sächsischen Felsengebirge,’ Der Fahrtgesell. Halbmonatsschrift für Natur und Heimat, Wandern, Bergsteigen, Schneelauf 1, no. 17 (15 Oct. 1925): 257. SächsHStaA Dresden, AH Schwarzenberg 127: 1. Indeed, the idea that visitors wanted nature, but in a comfortable and domesticated form, was widespread by the early twentieth century. See David Blackbourn, ‘Taking the Waters: Meeting Places of the Fashionable World,’ in The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War, ed. Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (Oxford, 2001), 444. SächsHStA Dresden, Staatskanzelei-Zeitungsausschnittsammlung 1159, Stuttgarter Tageblatt, 2 June 1934. A. von Schultz, ‘Die Spielwarenindustrie,’ in Kalender für das Erzgebirge und das übrige Sachsen (Dresden, 1925), 33–6; Neue Leipziger Zeitung, 1 Oct. 1935. SächsHStA Dresden, AH Annaberg 592: 53; H. Funke, ‘Auf einsamen Pfaden ins Weihnachtsland,’ Der Fahrtgesell 2, no. 20 (1926): 312. SächsHStA Dresden, Staatskanzelei-Zeitungsausschnittsammlung 1159,

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36 37 38

39 40 41

42

43 44 45

46

47

213

‘Glückhafte Fahrt ins Weihnachtsland,’ Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, 5 Dec. 1935. SächsHStA Dresden, AH Schwarzenberg 127: 189, 199; AH Schwarzenberg 1942: 56. SächsHStaA Dresden, AH Auerbach 78; AH Annaberg 592; AH Schwarzenberg 183. See, for example, Der Freiheitskampf, 10 Aug. 1933: 7; Oswin Poetschke, ‘Sachsen als Teil der deutschen Ostfront,’ in Sachsen als Grenzland, ed. Friedrich Grosch (Leipzig, 1936); Ernst Neef, ‘Der sächsisch-böhmische Grenzraum,’ Zeitschrift für Erdkunde 5, nos. 9/10 (1937): 407–8. This was in part an adoption of ideas developed through the Ostforschung movement that described Germany’s eastern borders, especially those with Poland, as bulwarks against the Slavs. Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (New York, 1988), 3–39. SächsHStA Dresden, Staatskanzelei-Zeitungsausschnittsammlung 1159, Adorfer Grenzbote, 25 July 1934. Shelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (New York, 2004), 120–1. SächsHStA Dresden, Erzgebirgsverein 1: 1, 26, 29. Such changes appear not to have met with great resistance. As Thomas Schaarschmidt shows, the Erzgebirgsverein saw cooperation with Nazism as an opportunity to expand its own activities. Schaarschmidt, Regionalkultur und Diktatur. Sächsische Heimatbewegung und Heimat-Propaganda im Dritten Reich und in der SBZ/DDR (Weimar, 2004), 62. Such Gleichschaltung took place in social as well as political organizations all over Germany. Detlev Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life (New Haven, 1987), 98–100. David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (Oxford, 1993). Applegate, Nation of Provincials. Pieter Judson, ‘‘‘Every German visitor has a völkisch obligation he must fulfill”: Nationalism Tourism in the Austrian Empire, 1880–1918,’ in Histories of Leisure, ed. Rudy Koshar (New York, 2002), 148–9. James J. Sheehan, ‘What Is German History? Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography,’ Journal of Modern History 53 (1981): 1–23. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (New York, 1996).

9 The Borderland in the Child: National Hermaphrodism and Pedagogical Activism in the Bohemian Lands tara zahra

In the late summer of 1918, Robert Scheu, a prominent Social Democrat and journalist from Austria, toured Bohemia with a mission to investigate national conflict in a so-called exotic ‘borderland’ society. ‘I wish to experience the national question in Bohemia, as a tourist,’ he wrote. ‘To this end, I wish to travel along stretches of the language frontier, then to cast a glance into the Czech areas, and finally to go to Prague, after having studied the periphery. I wish to talk with burghers, peasants, teachers, village priests, and politicians, and at the same time to absorb the unique qualities of the countryside and of the towns, and thus to gain intuition that cannot be gained from books and reports. Above all I am interested in how the national struggle manifests itself in the life of the individual, what stands behind the slogan as concrete contents, and what effects the struggle has had.’1 Scheu’s interest in the ‘national question’ in Bohemia in 1918 was hardly surprising, as only months later the Austrian Empire collapsed into self-declared nation states. Also unsurprising was his conviction that the essence of national character and the wellsprings of nationalist conflict could best be observed on the socalled language frontiers (Sprachgrenze / hranice) in Bohemia, where German-speakers and Czech-speakers allegedly rubbed together in perpetual conflict. The local language frontier, in the view of many nationalists, was ultranational: a place where national conflict and national character were thrown into sharp relief through daily struggles between Germans and Czechs on the streets, in shops, restaurants, and hotels, in city hall and railroad stations, in local associations, and, above all, in the home and schools. Scheu’s view of linguistic borderlands will sound familiar to historians of regionalism and nationalism in other parts of Europe, who have

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observed the multiple ways in which localities and regions often came to embody an imagined national community. Historians such as Peter Sahlins have explored how national identities came to be articulated precisely on the ‘borderland’ or periphery of the nation in an earlier period.2 Borderlands in East Central Europe have recently drawn growing attention from scholars, on the assumption that national identities and nationalist conflict emerged through everyday encounters with real or imagined Others in these liminal regions. And yet this representation of the language frontier as a wellspring of national conflict has always competed with another nationalist perspective on borderland societies. Although Scheu set out to discover how the ‘national struggle’ shaped individual lives along the language frontiers in Bohemia, at the local level he often found the opposite of national polarization: individuals who blithely ignored nationalists’ insistence that they remain loyal to one, and only one, national community. In the Bohemian town of Prachatice/Prachatitz, for example, he observed: ‘There is always a great deal of agitation during the holidays because of the schools. Both nations attempt to win students over for their schools, and not always with the most honest tactics. Some families send their children alternately to the Czech school one year and the German school the next.’3 Clearly, Scheu encountered plenty of engaged nationalists in Prachatice/Prachatitz. But the local targets of this activism did not always share nationalists’ priorities. Scheu also encountered many people who spoke more than one language at home and many parents who chose schools for their children based on whichever school offered better lunches and free textbooks rather than on nationalist convictions. If the local borderland was alleged to be a site of intense nationalist struggle in everyday life, Scheu, like other nationalist contemporaries in the late Austrian Empire, soon discovered that it was also a site of bilingualism, side-switching, opportunism, and indifference to nationalism. According to many nationalist observers, the ambiguous qualities of borderland societies were most strikingly evident in children. Thanks to their allegedly impressionable natures, nationalists projected onto children all the promise and danger of the borderland. While turn-ofthe-century nationalists insisted that all children were either authentic Germans or Czechs by ‘nature’ or birth, they also constantly obsessed that impressionable youth could be Germanized or Czechified by education in a bilingual milieu. This seemingly contradictory view reflected nationalists’ understanding of national identity as the product

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of both nature and nurture. Thus, the boundary between ‘Czechness’ and ‘Germanness’ seemed to run directly through the hearts and minds of these children. In Prachatice/Prachatitz, Scheu recalled, ‘One day I was brought a two-year-old little girl, clearly a clever child, who alternatively spoke German and Czech, and both completely flawlessly. The little child never once mixed the two languages, as if each was kept in a separate chamber of the brain. Here is a subject for the psychologists!’4 This essay explores how local ‘borderlands’ were imagined and politicized through the pedagogical activism of nationalists in the late Austrian Empire. Often the history of the borderland in East Central Europe is understood (and pathologized) as a story of escalating nationalist tension that culminated in the violence of ethnic cleansing. The history of nationalist activism around children in linguistically mixed regions questions the claims about popular identity that underlie this narrative. Nationalist conflict over children in the Bohemian lands rarely pitted Czechs against Germans in a world of national polarization. Rather, battles over who was Czech and who was German raged in a world of national ambiguity. The hard work of nationalists, much more than abstract processes of state-building or modernization, made Czechs and Germans out of bilingual children in the Bohemian lands.5 Linguistically Neutral Hermaphrodites As nationalists in the late Austrian Empire competed to claim as many children as possible for their national communities, they produced a unique vision of Heimat. Celia Applegate, Alon Confino, and Jennifer Jenkins have analysed how the concept of Heimat served to mediate between local and national political cultures in Germany.6 In the Bohemian lands, Heimat activism also served as a pedagogical strategy to bridge the gap between nationalists’ territorial claims on villages, towns, territory, and people, on the one hand, and the more ambiguous social relations within local bilingual societies, on the other. Through their pedagogical activism, both German and Czech nationalists inscribed the nation onto the locality and local social relations. They recast in nationalist terms local histories, local culture, local geography, and the daily experiences of the families who lived in bilingual regions. Nationalists hoped that their pedagogical activism would transform the indifferent, bilingual borderland children of today into the committed nationalist activists of tomorrow. In the process, Czech and German nationalists alike represented local borderlands as simultaneously

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ultranational and subnational. Borderland societies were ultranational in that they were alleged to be the places in which nationalist values were most fully realized. They were simultaneously subnational in that they were represented as sites of national malleability and indifference. As Pieter Judson has argued, the borders about which nationalists in the Austrian Empire were most concerned were not those between Austria and Germany. Nationalists instead mobilized around imagined linguistic frontiers, regions in which more than one language was spoken.7 In the early twentieth century, very few German nationalists in the Bohemian lands would have seen themselves as part of a German diaspora with a common homeland in Germany. The loyalties of German and Czech nationalists alike resided firmly with the supranational Habsburg dynasty and state. The Austrian state, in turn, facilitated the local activism of nationalists. For example, borderlands like Prachatice/ Prachatitz began to appear in nationalist rhetoric more and more often after 1880, when the Austrian state census began to poll its citizens about their ‘language of everyday use.’ Many families in the Bohemian lands would have been bilingual, which, significantly, they could not record on the census, or they would have been indifferent to nationality. Neither circumstance stopped nationalists from using the results of the census to count and map the nation in new ways, making claims on territory and people based on the languages people spoke.8 Hence, the very idea of the borderland or Sprachgrenze was the product of a nationalist world view. Whereas the concept assumed the coming together or mixing of two autonomous, distinct, parts, Czechs and Germans, in fact, nationalist mobilization in bilingual regions was often driven by the very lack of identifiable Czechs and Germans. As nationalists sought to eliminate the perceived ‘borderland’ in children’s souls, they vigorously denounced parents who pursued a bilingual education for their children. This stance signalled the important role of language in defining the boundaries of the German and Czech nations. As Peter Bugge has argued, by 1900 few substantial religious, cultural, or social differences separated self-described Germans from Czechs in the Bohemian lands.9 Because little besides language use actually differentiated the two national communities, nationalists feared that a child who spoke both languages could too easily be ‘Germanized’ or ‘Czechified’ and thereby lost to the nation. Parents who sought to raise their children to be bilingual, these activists claimed, were wilfully ignorant of their own national identities and their children’s best interests. For example, Jan Kapras, a Czech nationalist

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teacher and pedagogical activist in Brno/Brünn, mobilized against bilingual education following the 1880 Austrian census. He claimed that the census had revealed a dangerous child-rearing practice: parents speaking both German and Czech to their children in the home. Many parents in the Bohemian lands apparently registered different languages for different children in their households in the census, claiming that one child spoke German and another spoke Czech when both languages were spoken. Kapras insisted that these families produced children who threatened the very social order: ‘This is the class of linguistically neutral hermaphrodites, who sail to any wind, calling themselves Czech here, German there, and who are educated constantly to go back on their word.’10 Not surprisingly, nationalist campaigns to eliminate bilingualism and national hermaphrodism often failed miserably. For example, well into the inter-war period, parents in the Bohemian lands sent their children to live with families who spoke the other provincial language for the summer or the school year, for the purpose of learning the second language. In 1907 the Czech Nationalist Union of Northern Bohemia launched an aggressive propaganda campaign against the practice, called Kindertausch in German or handl in Czech. Ironically, however, the Union could not even convince local nationalists that bilingualism was dangerous to their children. ‘This nuisance is so widespread in the countryside,’ one of its members complained, ‘that even local notables participate with a clean conscience. They sit on the leadership committees of the local National Union of Northern Bohemia, Czech School Association, and other nationalist associations and send their children on exchanges to German schools. They justify it with the argument that the Germans also send their children to the Czech schools.’11 Classifying Borderland Children The Austrian state inadvertently empowered nationalists to expand their claims on both children and territory with the Imperial School Law (1869), which guaranteed citizens a primary education in their native language. If the parents of forty children within a four-kilometre radius demanded a primary school in a recognized language, the state was obliged to provide one. The result of this law’s passage was intense local nationalist competition to create new Czech or German minority schools and to fill them with students, regardless of their linguistic skills or national affiliations. These schools served as the most prominent

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physical symbols of nationalists’ claims on local borderland societies and borderland children. However, while municipalities were obliged to build and fund minority schools whenever the requisite forty parents demanded one, local nationalists on both sides of the national divide worked hard to obstruct the process. In 1909, for example, in Marianské Hory /Marienberg in Moravia, local Czech school authorities refused to build a German minority school. They insisted that the parents who had petitioned for the school, claiming to be Germans, were actually Czechs – Czechs, moreover, who had been pressured by their Prussian employer to declare themselves Germans or risk losing their jobs. In their complaint, local Czech officials conceded that the parents petitioning for the school could speak German and considered themselves Germans. According to those officials, the parents were no less Czech: ‘There is certainly a great difference between those who learn to speak German and those who belong to the German nation.’12 Czech nationalists in the Austrian Empire and inter-war Czechoslovakia often used the locality as a site for assessing ‘authentic’ national identity. These nationalists argued that rather than determining nationality based on self- identification, it was necessary to consider only ‘objective characteristics,’ including the nationality of parents and grandparents, languages spoken, voting habits, the nationality of social contacts, associational memberships, and reading habits. German officials, in contrast, typically rejected Czech demands for minority schools with the elitist claim that the Czech minorities in their midst consisted of an unstable population of migrant workers, servants, or railway officials who were ‘artificially’ imported into their communities.13 German officials in the northwestern Bohemian town of Podmokly/Bodenbach, located close to the German border, thus refused to build a Czech school on the grounds that the Czech minority consisted of a ‘fluctuating collection of splinters from the nation, who have no desire to take up permanent residence here.’ This Czech minority, argued the town authorities, could not be compared to the ‘German language islands of Budweis [Bohemia], Iglau [Moravia] or Gottschee [Carniola] or the longestablished indigenous, German minorities in Prague and Pilsen [Bohemia] with their towering economic importance.’14 Such arguments reflected German nationalists’ wishful thinking more than the realities of migration in the late Habsburg Empire. But these disputes illustrate how both Czech and German nationalists ascribed national identities to specific places and people and invoked nationalized views of local social relations. Thus, nationalists claimed that German employers, landlords,

