Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Hamburg 9781501731297

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Provincial Modernitv

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by a grant from Washington University in St. Louis. Copyright© 2003 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 51 2 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2003 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jenkins, Jennifer, tg66Provincial modernity : local culture and liberal politics in fin-de-siecle Hamburg I Jennifer Jenkins. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8014-4025-4 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Hamburg (Cermany)-History. 2. Hamburg (Germany)-Intellectual life. I. Title. DDgoi.I·I28J46 2003 2002009044 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing

1o 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

I

For Mohamad and Brigitte

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations 1.

2.

3· 4· 5· 6. 7. 8.

IX XI XIII

Introduction Citizenship Real and Imagined Culture in a City-State Provincial Reformers People's Educators A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place A Hamburg Museum Modernist Memory Architecture and Liberal Politics Epilogue

146 1 77 217 261 294

Bibliography Index

321

vii

1

12 39

79

115

299

Illustrations Hamburg in the eighteenth century

14

Alfred Lichtwark

59

Alfred Lichtwark as modern art

72

People's Home in Rothenburgsort before 1914

g8

Literary Society program for a "people's educational evening," J8g8

130

Jakob Loewenberg

159

Carl Gotze

160

Max Liebermann, Die Kirchenallee in Hamburg St.-Georg, 1891

193

Max Liebermann, Burgermeister Car/Friedrich Petersen, 1892

205

Title page of the yearbook of the Society of Hamburg Friends ofArt, 1895

233

Mary Hertz, poster for an exhibition of amateur art

2 34

Title page of the yearbook of the Society of Hamburg Friends of Art, 1902

235

Marie Zacharias, Old Hamburg Diele

239

ix

Illustrations

Ebba Tesdorpf, Old Hamburg Diele

240

Fritz Schumacher

264

Fritz Schumacher, painted design for the Institute for Tropical Medicine and Research, 191 o

282

Fritz Schumacher, painted design for a public school,

283

Fritz Schumacher, design for the Hamburg city park

X

1910

287

Acknowledgments I have incurred many debts in the writing of this book. In seeking to broaden the study of liberal and modernist culture in Germany, I have been generously supported by institutions, colleagues, and friends. Chief among my debts is to the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and to its directors, Charles Maier, George Ross, and Peter Hall, and its associate director, Abby Collins, for providing the congenial setting for writing during my time there as a James Bryant Conant Fellow in 1998-99 and again in the fall of2001. The Germanistic Society of America (Quadrille Ball Committee), the Institut ftir Europaische Geschichte in Mainz, the Horace H. Rackham School for Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan, and the National Endowment for the Humanities all generously provided financial support for an earlier incarnation of the book. Many thanks to the former director of the Institute in Mainz, Professor Dr. Karl Otmar Freiherr von Aretin, for the funding that allowed me to stay an extra year in Germany. I thank the dean of Arts and Sciences and my colleagues in the History Department at Washington U niversity for summer research funds in 1997 and 1998 and for leave during 1998-gg and in the fall of 2001. Thanks as well to the German Historical Institute and its GAAC/GARN program for funding in the summer of 1997, which supported research for Chapters 5 and 8. I have received intellectual and personal support from many individuxi

Acknowledgments

als. I am particularly indebted to Hans Wilhelm Eckardt of the Staatsarchiv Hamburg and to Joist Grolle of the Universitat Hamburg for their support and friendship through many years of research. Special thanks go to the family of Gustav Schiefler, particularly Mr. and Mrs. Georg Schiefler and Indina Woesthoff, who generously granted access to the private papers of Gustav Schiefler then in family possession. Many thanks to Lothar Gall for allowing me to participate in his seminar "Stadt und Biirgertum" in 199394· Thanks go to the library of the Hamburg Teachers' Union, to the staff of the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, and to the Hamburg School Museum-Raiiner Lehberger,Jorg Berlin, and Hans-Werner Engel-for their help over the years. Geralde Schmidt-Dumont, Steve Kalberg, Ulrike Koch, Rainer Ohliger, Klaus Saul, Lois Scribner, Lynne Tatlock, Bernd Widdig, and Martin Vogt all warmly supported this project in various ways. Parts of this book have been publicly presented, and I thank the audiences for their comments. Sections of Chapter 5 were presented at the Social Science History Association meeting in 1997 and at Harvard University in 1999; portions of Chapter 8 were presented at the German Studies Association meeting in 1997 and at Harvard University in 1999· Chapters 4 and 7 received their first public exposure at meetings of the German Studies Association in 1998 and 2000, respectively. Thanks to David Blackbourn, Mathias Bos, Howard Brick, Kathleen Canning, Fernando Coronil, John Czaplicka, Geoff Eley, Constantin Goschler, Andrew Lees, Jim Livesey, Margaret Menninger, Kathy Pence, Alexander Schmidt-Gernig, Scott Spector, and Corinna Treitel for reading parts of the manuscript in draft. Many thanks as well to my editors at Cornell University Press, John Ackerman, Ange Romeo-Hall, and Barbara Salazar, and to the two readers for their insightful comments. Portions of Chapter 2 have appeared in Intellectual History Newsletter (Fall 2001). I am grateful to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Georg Syamken, the Illies Family Foundation, VG Bild Kunst, and the Artists' Rights Society in New York for permission to reprint images from the works of Arthur Illies and Max Liebermann. Permission to reprint illustrations and to quote from archival sources has been granted by the Staatsarchiv Hamburg. Many thanks to them. I extend special thanks to GeofT Eley and David Blackbourn for both starting and aiding me in this quest. Many thanks to my family and to the Fischer family in Hamburg-Brigitte, Ewald, and Sandra-for giving me a home during years of research. The greatest thanks go to my husband, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, who has been my best fi'iend and companion during the writing of this book. All of its shortcomings, of course, are my own.

xii

Abbreviations FA

Familienarchiv (family archive)

DNHV

Deutschnationale Handlungsgehilfen-Verband (German National Employees' Union)

GEW

Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (Hamburg Teachers' Union)

HA

Hauptakte (main file)

HKH

Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg Art Museum)

HS

Handschriftensammlung (manuscript collection)

IWK

Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbe-wegung (International Social Science

Correspondence for the History of the German Labor Movement) .JGHK

Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft Hamburger Kunstfreunde (Yearbook of

the Society of Hamburg Friends of Art) OSB pp

Oberschulbehorde (school administration) Politische Polizei (political police) Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)

SPD

xiii

Abbreviations StAHH

Staatsarchiv Hamburg (Hamburg State Archive)

StUB HH

Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek Hamburg (Hamburg State and University Library)

UA

Unterakte (subfile)

VHV

Verein Hamburger Volksschullehrer (Hamburg Elementary School Teachers' Association)

ZAS

Zeitungsausschnittsammlung (newspaper clipping collection)

ZHG

Zeitschriji des Vereins fur Hamburgische Geschichte (Journal of the Society for Hamburg History)

xiv

Provincial Modernitv

Introduction In 1910, Karl Scheffler-native of Hamburg, art historian, and editor of the modern art journal Kunst und Kiinstler-opened his history of Berlin with the following words: Every city is an individual. One thinks about each as one thinks about a personality. Each has its own particular feelings and atmosphere, a singular physiognomy, and a kind of character that impresses itself indelibly upon the memory. When one experiences these feelings, it doesn't matter if one has done well or badly there, if one has lived there happily or not. Of far greater importance are the impressions, which hold the entirety of a city's history in embryonic form and whose objectivity overcomes all sentiments .... Each city preserves the particular conditions of its way of life, the factors that let it become what it is. A consistent and uniform influence, impressing itself on morals and customs, trade and traffic, architecture and fashion, shapes everything with such force that one confronts a unity without immediately recognizing how unified it is. 1 Scheffler's idiosyncratic reading of Berlin signaled his modernist sensibility to early twentieth-century readers. He approached Berlin not as a soL Karl Scheffler, Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1910), 3-4. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.

Introduction cial theorist or as a politician but as an intellectual fascinated by the city and as an art and cultural critic. As editor of the journal that had introduced the German public to the work of the French Impressionists and the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, Scheffler began his history with a rumination on Impressionism as a way of seeing. He aimed to read Berlin's "personality" in a way that coincided with the artistic tastes of his journal's readers. Atmosphere ( Stimmung) and impressions (Eindrncke), in which "the whole course of the city's history is held in embryonic form," became his social facts, the clues he used to discern deeper structures of meaning and action. Scheffler's book belonged to a growing corpus of writings penned by imperial reformers, for whom the urban environment was both a modernist spectacle and an object of national concern. For the sociologist Max Weber and the politician Friedrich Naumann, modern Germany was being created in the cities rather than in the small towns or countryside. Industrial, rational, and progressive, this modernity was created by middleclass professionals, who imprinted their values onto the city through programs of social reform, public housing, and urban planning. 2 As Germany's cities emerged at the forefront of transatlantic developments in municipal reform in 1900, their participation in what the historian Daniel Rodgers has called the progressive social politics of the age was not without its contradictions. 3 The liberal politics that reigned in Germany's cities were upheld, in most cases, by illiberal means. 4 Germany's liberal parties kept an artificial hold on power by restricting access to the local ballot box, keeping the majority of urban residents away from the vote. In the cities both the weaknesses and strengths, as well as the inner tensions, of German liberalism were on full display. As urban political culture transformed after 18go through the influence of the organized labor movement, contemporaries focused on the redefinition of citizenship and the broadening of the suffrage as topics of central political importance. This book reopens the topic of liberalism in imperial Germany by analyzing cultural and political change in Hamburg from the eighteenth cen2. Andrew Lees, Cities Perceived: Urban Society in European and American Thought I 8 2 o- I 94 o (New York, 1985); George Steinmetz, Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 1993); Brian Ladd, Urban Planning and Civic Order in Germany, I86o-I9I4 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). 3· Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1998). +James Sheehan, "Liberalism and the City in Nineteenth-Century Germany," Past & Present 51 (1971 ): u6-37; Harmut Pogge von Strandmann, 'The Liberal Power Monopoly in the Cities oflmperial Germany," in Elections, Mass Politics and Social Change in Modern Germany, ed. James Retallack and Larry Eugene Jones (Cambridge, 1992), 93-117; Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt/Main, 1988), 128-232; Richard Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years I8JO-I9IO (London, 1987).

2

Introduction

tury to the outbreak of the First World War. Specifically, it analyzes the relationship between ideals of citizenship and ideas of culture and the roles played by both in the transformation of liberalism during the late nineteenth century. Hamburg was imperial Germany's second largest city, an important commercial center, and the birthplace of distinctive strands of its national political culture. As Hamburg industrialized, and its Social Democratic Party grew to be one of the largest in Germany, a debate raged over the definition of political selfhood, the liberalization of voting rights, and the shape of the local constitution. Local debates on citizenship focused attention on fundamentally important concerns: the transformation of older discourses on urban community into newer ones on civil society; liberalism's local roots and the civic context ofliberal transformation; and the influence of liberal ideas in all areas of social and cultural life, even when these areas seemed remote from politics. The transformation of Hamburg's public sphere was discussed in the chambers of local government, but also in its clubs, associations, and institutions. In 1886, a man much admired by Karl Scheffler took up professional residence at the Hamburg Art Museum on his way to becoming one of imperial Germany's most influential cultural politicians. This was Alfred Lichtwark, a son of the city and the Art Museum's first professional director. Lichtwark transformed this institution from a second-rate collection of "Old Masters" to an exemplary museum of regional art and culture. Interested in democratizing public access to cultural institutions, Lichtwark was a "new type of museum director" in the words of his friends. However, he was no mere bureaucrat concerned solely with the development of his own institution. His task, as he saw it, was to create a new public culture in Hamburg for which the museum was his "principal tool. "5 Beginning with his inaugural address in 1886, Lichtwark unveiled an ambitious plan for local cultural development. It focused on cultural production through the training of artists, on cultural consumption through the creation of a public of wealthy and cultivated consumers, and on cultivation through the education of the wider public in Hamburg's cultural traditions. Lichtwark was a promoter of French, German, and Scandinavian Impressionism, a supporter of local variants of modernist culture in art and architecture, and a prolific writer on culture and society. His numerous books and articles of cultural criticism centered on four main themes: the degenerate cultural state of Bismarckian Germany; the necessity of creating a new national culture for the new empire; the importance of an educated, cultivated public to the economic and spiritual life of the nation; and the prime importance of high quality to cultural production-indus5. Gustav Schiefler, Eine harnburgische Kulturgeschichte: Beobachtungen cines Zeitgenossen I Bgorgzo (Hamburg, 1985), 91.

3

Introduction trial, manufactured, artistic, traditional, or otherwise. In Hamburg he inspired a broad movement for social and cultural reform, which played an important role in the city's history. 6 Beginning in the mid-188os, and based in its two central museums, this movement-called variously the art education movement, the aesthetic movement, and the movement for cultural renewal-was carried forward by a diverse group of people. The reformers, despite their disparity in religion, class, and program had a common goal: the creation and protection of a liberal society through the ideal of Bildung-education, cultivation, and improvement. What Lichtwark called the "education of the public" provided the foundation of their programs; the creation of a moral community of citizens was their goal. By opening museums to the public, founding a public library, and sponsoring lectures in the arts and sciences, musical evenings, exhibitions of tasteful home decor, and edifying literature, the reformers-ranging from the liberal to the Social Democratic and from the elite to the working classesaimed to create the modern citizens they envisioned: an educated, reasonable, and cultured public to serve as the cornerstone for political community and peaceful change. A forceful personality, Lichtwark advanced a line of argument that updated an older liberal discourse on citizenship, community, and local culture. He liked to classify German cities according to their cultural environments, claiming that culture and history imprinted local political understandings. His typology of cities, the Deutsche Konigstiidte, outlined different urban traditions, opposing Germany's princely cities to its commercial centers, Burgerstiidte such as Hamburg. 7 The forms of public life found in the commercial centers Lichtwark saw as the imperial state's most usable tradition. His focus on culture, history, and environment marked his work as fitting within an alternative tradition in German political and cultural thought. More material than abstract, it was attuned to the spatial and temporal aspects of identity and action. As a corpus of political writing, generally ignored for its unscientific character, its focus on culture, and its regionalism, Lichtwark's work analyzed political life from the ground up, giving a reading of the dynamics of state, city, and society as seen from the inside. His books and activities sought to modernize this tradition, and for this reason they resonated widely with his middle-class audiences. 6. For summaries see Werner Jochmann and Hans-Dieter Loose, eds., Hamburg: Geschichte der Stadt und ihrer Bewohner, 2 vols., 2:96-107 (Hamburg, 1986); Eckart Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg (Hamburg, 1981), 489-96; Volker Plagemann, Kunstgeschichte der Stadt Hamburg (Hamburg, 1995); Volker Plagemann, ed., Industriekultur in Hamburg: Des deutschen Reiches Tor zur Welt (Munich, 1984); Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturgeschichte. 7. Alfred Lichtwark, Deutsche Konigsstiidte: Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden, Miinchen, Stuttgart, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1912).

4

Introduction The art education movement and the example of Lichtwark himself provide a means to reconceptualize how historians have written about politics and culture in imperial Germany. The field of research on imperial politics has been dominated by studies of political organizations-from parties and pressure groups to local and national states-which have produced an image of political life as structured and directed primarily by party organizations. 8 Moreover, a structural approach to politics in Germany, made popular through a generation of sociologically oriented studies of its political peculiarities, has consistently bracketed the issue of culture when the focus is on political change. 9 Politics and culture intertwined in the ideal of the public, powerful since the eighteenth century, and in the concept at the center of German liberalism: the ideal of individual development and cultivation (Bildung) . 10 A model for cultural and spiritual development, Bildung was also central to the liberal idea of the autonomous and independent citizen. Discourses on Bildung composed a tradition of cultural and political thought outside of party life that freely mixed ethical and political concerns and focused on the changing norms of individual selfhood and community structure. By investigating such discourses we expand the scope of what we mean by "liberal culture" and highlight the central role played by local tradition, memory, culture, and environment in nineteenth-century conceptions of citizenship and community. 8. Some examples include James .J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978); Dan S. White, The Splintered Party: National Liberalism in Hessen and the Reich, r867-I9I8 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven, 1980); Roger Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan German League I886-I9I4 (Boston, 1984); David Blackbourn, Class Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centrr Party in WiirttembiTg Before I 9 I 4 (New Haven, 1980); Alastair Thompson, Lrft Liberah~ the State and Popular Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 2000). g. Arguments about Germany's "mis-development" (Sonderweg) focused on the weakness of liberal traditions, the strength of authoritarianism, and the position of "pre-industrial" elites to explain why Germany never developed a stable liberal democracy. It focused on the differences between English and German developments before 1914, and posited a fundamental link between the Imperial period and the Third Reich. See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, I87r-I9I8, trans. Kim Traynor (Leamington Spa, 1985); RalfDahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York, 1967). For an overview of this approach and the criticisms made of it see James Retallack, Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II (New York, 1996). 10. Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass., 1g8g); Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland; RudolfVierhaus, "Bildung," in Geschichtli~:he Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, 8 vols. (Stuttgart, 1972-97), 1:soS-51; Georg Bollen beck, Bildungund Kultur: Glanz und Elend cines deutschen Deutungsrnusters (Frankfurt/Main, 1994); Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Die Politik der Geselligkeit: Freimauerlogen in der deutschen Biirgergesellschaft, I 840- I 9I 8 (Gottingen, 2000).

5

Introduction This book intersects with a growing literature on the German bourgeoisie that covers topics from the material conditions of people's lives to the forms of their subjectivity. 11 As this research has progressively established the bourgeois character of imperial society, it has become commonplace to discuss the modernity rather than the backwardness of imperial ways of life. 12 Yet what has commonly been lost in the literature on imperial culture-commercial, institutional, popular, and political-is the issue of liberalism, the analysis of which had provided the initial impetus for studies of the imperial bourgeoisie. 13 For the reformers in Hamburg, questions deemed aesthetic were about more than painting and literature; they also addressed liberal views of social order, particularly the continuing importance of Bildungfor ordering society. The belief in the possibility of perfecting the individual's reason and aesthetic sense through immersion in art and literature signaled the reformers' debt to German idealism; this belief was harnessed to programs aimed at reforming society from within. Cultural reform programs were central to bourgeois society in imperial Germany. They articulated a liberal path to social and national consolidation, a means of unifYing and modernizing the population that had deep connections to liberal ideas of citizenship, of nationhood as encapsulated within a common culture, and of the state as a Kultuntaat. Particularly well represented in Hamburg through Lichtwark and others, such programs modernized local traditions and generated new conceptions of community and belonging. The complexities of Hamburg's civic culture can tell us much about Germany at the turn of the 1 1. Since the mid-1 98os and the publication of David lilac kbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Ninetrenth-Centu.ry Germany (Oxford, 1984), numerous studies have laid bare the structure, shape, and content of middle class life. This literature is too large to list in detail here. For examples of Burgertumsforschung that largely conform to narratives drawn from modernization theory, see three works edited by J urgen Kocka: Arbeiter und Burger im 19. Jahrhundert: Varianten ihres Verhiiltnisses im europiiischen Vngleich (Munich, 1986); Burgertum im I9.}ahrhundert, 3 vols. (Munich, 1988); and Burger und Burgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1987); Werner Conze andJiirgen Kocka, eds., Bildungsbiirgertum im 19.]ahrhundert, 4 vols. to date (Stuttgart, 1985-); Ute Frevert, ed., Burgerinnen und Burger: Geschlnhterverhiiltnisse im I9.Jahrhundert (Gi'lttingen, 1988); Lothar Gall, Burgertum inDeutsrhland (Berlin, 1989). For histories of particular cities, see the volumes produced by the project Stadt und Burgertum at the University of Frankfurt under the direction ofLothar Gall. For an overview see Lothar Gall, ed., Vom allen zum neuen Brl1gertum: Dir mitteleuropiiische Stadt im Um/n'uch, r78o-I82o (Munich, 1991). For a general summary see Jonathan Sperber, "Burger, Biirgenum, Biirgerlichkeit, Biirgerliche Gesellschaft: Studies of the German (Upper) Middle Class and Its Sociocultural World," journal of Modern History 69, no. 2 (.June 1997): 271-97· 12. Celia Applegate, A Nation of Pravincials: The CICrman Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990); Alon Contino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Wurttemberg, Imperial Germany and National Memory, I8jT-I9I8 (Chapel Hill, 1997). 13. For an exception see Kevin Repp, &formn'S, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-Politics and the Search for Alternatives (Cambridge, Mass., 2000).

Introduction twentieth century. It is to Hamburg and its historiography that we now turn. Hamburg has long thought of itself as a city with a unique identity, and its difference from the rest of Germany has been a prominent theme of its historiography. If Germany followed a Sonderweg, or special path, to modernity, then Hamburg was a Sonderfall, an exception; logically, that must have made it normal. The historian Percy Ernst Schramm set out this line of thinking in 1964, reworking the long-held conviction of Hamburg's uniqueness into a more durable myth. 14 In Schramm's positive view, liberal Hamburg was the exception to illiberal Germany's rule. Hamburg's history as a free city positioned between territorial states, its tradition of republican self-rule as opposed to bureaucratic absolutism, the cosmopolitanism of its merchant classes, and the international activity that characterized life in one of Europe's great port cities bequeathed a unique set of political and cultural resources that made Hamburg different from other parts of Germany. As Mary Lindemann has written on the "myth of Hamburg," When Percy Ernst Schramm and other earlier historians spoke of Hamburg's "peculiarity," they said it proudly and meant it positively. To them Hamburg was freer, richer and happier than the other German cities and territories. In the eighteenth century, Hamburg's Burger considered themselves a breed apart. They lived in a free city owing no allegiance to a higher authority (except a tenuous one to the Holy Roman Empire). The city ruled itself, and according to one observer, "citizens govern citizens." 15 Research has shown Schramm's assessment to be a myth, but it is a myth with considerable tenacity. In the twentieth century it has yielded the pernicious view of a city free of social and political conflict where political disaster, when it arrives, comes from outside. 16 Social historians have criticized the "myth of Hamburg," and none so trenchantly as Richard Evans. In Death in Hamburg Evans took the opposite approach from Schramm and studied Hamburg as a limit case to the Sonderwegtheory, using the city to test theses about the effects of political and economic modernization on local political culture. Evans focused on the 14. Percy Ernst Schramm, Hamburg: Ein Sonderfall in der Geschichte Deutschlands (Hamburg, 1964). 15. Mary Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers: Hamburg, I7I2-I8JO (New York, 1990), g. 16. It supported the myth that Nazism was imported rather than homegrown and was tempered into a kinder version of itself in Hamburg than elsewhere in Germany. This idea is patently false. See Angelika Ebbinghaus and Karsten Linne, eds., Kein abgeschlossenes Kapitel: Hamburg im ''Dritten Reich" (Hamburg, 1997).

7

Introduction development of the state and the growth of authoritarianism. Analyzing the cholera epidemic that struck Hamburg in the summer of 1892 as a prism for understanding the civic government and the opinions of its ruling classes, Evans concluded that the city was as authoritarian as other parts of Germany, if differently so. By the late nineteenth century class conflict had hollowed out its republican traditions; the nationalism and power aspirations of the merchant elites had suffocated its liberalism. After 1892 the local tradition of the noninterventionist state gave way to the buildup of a repressive state apparatus that policed the poor and politically radical in the interest of the city's elites. As they responded to the "threat" of Social Democracy with a "mobilization of the coercive and disciplining powers of the state," liberalism died on the altar of "Prussification. "17 Consequently, after initial efforts to liberalize voting rights, the suffrage law of 1go6 effectively restricted access to the municipal ballot box and gave Hamburg the dubious distinction of being more conservative than Prussia.18 However, as this book shows, the acrimony surrounding the expansion of the public political sphere did not signal the decisive end of civic discussions on liberalism and liberal values in Hamburg. Public discussion on Bildung and citizenship ideals did not end in 1go6. As associations multiplied and institutions changed, this discussion continued to transform municipal life. Being decentralized and diverse, it was also durable. As the movement for aesthetic education democratized Hamburg's public culture, new understandings of the social purpose of education and the necessary modernization of public mores continued to inform the political conceptions of participants in the suffrage debates. The suffrage law of 1go6 blocked the further liberalization of voting rights, but it was also the occasion for the founding of Hamburg's new left-liberal party, the United Liberals, which organized in protest to its restrictions. 19 This party, which drew its support from what contemporaries called a new "community of sentiment," placed a positive value on educating the public (in prepara17. Evans, Death in Hamlntrg, 107. 18. Ibid., 539-56; Richard Evans, '"Red Wednesday' in Hamburg: Social Democrats, Police and Lumpenproletariat in the Suffrage Disturbances of 17 January 1906," Social History 4, no. 1 Uanuary 1979): 1-31. Studies on the suffrage restrictions and the character of city government have so altered Schramm's myth that the existence of a liberal Hamburg, central to the city's self-understanding, has been changed from an assertion into a question. Examples include Hans Wilhelm Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament: Die Auseinandersetzung um das allgemeine und gleiche Wahlrecht in Hamlntrg (Hamburg, 1980); Michael Griittner, Arbeitswelt an der Wasserkante: Sozialgeschichte der Hamlntrger Hafenarbeiter, I 886- I 9I 4 (Gottingen, 1984); Madeleine Hurd, Public Spheres, Public Mores, and Democracy: Hamlntrg and Stockholm, I870-I9I4 (Ann Arbor, 2000). 19. Ursula Buttner, "Vereinigte Liberale und Deutsche Demokraten in Hamburg 19001930," ZHG63 (1977): 1-34.

8

Introduction tion for extending the suffrage), on local culture, and on the importance of Bildung as a factor in civic life. The expansion of associational life in Hamburg likewise had much to do with the city's enthusiastic experimentation with modernist culture after t8go. This enterprise had a social depth and resonance that is little known; moreover, it was driven by new patterns of association and organization-in short, by new and multiple publics. 20 Voluntary associations played a constitutive role in creating and sustaining a liberal political culture in Germany, and the eight chapters of this book analyze the rise and transformation of Hamburg's public culture. Chapters 1 and 2 lay the foundation oflocal political and cultural organization. Chapter 1 investigates the development of the concept of Burgerrecht, or local citizenship, the category that stood at the center of local political organization. Analyzing definitions of citizenship from the early modern period and their place in public life, this chapter focuses on changes in the eighteenth century-new abstract conceptions of citizenship and an idea of the general public-to argue for the importance of a cultural ideal of Bildung for liberal definitions of citizenship and political fitness during the nineteenth century. Chapter 2 investigates Hamburg's specific pattern of institutional cultural development and the founding of the two museums that organized Lichtwark's movement: the Art Museum and the Museum of Art and Industry. It also introduces Lichtwark's thinking on culture and society. Chapters 3 and 4 develop and complicate the tradition of thinking about Bildung and the creation of a liberal society by analyzing its development in two social sites. Social reform programs run by Hamburg's elite and professional classes form the topic of Chapter 3· These programs, which included the Hamburg People's Home, a German version of the English project of Toynbee Hall, extended and updated an older liberal discourse on education and the importance of Bildung for the creation of citizens. Turning from the elite, Chapter 4looks at Hamburg's new popular cultural associations, which were created and promoted by a Grub Street collection of writers, editors of small trade union newspapers, lecturers, and public school teachers. Here Lichtwark's ideas had their deepest resonance and greatest effect. The second half of the book investigates local forms of modernist culture. Chapter 5 turns to the introduction of the concept of the home place, or Heimat, into the curriculum of the public schools at the turn of the twentieth century. In Hamburg this instruction in local history, which was meant to generate a sense of community and belonging, had civics at its 20. GeoffEley, "Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, 1993), 289-339.

9

Introduction core. Heimatkunde, the study of the local place, was seen as an important aspect of socialization and as the first step toward the acquisition of citizenship. Chapter 6 extends the analysis oflocal culture to focus on Lichtwark's promotion of local and international modernist art. His efforts illustrate not just the desire to retrieve a sense of regional specificity after national unification, but its production and "invention" within a modernist framework. Lichtwark was not a small-town Heimat researcher who tramped with his rucksack through the countryside and lovingly built up a collection of local odds and ends. His circle was wider; his plans were more ambitious. His taste leaned toward the aristocratic; he had a specific vision oflocal culture that he wished to realize. Hamburg's museum would be a world-class Heimatmuseum, an emblematic oxymoron and an ideal far removed from a concept of localism as blinkered and insular. Chapter 7 continues the investigation oflocal culture by analyzing projects of historical conservation meant to combat the historical amnesia that appeared as the city industrialized and its population grew. Lichtwark saw amnesia as a civic problem that could be combated by popularizing historical knowledge and supporting projects to excavate the past. The number of individuals involved in documenting and interpreting the local past rose noticeably by 1900, as did the diversity of issues that were approached under this heading. Hamburg's civic history and its local memory emerged into the twentieth century in a modernist rather than traditional form. This development had as much to do with the social composition of the Heimat movement as it did with Lichtwark himself. The final chapter, on architecture and urban planning, analyzes the culmination of Lichtwark's movement and its transformation. Its ideals were taken up by Hamburg's new city architect, the modernist Fritz Schumacher, in his development of a "new architectural culture" in Hamburg after 1gog. Chapter 8 analyzes the city's transformation after the cholera epidemic of 1892 and after Schumacher's appointment in 1gog. A founding member of the German Werkbund and an important theorist of modern architecture, Schumacher designed public buildings, housing projects, and parks that inscribed a liberal vision of social transformation onto the face of the city, defined by the educative influence of Bildung and the social power of design. 21 Through Schumacher, Lichtwark's ideas and those of Hamburg's cultural reform movement found their greatest application and widest influence. 21. The Werkbund, an alliance of progressive industrialists, politicians, architects, and designers, was founded in Munich in 1907. It attempted to reorganize domestic production, promoted an industrial aesthetic as a national style, and emphasized the goals of liberal nationalism and Weltpolitik. See Joan Campbell, The German Werkbund: The Politics ofReform in !he Applied Arts (Princeton, 1973) and Frederic]. Schwarz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War (New Haven, 1gg6).

10

Introduction By analyzing intersections between cultural and political life and by tracing a tradition of thought on Bildung and society as it influenced and was transformed by various social groups, this book presents an alternative view of both liberal and modernist culture in imperial German society. It emphasizes the strength of this intellectual tradition, the plurality of interests represented in imperial civil society, and the dynamics of conflict and consensus that characterized the interactions of its many social groups. In the spirit of Alfred Lichtwark, it unearths a forgotten modernism that, like the work of Karl Scheffler that introduced this chapter, takes seriously the early twentieth-century interest in Impressionism as a way of seeing.

11

{1}

CitizenslliD Real and 1111aained In Hamburg it's hard to find a native Hamburger. A hurried and superficial search turns up only crayfish, people from Pinneberg, and those from Bergedorf. One accompanies the contented little kippers of a striving society; mackerels from Stade, sole from Finkenwerder, herrings from Cuxhaven swim in expectant throngs through the streets of my city and lobsters patrol the stock exchange with open claws .... The first so-called unguarded glance always lands on the bottom of the sea and falls into the twilight of the aquarium. Heinrich Heine must have had the same experience when he tried, with his cultivated scorn and gifted melancholy, to find the people of Hamburg. SIEGFRIED LENZ,

People from Hamburg

Visions of Cities Outsiders have traditionally been good observers of Hamburg's particular personality. From Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the eighteenth century to Siegfried Lenz in the modern period, some of its most astute commentators have not been natives but strangers who traveled to the city as adults. In the late eighteenth century Hamburg was the subject of many such travelers' reports. Its theaters, newspapers, reading circles, coffeehouses, and reform associations, its flow of goods and the enormous productivity of its

12

Citizenship Real and Imagined

thriving economic life made a deep impression on visitors from sleepy noble courts and provincial towns. As one of eighteenth-century Europe's largest cities, Hamburg rivaled London and Amsterdam in excitement and activity. Its visitors-businessmen, administrators, artists, and writerswrote of a city that was a living embodiment of prosperity, productivity, and abundance. The mention of Hamburg in the letters of the writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg gave a heightened version of typical impressions. "I stayed in Hamburg for five and a half days," wrote Lichtenberg to his friend Marie Tietermann in 1773. 'The things I saw there and the pleasures I enjoyed ... the greatest profusion of beautiful objects, the loveliest gardens in full bloom, the incalculable mass of ships of all nations, good society, good wine, and good food that it is possible to provide. This I have enjoyed in these few days, ... which I count among the best in my life. "1 The writer Christoph Ludwig Griesheim provided a precedent for Lichtenberg's opinion. He found Hamburg to be indeed a model of happy urbanity, a veritable "paragon of civic bliss. "2 Part of the delight of these travelers involved, no doubt, simply the experience oflanding in a city after an arduous trip through the countryside. Their enthusiasm stemmed also from their surprise at finding a place arranged in a way that spelled greater freedom and possibility to these men. Next to Hamburg's commercial activity, it was the "overall unmistakable marks of political thinking and the similarly general expressions of political life" that impressed the Danish writer Jens Baggesen. 3 For eighteenth-century travelers, such as Jonas Ludwig von Hess, a native of Stralsund, the city was a beacon of enlightened civilization. Hamburg was a republic, an important port and manufacturing city, and, as boosters liked to point out, a truly enlightened site, a "city both economically and spiritually powerful. "4 Its Senate and Citizens' Assembly, the executive and legislative organs of local government, shared power, overlooking the occasionally bloody struggles between them earlier in the century. A center of the German Enlightenment-along with Berlin, Leipzig, and Augsburg-Hamburg was an early venue for the publication of books and 1. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg to Marie Tietermann, May 19, 1773, in Ulrich Joost and Albrecht Schone, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Briefwechsel: Band I, I 765- I 779 (Munich, 1983), 265. 2. Christian Ludwig Griesheim, Die Stadt Hamburg in ihrem politischen, oconomischen und siftlichen Zustiinde (Hamburg, 1760), as quoted in Joist Grolle, Hamburgund seine Historiker (Hamburg, 1997), g. 3· Jens Baggesen, Das Labyrinth oder eine Reise durch Deutschland in die Schweiz ( 1789), as quoted in Franklin Kopitzsch, "Aufklarung und Reform-Hamburg als Beispiel," in Stadt und Burger im I 8. jahrhundert, ed. Gotthardt Friihsorge eta!., (Marburg, 1993), s6; emphasis in original. 4· W. Herbst quoted in Werner von Melle, DreijJig jahre Hamburger Wissenschajt, I 8 9 I - I 92 I, 2 vols. (Hamburg, 1923-24), 1: 8.

Provincial Modernity

Hamburg in the eighteenth century (courtesy ofStaatsarchiv Hamburg, Plankammer)

newspapers. Its theaters were lively; its opera house was venerated. Its flourishing economic life, particularly during the boom years of the late eighteenth century, fueled a sense of heady optimism. Yet the travelers' enthusiasm extended beyond a focus on economic prestige. Hamburg's economic activity aroused admiration, but these visitors consistently pointed to something beyond this, gesturing toward a way of thinking and a form of governing that structured economic life while also being dependent on it. In contrast to German cities that originated as administrative centers, noble residences, or the sites of medieval universities, Hamburg had always looked to commerce as its raison d'etre. Founded in 804 by Charlemagne as a fortress along the northern rim of the Frankish Empire, the small settlement rose out of obscurity during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through the medium of trade. Eleventh-century missionaries traded news around its wooden cathedral, and its first archbishop, the monk Ansgar, received the right to hold a market and to mint coins. Its twelfth-century ruler, the Holstein count Adolf III von Schauenberg, built a harbor, erected dikes to reclaim land from its swampy marshes, and tried to attract settlers.

Citizenship Real and Imagined

In 1189 he obtained trade privileges for the city from Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. 5 Ultimately the city owed its fortune to waves of immigrants, who brought with them their money, their connections, and their native industries, and to the opening up of the northern European world to trade. Beginning in the fourteenth century, the city grew as a member of the Hanseatic League, and with the shift in world trade from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic, this junior member soon began to eclipse its former partners. By the late eighteenth century Hamburg was continental northern Europe's largest open market. Industries brought by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century immigrants-sugar refining, calico printing, and tobacco processing-derived their basic materials from overseas trade and were enormously profitable. Sugar cane and tobacco came into the city from the plantations of the French West Indies and the Canary Islands; the finished products were shipped out to various points in northern Europe and Russia. 6 The prominent position of trade as a productive activity and of merchants as its agents determined the shape of Hamburg's society and its political culture. In the words of Johann Pauli, a founding member of the Patriotic Society of 1765, Hamburg's largest civic association, "our republic ... [is] nothing more than a commercial state, in which each and every thing draws its politics, raison d'etre, and its very essence from commerce. "7 The man who spoke directly about the influence of commerce on Hamburg's political culture was the aforementioned jonas Ludwig von Hess, who was a twenty-four-year-old writer and journalist when he arrived in Hamburg in 1 780. 8 Sociable and intelligent, he quickly ingratiated himself with leading families and Enlightenment circles and in 1 787 published the first volume of his largest work, the Topography of the City of Hamburg, a three-volume description of all aspects of the city's existence-political, social, architectural, geographical. Hamburg, particularly initially, made an overwhelming impression on him. "I didn't find the ideal of freedom that I had constructed in my mind," wrote Hess. "But this didn't stop me from experiencing and enjoying the essential difference that I actually found here." This "essential difference" was political. It lay in the "far greater independence and the lesser pressure exercised by estate, office, order, title, birth, and the thousand other unjust, childish, and laughable distinctions 5· Hermann Hipp, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg: Geschichte, Kulturund Stadtbaukunst anElbe undAlster(Cologne, 1976), 13-18. 6. On sugar and world trade see Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power (New York, 1985). 7· Johann Pauli, An aile wahre Patrioten Hamburgs (Hamburg, 1765), as quoted in Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers, 5· 8. The information on Hess is from an excellent article by Joist Grolle, "Eine Republik wird besichtigt: Das Hamburgbild des Aufklarers Jonas Ludwig von Hess," in his Hamburg und seine Historiker, 7-1 1.

Provincial Modernity

and privileges that burden despotic states and that owe their existence to chance or to the mood of one person. "9 To Hess Hamburg was more rationally organized than the despotic states dependent on the whims of monarchs and the aristocracy. In Hamburg one was freer; titles, privileges, and noble birth, in particular, did not carry their usual weight. Hamburg was different, Hess thought, and its difference was of an ideological and political nature visible to observers analyzing the concrete organization of society. He praised the effects of such a system of social organization on individuals' lives. His Topography described a world in which one's closeness to or distance from the merchant class (Kaufmannstand) structured one's social place and role, and his work described a social order that was organized by function rather than by hierarchy, according to the historian Joist Grolle. "Hess wants to describe not what one 'represented' but what one 'did.' "10 His Topography described an ordered and productive world, rather than an arbitrary one based on the vagaries of feudal privilege. Hess's writings and those of others raise the issue of Hamburg's particular forms of government and their relation to its social and political organization. How was the local state constituted? What were the organs of local government? How were the boundaries of communal membership set? Where did they come from, how did they change? If feudal privilege had no weight in Hamburg, what were the operative instruments of inclusion and exclusion? In short, if Hamburg appeared to eighteenth-century observers as a "model of civic happiness," what made it that way? These questions lead into the heart of the city's political organization. A long view of the city's political history, and an analysis of some of its central categories, helps us understand its political life at the turn of the twentieth century. At the basis of Hamburg's civic community lay the concept of Burgerrecht, or local citizenshipY It established a personal bond of belonging between the individual and the state and knitted residents tog. Jonas Ludwig von Hess, Durchjliige durch Deutschland, die Niederlande und Frankreich, vol. 6 (Hamburg, 1798), 8, as quoted in Grolle, "Eine Republik wird besichtigt," g-11. Geert Seelig gives a strikingly different view of Hess, emphasizing his critical stance toward Hamburg's government. See Seelig, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der hamburgischen Biirgerschaft und die hamburgischen Notabeln (Hamburg, 1goo), 102-3. 10. Grolle, "Eine Republik wird besichtigt," 14· 11. The word Biirgeris difficult to translate because it carries the meanings of both burgher and citizen, often confusing the simple town dweller with the politically enfranchised individual. In Hamburg the two meanings overlapped. Biirgerwere those involved in the running of social programs in keeping with Hamburg's self-definition as a republic and its tradition of self-government. See Manfred Riedel, "Burger, Staatsbiirger, Biirgertum," in Otto Brunner eta!., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 1:672-725. For a description of early modern citizenship in action see Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, r648-r8r7 (Ithaca, 1971).

Citizenship Real and Imagined

gether into a body politic. It formed the foundation of Hamburg's legal, political, and economic order and provided the city with a mechanism for inclusion that pointed backward to the past and forward into the future. Government, Sovereignty, and Citizenship

Hess wrote about a city that could govern itself without a monarch or ruling nobleman, relying instead on the seemingly harmonious cooperation of various civic forces. Its governance had not always been so balanced, however. What Hess observed in the late eighteenth century was the result of an earlier compromise, which was itself the outcome of a long process of internal political strife stretching the length ofthe seventeenth century. Issues of sovereignty stood at its center. The Principal Recess (Hauptrezess), passed in 1712, set the boundaries of Hamburg's state structure and provided the constitutional basis of its city government until 186o. Its main virtue was the ability to regulate the relations between the traditional oligarchic powers of the Senate (previously called the Rat, or Council) and the burgeoning forces of popular representation. The Principal Recess was the outcome of a compromise forced on Hamburg's warring Council and Citizens' Assembly by the Aulic Council of the Holy Roman Empire. A stormy process of political infighting raged between these two bodies throughout the seventeenth century, a continual battle through which each attempted to stake out the boundaries of its sovereignty. The battle began back in 1392 as the Council became the city's highest ruling body, usurping fealty to a feudal lord. Soon, however, it required the services of prominent citizens to act as consultants in times of trouble. Three previous Recesses-in 141 o, 1458, and q8 3 -created a citizens' advisory body for the Council and attempted to regulate the relationship between them. 12 Sparked by the growing power of this Citizens' Assembly-in 1563 the control of municipal finances passed from the Council to a new financial administrative body, the Kiimmerei, with members elected by the Citizens' Assembly-a turbulent political situation was bolstered by the growth of the body politic. A steady increase in the number of people calling themselves citizens swelled the increasingly rowdy meetings of the Assembly. In what was called the "time of troubles" of the 168os, two members of the Assembly, Hieronymus Snitger and Cordjastram, led a popular revolt against the Council, took over the city, and appealed to the king of Denmark for aid. The Council regained power with the aid of imperial troops and executed Snitger and Jastram as traitors. 13 12. See Seelig, Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 1 7, 23-43. 13. Ibid., ss-6o; Franklin Kopitzsch, Grundziige £>iner Sozialgeschichte der Aujkliirungin Hamburg und Altona, 2d rev. ed. (Hamburg, 1 yyo), 146-78. For a general oveniew of city-state organization see Richard Mackenney, The City-State, I500-I70o: Refm.blican Liberty in an Age ofPrincely Power (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1g8g).

Provincial Modernity

The deaths of Snitger andjastram did not end Hamburg's troubles. Political turmoil dissolved into anarchy as pastors whipped up popular disorder against the Council. Street fighting, pamphlet wars, and the disruption of the business of government forced the Imperial Commission to make numerous trips to Hamburg between 1686 and 1712. By 1 708 the commission had installed 2,ooo imperial troops in the city in an effort to end its civic strife. 14 The result was the Principal Recess. This compromise of 1712, described by the historian Peter Gay as the "least oligarchical urban charter of the age," reestablished city government and redrew the boundaries of sovereignty. 15 It named the Council (now called the Senate) and Citizens' Assembly as the organs of local government and regulated the relations between them. The Senate constituted the executive power; the Citizens' Assembly was the popular representative body. Both were responsible for legislation. The Senate, composed of twenty-eight members appointed for life, was self-contained. Its members were chosen by the senators themselves. The Citizens' Assembly was an assembly of property owners, an erbgesessene Biirgerschaft.Joining them in the tasks oflocal government were the biirgerliche Kollegien, ecclesiastical bodies that had jointly governed sections of the city since 15 29; deputations run by individual senators; and foundations ( Kollegien) , odd hybrid forms of administration jointly run by senators and citizens and responsible for the running of churches, hospitals, jails, and orphanages. 16 Hamburg's parishes housed the branches of its local government, as social policy was run by the deputations and the numerous private foundations ( Stiftungen). The latter were entirely staffed by citizens and residents and were the basis of Hamburg's tradition of self~governance, or Selbstverwaltung. In the words of Dietrich Gerhard, "in Hamburg deputations of the citizenry participated in ecclesiastical administration as well as in the care of the poor and sick. Yet the case of Hamburg is rather an exception. In most other places the magistrate and its appointed officials were exclusively in control. "17 Because of the importance of trade and commerce, economic policy was formulated through a separate set of institutions. Merchants began organizing into corporations during the fourteenth century; their prominent organization, the Ehrbaren Kaufmann, was founded in 1517. The Chamber of Commerce (Kommerzdeputation), established in 1665, determined all aspects of 14. Seelig, Geschichtliche Entwicklung, sg-6o. 15. On the Hauptrezess of 1712 and its definition of the powers of the Senate and Citizens' Assembly see Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament, 15-16; Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York, 1g66-6g), 1:47-48. Seelig's assessment contradicls Gay's. For Seelig, Hamburg after '7' 2 was an "oligarchical republic": GeschichtlicheEntwicklung, 93, g6. 16. On the Kollegien and deputations see Kopitzsch, Grundziige, 165-67. 17. Gerhard quoted ibid., 168.

Citizenship Real and Imagined

trade policy and represented the interests ofthe merchants directly to the Senate. 18 Eighteenth-century Hamburg enjoyed a reputation for being more enlightened and democratic than the rest of Germany, a position supported mainly by statements plucked from the mouths of its own residents. At the turn of the nineteenth century the educator Johann Daniel Curio, the founder of Hamburg's first teachers' association, the Gesellschaft der Freunde des vaterlandischen Schul- und Erziehungswesens of 18os, pointed to the difference in social and political organization between Hamburg and other cities in the German-speaking territories. Writing in the journal Hamlntrg und Altona in 1802, Curio boasted: "We have no aristocracy, no patricians, no slaves, not even subjects. All true residents of Hamburg know and belong to only one estate, that of citizen. We are all citizens, no more and no less." 19 Curio made it sound simple, and anumber of historians have taken him at his word. 20 But his assessment is misleading. Citizenship was the city's most important legal category, but not all residents of the city were citizens by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, eighteenth-century citizenship was not uniform, coherent, democratic, or applied in any general way, neither in Hamburg nor in the rest of German-speaking central Europe. In Hamburg citizenship was linked to sovereignty and to the form of the state, and the looseness of its definition had played a role in causing the earlier bloodshed. The expanded number of residents-namely artisans and petty merchants-who called themselves citizens had broughtjastram and Snitger to power, and the Senate had a vested interest in putting the lid back on such a potentially tumultuous situation. The Principal Recess thus codified citizenship and residence requirements, placing them on a firm legal basis. But even with the creation of such a document, the early modern state and early modern cities were tangles of legal distinctions, special provisions for special groups, stratified levels of rights, privileges, and duties that classified individuals into specified relationships with the governing authority. Eighteenth-century citizenship was not an abstract political privilege but a set of rules for defining the individual as a social being, locally bound and economically active. Citizenship was not yet a general political category; it would be many decades before it became so. The path toward general and abstract ideas of citizenship, on which modern political life would be based, was certainly, as Rogers Brubaker claimed, "longer and more tor1 8. Mosche Zimmermann, Hamburger Patriolisrnus und deutscher Nationalismus: Die Emanzipation der Juden in Hamburg, I8JO-I86J (Hamburg, 1979), 17. 19. Quoted in Herbert Freudenthal, Vereinr in llarnburg: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Volkskunde der Geselligkeit (Hamburg, 1968), 39· 20. See Lothar Gall, Biirgerturn in Deutschland (Berlin, 1989), 149·

Provincial Modernity

tuous" in Germany than in France. 21 It is possible that in the cities, particularly in independent and sovereign city-states such as Hamburg, it was the most tortuous of all. Brubaker defined citizenship as "a legal institution regulating membership in the state, not a set of participatory practices or a set of specifically civic attitudes." 22 In Hamburg this legal institution, called Biirgerrecht, lay at the center of a complex structure of regulations and came freighted with a variety of rights and privileges (legal, social, economic, and political) as well as with duties. 23 The Burger were full-fledged members of the urban community. They were granted privileges by the local authority, be it a bishop or a prince, that included access to the market and various exemptions from taxes in exchange for loyalty to the urban community, formalized by an oath (Biirgereid). Their rights included traditional guild privileges, such as the right to marry, the right to practice a trade independently, and the right to purchase land. The Biirgerrecht thus bound the individual into social and economic systems of order. It was the most privileged status, but others were also available. The Biirgerrechtwas further differentiated into various "forms of the Nexus, the contemporary term designating the 'connection' and degree of 'belonging' between state and person." 24 In the city itselfwere Grossln1rgerand Kleinlnlrger; both ofwhom owned property inside the city walls, and Schutzverwandten, urban residents without land. Male inhabitants who were not citizens found a place inside the system by becoming Schutzverwandten, a legal status that allowed them to marry and practice a trade upon payment of a small yearly fee. In this way they were able to work and settle in the city without becoming Biirger. 25 In the rural areas that belonged to the city, residents were designated not as citizens but as subjects ( stadtische Untertanen) and classified as either Landlnlrger (landowners) or possessing rural Schutzverwandschaft. After 183 7, residents could receive Heimatrecht after fifteen consecutive years of residence, which gave them access to the poor relief system. All of these categories were further subject to particular rules and restrictions. Grosslnlrger had full rights; Kleinlnlrger had narrower privileges. Full rights included the right to trade or practice a craft (Handels- und Gewerbefreiheit), exemption from certain customs taxes, eligibility for election to a city of~ fice (Amt), and the ability to participate in the Citizens' Assembly. The cost 21. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 50. 22. Ibid., 51. 23. Information on Biirgerrecht, the rights and forms of residence, is from Eckardt, Privi-

IRgien undParlamrmt,

10-18.

24. Ibid., 16. 25. On Schutzverwandten see Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers, 63-73.

20

Citizenship Real and Imagined

of Biirgerrecht (a required fee called the Biirgergeld) was 50 reichstaler. Sons of Biirger had to pay only 1 o. 26 Levels of Citizenship

In contrast to Prussia, which in 1794 set out a new legal code that applied to its territory as a whole, cities traditionally determined their own citizenship rights. Even the Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Lubeck, and Hamburg had their own ways of defining the boundaries of their respective body politics. In all three cities, however, the salient issue for determining membership was property. In medieval Hamburg, full citizens ( Vollbiirger) were those residents who owned property inside the city walls. With the unification of the old and new cities in 12 70, political rights were conferred exclusively through the ownership ofland. 27 This custom associated property not only with membership in the community but also with economic and spiritual independence. The property requirement was transferred to the entire city from its "new city" (Neustadt), a settlement originally organized as a consortium of tradesmen who owned their land outright. The Recess of 1483 established the Citizens' Assembly as an assembly of property owners and designated twenty-five such men in each parish to serve as mediators to the Council. 28 The concept of property and the state of "being propertied," however, while of central importance to the functioning oflocal government, remained vaguely defined. Attempts at definition repeatedly failed. 29 The Council passed mandates advancing definitions, but these often shared the fate of a document of 1693, which, in Geert Seelig's words, the "outraged people trod under their feet. "30 Residents simply ignored the details of what constituted "property" and attended the Assembly's meetings regardless. The term's ambiguity contributed to the Assembly's growing numbers, and in its attempt to control these proceedings the Principal Recess explicitly defined the concept and limits of "property." The definition of Erbgesessenheit was given in the Conventions (Regie26. Kopitzsch, Grundzuge. 186-87. From 1529 to 1603, citizenship was free for the sons of current citizens (Seelig, Gesrhichtliche Entwicklung, 53). The price rose during the seventeenth century. In 1694 the cost of becoming a Grossbiirgcrwas 150 reichstaler plus the ownership of a musket. Kleinbiirgerrecht could be obtained for a small sum and the ownership of a simple pike. See Percy Schramm, Neun Gencrationen: Dreihundertjahre deutscher "Kulturgeschichte" im Lichte der Schirksale eincr Hamburger Biirgerfamilie, I648-I948, 2 vols. (Gottingen, 196364), 1:106. 27. "Voraussetzung fiir das Biirgerrecht bildete der Besitz von Grund und Haus in der Stadt, eines 'Erbes"': Riedel, "Burger, Staatsbiirger, Biirgertum," 676. 28. Seelig, Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 19, 43-44; Hipp, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, 13-18. 29. Seelig called this the "Begriff der Erbgesessenheit" (Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 44). For descriptions of the problems this lack of clarity led to see ibid., 79-86. 30. Ibid., 84.

21

Provincial Modernity ment) of 1710, a document connected to the Principal Recess that tabulated levels of communal membership, set out economic regulations, and addressed the issue of religion. First and foremost the Conventions addressed economic concerns: the rights of the guilds, the right to engage in trade, and the level of adequate property for participation in the Assembly. Its first article sought to fix the Assembly's membership by determining ''which persons should be called to Burger assemblies." 31 It laid out a strict property qualification for political participation, thus codifYing the older custom. As Franklin Kopitzsch described it, "propertied persons" were defined as "only those persons who 'with their own fire and stove' were resident in the city and were in possession of property of a minimum of 1 ,ooo taler of free money (that is, money that was not burdened by debt) in the city and a minimum of 2,ooo taler of free money in the countryside. Only these men could participate in the decisions of the Property Owners' Assembly." One thousand taler was a significant sum in 1712, equivalent to approximately 3o,ooo to 40,000 marks in 1900. 32 Moreover, the stipulation that the money must be free of debt removed many small artisans and businessmen from the Assembly. Not surprisingly, the Kollegien complained. Under these rules the Assembly "would certainly become too small," they worried, because debts would prevent many property owners from attending. 33 Moreover, the Conventions enfranchised master craftsmen, heads of guilds, and various officeholders, thus slightly expanding the body politic. In its rules against debt and in the enfranchisement of these local notables it distinguished between persons "that must attend and those that may attend" the meetings of the Citizens' Assembly, requiring all members of the Kollegirn and leaders of the citizens' militia, stock exchange, and Chamber of Commerce to participate.'14 The distinction between those who must and those who could attend would reappear in a slightly different guise after 186o. This system, encumbered by rules and restrictions as it was, was nonetheless theoretically open, at least by eighteenth-century standards. Biirgerrechtwas acquired. It was not inherited. It was bought. It was a status category that had nothing to do with one's family. A cash transfer-the Burgergeld-opened the way to higher status, but only for male Lutheran residents. 35 The relative openness to communal membership was integral to the city's economic development from the 31. The Reglement der Rat.1 und Biirgerkonvente of 171 o, as quoted ibid., 87. 32. Kopitzsch, Grundzii.ge, 150; Seelig, Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 95· 33· The Kollegien of the Sixty as quoted in Seelig, Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 8g. 34· Ibid., go. Restrictions alternated with requirements. Members of the guilds were required to become Burger. See Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers, 37· 35· Lindemann, Patriots and Pauper;; 20. On the "open system" see Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament; Schramm, Neun Generationm, 79-80.

22

Citizenship Real and lmag£ned early modern period onward. The fact that in Hamburg one did not have to become a Burger in order to carry on trade or become a merchant had incalculable effects on the city's economy. In 151 o the emperor Maximilian declared Hamburg a free imperial city and its population climbed steeply. Tied by the loosest of cords to the German hinterland, in 1529 it opened its gates to new settlers.'~ 6 Population growth was boosted by its relatively tolerant stance in respect to religion. During the wars of religion, the city provided refuge to religious minorities throughout Europe. It must be said that it did so in the name of trade rather than in the service of tolerance. To boost trade the Senate encouraged the immigration of wealthy and skilled migrants by making it easy to engage in trade within the city walls. 37 As the historian Mary Lindemann put it, "Hamburg readily accepted and even encouraged the immigration of 'desirable' individuals and groups. It particularly welcomed those who supplied capital, offered trade secrets, or proposed new branches of manufacturing. "38 This policy held during all large-scale migrations between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries-the Dutch, the Portuguese Jews, the Huguenots, and the Mennonites. Mter the fall of Antwerp in 1564, the Senate allowed Dutch refugees to settle. They brought numerous skills and secrets with them, among them the technology of sugar refining and the format of the insurance company. 39 In 1567 the Senate encouraged the arrival of the Merchant Adventurers of the English court; one century later a member of this group founded in Hamburg the first coffeehouse to appear in continental Europe. 40 The end of the sixteenth century saw the arrival of wealthy Sephardic Jewish families from Portugal and Spain, who "were ... tolerated in Hamburg, as the Senate saw promising benefits for trade from their capital and international connections. "41 Beginning in the seventeenth century, German Jews settled in Hamburg and in the neighboring Danish city of Altona. Huguenot merchants began arriving in large numbers around the same time. They brought with them sugar refining and the profitable industry of calico printing. 42 By 16oo over 50 per36. Neither serfs nor Wends were allowed to settle in Hamburg. See Seelig, Gesrhirhtliche t:ntwicklung, 52, S5·

3 7. On tolerance towar·d foreigners see Feodor Wehl, Harnlmrgs Literaturleben im achtzehnten jahrhundert (Leipzig, 18s6), g. Joachim Whaley contradicts the assessment in Religious Toleration and Social Change in Harnlmrg, r529-r8r9 (Cambridge, 1985). 38. Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers, 61.

39· They also brought technologies for working with textiles, and Hamburg's stock exchange was established in 1558 following the Antwerp model (ibid., 33-34. 39-42). 40. Ibid., 63; Wehl, Hamburgs Literaturleben, 14. According to Schramm, :\1ennonites were not allowed to settle in Hamburg and had to move to Altona (Neun Generationen, vol. 1, 78-7g). 41. Zimmermann, Hamburger Patriotismus, 21. 42. Lindemann, Pattiots and Paupers, 39-41.