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and teachers pressured parents into Germanizing or Czechifying their children; that an individual’s nationality could be ascertained based on his or her location in a local social and cultural landscape; and that the geographic places themselves could be claimed as either ‘German’ or ‘Czech’ based on their cultural and economic ‘quality.’ Parents’ own responses to nationalist claims on their children reveal the tensions between nationalist representations of borderland societies and local social and cultural realities. In 1905 German and Czech politicians in Moravia signed the Moravian Compromise into law. The Compromise was intended to ameliorate national tensions in the province by segregating the population – not territorially, but administratively – into two national cadastres or lists. Henceforth, Czech citizens were to vote in a Czech cadastre, German citizens in a German cadastre. Children, moreover, were permitted to attend a school only if they were ‘proficient in the language of instruction.’ Local school boards were entitled to ‘reclaim’ children from the schools of the national ‘enemy’ each autumn, if they believed the children could not speak the language of instruction. After 1910 a parent could enrol his or her children in a school even if they did not speak the language, as long as the school corresponded to the children’s nationality. This law resulted in bitter disputes in Austria’s highest courts over the national identities of thousands of children and parents, whose own claims to be ‘German’ were disputed by local Czech school officials. Through these battles, parents eventually lost the very right to choose a national affiliation. Children and parents were increasingly assigned to national communities based on ‘objective characteristics’ such as language use, descent, social and political contacts, and reading habits, rather than on personal self-identification.15 In practice, as a first step in the implementation of this new policy, the parents of a ‘reclaimed’ child were typically required to fill out a survey. Parents’ responses reveal that many of the nationally contested children came from families with mixed marriages, had been raised in bilingual families, or had parents who had lived for many years in Vienna or Lower Austria.16 The questionnaires presumed both that social commitments measured identity and that every individual belonged to one national community or the other. These biases towards national voices reflected at the local level a larger transformation in the Austrian state. As Jeremy King has suggested, the non-national or supranational state increasingly became multinational after the turn of the century, institu-

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tionalizing nationality in its attempts to defuse nationalist conflict.17 In this case, the state’s perceived task was not to encourage non-national loyalties, but rather to determine whether parents had honestly declared to which community they belonged. The questionnaires began by asking: ‘To which nationality do you profess?’ but quickly moved on to family lineage, demanding the names, language abilities, nationality, and residence of the contested child’s grandparents. The surveys asked parents whether they had attended German or Czech schools and which language they used in family circles and in social life as children and adults. Next parents were required to provide information about ‘official’ markers of nationality, for example, Which language had their parents declared in the census of 1910? or In which voting cadastre were their parents registered? Finally, parents were questioned about whether they belonged to German or Czech associations, whether they were ‘otherwise active in public life in national relationships,’ and ‘in which direction’ such activity took place. We rarely get to hear the voices of the ordinary people who were the targets of nationalist activism in the early twentieth century. Often we can only detect the existence of less-nationalized families in the exasperated diatribes of nationalists themselves.18 These surveys, by contrast, open a window on how parents understood their own linguistic and national affiliations. For example, in response to the simple question ‘What was the nationality of your parents?’ many parents in the socalled German-language island of Jihlava/Iglau were evasive. Franz Rous answered that he could not say much about his parents’ national loyalties. He declared that he was German and that he spoke mostly German at home, but also that he had declared Czech as his language of daily life in the 1910 census and had been registered on the Czech voting list. Josef Vostal testified, ‘I don’t profess to any nationality,’ and he insisted that his parents had not belonged to a nation either. Franz Raus declared that his parents belonged to the Catholic nationality. Often the objective characteristics recorded by the surveys appeared to conflict with one another and undermine a binary understanding of national identity. Josef Tours, for example, reported that his parents were Czech, that both German and Czech were spoken without preference in his home, that he had listed German as his language of daily life in the census of 1910 but voted in the Czech cadastre in 1911, that his wife was German, and that he considered himself a German.19 Parents’ testimony also suggests just how new the concept of national

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identity was for many Moravian citizens, even in the last decade of the Habsburg monarchy, when historians typically claim the Empire was torn asunder by nationalism. In one rather extraordinary case, a parent actively contested the reclamation of his child all the way up to the Austrian Supreme Administrative Court, which was responsible for the final determination of cases involving contested reclamations of children. This parent’s strategies reflected many of the dynamics that characterized nationalist mobilization in bilingual borderland societies more broadly. In 1910 Anna Lehar, daughter of a grocer in the bilingual town of Hohenstadt/Záb“eh in Moravia, was reclaimed from a German school by local Czech authorities. Her father, Johann Lehar, appealed the reclamation on the grounds that he was a member of the German nation and therefore had the right to send his daughter to a German school. In a petition addressed to the supreme court, Lehar actually invoked the alleged national ambiguity of the borderland to rebut local nationalists who insisted he was really a Czech. He argued: ‘Along the language frontier, it is common for many families of purely German descent to have become Czech, and for many families of purely Czech descent to have become German over time, and to have joined the German nation. It is completely impossible to determine whether my ancestors were of Germanic or Slavic origins. The various professions of nationality made by my ancestors, as well as their various linguistic competencies, would in any case have been different at different points in time. Feelings alone are decisive in measuring whether one belongs to one or the other nation, and this cannot be determined through the procedures of a court.’20 Lehar’s appeal was overruled. The court deemed him to be Czech, and his daughter was required to attend a Czech school. But his appeal reflects the multiple and contradictory ways in which the idea of the borderland was invoked in the late Austrian Empire. Lehar spoke in nationalist terms when he described families of ‘purely German descent’ or ‘purely Czech descent’ being Czechified or Germanized over time. But he also emphasized the impossibility of objective national ascription in a local world populated by national hermaphrodites and side-switchers. His case thus reflects both a discursive nationalization of the borderland as well as a more complicated local social world, in which ordinary people often stood between national communities. Finally, Lehar’s appeal to the court suggests the ways in which parents themselves deployed ideas about national hermaphrodism for their own ends.

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Orphans Colonize the Borderland As nationalists sought to assert their claims on borderland societies and children, they developed new methods that extended their influence outside schoolhouse walls. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, nationalists began to establish orphan ‘colonies’ – settlements of ten to fifteen children in nationally ‘endangered’ regions. These colonies were intended both to assert a territorial claim on nationally contestd borderlands and to secure the national loyalties of children who might otherwise be ‘lost’ to the nation through education in an orphanage or foster home of the national ‘enemy.’ Not coincidentally, orphan colonies also served to boost enrolments in local German and Czech schools that appeared to be threatened by declining enrolments. The nationalist Union of Germans in Bohemia (Bund der Deutschen in Böhmen) established the first German orphan colony in the fiercely contested village of T“ebenice/Trebnitz in Bohemia in 1898. Children in the colony were raised in ‘families’ of ten children each.21 Other nationalist associations soon followed suit and created their own programs to colonize the language frontiers with orphans. At the beginning of the 1909/10 school year, for example, the German School Association received disturbing news from the director of the local German school in the village of Pavlov/Pawlow in Moravia. The tiny German-speaking population in the town appeared to be in steady decline, and the number of children enrolled in the school had slipped dangerously below the critical mass required to retain state funding. The School Association responded by establishing a colony of German orphans in the town, in order to boost the local German population. ‘On the 14th of October a colony of ten children was created in Pawlow and placed under the oversight of our school directors, thereby securing the existence of the school,’ the German school association proudly reported in its newspaper.22 Orphans, probably imported from predominantly Czech municipal orphanages in cities such as Prague, had saved the day for German nationalists. On the eve of the First World War nationalist voluntary associations had founded 45 orphan colonies altogether in Moravia, 29 Czech colonies with 397 children, and 16 German colonies with 252 children. In Bohemia the nationalist German Provincial Commission for Child Welfare cared for 1367 children in 8 colonies and 9 institutions in 1913, while the Czech Provincial Commission for Child Welfare raised 574 children in its orphanages and homes in that year.23 In his remarks at

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the Grand Opening celebration of a new German nationalist orphanage in Dolní T“eš¸ovec /Nieder-Johnsdorf, a local village official and leader of the Union of Germans in Bohemia, Adolf Hübl, insisted that orphans in Bohemia had previously faced a sad and difficult life. ‘We should never tire of remembering how German villages mercilessly sold their orphans off to Czech villages,’ he declared, describing ‘how children were left with broken limbs, how others had to wander from farmer to farmer in order to beg for their daily bread or a place to sleep in a horse stall, how children lacked sufficient nourishment or dental hygiene, and how others entered our care with lice, bruises, and open wounds. And we demanded from such children love for humanity, love for the nation!’24 The new orphanage, Hübl predicted, would not only offer these children the most modern facilities and flawless care, but also establish a strong territorial claim on the village. That claim, he predicted, would form a ‘powerful wall against which the Czech onslaught will ricochet helplessly, with a foundation so strong that no Czech flood can wash it away.’25 To this end, Hübl hoped that the institution would ultimately expand into a ‘small village’ of orphans composed of ten homes, each housing twenty children. But Czech nationalists were just as eager to use orphans to tip the demographic balance on the so-called language frontiers of the Bohemian lands. In an appeal for funds to build new Czech orphanages in 1913, one Czech nationalist warned, ‘Every day children are lost to us in orphanages, where they are given a piece of bread with one hand and robbed of their mother tongue with the other.’26 The movement to build nationalist orphanages and orphan colonies reflected nationalists’ profound mistrust of parents’ loyalties and of their national discipline in bilingual regions. Beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, German nationalists actively campaigned to save orphans for the nation by matching German-speaking orphans with suitable ‘German’ foster parents. For example, in 1909, before sending children to their new homes, the German Provincial Commission for Child Welfare in Bohemia issued foster parents the following stern instructions: ‘Raise the child to possess an inner, self-sacrificing love of their nation! If you are not in a position to make our child into a loyal, true German comrade, who is proud to be a German, then you are not called upon to raise our foster child.’27 Unfortunately, very few parents lived up to these lofty nationalist expectations. Too many German-speaking foster parents failed to abide

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by their promise to raise good nationalists, and nationalists claimed that sometimes they even contributed to the ‘Czechification’ of ‘German’ orphans. The complaint of the Union of Germans in Bohemia in 1909 was typical: ‘Where were we to find the degree of understanding which we required, when a strictly national upbringing was a near miracle even among our own erstwhile national comrades?’28 The nationalist association Südmark shared these concerns. Foster parents, its members argued, ‘often fail for the national purpose, or are at the very least insufficient. And it is around this end that all of child-rearing should be oriented.’29 Nationalists therefore came to see collective institutions such as orphanages and orphan colonies as an attractive alternative to placing children with foster parents, who seemed prone to neglect their duties both to the nation and to the children in their care.30 The members of the Südmark concluded: ‘Institutions that can take in a greater number of heads and be run in a unified nationalist spirit are necessary, in order that nationalist concerns are not neglected.’31 Through orphan settlements, nationalists pursued their goals of anchoring borderland children to a single national community and asserting local territorial claims at the same time. Collective education in nationalist orphanages, moreover, promised to reconcile tensions between nationalists’ romantic depictions of the borderland as quintessentially national and activists’ lingering anxieties about the perceived indifference and apathy of local parents towards the nationalist agenda. The Heimat in Our Souls While nationalist child-welfare activists sought to save children in the care of nationally indifferent parents from the dangers of Germanization or Czechification, German nationalist Heimat activists in the Bohemian lands developed other strategies to bridge the gap between nationalists’ polemical claims on borderland communities and popular indifference to nationalism. Heimat activists attempted to use the space provided by the nationally segregated primary school systems in Bohemia and Moravia to integrate German-speakers from the working class and peasantry into the German nation. Nationalist pedagogical activists and teachers soon became regular contributors to the magazines of nationalist associations such as the Union of Germans in Bohemia, the German School Association, and the Südmark. They published extensively in the Austrian school-reform publication Creative Work and Art in the School (Schaffende Arbeit und Kunst in der Schule), as well as in a

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Moravian school reform magazine, the German School-Warden (Deutsche Schulwart). The concerns of Heimat activists in the Austrian Empire were similar in many respects to those of Heimat movements in Germany. Heimat pedagogy was relentlessly modernizing and civilizing; nationalists were especially intent on improving the taste, culture, and housekeeping skills of German-speakers, in order to render them more authentically German.32 These nationalists sought to adapt to the demands of mass politics by expanding the boundaries of the national community. They sought to increase the number of people who would agitate, donate funds, and vote for the benefit of the German nationalist cause. At the same time, however, they did not want to compromise an elitist image of Germans as culture-bearers (Kulturträger) in Central Europe. German nationalist Heimat activists in the Bohemian lands simultaneously sought to ward off the alleged threat of Czechification by harnessing children firmly to a German cultural milieu and by asserting the authentic ‘German’ character of borderland regions and their inhabitants. The origins of the Heimat education movement fit squarely within a broader European progressive education movement at the turn of the century. Progressive pedagogical reformers insisted that children learned best through active engagement and play in their immediate environments, gradually building from concrete local relationships to abstract reason. The teachers and activists in the Heimat movement eagerly appropriated these ideas for the German nationalist cause. They redefined children’s ‘immediate environment’ in radically nationalist terms. As Josef Blau explained in 1919, ‘The central work of the teacher exists in the discovery of relationships between the Heimat and the curriculum and the creation of points of emotional connection. Written language can only be taught in connection with the perceptions and vocabulary of the children, history can only be effectively taught in relationship to the local traditions which live in the nation and in youth.’33 In 1911 many of the reforms proposed by Heimat education reformers were institutionalized in the state-sanctioned curriculum for German elementary schools in Bohemia. For example, the new curriculum unified all branches of social-studies instruction from grades three through five under the rubric of Heimatkunde.34 Whereas Heimat activists insisted that curricula had to be grounded in concrete experiences in the child’s immediate environment, the ‘organic’ Heimat promoted by these nationalists was often defined in highly idealized and abstract terms. Nationalist education reformers

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depicted Heimat as an autonomous and nationally homogeneous homeland – a reality that hardly described children’s actual communities. In fact, these activists were not always so confident that the ‘immediate’ surroundings of the home and local Heimat on the language frontier provided an ideal setting for a nationalist upbringing. Specifically, Heimat reformers promoted paradoxical views regarding the role of women and mothers in the national community. On the one hand, these nationalists represented mothers as the critical reproducers of national culture in the home, who would inculcate German nationalist loyalties and habits in their children by reading them German fairy tales, singing German songs, and cooking German foods.35 Above all, German women were to embrace bourgeois habits of domesticity and hygiene as well as middle-class ‘German’ standards of taste. Nationalists urged German mothers to speak only German at home and to send their children exclusively to German schools. This nationalist vision of Germanness as a set of rules for good housekeeping had parallels in other German colonial settings, especially after 1918. As Lora Wildenthal has argued, popular imperialist associations in Weimar Germany emphasized a gendered, cultural ‘civilizing’ mission in the east, in lieu of military occupation overseas.36 Heimat activists, like other nationalist pedagogical activists, were nonetheless animated by a more fundamental distrust of parents’ nationalist loyalties and cultural attributes on the language frontier. For example, pedagogical reformers and nationalist associations demanded that kindergartens and nurseries fill the gaps left by absent or inadequately ‘German’ mothers. The reformers’ aim was to ensure that ‘dependence and linguistic confusion’ were not ‘established in children's hearts in their earliest youth.’37 The German School Association explicitly promoted kindergartens and nurseries to protect young children between the ages of three and six from what they called the ‘dangers of the street’ – by which they meant the danger that children would pick up the Czech language from the neighbours’ children.38 These concerns reveal that nationalists were not always as confident as they claimed to be when they argued that the ‘immediate,’ local surroundings of the home and local Heimat provided an ideal setting for a nationalist upbringing. On a broader level, nationalist Heimat activists constantly bemoaned the vulgar nature of peasant taste in household objects and decor, even as they also extolled the national authenticity of life in rural borderlands. One of the most outspoken advocates of this pedagogy was Ernst

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Heywang, who wrote two handbooks for teachers on rural education. One of these focused explicitly on the role of art in the rural German school, but in both Heywang took the reader on a critical tour through the peasant household. He began with the telling observation, ‘One would often almost like to wish that there were no furnishings there at all.’39 Besides inadequacies in taste, Heywang and others discussed peasants’ ignorance of proper hygiene, complaining that cleanliness was not yet a natural instinct for the peasant. ‘How many peasants bathe?’ asked Heywang. ‘How many peasant families bathe especially in winter? In which peasant families have all of the members of the family actually brushed their teeth? Whoever can answer these questions based on his personal experiences will know how difficult it is to achieve victories on this ground.’40 According to Heywang and his supporters, it was the national calling of teachers and Heimat activists on the language frontier to remedy these deficiencies in taste and hygiene. One reform advocated by these pedagogues was the introduction of drawing and singing instruction in German public schools, neither of which was universal in elementary schools at the time. Nationalists linked both drawing and singing to the cultivation of taste, the struggle against (Socialist) materialism, and the training of skilled workers and craftsmen. Heywang demanded that the schoolroom itself was where the inculcation of good taste should begin. He wrote, ‘The children should learn from the beautiful wall decorations in the school that there are nicer paintings than those which they see daily in their homes. They should gain a true dislike for ugly, marionette-like pictures, which can never offer us a noble, lasting joy.’41 Even as Heywang fiercely denounced ‘mass-produced’ furniture and art, however, he expressed confidence that taste could be ordered out of a catalogue, with a teacher’s proper guidance. Children, he suggested, ‘should learn that the teacher is at any time prepared to lend out the catalogues of the most important firms, and even to handle the ordering, when one perhaps doesn’t want to take the trouble or doesn’t have the ability on one’s own.’42 Pedagogical activists also promoted the construction of Heimat museums, which collected and displayed artefacts from everyday life to represent local history and culture. Activists hoped to use these museums to cultivate national pride in local German culture and to provide peasants with lessons in appropriately German interior decorating. By creating artefacts for these Heimat museums, school reformers hoped that children would develop respect for ‘authentic’ German art and subscribe to a higher level of taste and culture: ‘The peasant should again, as in the old days, build, nail, whittle, paint, and garden.