Provincial Modernity

cent of the city's population had not been born in Hamburg. One-quarter of the population was Dutch. 43 By 1662, 75,000 people were living within the walls that protected the city during the Thirty Years' War. 44 While other German areas suffered declining populations and devastation during the first half of the seventeenth century, Hamburg's new immigrants laid the foundations for its future as a commercial center. 45 They came because of the open economic situation. They were welcomed because of the wealth they generated. The families that would later rule Hamburg from their positions in the Senate-the Amsincks, Jenquels, and Sievekings, to name a few-arrived in the early modern period and thrived in a situation that allowed individuals to rise to the top of the social structure through the acquisition of wealth. Openness toward wealth made this system less restrictive than others, but in other ways it remained closed, particularly in regard to religion. Full citizenship remained restricted to Lutherans and was defined by "purity of belief. " 16 Economic toleration translated into social toleration, but the acquisition of full rights was tied to the public observance of Lutheranism. The knitting together of the early modern state and the Lutheran Church in Hamburg through the position of church elders ( Oberalten) in the Citizens' Assembly, who functioned as intermediaries to the Senate, ensured that only Lutherans could become citizens. The Senate entered into contracts with the various immigrant groups setting forth the legal basis of their membership in the community. In 1605 it drew up the first such contract with 130 (mainly) Dutch families, stipulating their equality with Hamburg Biirgerprovided they joined the Lutheran Church. The Conventions then streamlined the various contracts in 1710. 47 In addition to defining property qualifications, it codified the legal situation of Hamburg's religious minorities. It limited Burgerrecht to Lutherans. Catholics and non-Lutheran Protestants acquired smaller packages of rights. They could enjoy the privileges of the Biirgerand could become VoltbUrger· but without political rights of any kind. 48 Jews could not acquire any form of the Biirgerrecht. 49 They stood in a protective relationship with the state, which sheltered them against attack, allowed them to engage in 43· Whaley, Religious Toleration, 10. 44· These walls were not a medieval inheritance but were first erected in 1615, only a few years before the beginning of the war. See Hipp, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, 17. 45· The Dutch established such modern financial institutions as the stock exchange and the Hamburg Bank (161g). See Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers, 34· 46. Whaley, Reli1,rious Toleration. 47· Schramm, Neun Generationen, 1: 78-81. 48. Kopitzsch, Grundziige, 187. 49· Jews instead possessed a separate and special status that allowed "samtliche wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Rechte" but not political rights. See Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament, 16.

24

Citizenship Real and Imagined

trade, and permitted marriage and inheritance to be practiced according to Jewish law. After the payment of certain fees, Jews were permitted to reside in Hamburg, but only in certain streets and without the right to purchase land. Therefore, they had no political rights and could not be elected to any political office (Senate, Citizens' Assembly, Chamber of Commerce and its designation of "honorable merchants") or join a guild. Hamburg did not have a closed ghetto, as did other German cities and towns, and the provisions of the Conventions were not strictly adhered to in practice. Jewish families and merchants did purchase land and houses, using Christian friends as proxies, both in the allowed streets and outside of them. By 18oo Hamburg housed the largest Jewish community in Germany at that time, and Jews made up 6 percent of the population. 50 In 18oo the city's population stood at 1 oo,ooo, but only between 3,000 and 4,ooo of those residents were Burger. 51 A great many more were Schutzverwandten or residents of various sorts. The body politic was made up of the "landowning Burger, the members of the biirgerliche Kollegien, the heads of the guilds, and the holders of administrative offices-judges, members of the deputations, and officers in the citizens' militia."52 This system, for all its merits, was obviously unrepresentative, being based on wealth and not on any principle of general rights. Moreover, it enshrined the idea that the more land and money residents owned and the longer they had resided in the city, the more important they were. Their voices were heard in the Konventen; others' were not. It drew sharp distinctions between Christians and Jews and between Catholics, Lutherans, and other Protestants. But the Principal Recess never claimed to be democratic; in fact, it was constructed to squash movements for popular representation, and the idea of democracy was foreign to most of its residents. 5 3 Its goal, like that of other eighteenth-century systems of government, "was not to clarify and dominate but rather to order and balance fragmented institutions and multiple loyalties. "54 Its usefulness during a period of industrialization, political ferment, and nation-building was another matter. By the mid-nineteenth century, an initially flexible system had grown rigid 50. Helga Krohn, Die juden in Hamburg: Ihre soziale, kulturelle und politische Entwicklung wahrend der EmazijJationszeit, r8oo-r85o (Frankfurt/Main, 1967), g-10. The Conventions of 171 o stipulated days of religious observation, forbade attacks against Christianity, and set clothing requirements. Jews also paid all required taxes. See also Zimmermann, Hamburger Patriotismus,

21-22 .

.'iL Kopitzsch, Grundzuge, 150. 52. Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament, 15. 53· Walter Grab claims that this idea was not entirely foreign: Demokratische Stromungen in Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein zur Zeit der ersten franzosischen Republik (Hamburg, 1g66). Seelig designates the late seventeenth century as Hamburg's true democratic period in Geschichtliche Entwicklung.

54-James]. Sheehan, German History, rno-r866 (Oxford, 1g8g), 14·

Provincial Modernity

and antiquated as well as grossly unrepresentative. The historian Adolf Wohlwill, writing on Hamburg's constitutional situation in 186o, characterized the Principal Recess as not suited to the tasks of nineteenthcentury governing precisely because it took no notice of large sectors of the population. 5 5 To ensure a more representative form of government, a more general category of citizenship needed to be developed from the eighteenth-century table of categories that contemporaries called the Nexus. Biirgersein needed to become a modern form of political imagining, which would entail a movement from the political world of the eighteenth century to that of the nineteenth, when an ideal of universal citizenship began to compete with its particularistic, early modern predecessor. Toward a General Public By the end of the eighteenth century, a new form of citizenship was emerging in Germany. In Prussia the Allgemeines Landrecht, while preserving distinctions between the estates of peasants, nobles, and Burger, defined a form of state citizenship ( Staatsbiirgerrecht) that transcended the particularities of towns and regional loyalties to tie the individual directly to the state. 56 In Hamburg the idea of general citizenship would come from sources other than the state, emerging out of new patterns of urban sociability and association. Buoyed by the activity of its markets and their exchange of goods and ideas, in the mid-seventeenth century the first forms of a civic public sphere began to emerge in Hamburg's theaters and coffeehouses and around its numerous newspapers and journals. In its opera, journals, and clubs a rich literary and musical life took shape. Learned men formed discussion clubs, such as a medical society of 1643 in which Hamburg's twelve practicing doctors gathered around the head of the Academic Gymnasium,JohannJungius. Men concerned with matters oflanguage and literature formed their own association, the Rose Society of 1643, as did teachers concerned with mathematics. Their Society for the Dissemination ofMathematical Sciences (16go) counted the philosopher Leibniz as a corresponding member. 57 One of the most important clubs initially organized around a newspaper, Der Patriot, a moral and satirical weekly published from 1724 to 1726. This group, which called itself a "patriotic society," furthered a new conception of general citizenship that departed from older definitions of Biirgerrecht. Their principal foe was not the state, to which many of its mem:;:;. Wohlwill, Die hamburgischen B1i1germeister: Kirclu:npauer, Peli:rsen, Versmann. Beitriige zur deutschm Geschichte des neunzehnten.fahrhunderts (Hamburg, 1903), 8. 56.jiirgen Kocka, "Biirgertum und Biirgerlichkeit als Probleme der deutschen Geschichte vom spaten 18. bis zum friihen 2o.jahrhundert," in Burger und Bilrgerlichkeit im r9. Jahrhundert, ed.Jiirgen Kocka (Gi:ittingen, 1987), 21-63. 57· Freudenthal, 1·1•reine in Ham/nug, 44-50.

Citizenship Real and Imagined

hers belonged as members of the Kollegien and the Senate, but the church, with its monopoly on issues of public morality. The weekly, inspired by the English Spectator, was created by a circle ofreformist clerics and young academics from the Academic Gymnasium. It turned a critical eye on issues of individual behavior and morality, whose improvement its members viewed as integral to an increase in social well-being. This emphasis on education and morality reflected the interests of the members, several of whom were trained in law or-in the case of the writers Barthold Heinrich Brockes, Michael Richey, and C. F. Weichmann- were men of letters. Emerging from the private discussion circle of Johann Albert Fabricius, a professor, bibliophile, and expert on Greek and Byzantine literature, the journal's direct precedent was a discussion club on language, literature, and morality, the Teutsch-ubenden Gesellschaft of 1715, with a program similar to that of the Rose Society. Der Patriot printed the group's weekly discussions on natural rights and morality and exhorted readers to reform their private lives in a rational fashion. Focused primarily on the enlightenment of its own members, the association attempted to shift this interest onto the public realm through the journal. With s,ooo copies published weekly after nine months in circulation, it was an eighteenth-century bestseller.58 Disturbed by the political apathy that reigned in the city after the Principal Recess-the Citizens' Assembly was often so poorly attended that it was unable to vote 59 -the new society furthered a conception of citizenship based on an ideal of individual responsibility and self-improvement. This new definition was both more inclusive and more abstract than traditional ideas about community membership. In a shift that emphasized the moral sentiments of residents rather than their wealth, property, or legal standing, the group expanded the older conception of Burger to include the new idea of patriotism. The word "patriot" came into the German language in the late sixteenth century as a geographical term designating the residents of a territory. In the eighteenth century it began to acquire the meanings that the Hamburg group popularized, referring not just to the resident of a territory but to someone who worked for a particular community and was bound to it through service. 60 Through the s8.Jiirgen Rathje, "Geschichte, Wesen und Offentlichkeitswirkung der Patriotischen Gesellschaft von 1724 in Hamburg," in Deutsche patriotische und gemeinnutzige Gesellschaften, ed. RudolfVierhaus (Munich, 1g8o), 51-6g; Freudenthal, ~ereine in Ilamlntrg, 33-38. See also Wolfgang Martens, Die Botschaji der Tugend: Die Aujkliirung im Spiegel der deutschen Moralischen Worhenschriften (Stuttgart, 1971) . 59· The Assembly was unable to vote 120 times between 1712 and 1731 f()r lack of a quorum (195 members had to be present). See Seelig, GeschichtlicheEntwicklung, 95· 6o. Rudolf Vierhaus, "'Patriotismus'-Begriff und Realitat einer moralisch-politischen Haltung," in Deutsche patriotische und gemeinniitzige Gesellschaften, ed. RudolfVierhaus (Munich, 1g8o), 11.

Provincial Modernity

writings and discussions of the Patriotic Society, community membership acquired a basis in eighteenth-century morality, and the calculus for determining civic membership shifted decisively. "A true patriot," wrote Friedrich Carl von Moser in 1 761, "is one who is pious, honest, steadfast, patient, compassionate, and wise. "61 This concept furthered the idea of property in oneself along with property as goods, wealth, and land. People had property in themselves, which they had the responsibility to develop. 'The honor ... to improve oneself and to make a true patriot of oneself should belong to the people themselves," stated Der Patriot in 1724. 62 Practical reason, considered behavior, and clear-sighted criticism were all recommended as vehicles of individual and civic happiness. Der Patriot instigated a discussion on citizenship ideals and the proper forms of governance not by attacking the state-the prevailing civil peace was preferred to the time of troubles-but by focusing on the morality and activity of its members and subjects. The Patriotic Society was content to work within the boundaries of the 1712 Recess, but they wanted to reform it from within, to increase its members' awareness of and involvement in civic governance. They furthered their alternative conception of citizenship in two ways. First, their meetings were peopled by men of various occupations and status categories, who began to designate themselves as equals by virtue of their education and their civic commitments. The education, behavior, and morals of its members became important signifiers of their new status. Second, the Patriotic Society broadened the category of Burger beyond its legal basis to include a moral dimension focused on individual behavior. The older values of participation, empathy, and loyalty were wedded to a new conception of local patriotism. As the writer Michael Richey stated in 1731, a patriot was a "friend of the city" (Stadtfreund), a formulation that tied the old conception to the new. 63 Yet, while the Patriotic Society of 1724 addressed a larger public of readers, its actual participants remained limited. The journal advised a larger readership of potential "patriots" on proper behavior and the importance of rational thinking-as mediated through the mouth of a fictional "patriot"-but an enlarged public bound together through morals and values did not materialize. Many merchants did not read the paper, which was written mainly by academics, lawyers, and pastors, many of whom participated in the Citizens' Assembly and Senate.64 Der Patriot ceased publication in 1726, and by mid-century the club no longer existed. 61. Quoted ibid., 12. 62. Quoted in Rathje, "Geschichte," 57· 63. Franklin Kopitzsch, "Die Hamburgische Gesellschaft zur Beforderung der Kiinste und nutzlichen Gewerbe (Patriotische Gesellschaft von 1765) im Zeitalter der Aufkliirung: Ein Uberblick," in Vierhaus, Deutsche patriotische und gemeinniitzige GeseUschaften, 82. 64- Kopitzsch, "Hamburgische Gesellschaft," 74-

Citizenship Real and Imag;ined

Its promotion of new forms of sociability and communication was taken up again in 1765 with the founding of the Society for the Advancement of Art and Useful Trades, based on the English Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce of 1754 and on the local example set by Der Patriot. 65 This new association took the academic and literary focus of the earlier group and turned it in social and practical directions. 66 Peopled by merchants rather than solely by academics, it worked to solve the economic problems that followed the Seven Years' War. 67 It brought together the male "members of various corporations and careers, academics and merchants, those involved with self-government and those closed off from it" to formulate programs of community support. 68 Taking a pedagogical and paternalistic stance toward the general population, it established Hamburg's first public savings association ( 1778), credit for home and property owners ( 1782-83), a general poor relief system ( 1778), organizations for care of the aged and infirm, and a postal system. The society protected houses against lightning by sponsoring the installation of lightning rods; saved residents from fire, drowning, and strangulation through various rescue societies; paved their streets and cleared their refuse; and gave them the city's first public swimming pool. 69 The society founded in 1765, which came to be called the Patriotic Society for short, claimed that it existed not simply to enable its members "to amuse one another with conversations on useful topics, but rather primarily to bring to pass such things ... as will be useful to the members of the community."70 Like its predecessor, however, the Patriotic Society saw its highest duty as the "making of patriots" through social programs and social policy. Placing a high value on the acquisition of Bildung, it encouraged residents to educate themselves with the aim of becoming individually knowledgeable and industrious. Education, industry, and Bildung set one on the road to citizenship and patriotism, as the society set forth an 65. On the Society for the Advancement of Art and Useful Trades, see the official history by Gustav Kowalewski, Geschichte der hamlmrgischen Gesellschaft zur Befdrderung der Kilnste und niitzlichen Gewerbe (Patriotischr Gesellschajt) (Hamburg, 1897); Freudenthal, Vrreine in Hamlmrg, 33- 59; and Kopitzsch's essays. Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers, fomses specifically on the system of public welfare. 66. Hamburg's new patriotic society was one of the most important of the approximately sixty such groups founded in Germany and Switzerland between 1760 and 1820. See Kopitzsch, "Hamburgische Gesellschaft," 71; Thomas Nipperdey, ''Vereine als soziale Struktur in Deutschland im spaten 18. und friihen 19. Jahrhundert," in Gesellschaft, Kultur, Theorie: Gesammelte Auf5iitze zur neueren Geschichte (Gottingen, 1976), 174-205. 67. Kopitzsch, "Hamburgische Gesellschaft," 76-78; Kopitzsch, Grundziige, 184. 68. Franklin Kopitzsch, "Die Patriotische Gesellschaft," in Industriekultur in Hamlmrg: Des deutschen Reiches Tor zur Welt, ed. Volker Plagemann (Munich, 1984), 226. 69. Alfred Lichtwark, Ilamlmrg: Niedenachsen (Dresden, 1897), 53-55; Kopitzsch, "Hamburgische Gesellschaft," 88-Sg. 70. Minutes from the founding in 1765 quoted in Freudenthal, Vereine in Hamlmrg, 33·

Provincial Modernity ideal of gradual and measured civic growth through the organic development of the individual and the community. Here the evolutionary thinking that characterized nineteenth-century liberalism in Hamburg made its appearance-the idea that suffrage could be extended and that the body politic could grow, but only under certain conditions; that political rights followed rather than preceded the acquisition of education and evidence of industry; and that the state rested on a popular base of loyal citizens, which evolved only gradually, as directed by leaders of the communitysenators, elders of the church, merchants, lawyers, doctors, and other notables. Residents could set themselves on the path toward Biirgerrecht by applying themselves to programs of self-education and cultural betterment. Inclusion in the civic community was available to all residents who demonstrated personal industry and morality; Jews, who could not be Biirger, could and did belong to the Patriotic Society. The Patriotic Society wanted to renew the state socially, to correct its oversights and supplement its activities through programs of poor relief and civic protection, believing that the "best division of the city's business" did not "see to all the needs ... of a republic." In other words, private citizens must give their energy and time to the state, for "the administration must be supplemented ... through an entire estate of motivated private zeal." 71 In the 1790s the Patriotic Society saw its programs as the best strategy for protecting the state, whose constitution many members revered; 72 in the nineteenth century this idea would be used to usher in a more pointed strategy of reform. The society's affirmative stance toward Hamburg's government changed during the next fifty years as Hamburg's political and economic foundations were repeatedly shaken. An economic boom in the 1 7gos was followed by a bust. The Holy Roman Empire fell and Napoleon's armies occupied the city. The sheer force of events at the turn of the century opened up possibilities for change that could have led to significant constitutional reform. Yet, despite numerous suggestions for change, in 1815 Hamburg joined the German Confederation, and the Principal Recess, with its many restrictions on political participation, was restored. This event set the political stage for the next forty-five years. The post-Napoleonic period would witness increasing tension between older and newer conceptions of citizenship as conceptions of legal equality and 71. Ibid, 34- The Patriotic Society and its General Poor Relief were so active that they functioned as "an arm of government'' (Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers, 6). Lichtwark put the matter more strongly, stating that the society had practically governed Hamburg for a century. "There were times in which its influence in a practical sense reached further than any organ of the state" (Hamlmrg: Niedersachsm, quoted in Kopitzsch, "Patriotische Gesellschaft," 2 26). See also Erich Marcks, Hamburg und das bilrgerliche Gdstesleben in Deutschland (Hamburg, 1907), 20-21. 72. Kopitzsch strongly makes this point in "Hamburgische Gesellschaft."

Citizenship Real and Imagined

political representation ran up against older codifications of difference. The ideal of the Burger as patriot, thought out by members of the Patriotic Society, was increasingly used to criticize a sprawling and antiquated system of government. Tensions sharpened as the distance between the old Burger and the new increased, as economic growth expanded the number of citizens and civic standing no longer fitted neatly into the categories used to designate membership. Growing tension between old and new empowered Hamburg's liberal movement during the nineteenth century. Mter 1830, a desire for general legal equality for all residents and for elimination of the antiquated distinctions between the city and its rural areas, joined hands with the movement for Jewish emancipation and for the reform of the city's constitution. Requests for reform had arisen in 1814 and continued to do so in the following years. Before the reinstatement of the Principal Recess, a reform deputation suggested a religious and geographical broadening of the body politic. This was a timely demand, as the French occupation had lifted the heavy scaffolding oflegal and economic distinctions that had encumbered the Jewish population and ushered in the idea of general rights. In 1814 Senator Abendroth, Hamburg's mayor during the French occupation, appealed for the inclusion of the Jewish population in the Biirgerrechtand for making the definition of "property holder" less onerous. Such suggestions were routinely rejected by the Senate. 73 Mter 1814, the legal equality granted to the jews under the French was once again abolished as the system reverted to its old ways. 7 ·1 Likewise, movements to expand Biirgerrecht geographically set off a furor. In 1831 the suggestion to extend urban citizenship to the borough of St. Georg-an area that was practically but not legally part of the city-led to riots. In 1833 St. Georg and St. Pauli began to be represented in the Assembly, but under higher property qualifications than other parts of the city. Nevertheless, the increase in members gave new life to a moribund Assembly. 75 Meetings in the parishes attended by property-owning citizens continued to structure local government during the first half of the nineteenth century. There were, as yet, no political parties, not even a concept of political representation. The elders of the parishes and the rich in each district "represented" the whole, and the gap between the general population and the enfranchised yawned wider: of 130,000 residents in 1841, only 6,882 were citizens. 76 The city's population continued to rise, its institutions stubbornly resisted suggestions for change, and tensions between the state and its critics sharpened. The push 73· Seelig, Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 104-6. 74- Anti-Semiticriotsbroke out in Hamburg in 181gandagain in 1830 and 1835· See Zimmermann, HarnlrurgerPatriotismus, 'P-35· 7.'>· Seelig, GeschichtlicheEntwicklung, 107-8. 76. Zimmermann, Hamlrurger Patriotismus, 16 n 1 1.

Provincial Modernity for constitutional reform continued, and the old system began to crack under the strain. Yet it took a catastrophe to make the necessity of reform truly apparent and to turn requests into demands. An immense fire-the Great Fire of 1842, a three-day blaze that destroyed 25 percent of the city and made 20,000 residents homeless-revealed the inadequacies of the old system and increased popular pressure on the Senate to reform the government in the direction of general rights and legal equality. Bending to the pressure of public opinion after the fire, the Senate called a special deputation but restricted it to issues of rebuilding and fire safety. 77 Popular suggestions for change went beyond such halfhearted cosmetic reforms. If fulfilled, they would remove parish government and unravel Hamburg's complex interdependence of church and state. Dissatisfied with the Senate's intransigence, the Patriotic Society transformed itself into a forum for political discussion and criticism and repeatedly appealed for a thorough reform of all aspects of state organization. As the Senate continued to turn a deaf ear to all such proposals, the meetings of the Assembly grew rowdier and other groups-attorneys, propertyless residents, artisans, and the Jewish opposition-began to organize. 78 The liberal opposition grew so insistent that the Senate was forced to yield, first on the issue of public accountability. Mter the fire, the proceedings of the Assembly, which had been formerly subject to strict secrecy (participants were sworn not to divulge what went on in the chamber), began to be published, and the Senate was forced to follow suit. With the new opportunity to review and publicly criticize government actions, political clubs began to form. Hamburg's lawyers organized into the Organization of Hamburg Jurists; the Organization of Non-Property Owners agitated against the property requirement for citizenship and for the legal equality of all residents. 79 The Workers' Educational Association, founded in 1845 as Hamburg's first labor organization, furthered a conception of general citizenship strikingly similar to the "patriotism" appealed to by the Patriotic Society in the preceding century. It based citizenship on spiritual independence and Bildungrather than on the ownership of property. 80 77· Seelig, GeschichtlicheEntwicklung, 111-13. 78. Ibid., 112-19.]ohn Breuilly claims that between 1842 and 1848 a liberal opposition formed in Hamburg: "Liberalism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Hamburg and Manchester,"" in his Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Comparative History (Manchester, 1992), 211. 79· Seelig, Gesrhirhtliche Entwicklung, 114-16. So. Madeleine Hurd has called this an "Enlightenment ideal of citizenship." Sec her "Education, Morality, and the Politics of Class in Hamburg and Stockholm, 187o-1914,"]ournal of Contemporary History (October 1996), and Public Spheres, qg-Sg; John Breuilly and Wieland Sachse ,Joachim Friedrich Martens (I 8o6- I 877) und die deutsche Arbeitnbewegung (Gottingen, 1g84). See also Freudenthal, Vereine in Hamburg.

32

Citizenship Real and Imagined

The movement for constitutional reform reached a high point with the Revolution of 1848 and the election of the Konstituante, a democratically elected constitutional assembly. For all the work of the organized opposition, the numbers of actual citizens remained strikingly low. On the eve of the 1848 revolution, of approximately 1go,ooo people living in the city and adjacent rural areas, approximately 15o,ooo were residents of some sort, but only 27 ,ooo, around ?)O percent, possessed some form of the Burgerrecht. Moreover, only 3,ooo-4,ooo of these Burger were property owners, and of this group only 200-300 participated in the meetings of the A~sembly. 81 Representative government had clearly not yet taken holdwhereas accountability had-although the topic of representation was afloat in public discussion. The Great Fire transformed requests for constitutional reform into demands, and the new democratic "citizens' associations" forced the Senate's hand on constitutional reform. What were called the "Eleven Points" drawn up by the Commission of Twenty-four, a group that brought together members of the Jurists' Association with like-minded property owners, merchants, and young academics, outlined the form of government desired by Hamburg's liberals. The principal issue addressed was voting rights. The first of the eleven points called for "political rights for every member of the state who serves the state through their person or through their wealth." A demand for "general voting rights and general eligibility" ( allgemeines Wahlrecht und allgemeine Wiihlbarkeit) was part of a package of liberal demands: the separation of church and state, the separation of political rights from religious affiliation, freedom of religion, establishment of the parliament as an assembly of elected representatives rather than a gathering of property owners, establishment of compulsory primary education, and removal of the influence of the church from the schools. These "Eleven Points" articulated the desire to introduce a form of citizenship separate from the distinctions laid out in the Conventions, which if followed would entail a complete reform of the state. As Seelig wrote, the selfappointed Commission of Twenty-Four "broke with every constitutional tradition. It wanted to substitute the Christian-Lutheran city-state, which rested on a corporate basis and was ruled by elites, with a non-denominational republic that embodied the sovereignty of the people in the broadest sense in its laws and government. "82 During the Revolution of 1848, however, this liberal commission was quickly overtaken by the flanking maneuvers of the Senate on the one hand and by the popular demands of the street on the other. A reform deputation called by the Senate discussed some of its ideas and brought up the important issue of political representation, but all such demands were eventually silenced; the plans were 81. Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament, 18. Seelig, GeschichtlirheEntwicklung, 121-22.

82.

33

Provincial Modernity literally shut in a drawer to await a more auspicious time. The Konstituante laid out a sweeping reform plan, but with the downfall of the National Assembly in Frankfurt the old system was reinstated and things stood much as they had been before. Disappearing Citizens

In Hamburg the true watershed came over a decade later. Two decades of constitutional reform found their long-delayed outcome in the reform of the constitution that went into effect in 186o. This new constitution brought about a fundamental change in the character of civic government. With the lifting of the Principal Recess, over three centuries of cooperation between church and state were abolished. The new constitution separated church and state by removing the bUrgerliche Kollegien, those commissions of the 15, 6o, and 180 church elders who were simultaneously the leaders of parish churches and the representatives of the Citizens' Assembly to the Senate. It abolished the property-owning Citizens' Assembly and extended voting rights to all who paid the citizenship fee (which was still required for the Burgerrecht) and taxes. The new constitution also opened up the closed society of the Senate by requiring the election of senators by members of the Citizens' Assembly. The parish structure of Hamburg's government was lifted, voting districts were established, political clubs were formed, and citizenship was divorced from issues of religious and economic integration. With the lifting of the Conventions of 171 o, which had codified religious, economic, and gender differences and calibrated packages of rights on the basis of those differences, political representation acquired a more modern and abstract character. Now political rights were severed from religious affiliation and guild membership, though women were still disfranchised. The emancipation ofHamburg's male jewish population was a desired outcome of the change. The guilds were also abolished in due course. As Hans Wilhelm Eckardt claimed, the new constitution had important progressive elements. It abolished the property requirement for citizenship and widened the body politic to include all taxpaying citizens. The Senate was no longer autonomous but was elected by the Citizens' Assembly.83 It granted Hamburg's Jewish population full legal equality. 84 Citizenship was redefined in keeping with these changes, yet political power remained largely in the hands of the wealthy. The new constitution did away with the idea of difference but preserved that of hierarchy as central to a liberal conception of the polity by retaining some older laws and creating new categories. Political rights were still dependent on the posses83. Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament, 26-27. 84.]ochmann and Loose, Ham/nag, 2:54-58; Krohn,.Juden in Hamburg.

34

Citizenship Real and Imagined

sion of the Biirgerrecht, and the fee was beyond the reach of most residents. Moreover, while the constitution of 186o did eliminate the property requirement for citizenship, it created in its stead a three-class system of voting rights. Often discussed as a reactionary measure, in actuality the basing of voting rights on a census was a tool of nineteenth-century liberals. 85 Even during the democratic ferment of 1848 most liberals did not dream of throwing the suffrage wide open. In the meetings in Frankfurt in 1848 and in the discussions of Hamburg's reform deputation, for many a census was thought to be a useful method for determining levels of political fitness. Efforts to widen the suffrage and simultaneously to limit it to those defined as "productive" and "independent" were characteristic of the way many groups thought. While the Eleven Points recommended the abolition of the Property Owners' Assembly, they did not imagine that a democracy would arise in its place. They recommended instead that the suffrage be extended to those who "serve the state through their person or through their wealth." This demand was essentially fulfilled in 186o. With the introduction of the census, the electorate was divided into three groups of voters: notables (men elected to administrative posts, such as judges), property owners, and taxpaying Burger. The constitution widened the political sphere to include taxpayers but attempted to keep decision making in the hands of the "productive" and "responsible." The Oberalten were abolished, but the category of notables (Notabeln) was introduced, designating the citizens now endowed with the most influence. Hamburg's judges, members of the bureaucracy, and members of the chambers of commerce and crafts ( Handels- und Gewerbekammer) now made up their own voting body. 86 The new constitution heavily favored them. The suffrage was further weighted toward defending the privileges of the first two groups: notables received three votes per election, property owners two, and taxpaying citizens one. 87 This weighting toward the top was combined with an emptying out at the bottom. With the abolition of the guilds in 1865, the economic and social privileges of the Biirgerrecht fell away and a purely political form of citizenship emerged. 88 Curiously, this change made citizenship both less attractive and less necessary for many residents. Mter 1 R65 the number of 85. Prussia introduced a census in the Rhineland in 1844 as a way of determining voting rights. On the census as a liberal measure see Peter Uwe Hohcndahl, Building a National Literature: The Case of Germany, I8Jo- I87o, trans. Renate Baron Franciscono (Ithaca, tg8g), 5154· 86. See Seelig's definition of the Notabeln in Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 5· 87. Nearly two-thirds (62.5%) of the Citizens' Assembly ofl86o, the first elected under the new suffrage law, were merchants. Eckardt notes that many of these men were small businessmen and traders rather than prominent merchants (Privilegien undParlament, 2g). 88. Breuilly, "Liberalism." 203.

35

Provincial Modernity Burger in the city actually declined as its population rose. This "citizen shrinkage" ( Biirgerschwund), as con temporaries called it, caused a great deal of unease. As citizenship was still dependent on the payment of a fee, and since it no longer had meaningful implications for work, marriage, or the right to settle, it is safe to assume that many residents no longer felt compelled to acquire it. Moreover, the traditional duties of the citizen (such as serving in the citizens' militia) now were either obsolete or seen as unduly burdensome. Whatever the reason for the lack of interest, many men who were eligible to become Biirgerafter 186o chose not to do so. Of a population of 390,000 in 1875, only 34,000 (8.7%) were citizens. 89 The significance of this development was compounded by shifts in the national political arena. In 1867 Hamburg entered the North German Confederation and joined a Prussian-directed process of state-building. 90 Most important, with the North German Confederation (and later the German Empire) came universal manhood suffrage, first for the diet of the Confederation and later for the imperial parliament. This significant democratic element of the imperial state ran up against older suffrage systems in Germany's regions, cities, and towns; it established a fundamental tension between a national public sphere defined through universal manhood suffrage and restricted local suffrages in which only a minority could vote. 91 In local politics after 1871, redefining the body politic by redefining the suffrage thus became an issue of the utmost importance. Statements made by the president of the Citizens' Assembly, the later lord mayor Gerhard Hachmann, on this point were typical. As he declared in 1 883, Hamburg's Biirgertum, which he defined as "the complex of those who should feel themselves to be and want to be the politically enfranchised and responsible carriers of the state," needed to be encouraged to involve themselves in government. The state needed to be built upon "the widest possible foundation that would be accessible to the greatest possible section of our population." A~ was customary, however, this recommendation went hand in hand with warnings against unsuitable citizens, those "revolutionary elements who must be held far from any influence on public affairs. "92 This type of thinking about desirable and undesirable citSg. Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament, 29-30. go. Integration into the empire brought a process of forced institutional reform: the city had to relinquish its military, foreign policy, foreign consulates, independent economic policy, and monetary, postal, and judicial systems. See Jochmann and Loose, Hamlntrg, 1:492500. gt. On this point see Peter Pulzer, ''The Citizen and the State," in The Camaridge Companion to A!odem German Culture, ed. Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der Will (Cambridge, tgg8), 20-43; Langewieschc, Liberalismus in Deutschland. 92. Quoted in Ottmar Heinze, "Die Liberalen in Hamburg zu Beginn des 20 ..Jahrhunderts: Eine Darstellung ihres politischen Verhaltens anliisslich der Biirgerschafts- und Reichstagswahlen, 1904-1907," Examensarbcit, Universitat Hamburg, 1981, 2,5-26.

Citizenship Real and Imagined

izens would continue to be typical of Hamburg's elite. At the turn of the twentieth century, large numbers of the merchant elite supported the outright repression of the labor movement and opposed any extension of the suffrage, and even those who recommended expanding voting rights did so with reservations. Future citizens, they claimed, had first to demonstrate financial and spiritual independence. The redefinitions of the suffrage after 1892 provided mechanisms for expanding the body politic coupled with mechanisms for measuring independence. An overall reluctance to embrace the idea of universal suffrage went hand in hand with liberal thinking about political community, hierarchy, and responsibility. Hamburg's liberals set up financial barriers, cultural requirements, and educational standards that they felt had to be met before a resident could become a Burger. Moreover, increasing democratization strengthened thinking about the role of the notables as agents responsible for directing political change. The word Notabeln came into common usage during the 187os, and in 1879 it became the official designation of this class of voters.93 In 1892 the number of citizens had dropped to an all-time low, and a cholera epidemic that claimed the lives of more than S,ooo residents strengthened arguments for a thorough reform of the suffrage. Shamed by the epidemic and chastened by the criticism of the Social Democratic Party, the Senate and Citizens' Assembly agreed that something had to be done. The numbers of Burger had dwindled so far that "no one could overlook the fact that the basis of trust in the governing bodies had become too small. "94 The redefinitions of the suffrage-from its extension in 1896 to its further restriction ten years later-stood at the center of Hamburg's political transformation. While these matters were of greatest importance to the members of Hamburg's Social Democratic Party (SPD), who fought for admittance to the chambers of local government through extension of the suffrage, the battles themselves took place between Hamburg's middle-class political factions. In short, while the SPD exerted pressure on local government, the fight over the suffrage also unfolded between the groups who already held power in the city; their members debated the merits and disadvantages of an expanded voting public in the Citizens' Assembly and Senate, at the Chamber of Commerce, in the Patriotic Society, and in numerous new associations. In debates on voting rights between 1890 and 1910, Hamburg's Burgertumfought over extending the suffrage, the conditions under which it should occur, the definition of a citizen, the place of the Social Democratic Party in local politics, and the possibility of transforming working people into citizens. They argued, too, over the role 93· Seelig, Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 7· 94· Jiirgcn Bolland, Die hamlmrgisr:he Biirgerschaji in alter und never Zeit (Hamburg, 1959), 61.

37

Provincial Modernity

of elites and of institutions in transforming public life. 95 This extended debate gave rise in 1907 to Hamburg's left-liberal United Liberal Party and to numerous projects aimed at "raising" and "educating" the general public on the road to enfranchisement. In this sense Hamburg's political transformation created cultural strategies for expanding the body politic that will be explored in the pages that follow. They were connected to a longterm view of the eventual democratization of the local suffrage, as the United Liberals "applied themselves ... consequently for an extension of the Burgerrecht and thus for the right to vote." 96 However, the drive to extend the suffrage was not a whole-hearted approval of democratization or evidence of egalitarianism. Liberal reformers wished for democratization, but only after the working class was raised to a level they considered suitable for enfranchisement. Their thinking on cultural and political reform, the role of institutions in a liberal polity and the importance of Bildungin thinking about citizenship and peaceful political change, constituted a body of thought and action which channeled into the programs of the United Liberals after 1907. 95· See Seelig, GeschichtlicheEntwicklung and Heinze, "Liberalen in Hamburg." See also Oscar Dranert, Wie wird man in Hamburg Burger? (Hamburg, 1897). g6. The coalition of socially conscious reformers in Hamburg did not have immediate or large-scale success, but it "became the seed of a collaboration between bourgeois reformers and the working class":Jochmann and Loose, Hamburg, 2:44, 61. According to Ursula Buttner, the prewar cooperation between the left-liberal bourgeoisie and the reformist Social Democrats laid the basis for the coalition government of the SPD and the German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei or DDP) during the Weimar Republic. See Buttner, "Vereinigte Liberale."

{2}

Culture in a Citv•State As a republic Hamburg was never As renowned as Venice and Florence But Hamburg has better oysters; one gets The best at Lorenz's restaurant. HEINRICH HEINE,

C'czermany: A Winter's Tale

Novels and poems written around rgoo often caricatured Hamburg as a city that was more businesslike in temperament than artistic, more economically oriented than spiritual. In a slur that began with Heinrich Heine and became common currency, nineteenth-century writers and intellectuals lampooned it as a city of merchants and philistine "beefsteak eaters" whose only concern about art was its value as an investment. The naturalist poet Detlev von Liliencron liked to make fun of "the city of lovely, good, and pious beefsteak eaters and chock-full money boxes! "1 An eighteenth-century predecessor, Daniel Schiebeler, flatly designated Hamburg as "Stomach opolis. "2 In these accounts commerce trumped culture and exchange overwhelmed art. A reporter for the Hamburger 1. From his novel Poggfred of 1891, quoted in Hans Gerhard, "Ein Vierteljahrhundert!" Literarische Gesellschaft 2, no. 8 ( 1916): 246. 2. Schiebcler in Kopitzsch, Grundziige, 385.

39

Provincial Modernity Nachrichten, assessing the period at the turn ofthe twentieth century, took a different view:

if Hamburg perhaps has no real right to claim the noble title of an art center [Kunststadt] -after all, not everything that's called gold necessarily is-it is without doubt most decidedly an art appreciation center [Stadt der Kunstpflege]. There won't be many cities in Germany, not to mention the rest of Europe, that mobilize the full value of their art collections in that way. Where else is the work of art and its observation so fully drawn into schooling as it is here? To be sure, the modern mediation between art and life definitely had its beginning in Hamburg.'~ The reporter had put his finger on something important. Hamburg was not and never had been an art center, an ambiguous honor, as he observed, but something nobler. It was a city of art appreciation and application, where interaction with art served a larger social good and the lessons taught by an intense appreciation of the civilizing, didactic, and moral message of art ennobled life in all its forms. In Hamburg, art collections were "mobilized" as instructive objects and put to use in public instruction; interaction with art was placed at the center of the public school curriculum. By 1905 Hamburg had emerged as the national center of the art education movement, headed by the director of the Hamburg Art Museum, the cultural politician and art educator Alfred Lichtwark. 4 Mter 18go, under Lichtwark's influence, a social movement promoted reform in the arts and in life through "people's education" ( Volksbildung). Founded on a liberal belief in the power of Bildung as the instrument for creating social identity and social citizenship, Lichtwark's movement became influential by its ability to cast older civic questions about belonging, community, and the standards of political fitness into new forms. His movement worked across generations and classes and was firmly anchored in the city's particular social and cultural organization. Art and culture were organized differently in Hamburg than in other German states and cities, and these differences had long roots. The timely construction of a set of fortifications in the seventeenth century enabled the city to emerge relatively unscathed from the Thirty Years' War, its urban order and its prosperity intact. This fortuitous starting point gave it an early lead over towns, villages, and cities left in ruins, and fifty years after the war it boasted one of the most active international art markets in Europe. The city's cultural development, moreover, can be traced to the structure of its institutions and the motivations of their patrons. Hamburg's cultural institutions emerged laboriously into the public 3· SL\ HH, ZAS A 76~r Hamlmrger Nachrichtrn, Dec. 27, 1()2j. 4· The proceedings of the three national art education conferences were published in 1901, '9"3· and 1905. For literature on Lichtwark see Werner Kayser, AlfredLichtwark (Hamburg, 1977).

Culture in a City-State

realm during the nineteenth century and remained weak and underfinanced throughout much of it. Their weakness was a continuing source of embarrassment to senators and assemblymen, who continually compared Hamburg's cultural infrastructure with those of its German rivals. Viewed from one angle, however, this institutional weakness was a strength. Financed primarily by private citizens, these institutions remained relatively independent of state influence. Moreover, the private networks that supported them provided a space to discuss ideas that did not find an audience in other parts of Germany. Lichtwark's movement capitalized on the lack of state control. The movement he launched flourished in Hamburg's civil society; it was organized through loose networks of middle-class and working-class associations devoted to aesthetic education. These associations found common ground in the programs of Hamburg's two main museums, the Museum of Art and Industry and the Art Museum, both creations of the nineteenth century. In the absence of a university or an academy, the museums self-consciously positioned themselves as the city's cultural centers. Private Interests, Public Interests

Since the seventeenth century Hamburg's cultural organizations had followed a path of development that the art and architectural historian Volker Plagemann has called the "Hamburg model. "5 According to Plagemann, this particular pattern of development-specific to city-states without a ruling aristocracy-was characterized by five factors: an absence of state support for the arts, weak municipal institutions, reliance on private initiative, the strength of the market, and the absence of a unified civic cultural style. The most important of these factors was the first-the absence of a central cultural bureaucracy or any state-based support for the arts. Only after the First World War did Hamburg establish a state cultural ministry. Until then, the largest middle-class association in the city, the Patriotic Society of 1765, played such an active role in promoting civic culture that Alfred Lichtwark called it a "voluntary cultural ministry." 6 The second characteristic was an effect of the first. In the absence of state initiative in founding and furthering museums, schools, and academies, civic cultural institutions were weak for much of the nineteenth century. Private groups and individuals (factor three) stepped in to define and nurture local cultural life through dense networks of associations ( Vereine). The reliance on private initiative strengthened the market (factor four) as the mechanism through which artists received work and consumers received goods. The last characteristic also derived from the substitution of citizen activity for state initiative 5· Plagemann, Kunstgeschichte, g-14. 6. Lichtwark, Hamlmrg: Niedersachsen, 52.

Provincial Modernity

in the regulation of cultural life. The colorful diversity of Hamburg's nineteenth-century buildings, streets, and squares made clear the lack of a centralized plan for urban development. 7 The Hamburg model-a strong market and a weak state-had both good and bad outcomes, depending on the perspective of the observer. For Volker Plagemann, the absence of state control contributed to the plurality and vitality of cultural life, creating a multiplicity of architectural styles and cultural groups that pointed toward twentieth-century multicultural urbanity. Seen from the perspective of the nineteenth century, however, the picture looked less rosy. Senator Werner von Melle, who began his political career as Senate syndic in 1891 and ended it as the founder of Hamburg's university in 1919 and as lord mayor during the Weimar Republic, bemoaned the lack of centralization and the sorry state of the municipal institutions. For von Melle, the nineteenth century represented one long night of decline and decay for Hamburg's cultural infrastructure. From his office in the school administration he tried to strengthen and modernize the patchy assortment of public cultural institutions that had emerged during the course of the century. As he looked toward the founding of museums and scientific institutions with national and international reputations in cities such as Leipzig and Berlin, keeping Hamburg competitive with its new German rivals was very much on his mind. "Before the start of my time in office, I was already convinced that Hamburg's scientific life and its overall cultural condition had to be more strongly developed than before. [This is] in the interest of our culture and to raise our political and economic influence in Germany," he wrote. The "first trading city of Germany," in his eyes, required a representative cultural infrastructure. 8 Hamburg's status as a city-state that became a commercial center during the early modern period decisively influenced the shape of its cultural life. Cities that had served as the residences of aristocratic rulers or as the sites of medieval universities could claim long histories as cultural centers. The presence of a court and the influence of aristocratic patrons in a city such as Munich or Dresden generated a rich cultural life around its theater, salons, and royal collections. 9 Aristocratic patronage contributed to 7· On Hamburg's institutional development see Freudenthal, Vereine in Hamburg, and Birgit-Katharine Seemann, Stadt, Burgertum und Kultur: Kulturelle Entwicklung und Kulturpolitik in Hamburg von r839 bis I933 am Beispiel des Museumswesens (Husum, 1998). On the influence of state support for the arts in Germany see Ekkehard Mai and Stephan Waetzoldt, eds., Kunstverwaltung: Bau- und Denkmalpolitik im Kaiserreich (Berlin, 1981), and Ekkehard Mai, Hans Pohl, and Stephan Waetzoldt, eds., Kunstpolitik und Kunstfdrderungim Kaiserreich: Kunst im Wandel der Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Berlin, 1982). 8. Von Melle, DreijJigjahre, 1:3-6. g. Gudrun Calov, "Museen und Sammler des Ig.Jahrhunderts in Deutschland," Museumskunde 38, no. 1-3 ( 1969): 1-1g6; and RudolfVierhaus, Germany in the Age ofAbsolutism, trans.

42

Culture in a City-State

the establishment of academies and places of artistic training where the arts were financially encouraged. Princely collections in such aristocratic centers later became wealthy public museums and galleries, beginning with the Louvre in 1792. 10 Hamburg never possessed this type of cultural infrastructure, nor would it develop one. Its first layer of institutions were religious, its second baroque. Founded as an outpost of Western Christianity in 804 by Charlemagne, it looked to the Catholic church as its first patron of the arts. This provincial place of learning possessed a library, known through its destruction by bands of invading Vikings in 845. Later it was reestablished, and by 1450 notice of the Dombibliothek indicated its stature within the region. By the late fifteenth century Hamburg's four churches housed their own libraries; the Senate library appeared in 1479, a gift to the city from its mayor, Hinrich Murmester, and the printing of books began shortly thereafter. 11 Lutheranism became the city's official religion in 1529, and during the seventeenth century a second layer of institutions made its appearance: the Academic Gymnasium, with philosophical and theological faculties, in 1613, the Admiralty in 1623, the Chamber of Commerce in 1665, and the City Library in 1648. Later historians claimed this institutional development-which included the establishment of an orphanage and a plague hospital-as a beneficial effect of the Reformation. 12 Institutions such as the Academic Gymnasium, a type of pre-university founded to promote the natural sciences and mathematics and to give elites access to the first levels of higher education, were shaped by collective concerns rather than by the hand of a sovereign. In general Hamburg's cultural institutions magnified civic concerns and commercial interests rather than royal power. This development went hand in hand with private ownership. Private ownership was the rule of the day, and many of Hamburg's museums found their first incarnation in the galleries and scientific collections of citizens. In Hamburg "the citizen acted for the state ... in all areas," wrote Lichtwark in 1897. 13 Cultural activities were the province of private interests and art was a "citizens' affair" ( Sache der Burger). 14 Lichtwark summed up the pattern of local cultural development as follows: Jonathan B. Knudsen (Cambridge, 1988), 58-SG, provide an overview of private collections and the social organization of the arts during the early modern period. 10. The literature on European museums and collecting is large. Two of the best analyses of the museum as a liberal institution are Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London, 1995); and Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London, 1995). 11. Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, 76-77. 12. Marcks, Hamburg, 16-17. 13. Lichtwark, Hamburg: Niedersachsm, .S 1. 14-]ochmann and Loose, Hamburg, 2:39. Andreas Schultz, "Weltbiirgcrtum und Gcldaristokraten: Hanseatisches Biirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert," Historische Zeitschrijt 2 59, no. 3 (De-

43

Provincial Modernity

Whenever a need was discovered or could be foreseen, an influential man would get together with his friends and form a structured association or a loosely organized committee. [They] applied for means, founded an institution, organized the administration, directed it in this way for a while (as was possible with private financing), and then gave the institution over to the state. 15 Lichtwark made a fluid continuum out of a halting series of steps that could go on for the better part of a century. Most of Hamburg's cultural institutions went through this process. In 1891, by von Melle's accounting, Hamburg had eleven municipal cultural institutions: a city library ( 1648), an observatory (1825), a natural history museum (1843), two collections of local artifacts (18o6 and 1849) a botanical garden (1856), an art museum (186g), a museum of art and industry (1877), an anthropological museum (1877), chemistry and physics laboratories (1885), and a botanical museum with an associated laboratory ( 1887) .16 As the list shows, layers of institutional development rubbed up against one another; the seventeenth-century City Library coexisted with mid-nineteenth-century museums of art, anthropology, art and industry, and natural history and with late nineteenth-century scientific institutions. While this list may seem impressive, the reality was far less grand. As von Melle noted, none of these institutions was particularly imposing. None had a large administration or a substantial budget. But they did have a common point of origin: all had grown from modest beginnings in citizens' clubs and associations as hobbies, group activities, or shared interests. Private ownership was strengthened by Hamburg's position as a commercial center and the presence of an international market in art. A market in luxury goods appeared early, driven by the wealth and tastes oflocal merchants. From the sixteenth century onward, merchant families such as the Amsincks assembled art collections and libraries that echoed aristocratic lineage and power. 17 Artworks intermingled with scientific specimens and rare and luxurious articles in the Raritiitenkabinetten, such as the one owned by Johann Andersen, lord mayor from 1674 to 1743. 18 Reports of rich private collections abounded in the eighteenth century. "There are cember 1994): 637-70, provides a comparison with Bremen on the subject of the Biirgertum and the arts. 15. Lichtwark, Hamburg: Niedersachsen, 51. 16. Von Melle, DreijJigjahre, 1:23. 17. This model was especially visible in the portrait galleries. The 1604 portraits of Rudolph and lsabeau Amsinck mimicked the conventions of aristocratic portraiture. Husband and wife faced front, wore formal attire, and held objects representing their social position. Rudolph Amsinck held up a watch (Plagemann, Kunstgeschichte, 190-91). 18. Niels von Holst, "Beitrage zur Geschichte des Sammlertums und des Kunsthandels in Hamburg von 1700-1840," ZHG 38 (1939): 265. Andersen was a member of the Patriotic Society of 1724. See also Calov, "Museen und Sammler."

44

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more artworks in Hamburg than one would think," wrote the Berlin artist Daniel Chodowiecki in 1782. 19 As Christian Ludwig Griesheim had written twenty years earlier, Hamburg was not at all lacking in libraries, beautiful paintings, etchings, or collections of curiosities "from all corners of the world and all realms of nature. "20 Such collections were made possible by the city's location at the intersection of east-west trade routes and its importance as a port, by its proximity to the great trading cities of the Netherlands (whose cultural life it sought to emulate), and its position as a great entrepot for goods material and cultural. According to Niels von Holst, "as an art market and as the home of important collections," Hamburg was "comparable only to Vienna in the German cultural area." 21 While this seems exaggerated, there is ample evidence that Hamburg had a thriving art market on the model of Amsterdam's. As goods moved through from west to east, so did artworks from the great artistic centers of Flanders and the Netherlands pass through the city during the seventeenth century; following this route a great deal of Dutch art found its way into private collections. Holst estimated that 85 percent of all the art collected up until 1840 was Dutch. A vogue grew for Dutch art and for its themes: genre scenes, scenes of everyday life, detailed cityscapes and paintings which "materially fascinate and represent everyday life"-landscapes, stilllifes (those showing food were particularly popular), and portraits. 22 The city oriented itself toward port cities such as Amsterdam rather than toward the German-speaking hinterland. In the late seventeenth century, Lichtwark wrote, "in many respects Hamburg formed a sort of Dutch cultural enclave on German territory. The impulse toward monumental construction came from Holland, a Dutchman built three of our church spires, new urban districts showed Dutch characteristics, and our artists went to Amsterdam and Haarlem to study, the way they now go to Munich. "23 Trained in Holland, Hamburg's artists returned to paint for its numerous theaters, for the opera (which opened in 1678), or for private customers. 24 French, Flemish, and Italian paintings may have found little 19. Quoted in Christian Meyer-Tonnesmann, Der Hamburgischer Kunstlerklub von I 897 (Hamburg, 1985), 23. 20. Quoted in Rathje, "Geschichte," 65-66. 21. Holst, "Beitrage," 253, 257-58. 22. Ibid., 256; Plagemann, Kunstgeschichte, 183-97. 23. Alfred Lichtwark, Matthias Scheits als Schildererdes Hamburger Lebens, I6JO-I700 (Hamburg, 18gg), 17. 24. Plagemann, Kunstgesr:hichte, 186-87. The early forms of theatrical entertainment were often so vulgar-bloody fights and animal torture were popular-that Hamburg's pastors complained about the abuse of public spaces. Opera productions were numerous and lavish. The composer George Frideric Handel came to Hamburg at the beginning of the eighteenth century only to meet Gian Gas tone de' Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, who took Handel with him to Italy. See Wehl, Hmnlmrgs Literaturleben, 27-33.

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favor among local patrons, but their presence on the auctioneer's block testified to Hamburg's importance as an international art market. Collections from as close as Lower Saxony and as far away as the American colonies, Spain, and Italy came under the hammer. Many years later, aristocratic refugees fleeing from the French Revolution quickly liquidated their art collections in Hamburg; one unhappy seller in 1795 ironically designated himself as Monsieur Egalite. In 1795, four such auctions were held. By 1802, the number had risen to ten. 25 International trade also contributed to the assembling of valuable scientific collections. The private garden of J. R. Buek exhibited plants and specimens from all corners of the globe; the scientific garden of Lord Mayor von Bostel merited a visit by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in 173 7. 26 Many members of the merchant elite assembled collections of plants, fossils, insects, and shells. The international shipping trade made possible the collecting of objects from foreign and so-called primitive cultures, and many Hamburg merchants owned valuable natural scientific and anthropological artifacts. "In the area of folk art Hamburg's collections, and those of its surrounding area, were more richly outfitted than practically all others in Germany," wrote Holst; even "anthropological curiosities from America were not rare." 27 The merchant and natural scientist Hermann Strebel, for example, assembled a valuable collection of Mexican artifacts known throughout Germany for its size and quality. 28 Nineteenth-century merchants continued the tradition of collecting and served as powerful patrons of art and science. They actively sponsored scientific expeditions and voyages of discovery that promised to prove profitable to their business interests. 29 Such a man was the merchantJohann Caesar Godeffroy. As he built up his trading empire in the South Pacific, Godeffroy assembled an enormous scientific and anthropological collection, which he housed in a private museum and opened to scientists. Godeffroy never went to the South Pacific himself; he sent others to administer his trading operations and to gather objects for his museum. He instructed the captains of his ships to bring back local flora and fauna, and he directly dispatched and financed individual collectors, mostly outsiders without formal training or experience, including the pioneering female naturalist Amalie Dietrich, for trips that lasted several years at a stretch. 30 25. Holst, "Beitrage," 257-59, 271-72. 26. Von Melle, Drei}Jigjahre, 1:33. 27. Holst, "Beitrage," 259· 28. Von Melle, Drei}Jigjahre, 1:45. 29. Helmut Washausen, Hamburgund die Kolonialpolitik des deutschen Reiches, r88o !tis r89o (Hamburg, 1968), 16-19. 30. Florence Mann Spoehr, White Falcon: The House of Godeffray and Its Commercial and Scientific Role in the Pacific (Palo Alto, 1963), 3-4- In a series ofletters to her daughter, published

Culture in a City-State

Such collections testified to individual wealth as well as to enthusiasms and hobbies. Regrettably for the city, its citizens' wealth did not ultimately enrich its public institutions. The temptations of a commercial center could undercut civic concerns. The heirs to these collections often sold them to raise cash upon the death of the owners. The Godeffroy collection was one of many that was dispersed. As the Senate was generally unwilling to pay the asking price to keep a collection in the city, objects and artifacts from Hamburg enriched the holdings of expanding museums in other parts of Germany while its own institutions languished. Godeffroy's private museum went to Leipzig; Strebel's collection was divided between museums in Leipzig and Berlin. The nineteenth century was littered with such missed opportunities, lamented von Melle, as Hamburg's wealth and expertise were sold in its own active markets. 31 Customers at these markets had traditionally been of the highest prestige, whether individuals or, as was later the case, institutions. In 1720 the Russian tsar Peter the Great purchased a collection of curiosities; a well-known coin collection ended up in Copenhagen. Paintings brought by French refugees traveled into and out of the city as mobile property. Hamburg supplied Russian aristocrats with French furniture and English collectors with Dutch paintings. In this manner, artworks produced by local and foreign artists ended up in all corners of Europe, particularly to the north and east of Hamburg. 32 Civic cultural institutions developed at one remove from this burgeoning art and artifacts market. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, many of the new institutions came under the jurisdiction of Hamburg's largest association, the Patriotic Society of 1765. It invested considerable time and energy in transforming private projects into public institutions. During the nineteenth century both the Museum of Art and Industry and the Art Museum developed under its protective wing. 33 It happened as Lichtwark described-influential men came together, voiced their opinions, gathered money, and formed organizations. This pattern reveals the tremendous importance of private citizens in the city's cultural expansion and their deep belief in the proper role of educated patrons in the creation and development of institutions. Lichtwark assumed a natural progression from private collection to public institution, particularly when its as Australische Briefe (Melbourne, 1943), Amalie Dietrich described her work for Godeffroy's museum in Queensland, Australia, from 1863 to 1872. 31. Von Melle spoke of lost chances, particularly regarding the Museum fur Volkerkunde, in Dreijigjahre, 1:44-46; Lichtwark, Matthias Scheits, 29. 32. Holst, "Beitrage," 260-62. 33· Ideas for the Art Association were first voiced in the Patriotic Society in 1807. Membership lists show that many of the association's founding members belonged to the Patriotic Society. See Marina and Uwe Scheede, "Der Zweck des Kunstvereins ist die mehrseitige Mittheilung iiber bildende Kunst," in Plagemann, Industriekulturin Hamburg, 336-37.

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founding members belonged to the local elite. But the movement from collection to institution and from private to public did not happen naturally. It progressed slowly; it had to be argued for as in the public interest, of service to all and beholden to none. This process could become belabored; as we have seen, ideas about what constituted the public interest were changing during the late eighteenth century, as were the shape and composition of what was being called the "public." The public and the private overlapped in interesting ways in eighteenthand nineteenth-century Hamburg, and the Patriotic Society offers ample evidence of their intersections. A private association, it acted in and for the public interest, often conceiving of itself as an addendum to the state. Its perspective on the merits of private activity for the public good carried over to its members and to Hamburg's elite in general. In Hamburg's new eighteenth-century clubs and associations, individuals often conceived of themselves as members of a new rational and benevolent public, perceiving their influence as necessary to the proper management of society as a whole. According to the local definition of patriotism, private individuals had a responsibility to devote themselves to the public welfare, and members of the Patriotic Society imbued their private cultural activities-gathering in circles of friends to read poetry or to discuss local politics-with public and civic value. Thus the meeting places of Hamburg's eighteenth-century public sphere were not just the theaters and coffeehouses, the offices of the stock exchange or the newspapers, but the homes and gardens of private citizens, who met together and thought of themselves as a cultivated public. The groups of citizens and residents that met in the gardens of the villas and summer homes that ringed the city saw themselves as a public force and translated their private ideology of improvement into a public project. In the most famous of these circles, the Senate syndic Karl Sieveking gathered together intellectuals, artists, and professors for debate on civic issues. Sieveking, the son of the merchant Georg Heinrich Sieveking, was a diplomat and politician. His circle was made famous by his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, which he crowned with a freedom festival in 1 792. 34 Out of these groups came numerous initiatives for cultural improvement: landscape gardens and the "ornamental farm" of Caspar Voght, 35 the Trade Academy of the economist and mathematician Johann Georg Busch, and the Sieveking circle's project to establish a university, the Akademie Ham. Men such as Sieveking and Busch staffed the Patriotic Society, and under their influence the society began to patronize the arts, which they defined 34· Von Melle, Dreifligjahre, 1:10-13. 35· Baron Kaspar von Voght, Lebensgeschichte (Hamburg, 1917); Plagemann, Kunstgeschichte, 204 -12; Volker Plagemann, "Vaterstadt, Vaterland, schiitz Dick Gott mit starker Hand": Denkmiiler in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1g86), 11-15, on Hamburg's first monuments, erected in private gardens and dedicated to poets and thinkers.