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Girls should lay fashion journals to one side and compete with each other in sewing from self-developed embroidery patterns.’43 Thus, even as nationalist Heimat activists depicted the rural language frontiers and borderland inhabitants as essential repositories of German national culture, they worked hard to ‘Germanize’ and civilize the borderland through their own pedagogical activism. This mission was not always a happy or a successful one. Josef Blau’s own descriptions of the borderland communities in which he had lived and worked as a teacher blatantly undercut any romantic vision of the local German Heimat as a national utopia. In an article entitled ‘The teacher on the language frontier,’ he implicitly suggested that the typical Heimat borderland was no promised land. Teachers there were forced to contend with the negative influence of nearby Czech-speaking towns, poor land, dependence on nobles or Czech landowners, and the constant threats posed by Czech schools and kindergartens. Even more demoralizing, however, were the inner weaknesses of German locals – the ‘mixed families, weak characters, derelicts, and other national comrades who waver for every reason.’44 Another self-justifying Heimat educator attempted to square the circle between nationalist ideals of Heimat and these grim realities: ‘The Heimat is on the one hand what is given in the hearts of men and what is still becoming through human desire. To fuse together what is given and what is still becoming is the task and very reason for the school.’45 Heimat pedagogy was therefore to bridge the yawning gulf between the Heimat of which nationalists dreamed and the Heimat in which they actually lived. In 1926 Josef Blau insisted, revealingly, that ‘Heimat’ was really much more than a literal place: it was actually a spiritual homeland. ‘The breadth of the Heimat has widened and now encompasses the entire nation, and not simply the narrow territory of the childhood years, the family and Heimat village in district X. We are no longer searching for the Heimat as a place but within ourselves, in the districts of our souls.’46 Heimat From Empire to Nation State Following the First World War and the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy into self-declared nation states, this unbounded world evoked by Heimat activists increasingly came to resemble a vaguely defined German diaspora in Central Europe. German-speakers in Czechoslovakia had been reduced to a minority in an aggressively nationalizing nation state, and German nationalists increasingly emphasized their affinities with Germans in other regions of Central

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Europe. For example, August Saurer argued in 1920 that the danger of an overly ‘narrow’ Heimat education could be easily avoided as long as teachers always stressed that the Germans in Bohemia were merely one branch of a German national tribe – a branch, indeed, that had been ‘flushed out over the border’s ramparts.’47 Heimat education ultimately provided inter-war German nationalists with a pedagogy that did not seem overtly hostile to the Czechoslovak state but still cultivated children’s loyalty to an imagined German diaspora in Central Europe rather than to Czechoslovakia. There is an ironic twist to this story that reveals how pedagogical activists transformed and instrumentalized the meaning of localism in different political contexts. In the late Austrian Empire, German nationalists had promoted an elitist self-image as bearers of culture in Central Europe – cosmopolitan and distinguished from the supposedly provincial and backward Czechs by their world language, education, and culture. The Heimat movement’s civilizing agenda served this self-image. But in inter-war Czechoslovakia, as Peter Bugge has suggested, these roles were reversed. German nationalists, including those mobilized in Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German Heimat Front, now typically represented themselves as simple, provincial Sudeten German peasants, wearing traditional folk costumes and singing folk songs. The civilizing component of Heimat education had largely disappeared. As inter-war German nationalists promoted an image of themselves as a victimized minority, they linked the German nation less to social mobility and high culture, and more to hearth, home, handicrafts, and racial purity in the local rural Heimat. The image of Germans in Bohemia was ‘localized,’ even as Sudeten German nationalists asserted their cultural affinities with Germans in the Third Reich. Czechs, meanwhile, now enjoyed an international reputation as a cosmopolitan, liberal, democratic, highly cultured people. This is exactly the image Czech nationalists themselves had actively promoted in inter-war Europe. The Czech nation was thereby de-localized, through claims to bridge East and West, through their alleged ‘Western,’ democratic exceptionalism in Eastern Europe, and through their ties to Paris and the cultivation of an avantgarde, modernist high culture.48 Conclusions How might these stories of nationalist pedagogical activism in Bohemian and Moravian borderlands inform our understandings of local-

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ism in Germany or other nation states? In scholarly writing on localism in European nation states, local identities and cultures have typically been understood as either subnational ‘alternatives’ to national cultures or as the ultranational embodiment of the nation. East Central European ‘borderlands,’ likewise, have been represented by historians as both ultranational sites of violent conflict and as subnational sites of an almost idyllic multicultural ‘hybridity,’ illustrating the mixing of national cultures. The history of nationalist pedagogical mobilization around children reveals that both the view of borderlands as a repository of authentic national values and the view of them as sites of ambiguous ‘hybridity’ were products of a nationalist world view. The idea of the borderland and the notion of ‘hybridity’ each assumes the mixing of two separate parts: pre-existing, distinct national cultures. And yet, as we have seen, nationalist attempts to build minority schools, nationalize orphans, and cultivate a love for Heimat in the Bohemian lands was often driven by the lack of clearly defined national communities. The hybrid, like the borderland, is in the eyes of the (nationalist) beholder. To ordinary peasants and workers in many multilingual regions of Central Europe, bilingualism or indifference to nationality were not exotic forms of ‘hybridity.’ They were normal aspects of social, cultural, and economic life. This is not to say that terms such as ‘borderland’ or ‘hybrid’ are so hopelessly contaminated by nationalism that they should disappear from our analytic vocabulary. These nationalist concepts often became deeply felt categories of human identification and objects of policy-makers and activists, and they stimulated state policies with real effects. We should be careful, however, not to lose sight of the nationalist implications of these terms. A close look at both nationalist activism and national indifference in Central Europe dampens the temptation to romanticize the so-called borderland hybrid. The national hermaphrodism described in this essay did not disappear in 1918 or in 1938. By some estimates at least 143,000 Bohemians and Moravians switched national affiliations in 1939 when the Nazis came to power (becoming Germans) and then attempted to switch affiliations again in 1945 when Germans were being expelled (claiming to be Czech).49 While we certainly should not follow nationalists in labelling such people ‘degenerates’ unworthy of citizenship, it also makes little sense to idealize Central Europeans who moved easily between national communities. In a world of national hierarchies and national classification, many such people were simply asserting their agency within the limits of their own power, responding to nationalists

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in nationalist terms. The very category of the hybrid was a function of the nationalist obsession with categorization in so-called frontier societies. The more nation states and nationalist movements obsessed over fixing and ranking national communities, making such affiliation the basis for citizenship and social rights, the more individuals could gain by being able to move between national communities depending on political or social circumstance. The borderlands discovered by Robert Scheu in 1918, and by German historians more recently, were neither utopian sites of hybridity nor backward and violent wellsprings of ethnic conflict. Nationalist pedagogical activists themselves depicted local language frontiers and their inhabitants as simultaneously ‘hybrid’ and quintessentially national. These competing visions of what a borderland society was or might become coexisted in early-twentieth-century Austria, and they drove nationalist pedagogical activism as nationalists sought to make borderland communities conform to their nationalist ideals. Moreover, these nationalist visions of borderland societies have endured. As historians today analyse the meaning and development of local borderland societies in Europe, they often share and perpetuate a long-standing nationalist fascination with the language frontier as both ultranational and subnational.

NOTES 1 Robert Scheu, Wanderung durch Böhmen am Vorabend der Revolution (Vienna, 1919), 1. Citation translated by Jeremy King, see http://www.princeton .edu/~eglasshe/CHC/scheudocument.htm (accessed 31 Jan. 2006). 2 Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley, 1989). On relationships between regional, local, and national identities in Habsburg Austria, see Laurence Cole, Für Gott, Kaiser, und Vaterland. Nationale Identität und deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols, 1860– 1914 (Frankfurt a.M., 2000); Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002); and Keely Stauter-Halstead, The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914 (Ithaca, 2001). 3 Scheu, Wanderung durch Böhmen, 200. 4 Ibid., 201. 5 For approaches to nationalism focused on modernization or state-building, see Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (Palo Alto, 1976); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on

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7

8

9 10 11

12

13

14

15

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the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (orig. 1983) (London, 1991); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1789: Program, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1992); Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); and Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History (Cambridge, 2001). Recent works that problematize narratives linking nation-building to modernization include Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation (Chicago, 1996); and Geoff Eley and Ronald Suny, ‘Introduction,’ in Becoming National: A Reader, ed. Eley and Suny (New York, 1996), 8–9. See Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990); Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 8; and Jennifer Jenkins, Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg (Ithaca, 2003). Pieter M. Judson, ‘When Is a Diaspora Not a Diaspora? Rethinking NationCentered Narratives about Germans in Habsburg East Central Europe,’ in The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness, ed. Krista M. O’Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin (Ann Arbor, 2005). On nationalist uses of the census in Habsburg Austria, see Emil Brix, Umgangssprache in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation (Vienna, 1982). Peter Bugge, ‘Czech Nation-Building, National Self-Perception and Politics, 1780–1914,’ PhD diss., University of Aarhus, 1994, 26. Jan Kapras, eeô mate“ská orgánem školy obecné a znakem národnosti (Prague, 1883), 10. Národní jednota severoôeská, Letter to NR2. ô. 2212, Prague, 19 June 1907, Národní rada ôeská (hereafter NR2), Carton 508, Národní archiv (hereafter NA). Aktenbund II/28 1909, Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv (hereafter AVA), Verwaltungsgerichtshof (hereafter VGH), Carton 302, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (hereafter ÖstStA). See Gerald Stourzh, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs, 1848–1918 (Vienna, 1985), 173–6 for an example of a similar case in Brüx/Most. Aktenbund II/154 1910, AVA, VGH, Carton 306, ÖstStA. The court decisively rejected the German community’s argument and the town was forced to open a Czech school. See Budwinski, Erkentnisse des k.k. Verwaltungsgerichtshofes, z. 1022, 27 Jan. 1912. Tara Zahra, ‘Reclaiming Children for the Nation: Germanization, National Ascription, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1945,’ Central European History 37, no. 4 (Dec. 2004): 499–541.

234 Tara Zahra 16 See surveys of Franz Raus, Franz Roôek, Josef Tours, Karl Vojaôek, Josef Vostál, and Franz Rous. Zemská školní rada (hereafter ZŠR), B22 1. ôast Carton 329, Moravský zemský archiv (hereafter MZA). 17 King, Budweisers, chap. 4. 18 Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, Mass., 2006). 19 Deutscher Bezirksschulrat in Iglau to Bezirkshauptmannschaft in Trebitsch, 28 April 1911, z. 3896, ZŠR, B22 1. ôast Carton 329, MZA. 20 Johann Lehar, 11 May 1912, Folder II/84 1912, with II/114 1912. SSD/V, Carton 89, NA. 21 Jugendfürsorge: Bericht über die erste deutsch-böhmische JugendfürsorgeKonferenz zu Prag am 23. und 24. Februar 1907, 13–14. Folder Kinderschutz-Zentralstelle für deutsche Waisenpflege und Jugendfürsorge in Böhmen. AVA, Justizministerium, Carton 425, ÖstStA. 22 ‘Die Kinderbesiedlungen des Deutschen Schulvereines,’ Getreue Eckart, 1913, 7. 23 Ibid., 6; ‘Sirotci kolonie a sirotci spolky,’ Ochrana dit¨t¨, 25 June 1914. 24 ‘Dr. Karl Schücker Waisenheim des Bundes der Deutschen in Böhmen,’ Jahrbuch der Deutschen Jugendfürsorge in Böhmen, 1909, 10. 25 Ibid. 26 ‘U d¨tech národu,’ Ludmila, 1913, 4. 27 ‘Leitordnung der Zentralstelle für deutsche Waisenpflege und Jugendfürsorge in Böhmen für die Waisenerziehung in Pflegefamilien,’ Jahrbuch der deutschen Jugendfürsorge, 1909, 227. 28 ‘Dr. Karl Schücker Waisenheim,’ 21. 29 ‘Deutschvölkische Waisenhäuser und Kriegswaisenfürsorge,’ Mitteilung des Vereins Südmark, 1918, 156. 30 Jahrbuch der deutschen Jugendfürsorge, 1908, 50. 31 ‘Deutschvölkische Waisenhäuser und Kriegswaisenfürsorge,’ Mittelung des Vereins Südmark, 1918, 156. 32 See Jenkins, Provincial Modernity, 146–77. Jenkins shows that Heimat pedagogy was not always anti-urban. 33 Josef Blau, ‘Lehrerbildung und Methodenkult,’ Heimatbildung, 1919, 16. 34 Lehrplan für Volksschulen mit deutscher Unterrichtsprache in Böhmen (Prague, 1911), 1–4. 35 For discussions of nationalist discourses valorizing mothers as transmitters of national culture, see especially Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London, 1997); Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York, 1995); and Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Sexual Fronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of

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37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48

49

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Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,’ in Becoming National, ed. Eley and Suny, 286–322. Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Durham, 2001); Elizabeth Harvey, Women in the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanization (New Haven, 2003); Nancy Reagin, ‘The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in Imperial Germany,’ Journal of Modern History 73 (March 2001): 54–86. ‘Der deutsche Kindergarten,’ Deutscher Schulwart, 1906, 66. Der Kampf ums Deutschtum, 1913, 26. Ernst Heywang, Landschule und Landlehrer im Dienste der bildenden Künste (Prague, 1920), 10–30. Ibid., 11. Heywang, Landschulprobleme und Landlehrerfragen (Prague, 1916), 30. Ibid., 30. ‘Die Heimatkunst und ihre Belebung im Volk,’ Deutsch-Mährische Schulblatt, 1911, 221. Josef Blau, ‘Der Lehrer an der Sprachgrenze,’ Heimatbildung, 1930, 134. Ignaz Goth, ‘Die Entwicklung des Heimatgedankes für Schule und Bewegung,’ Heimatbildung, 1937, 1–14. Josef Blau, ‘Zur Heimaterziehung,’ Heimatbildung, 1926, 129. August Sauer, ‘Noch ein Wörtchen über Heimatbildung,’ Heimatbildung, 1920, 4–5. See also August Sauer, ‘Deutsche Bildung,’ Heimatbildung, 1922, 93. I am grateful to Peter Bugge, who first made this argument in a panel on liberalism and nationalism in the late Austrian Empire at the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Boston in 2004. Benjamin Frommer, ‘Expulsion or Integration: Unmixing Mixed Marriages in Postwar Czechoslovakia,’ East European Politics and Societies 14 (Spring 2000): 387; King, Budweisers, 184.

10 Land of Sun and Vineyards: Settlers, Tourists, and the National Imagination on the Southern Language Frontier pieter m. judson

Rudolf Hans Bartsch’s 1910 novel The German Sorrow, tellingly subtitled ‘a landscape novel,’ is a nationalist Bildungsroman that traces the hero’s stormy relationship to his South Styrian Heimat. Although set in the Austrian province of Styria in the period 1880 to 1910, the novel attempts to place this southern language frontier in the context of a greater Germany, embodied in culture, in activism, and, most of all, in the sublime nature of the landscape itself. The increasingly severe political and social conflicts between German nationalist and Slovene nationalist communities in the region provide the backdrop to the many life phases of the novel’s hero, Erasmus Georg Botzenhardt. For Bartsch, however, the skirmishes between Slovene and German nationalists represent far more than parochial Austrian disputes of little interest to readers outside of Graz or Vienna. Instead, the national struggle, and the hero’s eventual acceptance of the part he has to play in it, will determine the fate of a region that is of critical importance to Germans both in Austria and in Germany. And it is the distinctive nature of the South Styrian landscape that makes the outcome so important to Germans everywhere. At first glance, Bartsch’s title appears to refer to the tragic political situation that threatened the survival of the historic German national community in the region. The rise of a self-confident Slovene nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century seduces gullible Slovenespeaking peasants from the region into a crude rejection of all things German. Traditionally they had lived in peace and harmony with their German-speaking neighbours, but now they increasingly follow the lead of Slovene nationalist lawyers, teachers, and civil servants who seek to provoke misunderstanding between the peoples of the Drau/ Drava river valley. Ultimately, this Slovene nationalist movement

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threatens to overwhelm traditional German social and cultural hegemony in South Styria. According to this reading of the novel, a precious German frontier region is gradually being lost to those who have loved and nurtured it for generations. The up-and-coming newly educated Slovene nationalists are crude materialists, utterly incapable of comprehending the deeper spiritual truths expressed in the landscape. To outsiders the German communities in the region appear powerless against this wellorganized, well-financed, and determined enemy that threatens their traditional existence. The German-speaking inhabitants, meanwhile, may be both cultured and hard working, but the pleasantly seductive quality of the landscape itself has also lulled them into a passive indifference to the crude ‘politics in a new key’ that is building around them. Georg too is uncertain how to respond to the increasingly sad situation he witnesses. He wanders restlessly in and out of the region for over twenty years. At one dark point, the apparent hopelessness of the nationalist conflict leads him to turn away from Austria and to contemplate a move to the German Empire. There at least, Georg imagines, his life would be free from the daily pain of loss he experiences in South Styria. Standing on the highest tower of the castle in Salzburg, Georg turns towards the west and declares, ‘Oh you Heimat of my soul, land of my great poets, you powerful German Reich, I belong to you!’1 Yet he is dissuaded from this move by a Los-von-Rom Lutheran pastor he meets in Salzburg, who shows him how his precious Heimat can indeed be saved for Germans. And it is at this point that Georg learns for the first time about the important work being carried out in Styria by honest Reich Germans whose cultural labours give the local inhabitants the strength and peace of mind to maintain their traditional hegemony with dignity and love, without stooping to the cruel tactics of division employed by Slovene nationalists. He stoically accepts his role as protector of this landscape, benefactor of the local community, and agent of a German culture that benefits all peoples. Bartsch’s detailed and emotional depiction of the South Styrian landscape also suggests the existence of another more fundamentally bittersweet sorrow, one shared ultimately by all Germans, not simply by those with ties to the region between the Mur/Mura and Drau/Drava Rivers. After all, this particular Heimat embodies a warm, fruitful, and sunny south for which generations of Germans in the cold dark north have longed. ‘What a life, what a beautiful dream of a free existence it is up there [in the vineyards].’ ‘In the uplands [to the north] God is the God of threatening weather, of avalanches, of winter ... the unmovable

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God of the Old Testament. But in the world of South Styria, [God is] the father [with] arms outstretched in blessing. The South Styrian world is simple accord, [it] is pure harmony of being.’2 This broader significance of his Heimat for Germans in Central Europe gradually becomes clear to Georg. Once he understands the scope of the loss that an entire nation would suffer if this borderland were permanently lost to the enemy, Georg gradually appreciates the particular dangers faced by his friends and neighbours in the Drau/ Drava valley. Pondering the possible expulsion of Germans and their culture from this region, Georg cries: ‘If only we could hold onto this piece of earth, this Styrian earth! Next to the southerly Tyrol, she is the only piece of the south that the eternal German yearning for a milder sun has yet known how to obtain.’3 This sunny landscape, this tiny paradise between the Drau/Drava and Mur/Mura Rivers, is where Germans have long held a piece of that mild south which, as Bartsch repeatedly tells the reader, Germans in their dark cold northern homes passionately desire. In the hands of the Germans it is a lushly productive land of wine and fruit that has brought a tenfold reward to the efforts of their labour. It is as if Bartsch is telling us that the general German ability to make the land productive – the first sign of culture, and one for which Germans are justly renowned – is only fully rewarded in this particular paradise that lies just beyond the reach of most Germans. It seems almost paradoxical that, as Bartsch repeatedly reminds the reader, most Austrian and Reich Germans actually know nothing of this blissful southern Heimat. This particular Shangri-La hides in its own valley south of the Mur/Mura River, invisible even to many of those who, like Georg, frequent it, but who lack the ability to appreciate its true significance. Contemplating the slow, peaceful life of German burghers and farmers in the region, Georg later muses that if ‘all the sick hearts throughout the German Reich knew how people here live, here in this Styrian paradise, they would come in droves to settle in this unspeakably happy, peaceful world, which offers fulfilment above all fulfilments!’4 And yet it is precisely through the agency of concerned outside activists from Germany, such as the Lutheran pastor Georg encounters in Salzburg, that the Styrians learn to help themselves by cherishing and nurturing their threatened Heimat. Bartsch’s novel functioned as far more than a novel when it was published in 1910. It was meant to raise popular interest in South Styria

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among readers situated well beyond Austria’s borders. Like Bartsch’s other work, The German Sorrow sold well, going through several editions in the first years after publication. In two years, for example, it sold over twenty-five thousand copies in Germany and the Austrian Empire. And of the reception of Bartsch’s novels in Austria one historian of the region has written, ‘[They] were read in many families. Their influence often surpassed that of political speeches and newspapers.’5 The German Sorrow was one of several literary calls-to-arms that hypothesized the threat to a particular German way of life in Styria in order to forge a selfconsciously German national community in real life.6 Bartsch and other German nationalist activists feared that indifference to or ignorance about German national identity in the region among bilingual or German-speaking farmers would transform the region from a language frontier into a Slovene nationalist outpost. Once the Slovenes had captured this region, so the logic went, they would turn their sights to the major towns in the region with German-speaking majorities, especially Marburg/Maribor, Cilli/Celje, and Pettau/Ptui. If those towns were cut off from German-speaking rural areas that could provide them with German-speaking labour and immigrants, they would gradually be overwhelmed by Slovenes and eventually lose their German character altogether. The demographic realities in the region offered both German and Slovene nationalists hope for their nationalizing projects, in part because so many inhabitants knew both regional languages and could therefore be viewed as potential recruits to each nationalist cause. In fact, many Styrians south of the Mur/Mura River believed their interests could best be served by a knowledge of both languages and by connections both to Graz in the north, where a German majority prevailed, and to Ljubljana in the west, where Slovenes were in the majority. Parents in the region often demanded the provision of bilingual schools, even though nationalist lawsuits and activism had gradually segregated the school system by language in the period since 1880.7 In addition, it seems that many Slovene-speaking peasants wanted to cultivate trade with German-speakers in regions to the north. Census statistics tell us far too little about the local dynamics of language use in South Styria to appraise these motives systematically, because individuals did not have the option to record their bilingualism. They had to choose between recording one language or the other as their language of daily use in the decennial census. The broad trend, however, showed that despite the preponderance of the Slovene language in rural communes,

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the proportion of German speakers was in fact on the rise in South Styria between 1880 and 1910.8 Slovene nationalists explained this trend by accusing their rivals of strong-arm tactics and compulsory Germanization. Employers and landlords, for example, had forced dependent Slovenes to proclaim their language of daily use as German against their will. While both sides did indeed employ such tactics when the census was taken to help justify their claims to specific territories, it is less clear whether rural inhabitants themselves wanted to practise the kind of cultural, social, and economic segregation that nationalists demanded of them. Bartsch’s novel in fact registered this ambivalence among rural Styrians, giving it his own particular nationalist slant in order to explain why the peoples of the region had lived together so peacefully for centuries until the rise of a Slovene nationalist movement. He distinguishes several different kinds of Slovenes, among them those who wish to better themselves by learning German and who want only to live in harmony with their German neighbours. Such a figure is Dorothea or Dortje, the young Slovene girl with whom Georg falls in love early in his travels. In her first conversation with him, for example, she tells him how sad she was when her German teacher left. ‘“Back then the school in St Kunigund was still German. Then the priest banished our dear, jolly teacher. Oh, he was so cheerful, so blonde, and he told us so many beautiful things.” She sighed. “The priest and the new Slovene teacher can’t do that. I know,” said Georg. “They grew up in envy, and hatred can neither ring bells nor sing songs. Only happiness can do that.”’9 It is also Dortje who recounts to Georg the legend of the Drau church bell, a story that symbolizes the natural harmony that had allegedly characterized earlier relations between the local Germans and Slovenes. By contrast, the Slovene nationalist lawyer who buys up the house and land of Georg’s benefactor, Tavernari, epitomizes the new breed of Slovene, the crassly pretentious nationalist who is appearing more frequently in the landscape and creating ill will within the local community. The novel also lauds the efforts of two German nationalist self-help associations in Austria whose activism focused on saving this region for the Germans: the German School Association and the Südmark. Bartsch praises the members of both organizations repeatedly for their willingness to make material sacrifices for the sake of the German nationalist cause. Repeatedly he tells the reader that only through their own efforts, and not through the intervention of wealthy outsiders, can

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the modest German communities hope to maintain their long-term viability in South Styria. It is, in fact, the Lutheran pastor from Germany who explains to Georg the deep degree of sacrifice incurred by poorer Germans in order to finance their community’s rebirth in the region. When Georg visits the Südmark-funded German settlement in the village of St Egydi he exclaims: ‘Oh holy earth! Scrimped and saved for, penny by penny in [Südmark] collection boxes, acquired and built up through painful sacrifice, a testimony to individual self-denial. The little school teacher in the Waldviertel, the university student in Innsbruck, the high-school youth in Leoben, the kindergarten teacher on the Danube, the small factory manager in Moravia, the modest merchant in Pettau, or the postmistress on the faraway Sava River, each has no better reward than to know that German songs are now being sung here.’10 Whereas Bartsch advocated self-help as the key to national survival, his novel also sought to encourage a close relationship between Germans in Germany and their southern brethren. Beyond stimulating support for nationalist activism among Austrians, the novel aimed to raise interest among inhabitants of the German Empire for the national fate of the German south. It is Germans from Germany, after all, who decisively show Georg the way to keep the precious southern borderland in the hands of Germans. After all, the loss of this language frontier would mean the loss of the only piece of the south traditionally belonging to Germans. Bartsch was only one of many activists who sought to create real-life interest in the German Empire for this little-known and nationally ‘threatened’ region. At the time of his novel’s publication, the organization Südmark was seeking actively to forge links with nationalist associations in Germany – associations that might produce financial and moral support for its activities and that might create closer ties between German nationalists of the south and German nationalists of the north. As we will see below, the Südmark had already embarked on a colonization project that relied on the willingness of farmers from wine-growing regions in Württemberg to resettle their families on farms in South Styria as a way to strengthen – or Germanize – the language frontier region just to the north of Marburg/Maribor. This initiative, begun around 1905, was soon touted as an ambitious self-help program meant to transform the linguistic and demographic profile of the region between the Drau/Drava and the Mur/Mura Rivers – forever. German governmental efforts to Germanize largely Polish-speaking regions in

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West Prussia and Silesia had experienced questionable success at best. The Südmark settlement program, however, unsupported by any government or state, appeared poised to accomplish the unthinkable. The Südmark and its propagandists made sure that nationalist newspapers and journals in the German Empire took note of the program and its successes. It encouraged German visitors from the north to experience the settlement project first-hand by making a visit to the region and supporting the settlers through their tourism. At the same time, the Südmark hoped to make its settlement project into a site where German nationalists from all over Europe could share the daily challenges of living on a language frontier. Visitors who experienced the nationality conflict on this southern language frontier might then return home and encourage their families, friends, and neighbours to take interest in this national project. Novels by authors active in Marburg/Maribor such as Bartsch and the Protestant pastor Ludwig Mahnert – himself the model for Georg’s pastor friend in the Bartsch novel – helped readers to understand the region in terms chosen by the nationalists. They focused their emotional stories of national conflict on a small number of real communities, thereby limiting the national conflict to a few easily comprehensible stories. And they encouraged visitors to see the populations they encountered in the region as national. Bartsch and Mahnert both described the settlement efforts in detail in their novels in terms that might have been drawn directly from Südmark publications, advertising both the settlement and the colony’s transformative effect on the local landscape. This latter trope introduced a paradoxical twist, for now this natural southern German landscape had to be transformed, not maintained, in order to preserve its ‘original’ pristine German form. Since its founding in 1889 the Südmark had vigorously promoted the settlement idea as a means to strengthen German national communities on the southern language frontiers of the Habsburg monarchy. The prohibitive cost of such an ambitious program, however, had prevented repeated attempts at its realization. Through a less ambitious program of loans, economic self-help programs, Christmas donations for children, and agricultural education, the organization had hoped to block what it perceived to be a trend of declining German influence. During the first fifteen years of its existence, the Südmark had also published periodic lists of available properties in allegedly threatened communities, advertising them both in German-speaking Austria and in the German Empire.11 In fact, in 1890 the organization’s Central Committee

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had proposed that lists of available properties be published in Imperial German newspapers specifically to attract German migrants from as far away as the Baltic territories of Russia. It was not until after 1905, when the organization’s annual income regularly exceeded 150,000 crowns, that it could consider a more financially ambitious program.12 In 1906 the Executive Committee established a long-range settlement policy. It committed the Südmark to purchase properties as they became available in specific villages, and then to find suitable settlers for the properties who would purchase them from the organization at a discounted price.13 By June of 1914 the Südmark had resettled some seventy-three German-speaking families (over four hundred people) on over 1000 hectares of farmland, most of it formerly owned by Slovene-speaking farmers on the language frontier. The majority of these families, often from as far away as Württemberg, were settled in the area between Marburg/Maribor to the south and what is today the border between Austria and Slovenia to the north, in and around the village of St Egydi (or hentilj and Sv. Ilj in Slovene). St Egydi/Sv. Ilj was the largest community in a region known as the Windische-Bühel. This picturesque landscape of steep hills, vineyards, forests, and orchards overlooks Marburg/Maribor and the Drau/ Drava valley to the south. In 1900, depending on their point of view, German nationalists understood this landscape as either a gap separating or a potential bridge connecting an urban German-language island and the more homogeneously German-speaking rural territories to the north along the Mur/Mura River. St Egydi/Sv. Ilj was well positioned geographically to anchor a future settlement program that sought to ‘reconnect’ the two German-speaking regions. The actual distances separating St Egydi/Sv. Ilj from Marburg/Maribor to the south (12 kilometres) and German Spielfeld/hpilje to the north (5 kilometres) were relatively small, thus making the Südmark goal of creating a linguistic bridge seem realistic enough. ‘Whether we maintain or lose this village will signify the difference between preserving access to the threatened city of Marburg from the German language region of Middle Styria or being locked out.’ Bartsch’s Lutheran pastor makes the same point just as forcefully: ‘In ten years the link that reconnects Marburg with German blood in the compact German region to the north will be completed ... There are a number of German schools planned along the banks of the Drau, and two or three at every river crossing. God willing, our precious threatened Heimat will have a defensible frontier.’14