Culture in a City-State

as one province within a much larger project of educating, reforming, and shaping the emergent public. Discussions on art focused on the public good rather than on the buying and selling of property. They were given a practical direction by the demands of craft reform and by a growing interest in improving training for local artisans. The society organized craft instruction in 1782, and in 1790 staged the first civic exhibition of "art and exemplary craftsmanship" intended for public instruction.% Like many of the Patriotic Society's ventures, Hamburg's museums were conceived as "rational" and "improving" institutions, as were the parks, libraries, museums, and schools established by the liberal bourgeoisie in cities all over Europe. The founding of museums and educational institutions demonstrated the intention ofliberals to use art and culture as means to create an enlightened, cultivated, and stable society. "The grand and principal goal of a museum is ... to awaken in the public, wherever it still slumbers, the feeling for fine art as one of the most important areas of human culture. In places where this sense is already awakened, [the museum should] create worthy nourishment and the opportunity for ever more refined cultivation." So wrote the Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1828. 37 Drawing on a line of thought stretching back to the art historian J. J. Winckelmann, Schinkel wrote that to awaken and develop the public's feeling for the fine arts was to develop and form that public itself. This ideal of aesthetic education was to have the greatest importance for Hamburg's civic development and for Germany's liberal national culture. As Friedrich Schiller wrote in 1795, interaction with art and culture-painting and sculpture, literature, music, and architecture-developed a core of aesthetic sensibility found in every individual, which served as a foundation for ethical social behavior. Writing during the French Revolution, Schiller defined art as the proper mediating force for a society attempting to evolve toward a greater state of freedom. His treatise on art was also, as he put it, "his profession of political faith." It strongly advocated the creation of a moral society through the education of individuals toward spiritual independence and made the profoundly political claim that only through an abiding social commitment to the education of the imagination could mature individuals and virtuous citizens be created. "Wholeness of character," wrote Schiller, "must ... be present in any people capable and worthy of exchanging a state of compulsion for a state of freedom. "38 36. Kopitzsch, "Patriotische Gesellschaft," 226; Freudenthal, Vereine in Hamburg, 50-52. 37· Quoted in Axel von Saldern, Das Museum fur Kunst nnd Gewerbe Hamburg, 1869-1988 (Hamburg, 1988), 13. 38. See Elizabeth Wilkenson and L.A. Willoughby's introduction to their edition of friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (Oxford, 1967). This scholarly introduction is invaluable for it~ complicated sense of the work and provides the foundation for the analysis offered here. Quotations are from xviii and Letter IV, sec. 7, p. 23.

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Schiller's belief in aesthetic education bequeathed to German liberalism an ideal of individual development as furthered and strengthened by sustained interaction with art. This was the famous ideal of Bildung, or selfdevelopment, which in the hands of an educator and statesman such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, the Prussian minister of education, or such local museum directors as Alfred Lichtwark became a program for the building of a liberal society through the creation of state educational institutions: museums, libraries, schools, and universities. 39 The Patriotic Society endorsed such liberal teachings on Bildung and the social role of cultural institutions. These ideas were reinforced in Hamburg by the work of one of the nineteenth century's most influential liberal cultural politicians, the architect Gottfried Semper, whose writings influenced Hamburg's most important nineteenth-century cultural bureaucrats: the museum directors Justus Brinckmann and Alfred Lichtwark. For Brinckmann, the founder of Hamburg's Museum of Art and Industry, and for Lichtwark, the first professional director of the Hamburg Art Museum, Semper's views on art as an instrument for creating a liberal society provided a set of arguments for establishing their institutions. 40 In Semper's writings, art served the public good rather than private desires; it was the proper medium for the raising of public taste and the fostering of national loyalty. Brinckmann in particular was fond of quoting from Semper's work. As Semper wrote in his Recommendations for the Encouragement of National Feeling for Art in 18 51, "collections and public monuments are the true teachers of a free people. They are not simply teachers of practical training but ... schools of a common national taste." 41 Semper was born in the Danish city of Altona in 1803 and became one of Germany's most celebrated architects. In exile in London after the Revolution of 1848, Semper aided Prince Albert in planning the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, the first in a series of lavish world's fairs. It was at this point that his influence grew. In the context of the reform of manufactures and the beginning of German industrialization, Semper updated the ideal of aesthetic education for the machine age, thereby making a lasting contribution to the development of this idea for German liberalism. 42 39· The importance of Bildungfor the social worldview of German liberalism is outlined in Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland. See also Jennifer Jenkins, "The Kitsch Collections and The Spirit in the Furniture: Cultural Reform and National Culture in Germany," Social History 21, no. 2 (May 1996): 123-41, and the works cited there. 40. Hans Pratkkc, Der Kunstbegriff Alfred Lichtwarks (Hildeshcim, 1986), 15-19. 41. Quoted in .Justus Brinckmann, Das Hambur:gisrhe Museum fur Kunst und Gewerhe: Ein Fuhrer durch die Sammlungm zugleich ein Handbuch der Geschichte des Kunstgewerbes (Hamburg, 1894), 3· 42. On Semper see Harry Francis Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, 1996).

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His teachings on museums, artworks, national publics, and machines would be channeled into Hamburg's institutional development through the person ofjustus Brinckmann and by way of London and Vienna. Museums and Manufactures

The Crystal Palace's halls of products and machines framed by a fantastic structure of glass and wrought iron rang in the age of the machine and celebrated the culture of industrialism. World's fairs held after 1851-those in Paris in 188g and 1goo and the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893-would exhibit cultural artifacts in a global context and aestheticize colonial power. The great iron-and-glass building outside London in 1851, by contrast, displayed not primarily cultures but machines. The machines and manufactured products of Europe's industrializing countries filled the great hall; images of them circulated with every newspaper in Europe. Following the eighteenth-century model of the instructional display pioneered by early manufacturers, the Crystal Palace aimed to educate. Manufacturers had used instructional exhibitions to introduce work methods and train craftsmen. Governments took up this model and applied it on a larger scale, creating more varied exhibitions and founding academies-the British Royal Society of Arts ( 1 7 54) and the French Ecole Royale Gratuite de Dessin ( 1 767) -to raise the quality of manufactured goods. 43 The Crystal Palace took this model to a new level. The sheer size of it launched imaginations in flight. "I remember from my own childhood years how the news of the Crystal Palace reached over into Germany," wrote the director of the Imperial German Museum of Art and Industry, Julius Lessing, in 1900, "how, in remote provincial towns, pictures of it were hung on the walls of bourgeois rooms." It clothed the mundane details of industrial and craft production in fantasy- "all that we imagined from old fairy tales of princesses in a glass casket, of queens and elves who lived in crystal houses"-a combination that many people found compelling.44 Its lessons were more prosaic. Behind the universal values that its promoters preached-the improvement of humankind and the forward march of progress-the Crystal Palace made the particular point that by furthering the arts and by training craftsmen, states could improve their manufactures and strengthen their export trade, and thus consolidate their economic power. After the Crystal Palace Exhibition, museums of art and industry were founded throughout Europe. 45 43· Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art, Architecture, and Design: Victorian and After (Princeton, 1g68), 13-15. 44· Quoted in Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 85. 45· Pevsner, Studies in Art.

Provincial Modernity

Vienna became a center of activity with the founding of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in 1864 by the art historian Rudolf Eitel berger, a follower of Semper's ideas. Eitelberger's lectures on craft reform were popular with the Viennese public. Into one of these lectures wandered Justus Brinckmann, the son of a Hamburg attorney, a student of the natural sciences at the University ofVienna, and the future founder ofHamburg's Museum of Art and Industry. 46 A gifted but eclectic student, Brinckmann was a well-educated bourgeois who was a bit adrift. Out looking for fossils, he had been brought to the lecture by a friend and was electrified by what Eitelberger had to say about the national mission of his museum. With a new sense of direction, he tossed his scientific studies overboard and devoted himself to art history. He became immersed in learning older craft methods and publishing books about them. He classified a collection of antique glass fragments and published his findings in 1866; he completed a translation of Benvenuto Cellini's Art ofGoldsmithinga year later. During the year he stayed in Vienna, Brinckmann acquired a life purpose and a plan. Eitelberger argued for the national economic importance of museums of art and industry, and Brinckmann was convinced that cities such as Hamburg needed similar institutions. He left for Berlin in the spring of 1866, and from the Prussian capital he wrote an appeal for the establishment of a museum of art and industry in his native city. Following Eitelberger, Brinckmann argued that the increase in international competition begun by the Crystal Palace made it imperative for cities and states to establish public museums of art and industry to elevate their "applied arts." This was an issue of economic improvement that cities, particularly cities that lived by manufacturing and trade, ignored at their peril. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna, and the Central Union for the Applied Arts and Industry in Paris had raised the quality of artisanal work and contributed to the national economic development of their respective countries, Brinckmann argued. Hamburg needed a similar institution to display local models of exemplary craftsmanship, to preserve knowledge of earlier work practices, and to improve its exports. Emphasizing current economic concerns-improving training for apprentices and raising the quality of manufacturesBrinckmann argued that reform of the luxury trades was an economic necessity, and that a new museum was needed to house such a project. 47 Brinckmann's article hit a nerve when it was published in the Hamllurger Nachrichten, for it addressed an ongoing problem. By the 186os, state in46. Alfred Lichtwark, "Justus Brinckmann," in Der Deutsrhe der Zukunft (Berlin, 1905), 1s 186. On the founding of the Museum of Art and Industry see also Saldern, Museum for Kunst und Gewerbe, 5-24, and von Melle, DrejJsigjahre, 1:66-77. 47· StA HH, S 2923:]ustus Brinckmann, "Die Griindung eines Hamburgischen Museums fiir Kunst und lndustrie," Hamburger Nachrichten, May 28, 1866.

Culture in a City-State

tervention in manufacturing had become a pressing concern. As part of its process of constitutional reform, Hamburg's government abolished its guilds in 1864. The Senate had never been particularly sympathetic to their interests. In the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, nonguild worker·s streamed into Hamburg, providing the city with the labor force necessary for its expansion. The Senate had traditionally been unwilling to restrict this source of cheap labor, and by 1848 Hamburg had as many nonguild workers as protected guild members. 48 Nonetheless, the full introduction of free trade (Ge-werbefreiheit)in 1864 shook Hamburg's manufacturing life from top to bottom, and establishing a new organization of craftsmen became a pressing problem. True to its traditional role in public life, the Patriotic Society stepped into the breach. It responded creatively to arguments about the reorganization of manufactures, seeing "therein a new task, to guide the creation of a free artisanal caste. "49 The sculptor E. G. Vivie had already called for the creation of a public school for artists and artisans in 1862. 50 Mter the guilds were disbanded, the society organized lectures and gave courses, initiated inspections of factories and workshops, introduced a system for assessing and grading technological innovations, organized competitions, and lobbied for the creation of a municipal chamber for artisans ( Gewerbekammer), which was established in 187 3· A craft association ( Gewerbeverein) had already appeared in 1867. 51 Into this ongoing discussion strode Brinckmann with his article in the Nachrichten. The Senate did not immediately respond. Taking stock of the situation, Brinckmann saw that he could not achieve his goal of founding a museum in Hamburg as an art historian. To play an effective public role he needed to be a lawyer. Returning to the University of Leipzig in the fall of 1866, Brinckmann speedily completed work for a law degree. By Christmas of 1867 he returned to Hamburg, law degree in hand, newly married, and quick to place himself at the center of the networks coalescing around the issue of reforming Handarbeit and the luxury trades. He became the secretary of the new Gewerbekammer, chaired the artistic section of the Gewerbeverein, and wrote articles as the art critic for the Hamburgischer Correspondent. 52

Progress toward the founding of his museum came in small steps. A museum commission formed in 1868; a call for donations went out in 186g. 53 Signed by prominent citizens, the appeal emphasized the civic importance

48. Evans, Death in Hamburg, 51. 49· Freudenthal, Vereine in Hamburg, 154· 50. Saldern, Afuseum for Kunst und GewfTbe, 1 2. 51. Freudenthal, VereineinHamburg, 154-55. 52. Lichtwark, 'Justus Brinckmann," 190-93. 53· Ibid., 214; Saldcrn, Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, 13-14.

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Provincial A1odernity of improving education for local craftsmen. 54 "Insightful craftsmen have expressed the conviction," the document proclaimed, "that to raise Hamburg's manifold forms of manufacturing and also to participate generally in a refining of taste in arts and crafts, an institute must be created. Like the Kensington Museum and the Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna, this museum pursues these goals by acquiring materials on arts and sciences and by making them accessible." 55 The new museum, with Brinckmann at its head, pledged itself to two official goals: "to advance artisanal work in general" and "to raise the level of public taste in the applied arts."56 Initially housed in a private residence, it grew rapidly, came under the jurisdiction of the state, and moved in to a new neo-Renaissance public building in 1877, three years after its founding and eleven years after Brinckmann's appeal. The ornamentation on the new building concretely represented the intertwining of art, manufactures, idealism, and state intervention that went into the museum's founding. Medallions of famous Bildungsbiirger-architects, natural scientists, writers, and explorers-marched around its walls. Portraits of the architects Gottfried Semper and Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt shared space with medallions representing the poets and writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,].]. Winckelmann, andJakob Grimm. This decorative program did not celebrate Greece or Rome as the origin of artistic life, but held up German artists and scientists as instructive examples. The new building housed several other schools and museums besides the Museum of Art and Industry: the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule, the Schule fiir Bauhandwerker, the Gewerblichen Vorschulen, the Schule fur Maschinenbauer und Techniker, the Realgymnasium des Johanneums, the Botanische Museum, the Museum fUr Volkerkunde, and a collection of plaster copies of antique sculptures that belonged to the Verein zur Forderung plastischer Kunst. Interestingly (and significantly for the further development of the museum), numerous unhoused collections-prehistorical, natural history, and anthropological, and collections of Hamburg-specific artifacts-found places in the building. 57 These lonely remnants would receive new attention later in the century. The Museum of Art and Industry initially served as a school for craftsmen. It displayed raw materials, prototypes, and half-finished products and tools. A permanent collection of "outstanding examples of the applied 54· Brinckmann, Hamburgische Museum, 3; Freudenthal. Vicreine in Hamburg, 155. 55· "Aufruf zur Beihiilfe zur Griindung einer Anstalt," October 186g, reproduced in Saldern, Museumfiir Kunst und Gewerbe, 14. 56. StA HH, 361-51, 1B, IV 1: "Statuten des Hamburgischen Museums fiir Kunst und Gewerbe, 1874" (genehmigt durch Beschluss der I. Sektion vom 4 April1874). 57. Saldern, Museum fiir Kunst und Gewerbe, 21-24.

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arts," temporary exhibitions of works in private ownership, a specialized library, and a lecture series all contributed to its goal of improving education for local artisans under state auspices. 5 8 The focus on production was the lever that allowed the museum to be founded. Brinckmann continued to report on the state of craft production in Germany, and his assessments were not favorable. "We cannot allow ourselves to have any illusions about the artistic and technical inferiority of our furniture industry in comparison with that of other large countries," he wrote from the Vienna World's Fair in 1873. 59 Reports filtering back to Germany from the World's Fair in Philadephia in 1876 made the same point. 60 Inferior production gave rise to a complex of problems affecting production and consumption alike. German consumers were subjected to inferior products, and German producers had to contend with the decay of the apprenticeship system. Brinckmann supported state intervention in industrial education rather than directly in production. This solution "leads us to the training and craft schools and from there to the craft museums. "61 The balance between production and consumption initially struck by Brinckmann shifted by the late 187os to a primary focus on consumption and to a new project of educating consumers. With this change in the museum's public role and its intended audience, Brinckmann began to formulate plans that addressed larger cultural and historical questions. The technical collection, originally meant to supplement the collections of prototypes, disappeared over time as the museum increasingly concentrated on raising the taste of the general public. Now the museum saw itself as a civic school of developing values. In this sense, Brinckmann and his museum prepared the way for Alfred Lichtwark and his followers. The Three Programs Brinckmann's struggle to found the Museum of Art and Industry was replicated in the years of effort required to establish a municipal art museum in Hamburg. 62 Behind its founding stood private collectors, the Art Association ( Kunstverein), and the Patriotic Society. It was as private collectors that prominent citizens got together in 1817 to view each other's etchings and paintings. The Art Association, the first middle-class art union in Germany, emerged officially in 18 22 to advance the arts, strengthen public 58. StA HH, 361-5!, 1 B, IV1: "Bestimmungen fur die Verwaltung des hamburgischen Museums fiir Kunst und Gewerbe," Aug. 24, 1877. 59· Quoted in Lichtwark, ':Justus Brinckrnann," 200. 6o. Franz Releaux, BriefP aus Philadelphia (Braunschweig, 1877). 61. Quoted in Lichtwark, "Justus Brinckmann," 201. 62. Alfred Bentzen, "Geschichte der Hamburger Kunsthalle," in Hamburger Kunsthalle: Meisterwerke der Gemiildegalerie, ed. Alfred Bentzen (Cologne, 1969), 7-11; Volker Plagemann, "Die Anlange der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen und die erste Kunsthalle, "jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunslsammlungen 11 ( 1966): 61-88.

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taste, support local artists, and organize exhibitions. As such clubs did at the time, it also cemented social ties among members of the local elite. At its meetings the merchant P. F. Roding (an art collector and owner of a small private museum), the Senate syndic Karl Sieveking, and the doctor N. G. Julius socialized with other municipal luminaries, such as the building director at the St. Georg Hospital and the founders of the first lithography shop in northern Germany. Roding, Julius, and Sieveking were members of the Patriotic Society and were responsible for numerous projects of civic improvement: Roding was one of the founders of the Natural History Museum, Sieveking helped establish the influential Protestant social welfare programs of Johann Hinrich Wichern's "Inner Mission," and Julius was active in the reform of the municipal prison system. 63 Over the intervening decades the Art Association grew in numbers and maintained its modest program of yearly exhibitions and auctions for the financial support of local artists. By 184 7 it had 467 members, 30 of whom were women. Three local collectors-liberal politicians and patrons of the arts-attended the National Assembly at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt in 1848 as Hamburg's delegates. The collectors agitated for a public art gallery in 1847 and donated paintings from their personal collections. 64 Mter 1850 the collection moved into rooms at the Stock Exchange and became the Municipal Art Gallery (Stadtische Gernaldegalerie). 65 Not content with this step, local newspapers pressed for the founding of a municipal art museum. Artworks should not exist principally as objects of "interior decoration" in "gold frames," wrote a reporter in the Nachrichten; they should be accessible to the public. 66 Spurred by such commentaries, the small gallery grew, the city granted land for a new building, and the state took over the collections and opened the Art Museum in the summer of 186g. 67 It placed the collection under the direction of a supervisory commission, the Kommission fii.r die Verwaltung der Kunsthalle, composed of senators and members of the Art Association. 68 Together with the 63. Marina and Uwe Scheede, "Zweck des Kunstvereins," 336, lists the names and occupations of the original 23 members. 64. Ibid., 337-39· 65. Syndikus Dr. Merck, Senator Jenisch, and two representatiYes of the Art Association composed the membership of the Gallery Commission: Plagemann, "Anfiinge der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen," 64. 66. StA HH, ZAS, A 517: [o.V.], "Der Hamburger Kunstverein," Hamburger Nachrichten, Mar. 15, 1866. 67. Plagemann, "Anfange der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen," 72. 68. However, the museum continued to be financially dependent on private patronage. After 1891 the Hamburg state began to contribute modest sums for the collections, provided the commission approved. See Hentzen, "Geschichte der Hamburger Kunsthalle." The later transformation of the Art Museum undertaken by Lichtwark was financed almost entirely through private donations.

Culture in a City-State

director, the commission decided all matters concerning acquisitions, administration, and upkeep. At its opening, official rhetoric patriotically celebrated Hamburg's tradition of private patronage in the arts, 69 but the institution that opened with such pomp was initially a rather sorry sight. It was not large and its collection was strictly second rate. It was run not by a director but by an inspector, a former art dealer named johann Christian Meyer, who preserved its amateurish character. Meyer expertly handled the etchings collection, his area of specialization, but dealt with the paintings in a manner befitting a caretaker. He protected the property and patrolled the building but did not improve upon or build up the collections in any noticeable way. Under his watch the Art Museum had limited public appeal. It sat like a lump on its land in the city center, an architectural backdrop to a statue of Friedrich Schiller, a reminder of the city's Schiller celebrations a decade earlier. It was unclear how long this situation would have persisted had not the timely death of Inspector Meyer in 1885 brought a reason to change it. Several of Hamburg's senators, Werner von Melle the most prominent among them, cast their eyes at the institutional and professional standards set by Hamburg's rival cities and worried that Hamburg was in danger of falling behind. Moreover, as art museums in Germany modernized their operations during the 188os, they increasingly installed university-trained art historians as their administrative heads. Brinckmann, at Hamburg's Museum of Art and Industry, set a local example of dynamic professional leadership. With the death of Meyer, discussion began on the possibility of finding an art historian to serve as the museum's new director. 70 This was von Melle's hope, and the Senate took the opportunity to assign to the museum an enlarged public role, explicitly recommending that the new director make the "artistic education of the people" (kiinstlerische Erziehung des Volkes) his main concern. 71 In 1886, at the recommendation of the merchant Karl Woermann, the post was offered to an art historian and librarian at Berlin's Arts and Crafts Museum, Alfred Lichtwark. Although this young academic had several factors in his favor-he was a university-trained art historian with stellar professional credentials, a protege ofBrinckmann 's, a native of Hamburg, and a former elementary school teacher-he was nevertheless a surprising choice. By the end of his life Lichtwark was a nationally known museum di6g. Hamburger Nachrichten, Aug. 27, t86g, as quoted in Plagemann, "Anfange der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen," 77· 70. StA HH, 364-2/t, III, 31b: "Zur Sache der Inspection der Kunsthallc," Ham&urgischer Correspondent, Apr. 18, 1886; "Die Inspectorstelle der Kunsthalle," Hamburgischer Correspondent, May 23, 1886. 71. Senate decision as quoted in Meyer-Tonnesmann, Hamburgischer Kiinstlerklub, 26.

57

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rector and one of imperial Germany's most influential cultural critics. He worked together with the director of the Imperial Museums, Wilhelm von Bode, the director ofthe National Gallery, Hugo von Tschudi, and the industrialist Walther Rathenau and was a close friend with the head of the Berlin Secession, the painter Max Liebermann. 72 But in 1886 he was a parvenu with a self-generated aristocratic veneer, an ambitious academic who propped himself up on his earnings as a librarian and journalist. Lichtwark owed his professional rise to the increasing availability of higher education and to the social cachet that came with the possession of Bildung. He created himself as an educated man, a story of possibility and individual transformation that belonged to the mid-nineteenth century. The "Priiceptor Germanie" (as Liebermann would later call him) came from humble origins. Born in 1852 in Reitbrook, a village outside of Hamburg, Lichtwark was the first child in a miller's family. His biographer emphasized the wonder with which the young boy explored his natural surroundings, finding moral lessons both in nature's profusion and in the folk art of the ceramic tiles that decorated the stove in the house, but in reality Lichtwark's early family life was violently disrupted by poverty and alcoholism. 73 Life in Reitbrook and later in Hamburg was not a time of wonder and magic for the future Volkserzieher. The family moved to Hamburg in 186o, when the father's drinking and gambling caused him to lose the mill and with it their financial security. 74 Alfred and his younger brother and sister went to a small and undistinguished school, where Alfred was praised as a bright and conscientious student. Ashamed of the poverty in which they lived, Frau Lichtwark dressed her children in clean clothing and taught them manners, emphasizing the importance of remaining respectable under difficult circumstances. Alfred rose to the top of his class and at the age of fourteen even aided his teacher by watching over classes of younger pupils. At the close of his primary schooling he attended the teachers' training seminar and became a schoolteacher, a typical path of social advancement for the clever son of a bankrupt miller. During his time as a schoolteacher Lichtwark continued to educate himself by learning Greek and Latin and by attending Brinckmann's public lectures at the Museum of Art and Industry; he even approached Brinckmann to inquire about possible employment at the museum. 75 Brinck72. For Lichtwark's friendship with Max Liebermann see Briefe an Max Liebermann, ed. Carl Schellenberg (Hamburg, 1947). 73· For the mythologized version of his upbringing see Anna von Zeromski, Alfred Lichtwark: EinFuhrer zur deutschen Zukunft (Jena, 1924). 74· HKH, Lichtwark-Archiv 120: Wilhelm Leonhardt, "Schwcre Schickalsschlage fuhrten Lichtwarks Vater in die Trunksucht: Neue Aufzeichnungen iiber die Familie Lichtwark entdcckt," Bergedorfer 7/itung, Apr. 20, 1963. 7.5· PraJtcke, Kunstbegriff, 14;]ulius Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark und die Kunsterziehungsbewegung in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1947), 29-81.

Alfred Lichtwark (courtesy of Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Plankammer)

Provincial Modernity

mann encouraged the young teacher in his interest in art and artifacts and secured the financial help of Carl Kall, a merchant and member of the Citizens' Assembly, to send Lichtwark to Leipzig in 188o to study art history under Anton Springer. Leipzig's was the only university open to students who had not passed the Abitur, the final exam at a gymnasium and ordinarily a requirement for university study. Lichtwark differed from his fellow students in being both significantly older (he was twenty-seven at the time) and driven by a strong sense of purpose. From Leipzig he moved to Berlin, where with Brinckmann's help he obtained a position in the library of the new Museum of Art and Industry. There he wrote his dissertation and supplemented his income by journalism. 76 A fast and gifted writer, he published articles on exhibitions, discoveries, and occurrences in the art world for the Nationale Zeitung and Die Gegenwart, keeping his eye on Berlin's rapidly changing cultural infrastructure. During the 188os new museums were built, archaeological excavations undertaken, and galleries extended as German bureaucrats tried to create a cultural infrastructure in their capital comparable to those of London and Paris. For Lichtwark, the situation in Berlin-the "political capital of Europe," as he called itbrimmed with opportunity. 77 The development of its cultural institutions was, he thought, a suitable expression of Germany's rising aspirations. His career advanced dramatically, aided by his sharp eye, his unceasing dedication to work, his rapid writing style, and his connections to prominent figures in Berlin society. At first overwhelmed by the wealth and opulence of Berlin's salon life and society circles, the former charity student adjusted quickly to his new surroundings and remodeled his apartment and his person to make what he felt was the proper aristocratic impression. 78 This attention to the details of personal grooming, self-presentation, and the orchestrated aesthetic effect of a room stayed with him throughout his life. Such things were never trivial to him; they were signs of social power. His meteoric rise to prominence was indicative of the careers that could be made during the GriinderyahreofBerlin's cultural institutions. In 1886,just six years past his life as a schoolteacher, the merchants of Hamburg offered their once poor son the directorship of the Hamburg Art Museum. Lichtwark accepted the post and drew up a blueprint for the institution he was about to lead. He wanted to depart with all possible speed from Inspector Meyer's mode of operation and to introduce a different institutional model. He wished to transform the Art Museum from a private collection intended for the elite into a public educational institution 76. Praffcke, Kunstbegriff, 2 7. 77· Alfred Lichtwark, "Vorwort zu 'Studien': Berliner Aufsatze, 1881-86," in his Erziehung des Auges: Ausgewiihlte Schriften, ed. Eckhard Schaar (Frankfurt/Main, 1991 ), 21-23. 78. See Alfred Lichtwark, Briefe an seine Familie, 1875-1913, ed. Carl Schellenberg (Hamburg, 1972).

6o

Culture in a City-State (Erziehungsanstalt), which would make artistic education and cultivation available to the population at large. This was in keeping with his own desires and advanced a plan that others in Germany would later emulate. But in 1886 many people saw it as odd. The Prussian historian Heinrich von Treitschke told Lichtwark that to leave Berlin for Hamburg was to "leave the current for the shore." 79 Compared to Paris, the center of the art world in the late nineteenth century, Berlin was provincial; and for the academics and artists in Berlin, Hamburg was a backwater, a staid provincial merchant city with no regard for art. Lichtwark, however, saw the call to head the Art Museum as a great opportunity. By transforming the museum, popularizing art education, and democratizing the activity of collecting, Lichtwark wished to emulate the project of cultural renewal he had seen in Berlin: he would initiate a project centered on the Art Museum but extending outward to cover every aspect of social relations. In the underdeveloped state of the Hamburg Art Museum Lichtwark sensed opportunity rather than neglect. Hamburg was "an open field," a space where he could establish his "Hamburg museum" unencumbered by an existing bureaucracy and established power bases. 80 At the beginning of his tenure, between 1886 and 188g, Lichtwark laid out his plan in what were called the "three programs." All focused on the creation of a new form of civic culture. In his inaugural address, 'The Tasks of the Hamburg Art Museum" (the first program), Lichtwark analyzed the museum's role as a public educational institution. Expanding upon this theme, he addressed the function of cultural institutions, particularly the social and political roles of the museum in a modern polity. For the second program, "Art in the School," Lichtwark shifted direction slightly and outlined a wide-ranging program for the artistic education of consumers. This second program spoke to some ofBrinckmann's concerns. It focused on the ongoing reform of manufactures but greatly expanded existing programs of craft education to take in what Lichtwark called "the culture of everyday life." The third program joined the main points of the first two and gave them a local focus. In a pamphlet submitted to the Hamburg Senate in 188g, Lichtwark argued for the participation of Hamburg craftsmen in the patriotic project of decorating the new city hall. 81 This third program outlined what he saw as the necessity of reviving local and regional cultures in order to create an authentic and viable national community. 82 79· Treitschke quoted in Praffcke, Kunstbegriff, 44, and in von Melle, DreijJig]ahre, 1:79. So. Praffcke, Kunstbegriff, 45· 81. Alfred Lichtwark, "Die Ausstattung des Hamburger Rathhauses," in Lichtwark et al., Denkschrift iibe;· die innere A usstattung des Hamburger Rathhauses: Einem hohen Senat im Miirz r 889 iiberreicht (Hamburg, 1891), 9-29. 82. The three articles were published together as Alfred Lichtwark, Drei Programme, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1902).