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In 1900 the village of St Egydi/Sv. Ilj – not the village of propagandists’ imagination – covered about 570 hectares of hilly land, with most of its 127 houses and farms dispersed well away from the single main road. Although three of the holdings could be classified as large estates (Großgrundbesitz), most land was owned and farmed by single families. Along with viticulture and the cultivation of fruit, the villagers raised pigs (266) and cattle (380 head). Officially, the village population of 715 in 1900 included 503 Slovene speakers and 201 German speakers, the rest undetermined according to the census taken in December of that year. The language-use statistics over the thirty-year period between 1880 until 1910 show that only in 1890 did the numbers of those reporting German and Slovene reflect at best a kind of parity between the two, and that the romanticized accounts by Bartsch and others notwithstanding, the village never had a majority of German speakers. Clearly, this was not a case of a solidly German village in danger of becoming a Slovene village, although it is not hard to see how it could have been portrayed in these terms. After 1890 the census statistics demonstrate that the percentage of villagers reporting German as their language of daily use declined significantly, while the total number of inhabitants remained constant. The village population grew from 700 to 715 between 1890 and 1900 and yet the number of those reporting German fell from 346 to 201, while those reporting the Slovene language increased from 355 to 503. Clearly, many villagers were bilingual and they had simply switched the language they reported between 1890 and 1900. If official reporting of the German language had declined, that does not necessarily mean that knowledge or use of the German language had declined, or that the village had in fact become more Slovene in anything but a political way. And this was precisely the kind of change that worried German nationalist leaders, encouraging them to interpret their political situation in defensive terms. In 1900 the village population was also completely Roman Catholic. The village boasted a small church built a hundred years earlier, two savings and loan cooperatives, two regional primary schools (one with instruction in Slovene provided by the community and one private German-language school supported by the German School Association, both with six classes), four gendarmes, and one physician. The Südbahn railway that linked Vienna and Graz to the cities of the south passed just below St Egydi/Sv. Ilj at ‘Egydi Tunnel,’ where the village boasted a regional post office and later a small station. The presence of the Südbahn not only made the village more accessible to the outside

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world (both to settlers and later to visitors), it also created within the village economic opportunities that increased in number and variety over time.15 In 1904 the Südmark spent its first significant sum in St Egydi/Sv. Ilj: 28,000 crowns to build an inn on the main road not far from the railway station. Called the Südmarkhof, this establishment came to serve as a social centre for the German nationalist and settler communities in the region, later as a place of worship for the region’s Protestant newcomers, and as a starting point for curious visitors travelling to the region. The Südmarkhof eventually housed several local German clubs such as the gymnastics association, and it offered hot meals to children from the region who attended the local German School Association school and who lived too far away to permit them to return home for the midday meal. With the relative success of this first venture in 1905, the Südmark proceeded to buy up several hundred hectares of farmland, and in 1907 the organization was able to settle the first three German-speaking families there.16 In order to encourage their move to South Styria, the Südmark offered settlers various financial enticements. It promised to offset their mortgages by providing them with an interest-free loan – the amount to be determined by the size of the plot and the size of the settler family. The Südmark also reimbursed the settlers for half of their moving costs. In return, settlers agreed to give the Südmark the right of first refusal on the resale of the farm. This last condition was meant to ensure some means of redress against any settler who might ‘show himself to be unreliable in a völkisch sense’ to prevent the land from ever falling back into the hands of the ‘national enemy.’ Still, as the Südmark pointed out, over time the greatest guarantee of national victory would be the völkisch conduct of the settlers themselves. This priority made the question of who was to settle on this land all the more important, and it helps explain why the Südmark eventually sought out more candidates from the German Empire than from German-speaking regions of Austria.17 On the surface the only requirement for settlers was that they be ‘good Germans.’ Yet this apparently simple condition was harder to fill than might at first be imagined. And in fact it was really only one of several important considerations. In the early years especially, with no experience to guide its policies, the Südmark often misjudged settler candidates and the conditions under which they were brought to the area. All candidates for farms had to be farmers themselves and had to agree to

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occupy the land with their families. The organization did not want to sell land to urban absentee landlords who might then sublet it to Slovene families. Given the nature of the fruit, grape-growing, and wine industries, farmers also had to bring considerable specialized knowledge to the venture. This criterion by definition caused the Südmark organizers to limit their recruitment efforts to farmers from specific regions where similar conditions prevailed. Although the organization was able to attract some settlers from the wine-growing regions of Lower Austria, few farmers, understandably, wanted to abandon their holdings in that comparatively more prosperous region. When farmers did agree to move from Lower Austria to Styria, the Südmark feared that intrepid Czech-speaking farmers from southern Bohemia might subsequently occupy their former land in Lower Austria, thereby feeding a new nationalist threat. The same type of problem held true for Germanspeaking farmers from the South Tyrol/Trentino, who also knew something about grapes but whose place, it was feared, might be taken by Italian vintners from the south. German-speaking farmers in Hungary offered another possible source of settler farmers well schooled in viticulture; but, ironically, several legal barriers hindered their easy emigration from Hungary to Austria. Hence, the Südmark worked to attract settlers from wine-producing areas in western Germany, particularly from Württemberg (Swabians from the region around Heilbrunn). This issue of bringing settlers from Germany brought with it further unexpected challenges. While it immediately affected the linguistic makeup of the village, the resettlement of farmers from Germany could not alter the local political balance of power until the settlers had gained full citizenship status. Settlers from Germany had to undergo an application process that often took years to complete before they earned the crucial right to vote in local elections. A far greater challenge to their successful integration, however, was the fact that most of the immigrants from south-western Germany were Protestants. As a result, some provision had to be made for them to find places of worship: this region of Austria had not seen a Protestant since the seventeenth century. The religious issue, in turn, fed the ongoing political controversies between the Südmark and its many critics in the Catholic press and in the Catholic political parties (both German Social Catholics and Slovene Catholic Populists). All accused the Südmark of secretly harbouring a religious agenda: the conversion of the region from Catholicism to Protestantism, both by means of its settlement policy and by promoting Georg von Schönerer’s Los von Rom movement.18

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The Südmark worked hard in Austria to counter these accusations. On the surface, the organization justified settling Protestants in the region with familiar arguments about the difficulty of finding Catholic farmers who were both knowledgeable about vineyards and also German nationalists. The Südmark steadfastly denied any political or religious preferences when it came to finding good German candidates for settlement. Yet the Südmark’s long tradition of denouncing local Catholic clerics for their apparently Slav nationalist sympathies meant that its own rhetoric implicitly confirmed the accusations of its critics. In a 1908 article explaining why so many of the settlers were Protestants, the organization conceded that Protestant settlers were also less likely to come under the powerful influence of the local Catholic Church. The article defended Südmark policy in part by recounting tales of Catholic German ‘renegades’ in St Egydi/Sv. Ilj who had switched nations because of the overpowering influence of their priest. Despite repeated petitions to the diocese in Marburg, only Slovene was preached from the pulpit in St Egydi. 19 How, asked the author of the article, could one in good conscience persuade German Catholic families to settle in a region where they would receive no spiritual guidance in their own language?20 Despite these justifications for the introduction of Protestant settlers to the region, the Südmark and its propagandists nevertheless made active use of their links to Protestant organizations in Germany in order to further their settlement goals. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that many Südmark leaders believed that settling Protestants in the region should be an unstated goal of their organization. The novels of Bartsch and Mahnert both stressed the failures of the Catholic Church in the region, and both depicted the spiritual quandaries in which good German Catholics found themselves. Under the influence of the Lutheran pastor, Bartsch’s Georg sees in Protestantism a masculine, activist form of religious practice that better suits the German farmers in the region in their struggle against Slovene nationalists. Mahnert’s novel presents the Protestant movement as the coming force in the region, suggesting (somewhat misleadingly) that thousands of Austrians in the region around Marburg/Maribor were converting to Protestantism during the first decade of the twentieth century. In both novels, however, the main characters come to Protestantism through a spiritual awakening that is triggered by their relationship to the natural landscape of the region. Mahnert’s Franz Oswald, for example, experiences a powerful new spirituality when he witnesses an outdoor service on

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the high peaks of the Bacher, a mountain overlooking Marburg/Maribor. Bartsch’s Georg undertakes a tour of the Drau/Drava valley with his friend, the Lutheran pastor, who teaches him to appreciate the power of the natural landscape in the region. When they arrive in St Egydi Georg is shocked at how powerfully the arrival of German settlers has transformed the landscape. Is it that the presence of the German settlers simply confirms and reinforces the eternal German quality of the landscape? Georg recalls from his childhood the terrifying myth of the Styrian bull jumping onto the ramparts of the Graz city walls and bellowing to the south. It seems that now the bull has found a powerful echo in the transformation Georg sees before him, a transformation wrought by the settlement of Germans in a German landscape. Spontaneously he begins to sing ‘Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott’ while the Lutheran pastor accompanies him, both, like the bull, bravely bellowing their nationalist rights to the southern Heimat.21 In order to establish a convincing right of ownership, the Südmark’s propagandists spent considerable effort to describe the particularly German character of the local landscape and to distinguish between the allegedly distinct forms of land stewardship practised by German and Slovene farmers. The association claimed, for example, that it was often forced to ‘improve’ lands it had purchased from Slovene-speaking owners before it could sell them to suitable settler families. The Südmark magazine never tired of reporting to its readers that considerable funds had to be invested in land formerly occupied by Slovene farmers before Germans could be settled there. Alleging that the previous Slavic owners left their houses in utter disrepair, their fields and vineyards in a condition approaching ruin, the Südmark’s propagandists claimed that the organization had to repair the damage done by previous Slovene owners before offering the property for resale.22 Similarly, Bartsch’s Georg explains the stunning transformation of the landscape when he arrives unexpectedly in St Egydi after many years’ absence. ‘Where miserable farming huts had stood in those [early] days, the vineyards burnt red or ravaged by the phylloxera, the land overexploited, and [where] thoughtlessness or misery had reigned in the huts, now comfortable, clean farmhouses stood around, newly plastered in white and pale blue ... Where earlier Slavic mismanagement had produced misery in the village, now the place fairly laughed with prosperity.’ When the German settlers arrived, Georg remarks, they saw at once how the value of the farmland had been squandered by the previous Slovene owners. ‘They recognized what was missing. The thoughtless Slavs had

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built that which brought in money and sold: wine and cattle feed. The [German] farmer, however, needed everything but money, and wasn’t blinded by the high prices for feed.’ In a few years’ time, observes Georg, ‘these have-nots who set themselves up on land bought by German sacrifice, farmed their property so well that they became lords of the region. The Slavs feared their neighbours who arose at three in the morning and worked deep into the night.’ On Sundays, instead of drinking and gambling in the local pub, the German farmers took their families to visit other German families in the neighbourhood, ‘where they drank their own wine and sang the songs of their Heimat.’23 The settlement program was an enormous source of pride to the Südmark, despite the serious financial burdens and political challenges it generated. After the first few confused years of the program, the organization embarked on a propaganda campaign designed to situate the colony at the very core of German nationalist efforts throughout Europe. Südmark writers rated their remarkable accomplishments in St Egydi alongside those of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and especially the contemporary Germanization programs in Prussia begun under Bismarck. Each of these great men of the past had struggled to develop a successful German settlement policy in the east. The Südmark had matched their efforts and had done so without any support from the state. ‘It was,’ recalled one Südmark leader in 1908, ‘a daring undertaking, to try to accomplish what powerful princes had attempted in the Middle Ages or what in our days the Prussian state had begun under Bismarck’s leadership, using the modest means of an association.’24 Enthusiastic accounts by visitors from near and far also helped the Südmark to project the image of St Egydi/Sv. Ilj as a robustly successful experiment in nationalist activism, as we will see. Certainly Slovene nationalists eyed the Südmark activities in the Windische-Bühel with concern. As early as 1908 the Slovene newspaper Naš Dom caricatured the settler families as ‘Prussians,’ complaining that ‘now arrogant Swabs strut about on the friendly homesteads that once housed pious Slovene farmers.’ Other newspapers warned that if it were not stopped soon, the advancing tide of Germans would soon push the Slovenes back below Marburg/Maribor. Such rhetoric matched the Südmark’s own militantly ambitious verbiage of German islands gradually reclaiming land from a Slavic sea. Both sides, intent on mobilizing their own supporters, exaggerated the grave dangers allegedly posed by their opponents in terms of peoples moving across landscapes.25

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After the Südmark had opened the Südmarkhof in St Egydi/Sv. Ilj, it initiated a policy of inviting members and curious visitors to visit the village and to see for themselves just how the settlement policy had changed the region and helped to maintain its German character. This public promotion of St Egydi/Sv. Ilj served an interconnected set of goals. First, the Südmark wanted to provide some kind of visible success to the membership to justify the enormous resources it was spending on the project. The organization’s annual report on settlement in 1911 noted: ‘Opinions may differ [on the effectiveness of the program] but no one who has actually visited the place and investigated it has ever denied that a good piece of German work has been accomplished here that the Südmark can [proudly] show the rest of the world.’26 Second, the organization believed that only a visit to this exemplary outpost on the language frontier could give observers an understanding of the immediacy of the national struggle there. According to the Südmark, the constant reports, warnings, and dire prophesies about the decline of the nation too often assumed an abstract quality for Germans who lived in the homogeneously German-speaking regions of Austria and Germany, precisely because they were consumed so far away from sites of open conflict. The antidote to distance was immediate experience of life on the language frontier. ‘One should study the national conflict on the language frontier on the basis of one’s own observation,’ wrote one enthusiastic visitor to the region in 1911.27 Third, a visit to St Egydi/Sv. Ilj might fire the visitor’s imagination with the potential for future German settlement and increase the activist – or financial/philanthropic – impulse once the visitor had returned home. The Südmark frequently claimed as well that visits from other Germans helped to strengthen the spirit and resolve of the besieged Germans on the frontier. Fourth, the apparently innocent act of showing visitors around the village enabled the Südmark to create in microcosm the very nationalist frontier society it wrote about – along with the nationalist conflict it entailed. After decades of promoting a belief in the importance of nationalist identity to daily life, the Südmark could finally illustrate that proposition through visits to its own model nationalist community. The Südmark only existed thanks to nationalist fears shared by specific elements in Austrian society, fears not generally shared by a majority of German Austrians. Most Germans in Austria and Germany did not live their lives in accord with the precepts of nationalist activists. Even those who did admit the importance of nationality rarely did so with the strength of conviction and consistency of action demanded by

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organizations like the Südmark or the nationalist press. The region around St Egydi/Sv. Ilj offered the observer a world in which nationalist activism, nationalist choices, and nationalist commitment appeared to permeate daily life in the way German nationalists believed that it should throughout the German regions of the Habsburg monarchy. Its caricature of reality made it the ideal nationalist theme park of the early twentieth century. Not only did the village provide nationalists with a tangible microcosm of their world view; it also served as a graphic illustration of several moral elements of German nationalist ideology. Visitors to St Egydi/Sv. Ilj were provided by the Südmark or by villagers with the proper lens through which to understand what they saw. The testimonies of visitors from near and far betray the ‘helpful’ framing of their experience provided by Südmark guides, members of local German associations, and novelists such as Bartsch or Mahnert. For example, every visitor reported that, on the surface, the village and its surroundings appeared to be prosperous, neatly laid out, well-tended, clean, orderly, and friendly. None of these qualities can be measured objectively, and all of them can only be understood in a relative sense. The benchmark against which these qualities were perceived was the former (and by now legendary) disorderly, miserable, and unfriendly Slovene past from which the Germans had rescued the village. Visitors never saw that former state (except from the distance of hillside outlooks), but they heard about it constantly, whether from Südmark accounts or from writers like Bartsch. Starting with its 1907 convention in Marburg/Maribor, the Südmark planned regular ‘mass outings’ to St Egydi/Sv. Ilj so that the members could view the Südmarkhof and survey the organization’s other properties there.28 In 1909 members of the Central Committee made the first of several ‘inspection tours’ to the village. After a hike that took them door to door to visit all the settlers, the members described their settlement program as ‘healthy and valuable work.’29 More typical in the years before 1914, however, were the observations of nationalist travellers to the region whose detailed impressions were often quoted at great length in Südmark publications to give them maximal exposure. In 1912 a Herr W. Frank, fraternity student from Berlin, wrote an account of a trip to St Egydi/Sv. Ilj. Like other visitors, Frank spent more time describing the landscape for his readers than his impressions of the people he met there. Gazing from his window in the train from

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Graz, Frank already perceived the link between the moral and nationalist significance of the natural landscape to the region. ‘To the south, where the Mur bends south-eastward, the landscape becomes hilly; this is the Windische-Bühel. Here, the Slovenes have crossed the Drau, which [once] served as the language frontier.’ Arriving in Egydi Tunnel, Frank stopped in the garden of the Südmarkhof for a light breakfast, noting the small gymnastics hall next to the Hof, ‘where they say the local German men and boys enthusiastically tumble on Sundays.’ Proceeding, thus fortified, into the southern German landscape, through ‘irregularly formed hills under flowering fruit trees, through small wooded areas, across meadows, vineyards and wheat fields,’ Frank found ‘the scattered farms, some thirty in number, that the Südmark has put in German hands.’30 After explaining the financial technicalities of the settlement program, Frank noted how difficult a challenge the settlers faced, given the well-documented disorderly habits of the previous Slovene owners. Following observations that left an impression of abundantly fertile land in a sunny climate – land just waiting to be cultivated by intrepid German colonists – Frank finally devoted a paragraph to his impressions of the settlers themselves. ‘How have the settlers established themselves in their new circumstances? Despite some complaints, they seem genuinely happy with and thankful for their new properties. You notice this from the friendly welcome you receive everywhere, under shady chestnut trees or in spotless parlours, from whose walls portraits of King Karl of Württemberg look down on you ... A bookcase groans under the weight of the family bible, surrounded by schoolbooks ... Even Schiller’s poems can be found here. The children attend the German School Association school in St Egydi. The only regrettable thing is that it is difficult for the German settlers to acquire citizenship. So they cannot vote in village elections.’31 The equation of the German settlement with cleanliness, piety, high culture, and, above all, with productive use of the land only makes sense if contrasted to the legendary miserable, sordid, uneducated, and unproductive world of the Slovenes, so close at hand and so readily available for direct comparisons. In 1913 the Berlin Association for Germandom Abroad planned an August tour of the language frontier in southern Austria. This trip was intended to give its members experience of and insight into the ‘national situation’ along the southern language frontier. The threeweek trip began in Passau with a Danube cruise to Vienna. From there the travellers made their way by train to Graz and then to the cities of the south: Marburg/Maribor, Cilli/Celje, Laibach/Ljubljana, Abbaz-

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zia/ Opatija, Pola/Pula, and Trieste, ending in Villach and Klagenfurt. Between Graz and Marburg, however, the party made a stop at St Egydi/Sv. Ilj. There they were ‘warmly received and welcomed by several settlers and members of the Südmark.’ The guests were then taken to a small chapel high in the hills, from which they had an excellent view of the entire settlement region. Readers of Bartsch’s novel would have been acquainted both with the chapel and with the views of the Drau/Drava valley it afforded. Afterwards, in the Südmarkhof, ‘the ladies of St Egydi received and served the gentlemen visitors’ a breakfast, while the president of the Südmark, Austrian parliamentary deputy Heinrich Wastian, welcomed them to the language frontier. A Südmark lecturer gave the visitors from Germany a detailed lecture about economic and social conditions in the region, ending his talk with a plea for the visitors to encourage other Germans to migrate to the region. Whether this visit produced any more settlers to the region is not known. More importantly, however, we can see that the Südmark was taking every opportunity to strengthen its growing ties to the nationalist milieu in Germany and to solicit its financial support. The following year the Central Committee reported that the Association for Germandom Abroad had decided to sponsor regular trips to the German language frontier in the south.32 St Egydi’s success in attracting tourists seems to be borne out not only by accounts of travellers from far away, but also by the increased number of local weekend visitors from the city of Marburg/Maribor who attended events held at the Südmarkhof. In September 1908, for example, the Südmark hosted a German Volksfest that attracted a thousand visitors to the Hof and its gardens. In the years before 1914 the Protestant community seems to have held weekly services in the gymnastics hall of the Südmarkhof, and in 1913 the establishment installed an indoor bowling alley.33 In a central chapter of Ludwig Mahnert’s novel Die Hungerglocke, German workers from nearby Marburg/Maribor travel by train to St Egydi where they learn that Slovene nationalists have planned a demonstration. Mahnert’s description of this weekend outing to St Egydi makes the unique German landscape of the south into the deeper justification for the nationalist and Protestant loyalties that motivate the main characters, Käthe and Oswald, to make this trip. Subtly but constantly, the land itself reminds the two protagonists of their larger purpose. From her seat in the train, for example, Käthe cannot take her eyes from the increasingly hilly landscape with its brown cows in the fields. ‘The entire hilly landscape exulted in the intense deep green of a rich summer. Not a speck of earth had gone

254 Pieter M. Judson

untouched by God in this blessed land.’ Alighting from the train in Egydi Tunnel Oswald and Käthe make their way up the crowded main street surrounded by nervous gendarmes attempting to separate the nationalist parties. Arriving at the Südmarkhof they and hundreds of other Germans stop for refreshment and to sing German songs. Later, from the terrace, Oswald notices the landscape but not with his eyes; instead, the land communicates its message to him with the scent of hay from the fields around the village, which reminds him again of those embattled frontier Germans on whose behalf he has come to St Egydi. ‘A silent loyal greeting rose from out of the fields to [those in] the Südmarkhof, and the sweet smell of the hay filled the air, the crickets chirped, the birds sang in the fruit trees.’34 Landscape, inn, village – all became simultaneously fictional settings for heroic acts and real sites of heroic activism. Nothing expressed the power of this landscape as both heroic frontier setting and real place than a visit made by visitors from Germany of an altogether different type in 1913. It seems that a group of students from Mannheim – seven high-school girls, five male university students, and their chaperones – had developed a burning desire to visit the settler colony in St Egydi. Why? They had all read Bartsch’s novel The German Sorrow, quoted at various points in this chapter. Never mind that the novel’s erotic qualities made its suitability for young schoolgirls questionable. The visiting students were hungry to experience for themselves some of the drama of the language frontier. They wanted to enjoy the southern qualities of this particular landscape and to share with the inhabitants the sorrows and joys of the frontier. The students toured the area with enthusiasm, looking down from the high hills at the part of the landscape their guide described as the ‘borderline,’ in imitation of Bartsch’s Georg. They visited several noteworthy sites mentioned in the book, and as part of their entertainment the students engaged in ‘friendly national intercourse with the settlers.’ They participated in a local German choir rehearsal and met several Germans of their own age. At the end of their two-day visit, the Mannheimers professed themselves highly satisfied with what they had seen and experienced. Upon their departure for the north the students promised to return soon and to encourage others from Germany to visit.35 Since 1905, as more travellers from Germany visited this sunny southern Heimat region, they learned about the struggles that engaged their brethren on the frontier. ‘The beautiful landscape and the national

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significance of the Südmark settlement area in St Egydi and in the Drau valley [have] earned it popularity as a destination for outings and trips,’ wrote one Südmark author in 1914 about the organization’s effectiveness at attracting visitors from Germany. 36 What exactly the visitors learned was in part a product of nationalist fiction and in part a product of the particular lens through which they viewed the South Styrian landscape, thanks to the efforts of the Südmark and its allies. St Egydi, a village of some seven hundred inhabitants, had come to symbolize the nationalists’ hopes for the entire region between the Mur/ Mura and Drau/Drava Rivers. The region in turn symbolized the apparently eternal struggle of German nationalists in Eastern Europe, not only in one locality but wherever Germans lived in close proximity to ‘Slavs.’ That this particular eastern frontier was found in a wineproducing region of the south increased its attractiveness for northern Germans, especially in an era of increasing travel and popular tourism. The qualities to be found in this region made it a better example for promoting nationalist vigilance than did other, less welcoming regions. Both the village of St Egydi and the region might gain German speakers, or lose them – the outcome was difficult to foresee. But if the Südmark and its propagandists had their say, both would remain German in a sense that lay outside of the particulars of their history. As German nationalists saw it, both village and region were situated in a German landscape whose special virtues depended on the a-historic elements of sun, soil, and rain, and whose profile would always be German, no matter who lived there. The success of this characterization points to a related accomplishment by nationalist activists of all kinds in Central Europe: the definitive territorialization of the nation in the geography of the region. If activists in Germany had long faced the challenge of knitting together Germany’s many regional characteristics in a single national identity, they had done so in the context of a state whose borders were clearly delineated on maps of Europe, whether or not Germany’s diverse inhabitants necessarily shared a sense of belonging to the nation that the new state supposedly embodied. Austria’s German nationalists had faced a different kind of territorial challenge. Since the Imperial Austrian state did not recognize the ‘right’ of any nation to any territory, nationalist organizations shouldered the work of establishing the geographic expression of their alleged nations. This process clearly provoked stiff competition among nationalist groups that laid claim to the same territories, as with Czech and German nationalists in Bohemia,

256 Pieter M. Judson

Moravia, Silesia, and Lower Austria, or Slovene and German nationalists in South Styria and Carniola. While nationalists in Germany sought to nationalize populations within the recognized borders of a nation state, German nationalists in Austria faced the daunting challenge of establishing the borders of their nation’s territory in the first place. Language frontiers, places where the census results showed the use of more than one language, became the imagined battlegrounds between nations, and their defence became critical for all nations involved. That defence also required the mobilization of Germans in Germany for support, and the stories told about the landscape in South Styria became central to marketing its German identity to German nationalists in other parts of Europe. As a review of Mahnert’s novel Die Hungerglocke in the Tages-Post of Linz noted, this story clearly ‘shows our brothers in the German Reich just how difficult it is to be German here in Austria.’37

NOTES I am grateful to Harvard University Press for permission to draw on and reprint some materials presented in my book Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). 1 2 3 4 5

Rudolf Hans Bartsch, Das deutsche Leid (Leipzig, 1912), 342. Ibid., 150, 208. Ibid., 205. Ibid., 208. On Bartsch’s influence, see Arnold Suppan, ‘Die Untersteiermark, Krain und das Küstenland zwischen Maria Theresia und Franz Joseph (1740– 1918),’ in Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas, vol. 7, Zwischen Adria und Karawanken, ed. Suppan (Berlin, 1998), 341. 6 For another such novel – less compelling, beautifully written, but far more directly political – see Ludwig Mahnert, Die Hungerglocke. Roman aus der steierischen Los von Rom Bewegung (Duisburg, 1912). Mahnert himself apparently served as the real-life inspiration for the influential Lutheran pastor in Bartsch’s novel, as one reviewer of Die Hungerglocke noted in Die Wartburg. I am grateful to Professor Jeremy King for introducing me to Mahnert’s work. 7 Maria Kurz, ‘Der Volksschulstreit in der Südsteiermark und in Kärnten in

Land of Sun and Vineyards

8

9 10 11

12

13

14 15

257

der Zeit der Dezemberverfassung,’ PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1986. See also Hannelore Burger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im österreichischen Unterrichtswesen 1867–1918 (Vienna, 1995), esp. 116–25. On the demographic trend as reflected in the Austrian census, see Emil Brix, ‘Die zahlenmässige Präsenz des Deutschtums in den südslawischen Kronländern Cisleithaniens 1848–1918,’ in Geschichte der Deutschen im Bereich des heutigen Slowenien 1848–1941 / Zgodovina nemcev na obmocmju današnje slovenije, 1848–1941, ed. Helmut Rumpler and Arnold Suppan (Munich and Vienna, 1988), esp. 53. Bartsch, Das deutsche Leid, 101. Ibid., 403–4. The association spent considerable sums on loans to farmers for the purchase of land, and even, on occasion, purchased buildings and farms itself. Typical of Südmark ventures were the contributions it made to local building societies for the purpose of erecting hotels or restaurants in important towns such as Rann/Brezmice, where the German minority had no central point for congregating and German travellers no ‘German’ place to spend the night. Erwin Barta and Karl Bell, Geschichte der Schutzarbeit am deutschen Volkstum (Dresden, 1930), 38. For a general overview of Südmark income and expenditures from 1890 through 1913, see ‘Übersicht über die Entwicklung des Vereines,’ Mittheilungen des Vereines Südmark (hereafter MVS), 1914, 196–7. See also Eduard G. Staudinger, ‘Die Südmark. Aspekte der Programmatik und Struktur eines deutschen Schutzvereins in der Steiermark bis 1914,’ in Geschichte der Deutschen, ed. Rumpler and Suppan, 130–54. ‘Tätigkeitsbericht des Besiedlungs- und Bodenschutz-Auschusses,’ MVS, 1914, 234, and ‘Übersicht über die Entwicklung des Vereines,’ MVS, 1914, 196–7. Bartsch, Das deutsche Leid, 403. Imperial census results for St Egydi/Sv. Ilj (village) by language of daily use and confession: Year

Total

Foreigners

German

Slovene

Catholic

Protestant

1880 1890 1900 1910

594 701 715 784

0 0 0 17 (2.2%)

253 (43%) 346 (49%) 201 (29%) 119 (17%)

339 (57%) 355 (51%) 503 (71%) 648 (83%)

594 701 715 773

0 0 0 11 (1.4%)

Judson, Guardians of the Nation, 139. In 1900 the total population for the larger St Egydi/Sv.Ilj district was 1097, of whom 267 were listed as German speakers.

258 Pieter M. Judson 16 MVS, 1906–7, 8; Marburger Zeitung (hereafter MZ), 5 January 1905. The Südmarkhof was the dramatic setting for a fictional riot between German and Slovene nationalists in Mahnert’s Hungerglocke, 126–61. 17 MVS, 1907–8, 387, and 1911, 410–11; for the quotation, MVS 1912, 328. 18 On the Los von Rom movement, see Andrew Whiteside, The Socialism of Fools: Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Austrian Pan-Germanism (Berkeley, 1975). See also Mahnert, Die Hungerglocke. 19 MVS, 1910, 284. Also reproduced here is the text of a petition to the Marburg diocese to provide St Egydi with a regular possibility of confession in German. 20 MVS, 1907–8, 288–9. 21 Bartsch, Das deutsche Leid, 404. 22 MVS, 1911, 410–11; 1914, 97. 23 Bartsch, Das deutsche Leid, 401–2. 24 ‘Bericht über die Siedlungsarbeiten,’ MVS, 1907–8, 387. 25 Quoted ibid., 388. 26 MVS, 1911, 411. 27 Hugo Scherbaum, ‘An der Sprachgrenze,’ MVS, 1911, 40. 28 MVS, 1906–7, 273. This visit was to be followed by the first Südmark tour, a ten-day extravaganza that would have taken participants across South Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia. Südmark Wanderlehrer Viktor Heeger was to have been the guide. The tour never took place because no members responded to the offer. However, members were highly interested in visiting the Südmarkhof in St Egdyi/Sv. Ilj, and this outing was a success. 29 MVS, 1909, 309; 1912, 297. 30 W. Frank, ‘Eine Fahrt in die Windischen Büheln,’ MVS, 1912, 327–8. 31 Ibid., 328–9. 32 ‘Reichsdeutsche Schutzvereinler im Südmarkgebiet,’ MVS (1913), 399– 400; MVS, 1913, 259; ‘Ausflüge und Reisen,’ MVS, 1914, 252; MZ, 2 August 1913, 4 and 30 August 1913, 2. 33 MZ, 26 Apr. 1908, 4; 6 Sept. 1908, 2; 17 July 1913, 2; 6 Sept. 1913, 3. 34 Mahnert, Die Hungerglocke, 148. 35 ‘Mannheimer Wandervögel in St. Egydi,’ MVS, 1913, 400, and 1914, 252. 36 MVS, 1914, 252. 37 Quoted in an end section entitled ‘Einige Auszüge aus Besprechungen der Hungerglocke,’ in Mahnert, Die Hungerglocke.