Provincial Modernity

In his inaugural address to members of the Senate and Citizens' A-;sembly Lichtwark argued that it was time for the museum to take on a new role and to transform itself in the public interest. A manifestly passive institution, it needed to become active. It needed to function as a civic school rather than as a storage facility for the second-rate paintings of private collectors. Lichtwark did not put things quite so bluntly, of course. He allowed himself to be blunt later in his career, but in this first speech to his new employers he spoke carefully. "In Hamburg we have no university, no polytechnic, and no academy," he said. "If our art museum correctly understands its tasks, it will not only engage in collecting ... it must give rise to a multifaceted and invigorating organism of instruction." He outlined what this project entailed. The museum needed to become two things: a keeper of tradition and a site for public education. 'We do not want a museum that sits and waits, but rather an institute that actively intervenes in the artistic education of our population.""'1 But what did Lichtwark envision as a fruitful intervention, and why should the museum intervene? What was at stake? Sometimes Lichtwark called it aesthetic education and sometimes artistic education, but the idea behind both terms was the same. He wanted to democratize access to art and culture and to promote involvement with it by the greatest possible number of individuals. Consequently he tried to make the museum accessible and useful for a wider public in order to increase its social inf1uence. In his speech he introduced a variety of practical changes to increase the openness of the institution and intensifY the artistic interactions that took place within it. 84 A library that was "available to the public at all times" would be stocked with pictures, information, and a new travel section with books on the art and architecture of other nations and regions to prepare people for the cultural and educational opportunities available in other cities. 85 The engravings collection (Kupferstichkabinett) was opened to the public and the reproductions mounted on sturdy backings so that visitors could pick them up and study them, rather than having them shut away in locked cupboards. Lichtwark gave public lectures on Sundays for working-class audiences and guided tours through the collections. He brought schoolchildren into the museum for instruction on viewing paintings, and he and Brinckmann instructed Hamburg's teachers on the observation and appreciation of art objects. Male and fe83. Lichtwark, "Die Aufgaben der Kunsthalle," quoted in Praffcke, Kunstbegriff, 45-46. As he claimed elsewhere, "Das Museum, das seine Aufgabe darin sucht, an Ort und Stelle zu wirken, ist erst heut im Werden": Alfred Lichtwark, "Museumsbauten," in Der Deutsche der Zukunft,

1 15.

84. For a summary of these changes see Praffcke, Kunstbegriff, 45-51; Zeromski, Alfred Lichtwark, 95-llg.

85. Eckhard Schaar, "Zustinde," in Lichtwark, Erzirhungdes Auges, 13.

Culture in a City-State

male teachers received instruction in music, drawing, painting, and crafts to develop their artistic capabilities before schooling children. 86 The courses and lectures were popular-crowds of 150 people regularly listened to Sunday lectures such as 'The Contemporary Art Movement" and "Art as a National Economic Power," and the work with schoolchildren was universally praised. 87 In opening the museum to the larger public Lichtwark also brought in exhibitions that departed from an art museum's traditional repertoire. As public outreach he staged exhibitions of amateur art, modern photography, and children's art and literature, as he felt them to be in the public interest. In 1893 the Art Museum hosted an international exhibition of amateur photography, the first time that photography found a space in a European museum. Put on by the Association for the Advancement of Amateur Photography, this exhibition made Hamburg an avant-garde center for amateur photographers. 88 A historical exhibition of children's literature was given in 1894 for the annual meeting of the German Teachers' Association, and in 1898 a local group called Teachers for Aesthetic Education staged an exhibition of children's art in the museum. 89 In addition to being a center of cultural display, the Art Museum became a site of cultural production: Lichtwark purchased a press for making prints in 1 894 and set it up in the basement for local artists to use. Lichtwark sought to appeal to the public and to educate individuals by entertaining them, but popularity was never his sole purpose. He wanted to educate the public, influence its composition, and determine its shape. Through processes of democratization, both cultural and political, and the 86. The painter Arthur Siebelist gave drawing and painting courses for teachers, and other local artists gave instruction in drawing and applied art at the Applied Art School for Women, established by Valesca Rover. See the memoir of the painter Arthur Illies, A us Tagebuch und Werk: r870-I952, ed. Kurtillics (Hamburg, 1981). 87. Helmut R. Lcppien, "Lichtwarks Wirken fiir die Kunsthalle," in Kunst ins Leben: Alfred Lichtwarks Wirken for die Kunsthalle und Hamburg von J886 ms I9 T 4· ed. Helmut Lcppien (Hamburg, 1986), 10-11; Alfred Lichtwark, Ubungen in den Betrachtungen von Kunstwaken, 1gth ed. (Hamburg, 1986). 88. Pr:iffcke, Kunstbegriff, 105. Hamburg was one of the first European cities to have amateur photography clubs and was a center of the art photography movement (Kunstphotographie). At the Hamburg exhibition in 1893 Lichtwark gave three lectures on the meaning of amateur photography for national cultural development. The lectures were published first in the Hamburgischer Correspondent and later as a book. See Alfred Lichtwark, Die Bedeutungder Amateurphotographie (Halle, 1894). On the art photography movement in Hamburg see Margret Kruse and ]ens Jiger, eds., Kunstphotographie um I9DO: Die Sammlung Ernst juhl (Hamburg, 1g8g), and Fritz Kempe, Vor dem Kamera: Zur Gesrhichte der Photographie in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1976). 89. The Lehrervereinigung zur Pflege dcr kiinstlerischen Bildung was founded in 18g6. See their edited collection Versuche und Ergelmisse 2d ed. (Hamburg, 1901) and catalog, Das Kind als Kunstler(Hamburg, 1898); Lichtwark, Hamlmrg: Niedersachsen, 64-65.

Provincial Modernity

creation of larger audiences, parties, and associations, it was necessary to think of how to knit these groups into larger publics and larger forms of community. Lichtwark believed that aesthetic education-the act of bringing individuals into interaction with the fine arts-created sets of norms and values that knitted communities together. Aesthetic education "raised" and "lifted" the public, as Lichtwark and his practioners said; it also worked to create the public itself. At issue was the shape of a developing norm of individual selfhood and community structure. Museums were central to this project. Lichtwark traveled throughout the empire to spread themessage of the social and political roles of institutions such as museums, and he lectured tirelessly on the edifying effect of a direct connection to art. The power of the work of art lay not in its material value but in its "effect" (Wirkung) on individuals. 90 Aesthetic education transformed the individual by instilling a process of internal self-transformation, what reformers called "self-education," "self-cultivation," and "self-development." It had an individualizing effect, but that did not exhaust its usefulness. It was also a common property, a community value. "Artistic cultivation is not an innate ability," wrote Eckard Schaar, summarizing Lichtwark, " ... but rather a participation in a national collective property that, carried by the spirit of the people, influences the soul of the individua1." 91 Museums shaped and directed this process. In 1903, as the opening lecture at the Mannheim Museum Conference, Lichtwark spoke on the social and political function of museums in his lecture "Museums as Sites of Bildung." They were an "expression of the spirit of democracy" that "stood open to the entire population, of service to all without acknowledging differences."92 To fulfill this social role, Lichtwark argued, the museum had to change. It needed to become more functional. He bridled at the example set by princely art museums, with their wide staircases and ornate facades, in which sumptuous ornament triumphed over function and usefulness. Ninety percent of German museums, he estimated, were of this type. He wished to see functional museums with smaller rooms for reading, studying, and public lectures, rather than pseudo palaces with "dazzling pieces" such as large staircases that were hard for older people to manage or wide corridors that impeded the quiet study of art. "For a museum that seeks to be active and effective," he claimed, "the facade is nothing and the interior is everything." He agitated for the creation of small museums, partie90. Alfred Lichtwark, "Museen als Bildungsstattcn," in Der Deutsche der Zukunft, 89-107. For his views on the Wirkungofthe work of art see his "Sammler," in £rziehungdes Auges, 166-86. As Lichtwark claimed in this essay of 191 1, "Sein hochster Wert liegt nicht in dem Preis, den es erreicht, sondern in der Wirkung, die es ausiibt" ( 167). 91. Schaar, "Zustande," in Lichtwark, Erziehungdes Auges, 8. 92. Lichtwark, "Museen als Bildungsstatten," 91.

Culture in a City-State ularly local museums, that were as didactic and functional as possible. "On the basis of current experience," he wrote, the hope must be voiced that alongside the gigantic collections in the big cities ... smaller museums will be founded in all parts of the city that will connect more closely to the life there than the big, celebratory collections oflarge empires are able to do. These small collections, cared for by communities and friends of art, could join with other institutions that bring neighborhood residents together-the stadium, the concert hall, the library. 93 By imagining communities organized around museums, Lichtwark visualized a society ordered through its commitment to Bildung. He placed his imagined museums in communities of interconnected institutions that formed a web of sociability and social communication. Such communities would easily absorb newcomers, he argued, for in museums newcomers would be assimilated-schooled-into a set of community norms and awareness of a common cultural inheritance. The museum was the entry point into his vision. Valued for their ability to educate and integrate, museums would create communities based on cultural foundations. For anationalist and liberal such as Lichtwark, who was dissatisfied with the state of the nation and anxious about the future of liberalism, a museum was the perfect mediating institution, a suitable social mechanism to create larger and larger communities while also preserving their essential structure. He made this point explicit in an article written toward the end of his life. Local museums will receive the population's most grateful attention, he wrote: as they give information on the growth and transformation of the native city. Local museums, if they are correctly administered, will have an inestimable political effect, in that they will provide a firm foundation for local feeling [Heimatgefiihl] and a feeling ofbelongingness [ Zugehiirigkeitsgefiihl]. This is all the more necessary given the rapid growth of the cities and the necessity of making citizens of the masses of new arrivals and their children. 94 Museums would educate and "make citizens"; they would also tame and civilize. Lest Lichtwark's celebration ofthe democratic effects of the modern museum leave too dominant an impression, most of his writings were rent by the tension between liberalism and democracy that exercised many nineteenth-century European liberals. Lichtwark was a typical German lib93· Lichtwark, "Museumsbauten, "in Der Deutsche der Zukunft, 119-24, 127. 94· Alfred Lichtwark, "Eine Lebensgemeinschaft der Hansastadte," Die Tat 5, no. 3 (1913): 215.

Provincial Modernity

eral; he was not a democrat, reluctant or otherwise. Democratic access to institutions, which he praised, rested on more traditional structures of authority. Culture was a common property, but it was to be defined by a few. Museums embodied social norms, but these norms were not themselves the products of a democratic process of decision making. The museum served to preserve and protect tradition, and, as Lichtwark argued, state institutions were necessary for the preservation of a cultural patrimony. 'The necessary element of tradition can't strike roots in a dynamic mass of individuals," he wrote; "it must rely on the enduring principle, the state," and its guardians, the educated middle classes. 95 At the helm of cultural institutions and at the center of civic culture stood the educated middle classes, whom Lichtwark saw as the custodians of culture. He assigned a primary role to cultural institutions and to the educated middle classes in guiding and shaping society. In a statement that sounded much like the social thought of Thomas Carlyle (whose works he liked to read), Lichtwark wrote of the function of models and norms in directing social behavior. "All progress," he wrote, "lies in the fact that a single individual presents an elevated model toward which the masses strive. "96 Reforming Lebenskultur

The creation of publics via the building of museums was a political vision, yet, as Lichtwark emphasized, it was also "a prominent question of national economy."97 A shift from politics to issues of national economy and national culture marked the second of the "three programs" on art and the education of the German consumer. Lichtwark first expressed his thoughts on this topic in 1 887 when he addressed an audience of 1 20 teachers and their guests in one of Hamburg's oldest educational organizations, the Schulwissenschaftliche Bildungsverein, founded in 1825.98 Lichtwark found a receptive audience in the teachers, and the lecture ended with a lively discussion and general agreement on his main points. 99 The education of future consumers should begin in the schools, he stressed, and should concentrate on studies of art, broadly defined. His program widened the concept of art to include all aspects of a people's culture-architecture, literature, furniture, ornament, clothing, painting, music, and economic and political structures-a "whole way of life," which he saw as capable of being modernized in all of its disparate elements. Within this 95· Lichtwark, Hamburg: Niedersachsen, 72. 96. Alfred Lichtwark, "Dilettantismus und Volkskunst," in Vom Arbeitsjfld des Dilettantismus (Berlin, 1902), 23. 97· Quoted in Praffcke, Kunstbegriff, 46; Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark, 20. 98. Alfred Lichtwark, "Die Kunst in der Schule," in Alfred Lichtwark: Eine Auswahl seiner Schriften, ed. WolfMannhardt, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1917), 1:31-48. All citations are to this version. 99· Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark, 17.

66

Culture in a City-State

broad program he focused on art, particularly modern art, which he believed trained the eye to appreciate the "simple, pure, and functional." Studying modern art also raised modern-thinking consumers, for it freed children from focusing too much on the past. 100 Lichtwark based his lecture on a critique of Germany's national culture. He compared Bismarckian culture unfavorably with the cultures of the more established nations of England and France. 101 Using the anthropological definition of national culture, which included everyday life habits and behaviors as well as high cultural forms, he lambasted the sloppy clothing and poor manners that made "uncultivated Germans" instantly identifiable in foreign countries. Lichtwark characterized this widespread lack of civility and cultivation as a symptom of national immaturity. England and France, by contrast, had developed powerfully and purposefully. The key to this difference, he believed, lay in their respective national cultures and the attention paid to them. In France and England "the foundations of national cultivation" were "very energetically prepared and cared for" as "a possession held in common." Children were taught from an early age to recognize and value the works of national poets and painters. As aresult, certain themes and values resonated throughout the population and worked to create a shared set of cultural norms. In these nations "the whole population genuinely lived with its poets," while in Germany the educated classes critically viewed "everything national" as "second class." 102 This attitude, in his view, had a particularly troublesome effect on the German economy. If German industry was to be competitive, it needed a cultivated and discriminating public of consumers who were steeped in knowledge of the national culture. To set about reforming manufactures, Lichtwark declared, was to address the wrong end of the equation. Germany was attempting to educate its producers rather than its consumers, when the development of German industry hinged on the development of an affluent and educated consuming public. "Our production will remain up in the air," he told his audience, "as long as we lack purchasers of independent taste in our own country." 103 Lichtwark's answer to international economic competition was to modernize the economy together with a thorough education-by which he meant an aesthetic education-of the German consumer. 104 He assigned 100. Lichtwark, "Kunst in der Schule," 42, 43· 101. The following paragraphs draw on Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark, 18-23. 102. Lichtwark, "Der Deutsche der Zukunft," in Der Deutsche der Zukunfl, 13-14. 103. Lichtwark, "Kunst in der Schulc," 36; Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark, 20. 104- Lichtwark's emphasis on consumption led him to take a favorable view of machine and mass production. In this regard English and American manufacturers enjoyed an advantage over their German counterparts. See Alfred Lichtwark, "Wandlungen," in Erziehung des Auges, 73-82. First published in 1894, it was included in Lichtwark's Palasifenster und Flilgelthur, 3d ed. (Berlin, HJOS).

Provincial Modernity

great importance to light industry and domestic consumption in future economic struggles and argued that a new form of cultural authority was needed. He argued for the creation of a new set of elites: the taste professionals and taste leaders, those strata of the population with "independent taste" and open purses who, through their decisions on how to spend their money, would direct national consumption and reform national culture. Through their buying power and their loyalty to German products (which Lichtwark assumed rather than proved), they would provide a bulwark against the invasion of foreign products.l 05 Without aesthetic education Germany threatened to become a dumping ground for the products of other countries, Lichtwark warned, as its consumers would buy indiscriminately and make poor choices. Foreign economic competition was a particular problem for Hamburg, as ''we stand before the immense upheaval of entering the Customs Union," which was in the process of opening Hamburg's interior market to the rest of Germany. 106 In 1887 it was unclear whether and how local production would survive in Hamburg, or whether goods imported from other areas of Germany and abroad would undercut local production. "In the space of one generation the situation will have completely changed," he warned, "and not to our advantage if in the meantime we haven't changed ourselves, by which I mean artistically educated ourselves." Educating the population to appreciate artistic products of good quality would spur industrial reforms and influence the production of high-quality goods. "If we lived alone on earth," Lichtwark claimed, "the philistine, who himself has no need of art, could say with confidence that art really has no need to exist. But while the German sleeps, his neighbors awake and work. "107 It was a rare art historian who could perceive the clear commonalties of interest between economic and aesthetic issues. "There is only one way to reach our goal now," he persuaded the teachers, "to strengthen the sensitivity and independence of the purchasing public" by educating consumers. 108 Ideally this project began with children of elementary school age. Lichtwark wanted to create a public educational program that combined museums, artisans, and industry into a self~sustaining system. England was his model. It had an influential social elite with the necessary public authority and it had the institutions. "To reach the goal," of creating a modern and ethical culture, he wrote, "in England the museums, 105. Lichtwark, "Kunst in der Schule," 33· w6. Ibid., 41. 107. Lichtwark, "Dilettantismus," 25, 26. Lichtwark claimed that England and the United States not only were taking Germany's foreign markets away, but since the early 18gos had been intruding upon its domestic market, which needed to be protected and strengthened: "Wandlungen," 78-82. w8. Lichtwark, "Kunst in der Schute," 41.

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schools, factory owners, and architects have striven for a single goal, supported by a wealthy and cultivated sector of society." The educated and affluent had led the way. Lichtwark praised the organizational impulse that brought disparate social forces together into a powerful national network. England had achieved what Germany had not. Such a system of museums and schools in Germany could define, produce, and disseminate a national style inspired by middle-class values of beauty, functionality, practicality, and tradition. Parts of this project were under way. A quarter century of reform in Germany had brought together architects, factory owners, and artisans. They worked from the examples of quality craftsmanship and design displayed in the museums. "But tw-o factors are missing," he claimed, and these two factors were central: "the artistically educated and desirous public and the artist. "109 In implementing this program, Lichtwark looked not only toward England but specifically toward William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. Like numerous designers and museum directors, Lichtwark had nothing but praise for the superior craftsmanship and design of English products. He saw in them a healthy national culture and a form of modern folk art. The only problem was that they were English, and as such took business away from German industry. 110 He wanted to free German producers and consumers from dependence on other national cultures. "In architecture and in industry we wanted to free ourselves from the influence of foreign countries. We wanted to take our models not from France or England," he wrote, "but from our own past." 111 One of the first projects he assigned to his new system of museums and schools was to resurrect what he defined as the authentic folk art of the German middle classes: the early nineteenth-century Biedermeier style. Lichtwark viewed this earlier style as truly German. It did not imitate other national styles. It was functional. Its lines were clean, its forms definite. Its purity of form best expressed middle-class values. However, the "simplicity," "efficiency," and "beauty of its lines, silhouettes, and relationships" had been forgotten. The style had gone out of fashion and examples had not been collected by museums.112 109. Lichtwark, 'Wandlungen," 81.

Ibid., 75· Count Harry Kessler praised English arts and crafts for their superior craftsmanship, yet he saw them as separated from the broader culture. He sharply distinguished between the English movement and the continental modern movement in arts and design, which had as its goal "die Bewiiltigung des modernen, technisch umgewandelten Lebens": "Die Arts- und Crafts-Ausstellung in London" (1903), in his Kiinstler und Nationen: Auftiitze undReden, I899-I9JJ, ed. CorneliaBlasberg and Gerhard Schuster (Frankfurt/Main, 1988), 64-65. 111. Lichtwark, 'Wandlungen," 73-74. 112. Alfred Lichtwark, "Theorie und Historie," in Erziehung des Auges, sti-S7· Lichtwark spoke specifically of Hamburg furniture from the early nineteenth century. 110.

6g

Provincial Modernity

Biedermeier's opposite was Bismarckian historicism, which Lichtwark continually savaged as inauthentic. Its raison d'etre was imitation, copying the heavy ornamentation of various Renaissance and Gothic styles. In a taste manual published in 1894 Lichtwark listed his complaints against the current vogue for the Old German style. "Everything has to look old," he complained, "the bookcases, the chairs, the wallpaper, the draperies. "113 He gave a sinister description of an Old German living room as crowded, dark, and bewildering. Heavy draperies suffused the room in twilight. Ornament disguised every surface. Such overabundant decoration on furniture was not only unaesthetic, he argued, it was unhygienic and dangerous to children and to guests. Sarcastically he described the ill effects of such decor at a family gathering: A board for old German tankards was even attached to the back of the sofa, and when a nephew visiting from the country was required to sit in the place of honor, the tankards struck him on the head. Generally speaking, one could move around these rooms only with the greatest caution [even] during the day, for they were very dark and stood as full as a furniture store. In addition, all the furniture had so many "Old German" corners and edges and so many sharp ornaments in the most unlikely places that the uninitiated visitor went home with periostitis .... Those who truly love their children (who have been given lovely Old German names that match the furniture) do not let them into [such rooms] without supervision, for they usually come out with hurt hands and bruised heads. 114 His description unveiled the decor as malignant and the social aspirations of the fashion-sodden parents as no less so (presumably they had saddled their children with names from the Niebelungenlied). As he saw it, the national hunger for ostentation had left no surface undecorated, no space unadorned. Even ordinary objects-the "ashtray and the bootjack" -were covered with "presumptuous adornment." 115 Moreover, the ghastly colors-"loamy yellow, pea green, dirty red"-were clues to this style's deforming influence. Men who sat on such chairs "no longer looked human," Lich twark wrote, "but rather like a heap of misery. "116 Even worse, the 0 ld 113. Alfred Lichtwark, Makartbouquet und Blumenstrau}J (Munich, 1894), 19. The book's title highlighted the ideological opposition between decadence and authenticity. The popular Makartbouquet (named after the Austrian society painter Hans Makart), a collection of dried flowers and palm leaves found in many middle-class parlors, symbolized cuilural decadence. These unaesthetic, dusty things, he claimed, were made by the cartload; "large factories see to it that anyone could buy ready-made Makartbouquets in all sizes" Makartbouquel, 21. 114. Ibid., HJ-20. 115. Licht:wark, "Wandlungen," 74· 116. Lichtwark, i\!Iakartbouquet, 21, 20.

Culture in a City-State

German was only one in a parade of historical styles. As the Germans are unaware of what their national culture should look like, he wrote, sharpening his commentary into an argument, they greedily consume historical styles. In 18g6 Lichtwark was still loudly lamenting the collective amnesia of the German middle classes. Struck by forgetfulness, they turned to artificial forms that perverted the idea of a true national style. Righting this wrong and reeducating the public, he claimed, would be an act of true patriotism. 117 After all his railing at cultural decadence in the guise of Bismarckian historicism, one might expect Lichtwark to turn to a musty version of Deutschtum, but his stylistic choices ran in the opposite direction, toward the modern and functional. He preferred a style that was "simple" and pure, its forms visible rather than hidden in a surfeit of ornament. This was not a trivial issue for him, for he saw style as affecting the norms and forms of national life. It also informed his particular mode of writing cultural and social criticism. Lichtwark believed that architectural and interior design expressed society's essential structures-a thought found throughout his writings-and that the surface aspects of a culture revealed the deeper structures of social order. Through reading the ornamental surface of Bismarck's Germany, Licht\vark described a society unjust in its forms, where things were masked and spaces were claustrophobic. This style was not just ugly, he claimed; it was unethical. After his greatly exaggerated picture of the decadence of German culture, Lichtwark set forth the constructive part of his argument. When the new style, with its "unadorned walls" and "smooth, polished, light shapes," took hold in 18go, a "flood of light" overcame historicism's artificial shadows.ll 8 "Once a woman of original taste filled her vases with the blooms and leaves of dandelions for the first time," claimed Lichtwark, "her society celebrated this event as a great happening .... One had a sense of satisfaction, as if an old injustice had been atoned for." 119 Lichtwark believed that his critique of the shortcomings of national design and style had a broad and general applicability; it should apply to everything from towers to ties to toothbrushes, books and furniture, clothing, artworks, and architecture. Like critics and artists active in the decorative arts movement at the turn of the century, he wanted to remake every aspect of everyday culture so that the educative and uplifting force of art would influence public life in all its aspects: through the buildings people lived in, the furniture they used, their daily utensils, books, and pictures, their gardens and parks. Voicing a critique that the German Werkbund 117. Lichtwark, "Theorie unci Historie," so- 58. The solution was to find models to emulate in their own national past. 118. Lichtwark, "Wandlungen," 74, 75· 119. Lichtwark, Makartbouquet, 28.

Alfred Lichtwark as modern art (courtesy of Staatsarchiv H amburg, Plankammer)

Culture in a City-State

would later employ, Lichtwark claimed that when stylish and modern objects of aesthetic quality were widely disseminated, they could act as a corrective to a soulless culture (read historicist culture) driven only by the market, devoid of a larger pedagogical program, and deprived of the guidance of the educated middle classes. With this perspective and these programs Lichtwark spoke to the desires and fears of the liberal middle classes at the turn of the century. This mix of the social and the aesthetic the art historian Ludwig Curtius called the "life force of the 1900 generation, where political goals, poetic-artistic sensitivity, and personal moral behavior intersected." On this path Lichtwark was a "programmatic pioneer". 120 Lichtwark's friend Gustav Pauli, director of the Bremen Art Museum, looked at Lichtwark's goal to aestheticize and transform everyday life and called him a "practical aesthete." 121 The Local and the National

In the first of his three programs Lichtwark outlined the civic importance of aesthetic education; the second emphasized its economic benefits and nationalizing effect. The third program addressed what would become the central theme of his life's work: the relationship between the local and the national in the making of German national culture. For the third program he emphasized the importance of local and regional cultures (Hamburg in particular) for the development of national culture and national identity. The importance of Germany's regional cultures had held a particular place in Lichtwark's cultural criticism since his student days. For the sharp of eye, an essay he published in the Preu)Jische jahrbiicherduring his time in Berlin outlined his entire program in miniature. 122 While he was then in the Berlin cultural scene, he was not of it, and he quickly developed the distinctive voice of a man on the periphery of the culture he critiqued. On the practical level, consumers received their aesthetic education where they lived and shopped. This was, for most, the local arena. But the locality for Lichtwark was also a repository of moral and artistic values. It was more than just a location; it was a spiritual inheritance. Writing in Hamburg and looking toward Berlin, Lichtwark wrote about a local culture that was morally superior to the false and abstract fashion coming from the capital. In a pamphlet he sent with others to the Hamburg Senate in 188g, Lichtwark argued for the engagement of local artists and craftsmen in the rebuilding of the city hall. The Great Fire had destroyed the old one in 1842; since then the Senate and Citizens' Assembly met in rooms at the Quoted in Alfred Lichtwark, Briefe an Wolf Mannhardt, ed. Carl Schellenberg (Ham7· 121. HKH, Lichtwark-Archiv g8: "Nachrufvon Gustav Pauli"; Priiffcke, Kunstbegnff, 27-28. 122. Sec Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark. 120.

burg,

1952),

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Provincial Modernity Patriotic Society. By the time Lichtwark arrived, a new and elaborate city hall was being built under the direction of the architect Martin Haller. 123 In his pamphlet Lichtwark emphasized the economic and aesthetic benefits of engaging local craftsmen, claiming that the construction was a patriotic act. The Senate did not listen to Lichtwark's plea, and he always considered this pamphlet a rather botched job. But it launched the dominant theme of his lifework, that the aesthetic education of the Germans had to occur through local lessons, spaces, and idioms. What Lichtwark called the "foundations of artistic education" ( Grundlagen der kunstlerischen Bildung) had to be drawn from local culture. Lichtwark was of the opinion that an authentic national culture did not now exist but needed to be created, and that the proper site for its making was the locality, the home place, the Heimat. 124 The "firm foundation of love and increasing understanding for the local place [Heimat] "was the basis for the "care of national character [das nationale Wesen] . ... National feeling, national consciousness, national pride, patriotism, and what we like to call expressions of a deep feeling of belonging will be cultivated in such soil." 125 Lichtwark's localism did not detract from his nationalism, but refined it, distinguished it from that of the imperial government, and gave it a distinctive, competitive North German stamp. An ardent nationalist himself, Lichtwark criticized the official nationalism of the empire as abstract, removed from the concerns of everyday life, and Prussocentric. In his eyes, the culture of Hamburg's Heimat-its landscape, architecture, literature, and material culture-was a purer expression of Germany's national culture, and the growth and flowering of this seed would promote healthy national development. He was not alone in voicing these sentiments. One of the most popular books in imperial Germany, Julius Langbehn's Rembrandt as Educator of 18go, made similar points. Langbehn also wrote on the use of local art to purifY a corrupt national culture, and the two men were acquaintances. Langbehn became (in)famous for his antimodern, antiliberal, and anti-Semitic sentiments in a diatribe that had a poisonous effect on German political culture. 126 Lichtwark, starting from the same insistence on the importance oflocal culture, went in an entirely different direction, toward significantly more liberal and modernist sentiments. 123. Hipp, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, 121-28. 124. As Gustav Schiefler wrote, "it became clear to him that a common German culture would be best served through development of its regional cultures [Stammeskulturen] ": Eine hamburgische Kulturgeschichte: Beobachtungen eines Zeitgenossen, I 890- r920 (Hamburg, 1985), 62; Alfred Lichtwark, "Die Verschiebung der deutschen Kulturzentren," in Alfred Lichtwark: EineAuswahlseinerSchriften, ed. WolfMannhardt (Berlin, 1917), 1:19-26. 125. Alfred Lichtwark, "Einleitung," in Versuche und Ergebnisse, 6-7. 126. See in particular Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, 1961).