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Contributors

Celia Applegate is Professor of History at the University of Rochester. She is the author of Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca and London, 2005), and A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990). She is co-editor (with Pamela Potter) of Music and German National Identity (Chicago, 2002). She currently serves as vice-president of the German Studies Association. David Blackbourn is Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University and taught at London University 1976–92. His books include The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (London and New York, 2006); The Long Nineteenth Century: The Fontana History of Germany, 1780–1918 (London, 1997); Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany (Oxford, 1993); The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford, 1984), with Geoff Eley; and Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (New Haven and London, 1980). Jennifer Jenkins is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Modern German History. She is the author of Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg (Ithaca and London, 2003), an exploration of the dynamics of nationalism, modernity, and public culture in Imperial Germany. She is currently working on the relationship between Germany and Iran after 1890 and on architecture and modernism in twentieth-century Germany.

266 Contributors

Pieter M. Judson is Professor of History at Swarthmore College and editor of the Austrian History Yearbook. His book Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor, 1996) won the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association in 1997. Judson is also the author of Wien brennt! Die Revolution von 1848 und ihr liberales Erbe (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 1998), and co-editor of Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (New York, 2004) with Marsha L. Rozenblit. His book Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, Mass., 2006) examines nationalist activism in so-called language frontier regions of the Habsburg monarchy from 1880 through the 1920s. His current book project is titled A New History of Habsburg Central Europe, 1780–1948. Thomas Kühne is Associate Professor of History and Strassler Family Chair in Holocaust History at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. His book Dreiklassenwahlrecht und Wahlkultur in Preussen 1867– 1914 (Düsseldorf, 1994) won the German Bundestag Prize. Since changing his focus to twentieth-century gender and military history, his recent work deals with the mythical ideal of comradeship among German soldiers: Kameradschaft. Die Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges und das 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2006). He has also published on the history of masculinities and on mass violence in the 20th century. His edited books include Männergeschichte – Geschlechtergeschichte (Frankfurt a.M. and New York, 1996) and Massenhaftes Töten. Kriege and Genozide im 20. Jahrhundert (Essen, 2004) with Peter Gleichmann. Kühne has been a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and has served as chair of the German Historical Peace Research Society. Eric Kurlander is Associate Professor of History at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 2001 and has written widely on politics and culture in Imperial and Weimar Germany. He has recently published The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898–1933 (New York and Oxford, 2006). He has also published articles in the European Review of History, The Historian, the Jahrbuch zur LiberalismusForschung, The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, and a number of edited volumes. Kurlander’s current project, entitled Living with Hitler: Liberal Democrats between Resistance and Collaboration, 1933–1945, delves into

Contributors

267

the everyday social, cultural, and intellectual life of liberal democrats during the Third Reich. Thomas M. Lekan is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1999. He is the author of Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 2004). With Thomas Zeller he has co-edited Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (New Brunswick, NJ, 2005). He received German Historical Institute and American Council of Learned Societies fellowships for his current research project Sublime Consumption: Nature Tourism and the Making of the German Leisure Class, 1880–1980. Caitlin Murdock is Assistant Professor of History at California State University Long Beach. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2003. She has published several essays on borderlands, including ‘Central Policy and Local Practice: The Changing Dynamics of the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands after 1933’ in the Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Changing Places: Mobilizing Society, Culture, and Territory in Central Europe’s Borderlands, 1870–1938. James Retallack is Professor of History and German Studies at the University of Toronto. He received his DPhil from Oxford University in 1983. His books include The German Right, 1860–1920: Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination (Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 2006); Wilhelminism and Its Legacies (Oxford and New York, 2003), edited with Geoff Eley; Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II (Basingstoke, London, and New York, 1996); and Notables of the Right (Boston and London, 1988). He is editing Imperial Germany 1871–1918: The Short Oxford History of Germany and recently completed a volume of on-line documents on Bismarckian Germany for the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC. He is nearing completion of a monograph on electoral culture and the authoritarian state in Saxony and Germany from 1860 to 1918. Tara Zahra is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago. Previously she was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her book entitled Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the

268 Contributors

Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 is forthcoming from Cornell University Press. Her publications include an article in the American Historical Review (December 2006) entitled ‘Each Nation Only Cares for Its Own: Empire, Nation, and Child Welfare Activism in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1918,’ and ‘Reclaiming Children for the Nation: Germanization, National Ascription, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1945,’ which appeared in Central European History (December 2004).

Index

‘absolute music,’ 42 Adriatic Sea, 21 Agrarian League, 112, 132 Alsace, Alsace-Lorraine, 8, 125, 126, 129, 131, 133–7, 140n29, 143n59, 144n62 Alsatian Progressive Party, 125, 133, 136 Althusser, Louis, 19 Anderson, Benedict, 15, 23, 32n27 Anderson, Margaret Lavinia, 102 anti-modernism, 60, 61, 78, 174, 187n9. See also modernity antisemitism, 7, 84, 132, 138n6, 141n50 anti-urbanism, 44, 60. See also urbanism, urbanization Applegate, Celia, 60, 152, 172, 216 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 172 Arnold, Matthew, 39 Association for Germandom Abroad, 252–3 Association of German Tourist Clubs, 174 associations, associational life, 6, 12, 21, 25, 48, 50, 67, 68, 106, 112–17, 121n29, 122n37, 125, 129, 134–6,

142n61, 174–7, 180, 181, 195, 214, 218–19, 221, 223, 225, 227, 239–41, 244, 245, 248–9, 251, 252–3, 257n11 Auden, W.H., 94 Austria, 5, 20–1, 28n2, 33n37, 53, 166, 178, 209, 214–35, 236–56. See also Habsburg Empire Austrian Supreme Administrative Court, 222 authoritarianism, 7, 79, 80, 81, 101, 102, 104, 110, 114 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 50 Baden, Grand Duchy of, 12, 124, 129 Bancroft, George, 80 Barbizon school of painting, 65–6 Barkenhoff, 64, 67, 69–70 Barrès, Maurice, 18 Bartels, Adolf, 126–7 Bartsch, Rudolf Hans, 236–44, 247–8, 251, 253–4, 256n6 Bathrick, David, 62, 63 Bauhaus, 72n7 Bavaria, Kingdom of, 5, 12, 13, 16, 28n3, 129, 152, 159, 178 Bayreuth, 13, 26, 42–7, 52

270 Index Beautification Society for the Siebengebirge, 173–7, 183 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 47, 56–7 Beheim-Schwarzbach, Max, 153 Benjamin, Walter, 40–1 Berlin, 5, 48, 63, 90, 104, 105, 106, 116, 149, 173, 175, 176, 204, 252 Best, Heinrich, 108 Bhabha, Homi, 19 bilingualism, 215–18, 220, 222, 224, 231, 239, 244. See also language Bismarck, Otto von, 12, 16, 20, 28n3, 79, 90, 149, 173, 183, 189n34, 249 Blackbourn, David, 40, 102, 172 Blake, William, 152 Blau, Josef, 226, 229 Blount, Roy, Jr, 78 Blumenthal, David, 130, 133–5, 142n57, 143n64 Bohemia, 13, 158, 199–200, 203, 207, 209n2, 210n12, 211n12, 214–35, 246, 255 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 12, 16 Botzenhardt, Erasmus Georg, 236–8, 240–2, 247–9, 254. See also Bartsch Bourdieu, Pierre, 113, 121n32 Brahms, Johannes, 27, 50, 51, 55 Bredt, Johann Victor, 105, 120n15 Bremen, 12, 65, 67–8, 69 Bremen Art Museum, 61–2, 63 Britain, 16, 48, 52, 76, 101, 102, 111, 181, 200 Brno/Brünn, 218 Brophy, James, 23 Brubaker, Rogers, 209 Bugge, Peter, 217, 230 Bülow, Bernhard von, 134 bureaucracy, 7, 12, 18, 80 Calendar for the Erzgebirge, 201

capitalism, 61, 125, 135, 158 Catholic Church, Catholicism, 6, 8, 124, 130, 132–3, 136, 244, 246, 247. See also German Centre Party; religion Centennial Exhibition of German Art, 64 Centre Party. See German Centre Party ‘Christmasland,’ 205–6 Cioc, Mark, 166 cities. See urbanism, urbanization civilization, 43, 151, 156, 157, 160n5, 165, 166, 168, 170, 171, 175, 181–2 Civil War, U.S., 80–1 Clark, T.J., 63 class, 7, 8, 28n8, 49–51, 56, 57, 81, 103, 105, 110–13, 115–17, 122n40, 125, 131–2, 136, 166–7, 175–6, 184, 189n34, 197, 198, 201, 218, 225, 227, 244 colonialism, 31n23, 111, 130, 137, 156, 165, 173, 227, 249, 254 colonization, 21, 22, 152, 153, 154, 241, 252 communism, 64 Confino, Alon, 23, 60, 211n19, 216 Connell, John, 41–2, 46, 51 Contemporary Review, 78 Conwentz, Hugo, 178–81, 185 Cronon, William, 165, 170, 185 Csallner, Heinz, 159 culture, 19, 21, 23, 26, 27, 39–57, 58n8, 60–3, 65, 67, 70, 72n7, 80, 85, 126, 129, 154, 165, 167, 169, 172, 173, 179, 181, 182–3, 186, 187n9, 207, 216, 226–8, 230–1, 236–8, 252. See also political culture culture-bearers (Kulturträger), 226

Index Curley, James L., 124, 130 Czechs, 127, 129, 139n28, 198, 204, 214–32, 246, 255 Czech language, 214–32, 246 Czech Nationalist Union of Northern Bohemia, 218 Czech Provincial Commission for Child Welfare, 223–4 Czech School Association, 218 Dahlhaus, Carl, 49 Danes, 127, 128, 132, 136, 139n28 Danish language, 5, 128, 140n29 Darwinism, 128, 155, 172, 199 democracy, democratization, 25, 61, 101–23, 125, 127, 128, 130–7, 143n64, 169, 170, 173, 183–4, 187n9, 230 Dolní T“eš¸ovec / Nieder-Johnsdorf, 224 Drau/Drava River, 236–8, 240–1, 243, 248, 252–3, 255 Dresden, 25, 76, 77, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 212n22 Dresden Art Gallery, 86 Dresden Realschule, 87 Dresdner Nachrichten, 84, 85, 93 Eagleton, Terry, 42 education. See schools Eifel, 13, 173–4 Eifel Association, 174–6, 190n44 1848, revolution of, 5, 12, 43, 154 1871, 4–6, 9, 12, 14–15, 16, 43, 53, 80, 81, 82, 103, 125, 129, 133, 140n29, 166, 197, 199. See also unification (German) Elbe River, 9 elections, electoral campaigns, 101– 23, 132, 141, 218, 224, 249

271

Eley, Geoff, 102 elites, 7, 80, 84, 103, 105, 106, 107, 112, 117, 165, 167, 181 Elsässer, Der, 129–30 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 84, 168–9 emperor (Kaiser), 4, 57, 65, 81, 93, 114. See also Wilhelm I; Wilhelm II Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), 13, 18, 22, 195–6, 201–2, 205 Erzgebirge Association, 207, 210n3, 213n41 family, 3, 7, 14, 20, 21, 22, 52, 65, 86, 104, 112, 130, 149, 150–2, 154, 215– 18, 220–3, 228–9, 239, 241–9 fascism, 104, 137, 167, 186. See also National Socialism, Nazism Fechter, Paul, 151, 158 festivals, 47–51, 104, 115–17, 180 First World War, 64, 91, 102, 117, 118, 125, 129, 136, 137, 149, 153–5, 159, 182, 183, 197, 198, 203, 208, 223, 229 forests. See wilderness Fortschritt, 128 France, 18, 28n3, 44, 59n32, 129, 131, 133, 136, 140n31, 144n88, 189n30 Franco-German War, 5, 81, 87 Francophile, 125, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135 Frank, Hans, 156–7 Frank, W., 251–2 Frankfurt am Main, 5 Frederick the Great, 150, 153, 157, 249 French language, 5, 140n29 Frenssen, Gustav, 127 Frevert, Ute, 50 Freytag, Gustav, 154 Friedeburg, Robert von, 112 Fritzsche, Peter, 122n40

272 Index Garnier, Jean-Louis-Charles, 44 Gazette Musicale, 46 Gehrmann, Karlheinz, 151 gender, 7, 8, 50, 113, 155, 227 Gennin, 149–50 German Association for Heimat Protection, 180–2 German Centre Party, 103, 108, 109, 110, 134, 143n73. See also Catholic Church, Catholicism German Colonial Society, 115 German Confederation, 4, 5 German Conservative Party, 106, 107, 108, 128 German Customs Union, 16 German Fatherland Party, 136, 144n89 German Garden City Association, 68 German Garden City Movement, 64 ‘Germanization,’ 56, 129, 155, 158, 161n27, 215, 217, 220, 222, 225, 229, 240, 241, 249 German language, 214–32 German Life and Manners (Henry Mayhew), 82–3, 84 German musicians, 46–7, 51, 53–5. See also music German Navy League, 112, 115 ‘Germanness’ (Deutschtum), 4, 8, 17, 21, 27, 44, 56, 131, 216, 227 German Provincial Commission for Child Welfare, 223–4 German School Association, 223, 225, 227, 240, 244, 245, 252 German Sorrow, The (Rudolf Hans Bartsch), 236, 239, 254 Germany, Federal Republic of, 4, 62, 72n7, 159 Gibson, Chris, 41–2, 46, 51 Gierach, Erich, 156

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 4, 5, 27 Gogh, Vincent van, 61–3 Gooley, Dana, 53–4 Grass, Günter, 98n48, 159 Graz, 236, 239, 244, 248, 252, 253 Great Depression, 137 Habsburg Empire, 4, 9, 20, 153, 217, 219, 222, 229, 242, 251. See also Austria Hamburg, 12, 16, 52, 124 Hanover, 9 Hanover Gothic, 68 Hansa League, 134 Harvard, 86 Hawthorne, Julian, 25, 76–98. See also Saxon Studies Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 25, 76, 77, 85, 86, 95n1 Haydn, Joseph, 47 Heimat, 17, 18, 21, 23, 25, 60–75, 78, 124, 127, 133, 152, 154, 155, 166, 167, 171–7, 179, 182, 185, 187n5, 195, 198–204, 206–8, 210n12, 216, 225–6, 237, 243, 249, 254. See also home, homeland Heimatkunst, 26, 61–6, 68, 71–2 Heine, Heinrich, 175 Henlein, Konrad, 230 Hetch Hetchy Valley, 182 Heywang, Ernst, 227–8 history of everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte), 18, 39 Hitler, Adolf, 150, 151, 155–8, 183, 207 Hoffmann, Friedrich, 128 Hölscher, Lucian, 50 Holy Roman Empire, 4, 129 home, homeland, 3, 4, 9, 14, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22, 27, 45, 49, 60, 104, 165–92. See also Heimat