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Lichtwark became acquainted with Langbehn when the chronically insecure and grasping author was on the hunt for supporters. He sought out Lichtwark at the Hamburg Art Museum before the publication of Rembrandt. Sympathetic to many struggling artists, particularly those from northern Germany, Lichtwark did not fail him. As historians have noted, at this meeting Lichtwark enthusiastically supported the project, although it is not clear which parts he endorsed. 127 Most historians draw a clear distinction between the two men, stressing that the ideas Langbehn put into his book were part of a general intellectual climate. 128 Contemporaries made this point as well. In a review of Langbehn's book, Ferdinand Avenarius, editor of the arts and ideas journal Kunstwart, wrote that there was little in it that was original. Others pointed to the fact that the haphazard structuring of the Rembrandt and its lack of intellectual clarity made it possible for people to take from it what they wanted. It was more of a touchstone than a clear program. 129 Both Lichtwark and Langbehn wrote about the importance of local cultural renewal and the place of the local in national culture, but beyond this they could not have been more different in temperament and outlook. The local culture supported by Lichtwark was old and urban; he was interested in drawing out of it a form of modern civic culture that would be connected to Hamburg's national markets and its incipient national power. In the Hamburg Art Museum he supported and gave a home to modern art, particularly German and French Impressionism, which Langbehn derided as the sick expression of a foreign cultural essence. In Hamburg Lichtwark built up one of the largest public collections of modern art (mainly the art of the Secessionists) that existed in Germany at this time, and he did so with significant support from Hamburg's Jewish elite, the Warburg, Wolffson, and Tropolowitz families. His language focused on 1 27. Historians have remarked on this acquaintance, drawing on the account of Lichtwark's sister and that of the landscape painter Momme Nissen, Langbehn's partner and financial supporter during much of his life. See Zeromski, Alfred Lichtwark, 59; Benedikt Momme Nissen, Der Remiffandtdeutschejulius Langbehn (Freiburg i/B., 1926), 59-6o, 31415. See the discussion on the connection between Lichtwark and Langbehn and its implications for the art education movement in Gisela Wilkending, Volksbildung und Piidagogik "vom Kinde aus ": Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der Literatwpiidagogik in den Anfiingen der Kunsterziehungsbewegung (Weinheim, 1980), 79-85. 128. Wilken ding, Volksbildung, 81, draws a clear line between Lichtwark and Langbehn and uses Momme Nissen's account to document the personal antipathy that developed between the two. The dissimilarity in their writings, given the similarity of their starting points, illustrates the depth and complexity of questions concerning culture and nationalism in Germany before 1914. 129. On Avenarius's assessment see Gerhard Kratzsch, Kunstwart undDiirerbund: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gebildeten im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Gottingen, 1969); Corona Hepp, Avantgarde: Moderne Kunst, Kulturkritik und Reformbewegungen nach der jahrhundertwende (Munich, 1987), analyzes Langbehn's influence on Wilhelmine culture.

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"forces": the battles between nations, economic competition, the development of industrial strength, the importance of imports and exports, and the securing of German dominance in a European arena of economically competing nations. His aesthetic, spiritual, and artistic concerns were part of a larger, future-oriented vision. The anti-Semitism so prominent in Langbehn's work was absent from Lichtwark's vocabulary. Lichtwark, in fact, later rejected Langbehn as a crank and deplored the effect his ideas were having. As he wrote to his friend Gustav Pauli, Langbehn's ideas were corrupting his contemporaries. "Brodersen [Councillor Th. Brodersen, who later became the head of the Hamburg Art Association] is a bookseller and a very nice man," Lichtwark wrote, "but Langbehn's ideas, and those of his successors, have confused him. In the next generation a great many in Schleswig-Holstein will be swallowed up. "130 The two men also advanced radically different interpretations of the word Heimat, which affected their perspectives on North German culture and colored their vision of a future national culture. Langbehn defined Heimat as a racial and biological community tied by blood and rooted in the soil. Lichtwark's Heimatwas a historical and cultural entity, the place in which the particular forms of Hamburg's culture had developed. The difference in their ideas of Heimat is seen clearly in the Hamburg Art Museum. With its collections of Manet, Monet, and local painters, it became a type of Heimatmuseum under Lichtwark's direction, but not one that Langbehn would ever describe as niederdeutsch (low German). Most important, Langbehn's influence was diffuse and Lichtwark's was concrete. Lichtwark transformed the Hamburg Art Museum into a museum of both modernist and regional art and culture. His friends Hugo von Tschudi, director of the national gallery, and the critic Karl Scheffler declared him to be "the model of the modern gallery director." A new epoch in the history of the German art museum began with Lichtwark, as he made his museum into the prototype of its modern institutional form. He kicked off what Robin Lenman has called the "great museum race" of the late nineteenth century, as Germany's cities competed in establishing academies, schools, and museums and in expanding their art collections. Lichtwark was an instigator of this process, and to von Melle's delight he made the Hamburg Art Museum into one of the most prominent in the empire. "Lichtwark was able to make it understandable that the Hamburg Art Museum is directly important to every friend of art in the whole empire. He made it into something like a national gallery," wrote Scheffler. The museum was also one of the richest in Germany, and the sums of money Lichtwark gave out for the works of Secession artists, German Im130. Alfred Lichtwark to Gustav Pauli, Apr. 10, 1902, in Lichtwark, Briefe an Gustav Pauli, ed. Carl Schellenberg (Hamburg, 1946), 23. The note in brackets is Schellenberg's.

Culture in a City-State pressionists, and the work of the turn-of-the-century international avantgarde drove their prices up all over Europe. 131 Hamburg's institutional peculiarities-the specifics of the "Hamburg model"-supported his venture. The absence of a strong state presence freed him from restrictions that hemmed in civil servants elsewhere in the empire. Lichtwark had a remarkable amount of freedom, for behind him stood private patrons and collectors-fantasticallywealthymerchants such as the diamond dealer Alfred Beit-who richly endowed the museum, making it one of the wealthiest in Germany. With their money Lichtwark purchased Manet, Monet, and Liebermann, the Secession painters Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, the paintings of the "Saxon Monet," Gotthardt Kuehl, and those of local modernist artists, turning the museum's rooms into an Impressionist gallery par excellence. Lichtwark was successful, wrote Scheffler, because he always did more than either the institutions or the public expected of him. "He made himself into an authority and sought to make the small and powerful city-state whose gallery director he was into a leading influence in all areas of art." He "was not just a Hamburg museum director; rather, he was something like an art chancellor [Kunstkanzler]. Or to go even further, as an employee of the city he had so conceptualized his task that he appeared as the voluntary minister of the whole of German artistic culture." 132 The museum stood at the center of Lichtwark's project, but his influence reached beyond it. Scheffler waxed euphoric on Lichtwark's influence in Germany, and in Hamburg itself his influence reached far beyond the museum. His three programs quickly catalyzed a diverse social movement that worked to further his ideas. After 1 Sgo new organizations devoted to aesthetic education, modern art, and the democratization of culture began to appear on Hamburg's cultural scene. Lichtwark and Brinckmann transformed their museums into public educational institutions, and Lichtwark began his program to educate the public in local artistic traditions. New associations ranging from the elite to the plebeian appeared. Elite clubs, such as the Society of Hamburg Friends of Art ( 1893) and the Society for the Promotion of Amateur Photography ( 1891), furthered the artistic interests of wealthy amateurs and elite hobbyists. The Teachers for Aesthetic Education organized elementary school teachers to reform the public school curriculum and to stamp out the influence of trashy commercial literature ( Schund), and in 1891 the Literary Society created a populist fo131. Robin Lenman, "Painters, Patronage, and the Art Market in Germany, 1850-1914," Past & Present 123 (May 1g8g): 109-40, and A.rtists and Society in Germany, r89o-r9r4 (Manchester, 1997); Karl Scheffler, "Zum Tode Alfred Lichtwarks," in Eine Auswahl seiner Essays aus Kunst undLeben I90J-I9JO, ed. Carl Georg Heise and Johannes Langner (Hamburg, 1g6g),

6s. 132. Scheffler, "Zum Tode Alfred Lichtwarks," 65.

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rum for modern poetry and literature. The new organizations ofteachers and working-class intellectuals formed ties to Hamburg's greater labor subculture. In 1893 the People's Theater was founded on the model of the Social Democratic People's Theater in Berlin. In 1909 the SPD established its Central Commission for Workers' Education and offered art evenings, theater, and cultural activities for its working-class members with a repertoire that fitted with Lichtwark's program. Associations with cross-class memberships formed around the issue of aesthetic education. So did groups aiming for the education of one class by another. This could be clearly paternalistic in focus, as in the project of the People's Home, or more subtle, when it was not clear which group had the upper hand or who was educating whom. In the latter group belonged Hamburg's elementary school teachers, who saw themselves as cultural missionaries to the poor. In 1908 the Teachers' Association began a series of Sunday-afternoon lectures for workers and their families. 133 Teachers' organizations published lists of recommended children's literature, took schoolchildren to the theater, and advocated increased attention to contemporary art and literature in the primary schools. 134 Their desire to be "people's educators" was motivated by Lichtwark's example and supported by his influence. As some of his most devoted supporters, they will appear often in the pages that follow. 33· J. J. Scheel,jahresbericht der Gesellschaft der Frcunde, I go8, 50-51. I34· On the Committee to Improve Children's Literature see Geralde Schmidt-Dumont, ed., Von den Anfangen der]ugendschriftenbewegung: Diefugendschriftenausschiisse und ihr "Vorort" Hamburg um I900, suppl. 1 (Hamburg, 1990), and "Das Kinderbuch in Hamburg um 1 900: Lichtwark, Wolgast und Dehmel und der Umkreis der Kunsterzichungsbewegung," Auskunft g, no. 3 (September 1 g8g): 18g-204. On the public school teachers, Theodor Blinckmann, Die offentliche Volksschule in Hamburg iII ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Hamburg, 1930)' is comprehensive. I

{3}

Provincial ReforMers There was at that time [in 18go] something [in Hamburg] that in England was called "society." That is, the stratum of the population that felt responsible for the entire life of the city and gave it its outward expression .... Certainly there were enough philistines among the leading people of Hamburg .... The business people and millionaires were not exactly a charming group. But among them at the turn of the century, men also came together who knew how to treasure cultural values and made it their project to further them.

The Hamburg Labor Movement as a Cultural Factor

JOHANNES SCHULT,

Culture-civilization-two concepts that cannot strictly be separated. To civilize a people is to tame it, to make it moral, and to raise its members as the citizens of a state. HERMANN L. KOSTER,

From Hamburg's Cultural History, r87r-rg5o In the introduction to the little book From Hamburg's Cultural History the elementary school teacher Hermann Koster put down his thoughts on the civilizing power of culture. Culture tamed and ennobled and created subjects and citizens. Eschewing the distinction between culture and civiliza-

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tion and its nationalist overtones, he claimed that everything "that refines morals but also those things that make life easier serve civilization: running water, gas stoves, the electric light, the sewing machine, the locomotive, the steamship, the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and so forth." At the top of the list, however, was culture, the things of the mind and the spirit, which ennobled and humanized the world of the airplane and the sewing machine. "For culture includes the entirety of social and mental life. It embraces science and art, it comprises everything that deepens life and gives it sense and meaning. The cultural epochs of a people are its truly creative periods in art and science. "1 Koster's introduction, written in the early 1950s, after two world wars, echoed an earlier time. In this small snippet surfaced an older way of thinking that made Koster seem like a relic himself, a castaway from the past. This older discourse on the humanizing and transformative potential of Bildung and the necessity of its dissemination stemmed from the late nineteenth century, when it had found a home in Hamburg's museums, schools, and cultural associations and had been spread by its teachers, writers, professionals and the members of prominent families. By the late 188os these ideas had generated an intense amount of civic interest in the value of aesthetic education. Lichtwark's success in disseminating his ideas brought together a socially and professionally heterogeneous group of people to form a movement for popular education. They may have been "occupationally different," as Patrick joyce wrote of the diverse audiences that attended popular educational events at London's Athenaeum and Mechanics' Institute in the 1 84os, but "the patrons of both institutions held out the same heady vision of knowledge as the key to transforming the world. "2 A similar belief in knowledge and social transformation knitted together middle-class professionals with working-class intellectuals, who worked together to further the cause of aesthetic education in Hamburg. On issues of culture and social change, the local authors Richard Dehmel, Otto Ernst, Detlev von Liliencron, Jakob Loewen berg, and Gustav Falke found common ground with the judges Wilhelm Hertz and Gustav Schiefler, with the teachers William Lottig, Friedrich von Borstel, and with Emil Krause, the editor of the cultural section of the Social Democratic newspaper, the Hamlntrger Echo. The educated middle classes, particularly lawyers, doctors, teachers, judges, and administrators, made up a core group of Lichtwark's supporters. They were joined by schoolteachers, writers for small newspapers, trade union activists, booksellers, poets, and artists-a whole spectrum of petty in telH. L. Koster, Aus Hamlntrgs Kulturgeschichtr, r87r-I950 (Hamburg, 1953), 5· PatrickJoyce, Democratic Subjects: The Stlfand the Social in Nineteenth-Crn fill)' England (Cambridge, 1994), 170. 1.

2.

So

Provincial Reformers

lectuals-who stressed the need for cultural and social reform. These men and women criticized existing social and economic conditions in person and in print. Lichtwark insisted on the need for alliances between these two groups. Through alliances with working-class intellectuals connections to the Social Democratic Party and its constituency could be forged, which would give his ideas their largest possible audience. Elementary school teachers constituted the most important group in this sense. Valuing BiZdung as a medium of social reform and social mobility, they stressed their position as cultural transmitters ( Bildungsvermittler), standing between the "educated" and the "people."3 For this group, Bildung derived its power from the fact that it both defined the boundaries of the Burgertum and offered symbolic admission to it; thus its wide appeal. As a teacher and a member of the Literary Society, the Volksheim, and various popular education societies, Koster stood at the center of Lichtwark's movement. He planned to write its history, to become its chronicler. But the intervention of two wars and Koster's full schedule during peacetime forced the project to remain at the level of note taking. He sketched a chronology of the movement and jotted down a list of names. 4 Only his small book, From Hamlmrg's Cultural History, would give twentieth-century audiences a hint of his interest and concerns. The movement had its other historians, however, who were as varied as its participants. The liberal judge Gustav Schiefler, a close friend of Lichtwark's, gave the fullest and most sympathetic accounting in his Cultural History of Hamlmrg, covering issues of public culture from the building of the public library to the dissemination of low-cost prints and the collecting of modern art. The Social Democratic teacher Johannes Schult also attempted to write the history of the movement. In The Hamlmrg Labor Movement as a Cultural Factor Schult covered the educational initiatives of the labor movement and also those projects carried out by the elite-members of "society," as he called themtoward which he was surprisingly sympathetic. Lichtwark's ideas were popular in the higher reaches of Hamburg's B1"irgertum, and by the 18gos elite initiatives to educate the public competed for space and attention. On its way to establishing a university, in 18g6 the city government began a series of public lectures in the arts and 3· On public school teachers, liberalism, and Volksbildung, see Horst Drager, Die Gesellschaft fur Ver!Jreitung von Volksbildung (Stuttgart, 1975); Rainer Bolling, Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Lehrer (Gottingcn, 1983); Wilkending, Volksbildung; Langewiesche, Liberalismus and "'Volksbildung' und 'Leserlenkung' in Deutschland von der wilhelminischen Ara his zur nationalsozialistischen Diktatur," lnternationales Arrhiv fi1r Sozialgeschichte der d~Cutschen Literatur 14, no. 1 ( tg8g): 108-25; Jiirgcn Reulecke, "'Kunst' in den Arbeiterbildungskonzepten biirgerlicher Sozialreformer im 19. Jahrhundert," in Mai et aL, Kunstpolitik und Kunstfdrderung, 8394; Rudolf Schenda, Die l"esestoffe der Klein~Cn Leute: Studien zur populiiren Literatur im r9. und 2o.jahrhundert (Munich, 1976). 4· For Koster's notes see StA HH, 6q-1/39:1.

81

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sciences to supplement Lichtwark's and Brinckmann's efforts. Groups formed to bring Bildungto the underprivileged: the Association of Friends of Music funded popular concerts of classical music, and the People's Home ( Volksheim) set up cultural community centers in Hamburg's slums. Not surprisingly in a century enthralled with the printed word, many elite projects devoted to Bildungfor the "masses" focused on books. The Patriotic Society opened Hamburg's first municipal library in 18gg, and two new initiatives-the Foundation to Commemorate German Poets ( 190 I) and the Hamburg Home Library ( I90 1) -published low-cost "quality" literature. Providing instruction in the fine arts-literature, music, and theater-and in practical pursuits was an important philanthropic activity. These initiatives had a vision of social improvement, via moral improvement, at their core. Consciously kept apart from politics, such initiatives provided both space and substance for what would become Hamburg's left-liberal revival in the early twentieth century. In these groups what participants called a "community of sentiment" ( Gesinnungsgemeinschajt) was forming, a cohort was coming together, and ideas that later were to inform Hamburg's left liberal party, the United Liberals, were beginning to be discussed. Enemy Camps

Lichtwark's initiative would not have found such a willing audience if he had not addressed current concerns. Programs to extend access to art, culture, and education through concerts, libraries, and lectures cannot be viewed in isolation from the social concerns they addressed. They must be seen against a backdrop of escalating violence between capital and labor after I H9o as the Social Democratic Party organized and confronted the power of organized capital, principally the merchant elite of shipbuilders and allied industrialists. With the closing of the National Customs Union in 1H88, Hamburg's merchants celebrated the city's final entry into the empire and the building of their industrial harbor, congratulating themselves on their nationalist loyalty and their local business sense. A state visit by the emperor was celebrated with festive dinners and fireworks. The elite took their pleasure boats out on the Alster and down the Elbe, feeling themselves to be united as a group and looking forward to prosperous times ahead. 5 But as the banquet tables were set and the fireworks lit, the city was poised for a period of explosive change. The 189os opened with violence as a peaceful May Day demonstration planned by the SPD escalated into bloodshed when the police and harbor employers moved aggressively against the assembled workers. This first clash led to lockouts, 5· Renate Hauschilrl-Thiessen, Biirgerstolz und Kaisertreue: lfamburg unrl rlas deutsche Reich von r87r (Hamburg, 1979).

Provincial Reformers

blacklists, and the founding of the militantly repressive Employers' Union. The SPD and the unions responded with an organizing drive that turned Hamburg into a hotbed of socialism. The general commission of German Trade Unions established its headquarters in Hamburg, and many unions had their national headquarters there. The conflict unfolding in the harbor highlighted the most important political shift to occur in the city since the 186os: the emergence of the SPD as a factor in municipal politics. With the lifting of the Antisocialist Law in 18go, it rapidly became the city's largest and most organized political party. 6 Founded in the 186os through the influence of Ferdinand Lassalle, the party grew steadily, even during the period oflegalized repression from 1878 to 18go. The industrialization of the harbor, the expansion of the shipbuilding industry, and the boom in the construction trades drew workers to Hamburg throughout the 188os; many of them would join the SPD. Mter 18go the influence ofthe labor movement throughout the city was unmistakable. By 1907,42.6 percent of Hamburg's workers belonged to a trade union; a large number of educational associations and consumer cooperatives were organized. These new organizations attached themselves to older gymnastic societies, newspapers, and educational associations that dated back to the 184os. By the 188os the SPD began to capture Hamburg's seats in the imperial parliament, and by the end of the decade they held all three of the city's mandates. The inability of most working-class residents to vote in municipal elections created tension between national and local politics. The SPD demanded a change in local suffrage after the "cholera summer" of 18g2, when the deaths of 8,6oo mainly working-class residents starkly highlighted the injustice perpetuated by limited suffrage and an unrepresentative government. In 1893, only around 14 percent of those eligible to vote in the parliamentary elections could vote in municipal elections; of 66o,ooo residents, only 23,000 could vote locally. 7 The entrance of the SPD into local politics was followed by the emergence of other organizations representing ideas across the political spectrum. The new mass-based political parties (the Social Democrats primarily but also the Anti-Semites, who controlled Hamburg's largest white-collar union, the German National Employees' Union), nationalist pressure groups, and labor organizations began to challenge established political ideas and practices. They introduced new forms of organization and a new and aggressive political language. The radically anti-Semitic Ger6. See Volker Ulrich, Die Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung vom Vorabend des Erslen Weltkrieges bis zur Revolution, rgr8-I919, 2 vols. (Hamburg, I~J76); Griittner, Arbeitswdt; Arno Herzig, Dieter Langewiesche and Arnold Sywottek, eds., Arbeiter in Hamburg: Unterschichten, Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung seit dem ausgehenden 18. jahrhundert (Hamburg, 1983). 7. Evans, Death in Hamburg, 539- 56; Eckardt, Privilegien und Parlament, 37.

Provincial Modernity

man National Employees' Union (DNHV), founded in 1893 to organize the growing ranks of commercial white-collar workers, was the fastest growing and most disturbing of the new arrivals. 8 It quickly put together a regular program of political, educational, and cultural activities for its members and inserted itself aggressively into local politics. The provocation of the DNHV was not passed over in silence. The Association of Office Workers of 1858 and the Social Democratic employees' association competed with the DNHV for members, and DNHV meetings regularly turned into free-for-alls as Social Democrats in the audience argued with the speakers and tried to disrupt the proceedings. These scenes were a world away from the genteel traditional politics in the City Hall, where even an uninvited burst of applause was forbidden. 9 After two years of discussion in the Senate and Citizens' A~sembly, in 18g6 the citizenship fee was abolished and municipal voting rights were recalibrated on the basis of the census. The new law preserved the three classes of voters established in 186o-notables, property owners, and voters in general elections-but divided the last group into three parts on the basis of annual income: over 6,ooo marks, 3,ooo-6,ooo marks, and under 3,ooo marks. Now the suffrage was extended to lower-income residents. Some reformers proposed doing away with the property owners' and notables' elections entirely. This idea received feeble support in the chamber, but the financial limits for the suffrage were lowered: after 18g6 a resident of Hamburg who had an income of 1,200 marks for five consecutive years and paid taxes on it became eligible for citizenship. This change opened the suffrage to skilled and well-paid workers. The change has been variously interpreted, both then and now. The SPD leadership saw it as an opportunity and exhorted workers to declare their eligibility and become citizens as soon as possible. Members of the Senate and Citizens' Assembly saw the new level of 1,2oo marks as meeting the need "to preserve the vote for the sector of the population that lives in a middle-class fashion." The change in the law brought an increase in voter registrations. Between 18g6 and18g8 more than 14,000 residents registered as citizens, 44 percent of them in the lowest income category. 10 The numbers of these "worker citizens" (Arbeiterbiirger) would continue to rise after 18g8. Buoyed by their support, the first Social Democratic representative, the machinist Otto Stolten, entered the Citizens' Assembly in 1901. An increase in citizens added volatility to the political scene. While the H. Iris Hamel, VOlkischer Verband und nationale Cewerkschaft: Der Deutschnationale Handlungsgehilfen-Verband, r893-I933 (Frankfurt/Main, 1967). See also StA HH, 331-3, PP, V 544· 9· Bolland, Hamburgische Biirgerschaft, 59-89.

10. Heinze, "Liberalen in Hamburg," 27-28; Otto Stolten,

"Wahlrecht~umsturzvorlage,"

Die neue Zeit 23, 2, 36 (1904-5), 324-25. Geert Seelig put the number at 10,000 (Geschichtliche Entwicklung, 5 n3).

Provincial Reformers

new voting rights law empowered the labor movement, it also allowed the first Anti-Semite representative to enter the Assembly in 1897. He was followed by two more at the turn of the century_ll Between 1896 and 1904 Stolten counted 36,ooo new Burger, and thirteen more SPD members joined him in the Asembly in 1904. 12 The SPD's modest success fueled the ongoing debate on the suffrage. The place of Social Democracy in local political life divided Hamburg's merchant elite from its professional Biirgertum politically and socially. While it has been traditional to view local politics during this period as a struggle between two organized blocs -Biirgertum and Arbeiterschaft, capital and labor-noticeable rifts were appearing between the various groups that made up the Biirgertum, or middle class, which would greatly affect the character of civic liberalism. Fear of the SPD unified imperial Germany's middle classes, but in Hamburg it drove them apart, the merchant elite and the professionals increasingly taking opposite sides on the issue. 13 The line between the two groups was fluid and was often crossed, but its presence was unmistakable. It appeared in 1896, forged by disagreements over the handling of the dockworkers' strike, and received full expression in 1907 with the founding of Hamburg's left liberal party. The privileged and propertied adopted a variety of responses to the conflicts and issues of the two decades leading up to the war-strikes and labor violence, the growing power of the unions, the rising membership in the SPD, the deplorable state of working-class housing, an authoritarian police and repressive poor law, and the spread of slums old and new. Yet on the issue of who could vote and the terms on which non bourgeois groups could belong to Hamburg's body politic, Hamburg's Biirgertum split into two opposing groups so hostile to each other that the finance minister Leo Lippmann called them "enemy camps." 14 Lippmann saw the deepening split between merchants and professionals developing in the years leading up to 1906. Others saw its origins in the differing positions taken toward the dockworkers' strike of 1896 and the changed voting laws of that year, or in opinions on the founding of the Employers' Union in 1890. One observer, the Senate secretary Julius von Eckardt, saw the social rather than political roots of the situation, which he traced back to the 187os. Newly arrived in Hamburg from Leipzig in 1870 as the chief editor of the liberal newspaper Hamburgischer Correspondent, the Baltic German Eckardt immediately spotted the rift dividing those who belonged to "Hamburg society" and those who did not. The line was defined Bolland, Hamlnugische Burgerschaft, 64. Stolten, 'Wahlrcchtsumsturzvorlage," 325. 13. Hurd argues in Puhlir Spheres that fear of the SPD unified Hamburg's bourgeoisie. 14. Leo Lippmann, 1Hein l£ben und meine amtliche Tiitigkeit: Erinnerungen und ein Beitrag zur Finanzgeschichte Hamburgs, cd. Werner Jochmann (Hamburg, 1964). 11. 12.

Provincial Modernity

and policed in myriad ways. "Society" for Eckardt consisted of the families of the merchant elite, many of whom could trace their presence in the city back to the seventeenth century. Eckardt was struck by their homogeneity. They sent their sons to the same schools-first the Johanneum, then to the University of Heidelberg, Gottingen, or Bonn, where they studied law until they could append "Doctor" to their names. These sons then joined the same university and professional clubs and began to climb the career ladder of city government as well-connected jurists. Sons who went into business followed a slightly different track. Mter the Johanneum they were apprenticed to connected firms and spent several years overseas before returning to Hamburg. Group socialization created group mentality. "To a man they were conscientious lawyers and hard workers," wrote Eckardt, "but their general education [Bildung] always carried the same stamp and moved within the same boundaries. What one of them didn't know, as a rule the others didn't either. Or to put it more precisely: things that didn't exist for one seemed not to exist for all of them. "15 This group was not open to new ideas, and the power of past practices held them fast. They had a "born consciousness of power" ( angeborene Herrschaftsanspriiche), Eckardt wrote, and they saw eye to eye on who was fit to govern. It was "obvious that to work with them and to merit consideration, a certain wealth was necessary, one must 'have something."' 16 Their emphasis on wealth -their own huge amounts and the lesser amounts of others-placed a vast distance between themselves and all others. They excluded all those who did not belong to their own group, not only the working class but also the growing numbers of professionals. Clearly the "open elite" that historians such as Percy Ernst Schramm deemed essential to Hamburg's social structure had closed by the late nineteenth century. Two competing elites had emerged. To this group, many wealthy, successful businessmen and professionals were second class. They looked down on all professionals other than merchants and lawyers of their own social stratum; other merchants and lawyers were not accepted as equals, no more than the city's growing group of middle-class professionals, the doctors, heads of hospitals, scientists, architects, and administrators who directed and ran its institutions. Members of their own class who leaned to the left politically, Eckardt wrote, might as well have lived "on another part of the planet." One did not associate socially with Hamburg's wealthy Jewish professionals, merchants, and bankers. Educated and propertied, moderate and liberal in their political leanings, these families were, in Eckardt's nineteenth-century estimation, "uncommonly productive and useful." Yet "despite a decided friendliness 15.]uliusvon Eckardt, Lebenserinnerungen, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1910), 1:199. 16. Ibid., 199-200.