Index Hübl, Adolf, 224 Hungary, 52, 59n32, 246 Huyssen, Andreas, 62, 63 ‘imagined community,’ 18, 215 imagology, 82–3 Imperial and Free Conservative Party, 106, 108, 143n73, 144n89 Imperial School Law (Austria), 218– 19 Impressionism, 65 industry, industrialization, 44, 48, 50, 60, 111, 124, 166, 167, 175, 180–2, 184, 186, 195–203, 205–6, 208, 209, 211n20 Innocents Abroad, The (Mark Twain), 77, 80, 86 James, Henry, 77, 83, 84, 88, 91, 93 Jefferies, Matthew, 61 Jenkins, Jennifer, 187n9, 216, 234n32 Jews, 7, 8, 29n9, 127, 128, 132, 136, 157. See also antisemitism Jihlava/Iglau, 221 Johann, of Saxony, 87 Judson, Pieter, 217 Junkers, 127, 136 Kapras, Jan, 217–18 King, Jeremy, 220–1 Kladderadatsch, 101, 103–5, 109 Klingenthal, 200 Kraus, Otto, 152 Kühne, Thomas, 137 Kulturkampf (cultural struggle), 6, 109 Künkel, Hans, 149–50, 158 Kyffhäuser movement, 112 Lamprecht, Karl, 153

273

landscape, 3, 9, 13, 19, 20, 22, 23, 39, 57, 60, 63, 65–6, 68, 77–8, 89, 124– 45, 149–64, 165–92, 195–213, 237, 248, 254. See also nature Landsmannschaften, 159 Landtag (Prussia), 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 117, 123n43 Landtag (Württemberg), 12 Langbehn, Julius, 126–8 language, 3, 5, 8, 23, 25, 27, 60, 71, 108, 215–32, 239, 255–6. See also bilingualism; Czech, Danish, French, German, Polish languages language frontier, 214–15, 222–4, 227–9, 232, 236–56 Laufenberg Rapids, 180 Laugel, Anselme, 131 Lauter, 205 law, 18, 21, 80, 103, 109, 111, 128, 134, 142n61, 150, 180–1, 182, 199, 203, 218, 220, 222, 233n14, 240, 246 Leacock, Stephen, 86 League of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, 7 left liberalism, 108, 110, 124–8, 131, 132–6, 141n46, 144n89. See also liberalism Lehar, Anna and Johann, 222 leisure, 22, 44, 46, 189n34, 196, 198, 200, 206. See also tourism Lekan, Thomas, 152 Lenz, Siegfried, 60 Leopold, Aldo, 186 Lesser Germany (Kleindeutschland), 4, 15 Levi, Primo, 158 liberalism, 9, 12, 16, 71, 103, 109, 124– 45. See also left liberalism; National Liberal Party liberal nationalism, 15, 16

274 Index Liberal Regional Party, 125, 133, 134– 5 literature, 5, 17, 18, 28, 55, 61, 63, 67, 80, 82–4, 86, 88–9, 91, 94, 150, 154, 196, 201, 202, 205 Lichtwark, Alfred, 63–4 Liszt, Franz, 27, 43, 53–4 living space (Lebensraum), 155, 156 Lodge, David, 81 Löscher, Friedrich, 195 Lowell, James Russell, 86 Lower Saxony, 124 Lübeck, 12 Ludwigshafen, 48 Lusatia, 199 Mackensen, Fritz, 65, 66, 69 Magdeburg, 13 Mahnert, Ludwig, 242, 247–8, 251, 253, 256 Mannheim, 254 Mannheim, Karl, 117 Mansfield, Katherine, 81 Marianské Hory / Marienberg, 219 Marburg, 105, 239, 241–2, 243, 247, 248, 249, 251, 252, 253, 258n19 Marsh, George Perkins, 168, 171 Mason, Bobbie Ann, 92 Mayhew, Henry, 82, 83, 84, 95n2 memory, 14, 19, 27, 33n33, 80, 150, 159–60, 173, 175, 211n19 microhistory, 18, 39 Middle Ages, 41 Miegel, Agnes, 158, 159 military, 12, 16, 84, 88, 111, 113, 133, 137, 158 Miller, Arthur, 92 mining, 168, 176–7, 200 modernism, 61–3, 64, 71–2, 187n9

modernity, 23, 41, 70, 71–2, 73n17, 78, 91, 184, 186, 196–7 modernization, 16, 19, 63, 206, 216, 226, 232n5, 233n5 modernization theory, 109–10 Moravia, 158, 219–20, 222–3, 225–6, 230–1, 241, 256 Moravian Compromise, 220 Morris, William, 64 Möser, Justus, 17 motherhood, 152, 159, 227, 234n35 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 47 Muir, John, 169, 182 Munich, 43, 45, 175 Mur/Mura River, 237–9, 241, 243, 252, 255 Murdock, Caitlin, 187n9 museums, 50, 61, 62, 63, 66, 72, 154, 178, 205, 228 music, 3, 26, 39–59, 79 Naš Dom, 249 Nash, Roderick, 167 National Association (Alsace), 12, 134–5 nationalism (Czech), 216–19, 224, 230, 255 nationalism (German), 8, 9, 24, 122, 126, 131–2, 138n6, 153, 171, 208, 209, 215–32, 239, 241–56, 258n16. See also liberal nationalism; völkisch nationalism (Slovene), 236–7, 239–40, 247, 249, 253, 258n16 National Liberal Party, 107, 108, 127– 8, 134, 141n47, 143n68, 144n89 National Social Association, 125 National Socialism, Nazism, 18, 62, 104, 118, 133, 137, 150, 156, 158, 172, 183, 207, 213n41, 231. See also Third Reich

Index nature, naturalism, 3, 13, 22, 23, 60, 63, 66, 68, 70, 149–64, 165–92, 195– 213 nature conservation, 3, 23, 152, 180, 182, 165–92 Nature Park Society, 166, 178 Naumann, Friedrich, 125 New German School, 52 New York City, 85, 87, 90, 167, 168, 170, 177 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 44, 79 Nipperdey, Thomas, 24 Nora, Pierre, 33n33 Oldenburg, 12 Overbeck, Fritz, 65 painting, 8, 27, 63–6, 168 Pan-German League, 115, 126, 130, 132 Paris, 43, 46, 52, 58n8, 63, 65, 81, 172, 230 Paris Opéra, 44 park, nature park, 51, 165–86, 188n16, 192n77, 251 parliament, 4, 7, 81, 101, 102, 104, 110, 118. See also Reichstag parliamentary deputy, 24, 101, 103, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 114, 121n24, 253 patriotism, 7, 17, 54, 122n40, 128, 131–3, 136, 143n64, 172, 184. See also nationalism Pavlov/Pawlow, 223 Peace Resolution, 136 pedagogical activism, 214–32 pillarization, 102 Pinchot, Gifford, 168–9, 182 Podmokly/Bodenbach, 219 Poles, 127–9, 132, 136, 156

275

Polish language, 5, 129, 241 Polish Party, 108, 109 political culture, 24, 101–2, 109, 124, 130, 137, 216 political mobilization, 25, 61, 104 ‘politics in a new key,’ 24, 237 Pollock, Griselda, 63 Prachatice/Prachatitz, 215–17 Prague, 214, 219, 223 Preiss, Jacques, 130, 133, 135 press, 23, 55, 59, 84, 105, 115, 129, 131, 142n61, 154, 196, 204–6, 223, 225, 239, 242–3, 246, 249, 251 primitive, primitivism, 167, 169, 170 professions, 7, 20, 79, 105, 111, 176, 201, 236 Progressive People’s Party, 125, 132, 136 Prokosch, Frederic, 124, 127 proportional representation, 107, 110 Protestant Church, Protestantism, 6, 28n8, 80, 126, 130, 133, 136, 149, 237–8, 242, 245, 246–8, 253. See also religion province, provincialism, 13, 17, 18, 23–4, 26, 42, 44, 46, 47, 49, 51, 53, 62, 63, 72, 98n48, 106, 108, 112, 124–5, 129, 130, 136, 137, 141n46, 143, 149, 167, 172, 173, 176–8, 181, 189n33, 218, 220, 223, 224, 230, 236 Prussia, Kingdom of, 5, 9, 12, 13, 28n2, 81, 86, 103, 105, 106, 108, 111, 113, 117, 129, 131, 149, 153, 156, 157, 159, 173–4, 176, 184, 242 Prussian Law Against the Disfigurement of Outstanding Landscapes, 180 race, 60, 80, 83, 126–32, 136, 139n28,

276 Index 140n39, 155, 156, 158, 165, 172, 183, 230 Radical People’s Party, 125, 134 Radical Union, 125 railways, 4, 8, 101, 103, 104–6, 111, 112, 117, 149, 154, 174, 175, 182, 183, 199, 205, 219, 244–5 Ratzel, Friedrich, 155 refugees, 19, 150–2, 154, 158–60 Reichstag, 4, 24, 102–4, 107, 111, 114, 115, 117, 118, 134, 144n81. See also parliament religion, 7, 8, 13, 21, 25, 50, 57, 132–3, 135. See also Catholic Church, Catholicism; Jews; Protestant Church, Protestantism Retallack, James, 103 revolution, 5, 12, 26, 43, 87, 154, 157, 183, 204 Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Heimat Protection, 181–2 Rhenish Provincial Association, 176– 7 Richler, Mordecai, 80, 94 Richter, Eugen, 125 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich, 17, 45, 60, 78, 97n40, 172, 173, 189n30 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 69, 70, 71, 74n39 Rollins, William, 151 Romanticism, 167, 171, 184, 188n29, 189n30 Roosevelt, Theodore, 168, 170, 175, 182 Rosenberg, Hans, 24, 117 Rubinstein, Anton, 56 Rudorff, Ernst, 180–2 Ruhr, 8, 13, 202 Ruland, Heinrich, 130 Rushdie, Salman, 14

Ruskin, John, 152 Saarland, 13, 208 Sack, Robert, 40 Sahlins, Peter, 215 St Egydi / Sv. Ilj, 241, 243–5, 247–55 Sammlungspolitik, 134 Saurer, August, 230 Saxon Studies (Julian Hawthorne), 76–98 Saxon Switzerland, 89, 196, 204, 211n12 Saxony, Kingdom of, 6, 9, 12, 13, 22, 76–98, 103, 105, 169, 178, 195–213 Schaefer, R. Murray, 41 Scheu, Robert, 214–16, 232 Schickele, René, 135 Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 4, 6, 27, 252 Schleswig-Holstein, 24, 124, 126–8, 132, 136, 137 Schmoller, Gustav, 155 Schönerer, Georg von, 246 schools, 3, 16, 20, 80, 149, 156, 215–17, 221–3, 225–9, 231, 233n14, 239–41, 243–6, 252, 254 Schorske, Carl, 24 Schultze-Naumburg, Paul, 181, 183, 185 Schumann, Clara, 53 Schumann, Robert, 56 science, 80, 93, 128, 168–9, 171, 178, 184, 192n77, 199, 202 Second World War, 48, 62, 82, 137, 150, 157, 196, 197 Sedan Day, 6, 79, 114–15, 199, 210n7 Sering, Max, 155 settlement, settlers, 13, 151, 153, 156– 9, 223, 225, 236–56 Sierra Club, 169, 182

Index Silesia, 8, 129, 156, 159, 172, 242, 256 Slavic peoples, 8, 47, 127–8, 136, 153– 5, 157–9, 172, 207, 213n38, 222, 247– 9, 255 Slovenes, 21, 236–7, 239–40, 243–4, 246–9, 251–3, 256, 257n15, 258n16. See also nationalism (Slovene) Social Democratic Party, 6, 7, 29n10, 108–10, 115, 124–6, 131, 134–6, 141n42, 142n61, 143n73, 144n89, 214, 228 socialism, 6, 29n10, 64, 71 Sonderweg, 7, 77 Song of Myself (Walt Whitman), 94 South German People’s Party, 125 Spielfeld/Spilje, 243 Stammtisch, 112, 114, 116, 117 State Office for Natural Monument Preservation, 178 Strength through Joy, 207 Stuttgart, 178, 205 Styria, 26, 236–41, 243, 245–6, 248, 255–6, 258n28 Sudeten German Heimat Front, 230 Sudeten Germans, 159, 230 Südmark Association, 21, 225, 240, 241–3, 245–55, 257n11, 258n28 Südmarkhof, 245, 250–2, 254, 258n16 suffrage, 24, 101, 102, 103 Switzerland, 89, 174 Tiedje, Johannes, 129 theatre, 43–5, 48, 69, 84 Third Reich, 4, 156, 157, 208, 230. See also National Socialism, Nazism Thoreau, Henry David, 165, 168 Thuringia, 9 tourism, 3, 8, 22, 171, 174, 179, 195– 211, 212n22, 214, 236–56. See also leisure

277

Trail Companion, The, 204–5 T“ebnice/Trebnitz, 223 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 153 Trinius, August, 155 Tschudi, Hugo von, 63–4 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 155, 169– 70, 172 Twain, Mark, 77–8, 83, 86, 92 unification (German), 4, 5, 6, 12, 17, 80, 173, 197, 210n7. See also 1871 Union of Germans in Bohemia, 223, 224 United States of America, 9, 17, 25, 27, 76–8, 80, 81, 84–7, 89, 91, 92, 94, 124, 155, 157, 165–72, 174, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184–6, 203 United States Forest Service, 168 urbanism, urbanization, 4, 20, 26, 40, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 53–5, 60, 61, 63, 76, 78, 83, 110, 111, 116, 124, 130, 165, 168, 169–70, 173, 175, 182, 184, 189n34, 195, 197, 214, 234n32, 243, 246, 248, 253 Velde, Henri van de, 66 Venatier, Hans, 156 Versailles, Treaty of, 159 Versailles Palace, 28n3, 82 veterans associations, 112–14 Vienna, 48, 52–3, 55, 56, 69, 220, 236, 244, 252 Vinnen, Carl, 61–2 Vogel, Jacob, 114 Vogeler, Heinrich, 26, 64–6, 68, 69–71, 73n18, 74n18 völkisch, 60, 126–33, 136, 137, 138n6, 156, 172, 245 Volksgemeinschaft, 127–8 Volkstum, 124, 127–8

278 Index Wagner, Richard, 13, 25, 26, 27, 42–7, 49, 79 Wastian, Heinrich, 253 Weber, Eugen, 23 Weber, Max, 114–15, 155 Weigel, Philipp, 201 Weimar Republic, 4, 133, 183 Wetekamp, Wilhelm, 178 Wetterlé, Emil, 130, 133, 135, 140n39 Wetzlar, 105–6 Whitman, Walt, 94 Wildenthal, Lora, 227 wilderness, 13, 22–3, 65, 66, 89, 151, 152, 154–7, 165–92, 198, 200, 206, 243 Wilhelm I, 84, 114 Wilhelm II, 7, 16, 114

Windische-Bühel, 243, 249, 252 Wolf, Georg, 133–5 world policy (Weltpolitik), 8 Worpswede, 26, 64–6, 68, 69, 70 Worpsweder Werkstätten, 68 Württemberg, Kingdom of, 5, 12, 13, 108, 111, 241, 246, 252 Yellowstone National Park, 168–9 Yosemite National Park, 166, 169, 177, 182 Zabern Affair, 136 Zahra, Tara, 187n9 Zander, Friedrich von, 105 Zedlitz-Neukirch, Octavio von, 106 Zimmerli, G.W., 128

GERMAN AND EUROPEAN STUDIES General Editor: Jennifer Jenkins 1 Emanuel Adler, Federica Bicchi, Beverly Crawford, and Raffaella A. Del Sarto, eds., The Convergence of Civilizations: Constructing a Mediterranean Region 2 James Retallack, The German Right, 1860–1920: Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination 3 Silvija Jestrovic, Theatre of Estrangement: Theory, Practice, Ideology 4 Susan Gross Solomon, ed., Doing Medicine Together: Germany and Russia between the Wars 5 Laurence McFalls, ed., Max Weber’s ‘Objectivity’ Revisited 6 Robin Ostow, ed., (Re)Visualizing National History: Museums and National Identities in Europe in the New Millennium 7 David Blackbourn and James Retallack, eds., Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930