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toward the Jews, the Old Hamburg elite [Althambiirgertum] closed themselves off socially against the Jewish element.' With very few exceptions, Hamburg's wealthy and respected jews stood outside of 'Society.'" 17 Old Ham burg also took a hard and unforgiving line toward the Social Democrats and were willing to support the overt repression of the working class. Represented by the shipbuilder Hermann Blohm, these men staffed the ranks of the Employers' Union, put their support behind the National Liberal Party, read the conservative Hamlmrger Nachrichten, and sided with the authoritarian capitalists throughout the empire. The split between Old Hamburg society and middle-class professionals widened in the 18gos. It was the professionals, by and large, that were receptive to Lichtwark's ideas. An ideology of Bildungas an instrument of individual and social change and an attraction to the social programs of English liberal reformers helped bind this group together. Not all professionals, of course, subscribed to this set of beliefs, and, more important, some members of the merchant elite did. Those who did socialized and worked together. They met at the People's Home, at meetings of the Patriotic Society, in Hamburg's churches, theaters, and museums, and also at the courthouses, hospitals, banks, at the stock exchange and in the Citizens' Assembly. The men met in the 1894 Club, Lichtwark's new gentlemens' debating society, where they discussed a left-liberal political agenda; the women gathered around Lichtwark and patronized the museum and the amateur artists' club. Members of several prominent families-the Hertz, Traun, and Schramm families, all of whom had or would have senators in their midst-patronized several of the organizations, but in the main the enterprises were staffed by lawyers, judges, doctors, and administrators, many of whom had, like Schiefler, moved to Hamburg recently to pursue careers. 18 These professionals espoused a reformist strategy toward the "social question," taking many cues from English reformers. They accepted the traditional idea that "men of culture" had particular responsibility to advance the common good, and they eagerly followed the programs of English reformers-Toynbee Hall, the Whitechapel picture exhibitionsthat focused on the "raising" of workers into "respectable" citizens. They patronized programs aimed at transforming what Seth Koven called the "interior and exterior landscapes of the urban poor" by providing better housing, public parks, libraries, and schools, accessible museums. Such 17. Ibid., 201,202-4. 18. Many members of the Volksheim belonged to the 1894 Club and the Patriotic Society: StA HH, Library, A 507 I 29, "Mitglieder-Vcrzcichnis der Gesellschaft ''Volksheim" e.V.," April I90.'J and April 1910; "Jahrbuch der Hamburgischen Gesellschaft zur Befordcrung der Kunste nnd nutzlichen Gewerbe," 1901, 149-6o; StA HH, 331-3, PP, V 567: "Club von 1R94: Mitgliedcr-Verzcichnis," Feb. 1, 1896, and Feb. I, I ~'99·

Provincial Modernity

projects supported their vision of a future civic community as an expanded public based on common values and "consensual citizenship." 19 The Hamburg reformers built libraries and community centers, patronized Hamburg's museums (Lichtwark's in particular) and supported the publication of inexpensive books and the selling of "art objects." Later they would support programs to reform working-class housing and the building of the new city park. Uncertain democrats in the main (only time would tell where they would come out on that issue) but liberals to the core, they supported traditional ideas about the role of patrons, institutions, and education in shaping and raising the public. They believed that the "moral reform and personal social commitment of the propertied class itself" was "indispensable for bridging the social cleavages of industrialization and capitalism. "20 Such a man was the lawyer and judge Wilhelm Hertz, son of the merchant senator Adolph Ferdinand Hertz. The longtime chairman of the People's Home, Hertz was one of Hamburg's most active social reformers and one of its most able administrators. He served as the first director of Hamburg's youth welfare administration and was a pioneer in the field of juvenile criminal law. His political awakening came during the dockworkers' strike of 18g6-g7, which paralyzed the Hamburg harbor for sixteen wintry weeks. As a young lawyer Hertz was appointed secretary to the Senate commission responsible for examining the "causes and consequences of the dockworkers' strike." Through this experience he connected himself politically to the group forming around Friedrich Naumann. 21 Hertz was joined at the People's Home by men as different as the industrialist Heinrich Traun and the attorney Siegfried Heckscher. Traun, a blustery industrialist, was the owner of a rubber comb factory in Harburg, across the river from Hamburg. 22 He approached social problems as moral issues, to be dealt with firmly. Authoritarian as many found him, for the Old Hamburg elite Traun was a defector and an outsider. Traun gave his employees Christmas bonuses and financially supported the families of sick workers. 19. Seth Koven, "The Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions and the Politics of Seeing," in Museum/Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles, ed. Daniel Sherman and Irit Rogoff (Minneapolis, 1994), 23. 20. Christoph Sachl.k, "Social Mothers: The Bourgeois Women's Movement and German Welfare-state Formation, lil90-1929." in Mothers of a New World, ed. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel (New York, 1993), 146. As in other cities of the empire, the "principal underwriters of reform" were the urban academic and liberal middle classes, motivated by a strong ethic of social responsibility. See Repp, Reformers, 19-66; Riidiger vom Bruch, "Weder Kommunismus noch Kapitalisrnus ": Biirgerliche Sozialreform in Deutschlanrlvom Vormarz /lis zur Ara Arlerzauer

(Munich, 1985), 61-179. 21. Schiefler, Harnburgische Kulturgeschichte, 55;]ochmann and Loose, Hamburg, 2:43. 22. StA HH, ZAS, A 770: Hamburger Nachrichten, Aug. 30, 1905; Hamburgischer Correspondent, Jan. 12, 1908; Hamburger Echo, Jan. 15, 1908.

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His "friendliness toward the laboring classes" earned him a seat in the Senate from 1901 to 1908, and Hamburg's newspapers praised his "aristocratic consciousness, social convictions, and humanitarian sense of duty." Yet what some found praiseworthy seemed dangerous to others. 23 Siegfried Heckscher represented the new face of social reform in Hamburg. Heckscher belonged to the steering committee at the People's Home and was known for his "modern" approach to social problems. The son of a merchant, he studied law and economics and settled in Hamburg as a lawyer in 1899. 24 Heckscher belonged to the Association for Social Policy and sat on the steering committee of the Association for Social Colonization. In 1912 he became the head of the social-political section of the Hamburg America Shipping Company (HAPAG). Heckscher was Jewish, a nationalist, a liberal, and an artist of sorts (he wrote plays). He was anational politician, representing the left-liberal Freisinnige Volkspartei for Lauenberg in the imperial parliament between 1907 and 1918, and aregional reformer. He became friends with Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow and with the regional authors and poets Detlev von Liliencron, Gustav Falke, and Gustav Frenssen. 25 Together with Carl Monckeberg, son of the lord mayor, Heckscher edited the weekly journal The Navigator, a platform for social and political reform at the turn of the century. 26 Carl Monckeberg, for his part, set himself against the conservatism of his family and joined Lichtwark's circles of writers and artists. Mter his stint at The Navigator he wrote for the liberal Neue Hamburger Zeitung. Fancying himself as a playwright, he held a literary and artistic salon at his family's home in 1896, to which he invited young reformers and professionals who were "highly interested in art" to mix with young writers and artists. 27 The commitment to Bildung and a growing interest in modern art on the part of younger members of this group only exacerbated the conflict between them and Hamburg's more conservative circles. In the name of Bildung reformers hotly criticized members of their own class. Gustav Schiefler sharpened his pen and chastised the old Hamburg elite for paying no heed to the winds of change blowing over Hamburg's social scene. They could have acted as the movement's head, he claimed, but instead they saw it as a threat to be defended against and gave away their social authority.28 He saw the same coldness and apathy even in the Patriotic Soci23· Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturgeschichte, 330; StA HH, ZAS, A 770: "Dem Grunder des Volksheims," Neue Hamburger Zeitung,June 30, 1910. 24. Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturgeschichte, 55;]ochmann and Loose, Hamburg, 2:38. 2 5· StA HH, ZAS, A 7 58: "Zum Tode von Siegfried Heckscher," Ham&urger Nachrichten, Feb. ;, 1929· 26. The left-liberal Navigatorwas published from 1899 to 1902. StA HH, ZAS, A 758: "Dr. Siegfried Heckscher," Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Feb. 6, 1929. 27. Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturgeschichte, 8o-85; Illies, Aus Tagebuch und Werk, 91. 28. Gustav Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturaufgaben (Hamburg, 1899), 10-12.

Sg

Provincial Modernity

ety, which harbored a number of "mandarins" who were resistant to change. Schietler saw the ultimate expression of this spirit in the fashionable Society for Art and Science, an elite association founded in 1867, officially to further civic cultural life hut actually as an excuse to give lavish costume halls. Its closed structure and sumptuous dinners and parties perverted Enlightenment ideals, according to Schiefler, as well as local tradition. Art and science appeared only in its title; its cultural programs were merely excuses for dining and dancing and served no larger public purpose. Schiefler vented his disgust at this "bourgeoisie of the period after 1870, swimming in philistine fat." In spirit they were "so dried up and dusty, so opposed to the progress of German cultural life," he claimed, "that one had to laugh. "29 Against his criticism of his own class he praised the new social actors who had recently emerged as a force in public lifethe audiences at public lectures and the teachers and intellectuals responsible for new public cultural associations. These people, he claimed, rather than the ruling bourgeoisie, were responsible for "the modern upswing."30 The People's Home

In 1871 Dr. J. F. Voigt urged the members of the Patriotic Society to apply themselves to the deep divisions appearing in the city's fabric. The divisions between capital and labor, profit and loss, threatened deeply held ideals of social harmony. Voigt urged members to apply themselves to problems "that the state cannot solve without the initial work of private persons, who have experimented to see where and how purposeful interventions could he made." 31 Twenty years later, Hamburg's new slums presented the Patriotic Society with an opportunity to put his word into practice. The long rows of tenements, factories, slaughterhouses, and machine shops presented a heartless industrial landscape. Reformers worried that these conditions would breed apathy and political radicalism. 32 In the pages of her social novel The Burden, lise Frapan made the slums of Hammerbrook into a symbol of working-class alienation and social decay, amilieu of faceless buildings and anonymous streets that trapped the city's laboring poor in lives of numbing and exhausting work. In his essay "We, the Educated, and Our People" Wilhelm Hertz re29. Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturgeschichte, 275, 277-79. See also Freudenthal, Vereine in Hamburg, 18 2- 86; Verein fiir Kunst und Wissenschaft, Gedenkbliitter zur Feier des funfundzwangzigjiihrigen Bestehrms des ~!?reins fur Kunst and Wissenschaft am ro. Norl(mber r893 (Hamburg, 1893). 30. Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturaufgaben, 1 o-12. 31. Kowalewski, Geschichte der hamburgischen Gesellschaft, 2 38- 39· 32. Andrew Lees, "Walther Classen, Settlements, and Youth Work," in his Cities, Sin, and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (Ann Arbor, 2002).

go

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corded that Hamburg's Biirgertum was responsible for the creation of such slums. Hertz was deeply troubled by the abdication of social responsibility by the elite and the middle classes, which for him implied nothing less than a rejection of the codes oflocal patriotism. Gradually, he wrote, members of the educated and propertied circles began to feel guilty, particularly for their part in the construction of the slums, "masses of stone without air and light, squeezed together without space for children [or] for relaxation or reflection for adults. Inner Hammerbrook stands as a horrifying example in our midst: an exclusion of the 'masses' from culture, spirit, and community created by complete coldness." 33 The People's Home, founded in 1901, attempted to improve the situation by bringing the propertied and the laboring classes together in a project directly modeled on England's Toynbee Hall (1884) and its predecessor, the settlement movement (1867). 34 Looking toward Toynbee Hall, Hertz wrote that Hamburg's elite had to serve as "bridge builders" to the working class. They needed to move to workers' neighborhoods to "offer there what they possessed of life and spirit in order to bring people together again." The People's Home's statutes outlined a project of community building that furthered "the cultivation of personal interaction between educated bourgeois circles and workers in order to encourage mutual respect and mutual trust." It was to "offer both the opportunity to experience and to understand the other's views oflife" and "in this way to revive community spirit."35 The practical means of realizing this vision entailed the procurement of rooms in the center of Hamburg's working-class areas for meetings and social purposes together with several connected residential halls (settlements), [where] rich and poor [will be] brought together to establish personal connections and mutual trust. In this

way the educated and wealthy will be given an opportunity to get to know a worker's life and its needs through their own observation, and will be able to contribute to the betterment ofboth. 36 33· StA HH, FA, Hertz, 622-1-I-6: Wilhelm Hertz, "Wir Akademiker und unser Yolk," typescript, Dec. 22, 1928. 34· Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford, 1971); StA HH, HS 731-1, 1175: Hans-Joachim Rackow, "Das Hamburger Volksheim: Entstehung, Organisation und Zielsetzung: Ein Beitrag zur Volksbildungsarbeit des liberalen Protestantismus im Wilhelminischen Reich," Universitat Hamburg, 1g8o. Local accounts of the Volksheim, written mainly to celebrate its various anniversaries, generally present its activities and the civic spirit of the protagonists as self-explanatory. They make little mention of the complexity of its social formation or the somewhat contradictory force of its activities. 35· StA HH, Library, A 507/29: statute ofjuly 1906, 3· 36. Ibid., statute of Apr. 20, 1901.

Provincial Modernity

The English settlement movement began when Edward Denison, son of the bishop of Salisbury, moved to the working-class area of Stepney in London in 1867, one year after his graduation from Oxford. A reader of Thomas Carlyle, Denison claimed that class segregation and the "absence of a 'resident gentry'" in London's poorer neighborhoods led to the "demoralization" of the urban poor, which increased poverty and social unrest. Denison saw moral decline as the cause of urban misery. It would be halted when the rich took up residence in poor neighborhoods. There they could provide clubs, instruction, and incentives that would help the poor to help themselves. The founding of Toynbee Hall in 1884 institutionalized Denison's vision. It identified moral failure as the cause of urban poverty and moral uplift as its cure. Its offerings changed over the years, writes Gareth Stedman Jones, from "urban manor houses from which a new squirearchy would lead the poor to virtue" to "informal social laboratories where future civil servants, social investigators, and established politicians could informally work out new principles of social policy."37 At first, however, moral uplift was the preferred strategy for both the English reformers and their German admirers. As anxiety about class conflict and national regeneration congealed into a thick soup of worry after passage of the Second Reform Bill in 1867, Toynbee Hall covered the slums of London's East End with museums, libraries, working men's cooperatives, and sports clubs. It was, Seth Koven writes, a "self-conscious attempt to create nation and community through vertical bonds of comradeship across class lines" by focusing on the "problem of male citizenship. "38 This moralizing and individualizing approach to urban misery proved popular in Hamburg. 39 The focus on uplift and Bildung fitted local middle-class forms of liberal social engagement. The industrialist Heinrich Traun, interested in pursuing such a project to "raise" the urban working classes, dispatched a young theology student, Walther Classen, to Toynbee Hall in 18gg to observe its programs and report on the feasibility of starting a sim37· StedmanJones, Outcast London, 258-59,328. 38. Seth Koven, "From Rough Lads to Hooligans: Boy Life, National Culture, and Social Reform," in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, and Patricia Yeager (New York, 1992), 367,365. 39· In Germany there were similar worries that young working men were by nature disorderly, politically radical, undisciplined, dangerous, and potentially criminal. At the end of the century organizations arose to shepherd boys through the "dangerous years" between school and army. Naumann's Evangelical-Social Congress set out many ways to "lead young men to virtue." SeeJiirgen Reulecke, "Formen biirgerlich-sozialen Engagements in Deutschland und England im 19.]ahrhundert," in Kocka, Arbeiterund Burger, 261-86; Klaus Saul, "Der Kampf urn die Jugend zwischen Volksschule und Kaserne: Ein Beitrag zur Jugendpflege' im wilhelminischen Reich, 1890-1914," Militiirgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 ( 1971): 97-142; Lees, Cities, Sin, and Social Reform.

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ilar project in Hamburg. This idealistic and somewhat naive young man, a candidate in theology and a passionate evangelical social reformer, was · only too happy to become an instrument for a larger cause. He was the son of professionals-his father was an ophthalmologist and his grandfather had been the grand and autocratic head of the Johanneum. 40 As a student Classen was influenced by Adolf von Harnack, and when he returned to Hamburg after his university studies he immersed himself in evangelical social work (he had ties to Naumann's Evangelical Social Congress) and in 18g8 became the leader of an apprentices' club. The clubs for apprentices and young boys had an inexplicable magnetism for him, particularly the circle organized by the pastor Nicolai von Ruckteschell in the working-class neighborhood of Eilbeck. Witnessing the lively debates between workers and would-be reformers at their meetings, Classen was inspired by a vision of trust and community. 41 On his trip to England to visit Toynbee Hall in 18gg, Classen also attended meetings of the Boys' Brigade, a forerunner of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts. In a small book, Social Chivalry in England, he reported enthusiastically on the "lectures, free legal advice, people's concerts, clubs" sponsored by Toynbee Hall, which made a ''web" that "extends ... over the entire neighborhood." At the core of these projects lay the idea of inculcating discipline through programs of self-education ( Selbsterziehung), which in Germany was translated into a program to promote Bildung. One should "educate and shape the population from the top down in order to enable them to help themselves," wrote Classen. In the Boys' Brigade "they seek to strengthen character and improve morals by awakening a sense of honor, self-respect, and esprit de corps." The "people's lectures, people's concerts, art exhibitions for the people, sports festivals for the young people, and so on," he wrote, were arousing great interest in Hamburg, and people were "beginning to take practical steps. "4 2 On returning to Hamburg, Classen gathered supporters. Soon a group of fourteen young university-educated professionals met at the Patriotic Society to discuss his ideas. By the end of 1900, an eleven-member committee "to which several women had also been intentionally elected," among them Antonie Traun, the sister-in-law of Heinrich Traun and a re40. Walter Uhsadel, "Walther Friedrich Classen," Neue Deutsche Biographie 3 (1956): 26465; Rainer Hering, Walter Classen: Ein Hamlntrger Piidagoge zwischen Tradition und Moderne (Herzberg, 2001); Lees, in Cities, Sin, and Social Reform, designates Classen as one of imperial Germany's most important social reformers in youth welfare work. 41. StA HH, ZA..'l, A 753: Heinz Marr, "Walther Classen," Neue Hamlntrger Zeitung, Mar. 1, 1913; Walther Classen, SechszehnJahre in Arbeiterquartier: DemAndenken unserer gefallenenFreunde ausdemHammerbrook (Hamburg, 1932), 7-1fl; Hering, Walter Classen, 11. 42. Walther Classen, Sociales Ritter tum in England: Ein Reisebericht (Hamburg, 1900), 20, 24, 49·

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spected social worker, was established for further discussion. 43 Significantly, members defined the People's Home as an educational endeavor rather than as a form of poor relief. Classen in particular derided the "superficial" social reform of both state-based welfare and the giving of alms. At root the "social question" was a matter of individual character, a "question of the heart," he claimed. 44 The moral issues at the root of urban poverty could not be resolved through laws passed or organizations formed but only through a "moral conscience" internalized. In setting out the goal of the project he parroted the lessons he had learned in England. The goal was not poor relief (Armenpjlege) but the welfare and cultural work ( Wohlfahrts- und Kulturpjlege) necessary for the "deepening of the sense of community." Not all of the other participants agreed with his stance or his definitions, but all felt strongly that something needed to be done to address the city's social problems beyond what the Hamburg state was willing to do. They engaged in intense and protracted discussions on the idea of community, which ran from romantic proclamations of "healing" the rift running through "the people" to Hertz's religiously motivated belief in humankind's "community of destiny." While their approach to urban problems would prove to be shortsighted-poverty was not, of course, reducible to a lack of will on the part of the poor-their desire to create new forms of community and their belief in the necessity of the project were painfully sincere, though manifestly one-sided. Despite their talk of a joint effort of themselves and the working classes, the creation of a new "sense of community" depended primarily on the transformation of the proletariat, both individually and as a group. 'The whole question of the prospects of the working class," Stedman jones reports, "came to revolve around the 'degree to which they can be made rational beings."' 45 Working-class men and women needed to transform themselves through projects of self-education and self-discipline. The educated and privileged were there to guide them. Since the founding of the Patriotic Society, the solving of social problems had been seen as the responsibility of the privileged. Here these ideas led into a new form ofliberal social action, based primarily on education and permeated with ideas about patronage, responsibility, and the shaping power of the professional classes. Mter World War I the People's Home would modernize its practices, but before 1914, democracy was not one of its projects. Ecstatic statements about creating one community-a "single brother43· Ernst Schultze, "Das Hamburger Volksheim," Grenzboten 32 (1904): 304; W[alther] Classen, "Wie wir anfingen," in Festschrift 90 jahre Kulturelle Vereinigung Volksheim e. V. in Hamburg, 1901-1991. Traun and a Fraulein Koster sat on the steering committee. 44· StA HH, ZAS, A 753: Marr, "Walther Classen," Neue Hamburger Zeitung, Mar. 1, 1913. 45· Stedman Jones, Outcast London, 4, quoting John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 8th ed. ( 1878).

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hood of the people" (the members were fond of quoting Schiller) -were intertwined with affirmations of the necessity of social hierarchy. A project of liberal patronage, the People's Home was driven by a sense of liberal guilt; after all, the destruction of social harmony was a sin. Mter discussing goals, the steering committee turned to the question of location. Classen wanted to start the home in Hammerbrook, where in tgoo he had founded an association for reforming young men. Siegfried Heckscher also thought the project should be located in a slum. Others wanted someplace with a "healthier laboring population." As the goal was to educate the souls of the poor, setting into motion an "inner completion," the target groups were not the poorest, "completely uneducated strata." As Traun had already established a building and savings association in the working-class district ofRothenburgsort, the first branch of the People's Home set up shop in this area. 46 Hertz hoped that the project's supporters would "move to working quarters and offer there what they possessed of life and spirit in order to bring people together again." But few expressed a desire to move to industrial Rothenburgsort. "Certainly, the sacrifice ofliving communally was made by only a few and by these only for a limited time," wrote Hertz; "nevertheless, the project was still 'getting to know' the working class through community educational and recreational activities, through working in youth and adult groups, and through providing advice for the emergencies that arise in everyday life." 47 From the "acquisition of secure [settlements] in the middle of working-class areas ... we [will] offer our personal help, labor, and friendship, unconnected to political and religious partisan endeavors," the group claimed in a public statement. 48 In the first few years of the home's existence, its 126 members mounted an impressive array of activities. By tgo6 the People's Home offered the following: Information bureaus. Public lectures with the free exchange of opinions. 3· Lecture series on everyday questions. 4· Sunday discussions. 5· Picture and art exhibitions. 6. Field trips and observation visits. 7· Workers' clubs. 8. Associations for young people past school age, apprentices, young girls, and others. 49 1.

2.

46. Hering, Walter Classen, 12-13; Classen, 'Wie wir anfingen"; Ernst Schultze, "Hamburger Volksheim"; Schiefler, Hamlmrgische Kultu~e;esrhichte, 332-37. 47· StA HH, FA, Hertz, 622-1-l-6: Hertz, "Wir Akademiker." 48. StA HH, Library, A 507 I 30: "Aufruf zur Beteiligung bei der Gesellschaft Volksheim." 49. StA HH, Library, A 507 I 29: Volksheim statute,July 1906, 4·

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Four years later the group added a science club and an economics club on the way to creating a full-fledged community and pedagogical center. Volunteers provided courses for elementary-level school instruction, set up legal aid windows, provided visits to the city's art institutions, adult groups for the care of the elderly, clubs for working-class housewives, courses for the care of infants and the sick, sewing classes, and sections for training in crafts, gymnastics, hiking, rowing, sports, singing, stenography, and languages.50 The group had expanded to 361 members by 1905 and 418 by 1910. 51 According to statute, every person-man or woman, regardless of religion-"of full age and stainless character" could join. "Associations, societies, charitable foundations, and other groups of individuals" were also invited. Yearly dues were set at 20 marks. Participants could also volunteer their time. 52 Working capital came from wealthy patrons. The Friedrich Foundation donated land for a settlement in Barmbeck and offered a rentfree house, garden, and a hall large enough to seat 400. 53 Money was not an issue, as the membership boasted many of Hamburg's wealthy. In addition to Wilhelm Hertz, six members of his family, including Senator Gustav Hertz, were members. So were two lord mayors and five senators. They were joined by growing numbers of professionals: judges and lawyers, doctors and scientists, professors and elementary school teachers. The director of the city orphanage, Dr. Johannes Petersen, the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, Dr. G. H. Embden, and the director of the zoo, Dr. Heinrich Bolau, had all joined. Prominent Jewish families and individuals were involved- Albert Wolffson, president of the Citizens' Assembly; the banker Max Warburg; the merchant Carl Cohn, who became Hamburg's first Jewish senator during the Weimar Republic; and the merchant R. E. May, founder of the Social Democratic cooperative called Production. 54 Several of Hamburg's most prominent female philanthropists played important roles. Antonie Traun also served on the steering committee of Hamburg's branch of the General German Women's Association and in 1899 founded a social aid group based on the work of Alice Salomon in Berlin. 55 Together with the head of the bourgeois women's movement 50. Ibid., A 507 I 30: pamphlet advertisement, Das Hamburger Volksheim; "Geehrter Herr Referendar!"January 1910. 51. The totals are approximate, as the Volksheim had corporate members. The Hamburger Gewerbekammer and the banking firm of M. M. Warburg & Co. belonged to the association. StA HH, Library A 507 I 29: "Mitglieder-Verzeichnis der Gesellschaft ''Volksheim" e.V.," April 1905 and April1910. 52. Ibid., Volksheim statute ofJuly 1906, 4. 53· Before this gift, the group used the gym at a local school and a small apartment. 54· See note 51. 55· Antonie Traun was active in the Verband fur Waisenpflege, Armenpflege und Vormundschaft and led the Hausfrauenbund. The bourgeois women's movement in Hamburg

g6

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in Hamburg, Helene Bonfort, Traun helped to found the Soziale Frauenschule and the Sozialpadagogisches Institut. 56 Likewise Agnes Wolffson, sister of the president of the Citizens' Assembly, was actively involved in philanthropy. She set up home economics classes and worked with the Martha-Helene Heim Foundation to provide housing and financial support for unmarried women. 5 7 With its growing membership, the People's Home expanded. By 1914, three branches were operating in Rothenburgsort (1905), Barmbeck (1908), and Hammerbrook (1908). People's Home "colonies" ( Volksheimkolonien) appeared on the island of Finkenwerder in the Elbe and in the harbor district of Neustadt. 5 8 Education mediated through personal contact was the project's preferred method. The educated and the workers were to come together to learn about history, the solar system, and the regional novel in large lecture rooms. That is, the lower classes were to learn about history, the solar system and the regional novel; the upper classes were to learn about the lower classes. Face-to-face contact would create trust. It would "give [the educated] the opportunity to get to know the workers [and] ... free the workers from their suspicion and prejudices toward the better situated."59 The enjoyment of art and the pleasure of edifying conversation and debates on selected topics were thought to be particularly suited for providing the "neutral ground" on which the classes could meet. 60 The organizers of the Thursday-night lecture series and the Sunday lectures on art and music worked hard to create this neutral ground. Admission was free on Thursday nights. The Sunday program, which included a two-hour lecture, cost 10 pfennig. Discussion often carried over into local restaurants, and crowds were large. The large hall at the main branch of the People's Home in Rothenburgsort (a Jugendstil structure built in 1905) organized around educational issues and social reform rather than around political right~ for women. The more conservative General German Women's Association, under the leadership of Helene Bonfort, broke with the more radical women's political movement led by Lida Gustava Heymann over the suffrage issue. For a summary see Karen Hagemann, "Feindliche Schwestern? Burgerlichc und proletarische Frauenbewegung Hamburgs im Kaiserreich," in "!hi/ iiber Dir Harnmonia ": Hamburg im r9. Jahrhundert, ed. Inge Stephan and Hans-Gerd Winter (Hamburg, 1992), 345-68. 56. Schiefler, Hambur1,rische Kulturgeschichte, 299-301; StA HH, ZAS, A 77o: Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Nov. 1, 1924. Antonie Traum campaigned for the Citizens' Assembly in 1919 under the new democratic suffrage as a member of the left-liberal German Democratic Party. See Helmut Stubbe-da-Luz, Die Stadtmutter (Hamburg, 1994), 7. 57· Schiefler, Hamburgische Kulturgeschichte, 301. 58. Rackow, "Hamburger Volksheim," 45· See also StA HH, Library, A 507 I 30: Das HamIYurger Volksheim (pamphlet). 59· Ibid., A 507 I 30: "Geehrter Herr Referendar!" 6o. Friedrich von Borstel, "Zur gemeinsamen Frage," Volksheim jahresbericht, 1906-7, 6. For a summary of activities see Schultze, "Hamburger Volksheim," 305-11. On "neutral ground" see Classen, Sociales Rittertum, 32.

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People's Home in Rothenburgsort before 1914 (courtesy of Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Library A507 I 32)

Provincial Reformers

served most purposes with its seating capacity of 200, but occasionally a larger hall seating 6oo to 700 people was needed. 61 The public lecture series, with talks given by local professionals, began during the winter of 1901-2 with a broad range of topics: Hamburg's director of hydraulic engineering gave a lecture on the harbor and the director of the Botanical Garden lectured on botany. Others spoke on "Hamburg's local railway," "folk art in the four lands," "periods of world history," "the ancient cultural states of Babylon and Egypt," and "Hamburg's time of troubles in the seventeenth century." Lectures addressing specific legal matters ("On Inheritance Law," "On Criminal Law") and informative lectures ('The Building and Loan Associations," "Our Foodstuffs") rounded out the program. 62 During the first year 2,290 people attended 2 5 lectures. The number oflectures stayed fairly constant during the next decade while the number of participants almost doubled, reaching 3,933 during the 1910-11 season. The average size of the audience rose from 92 listeners in 19cn-2 to 179 in 1910-11. Clearly the lectures were popular, as within a decade a total of 229 lectures drew close to 4o,ooo visitors. 63 The gatherings were meant to catalyze learning through the "free exchange of opinions." Rather than dumbly listening to their betters, participants were encouraged to respond to the lecturer. Rational discussion was the ideal. "The means ... to carry these thoughts to the people should be discussion," according to one report. 64 Sometimes looking was more educational than listening. The People's Home turned its large lecture hall into a gallery during the summer months. The goal of these exhibitions, modeled after those in London's East End and Berlin, was "learning to see," training the eye and the sensibility through interaction with art. The first exhibition in 1902, with the theme "The Colorful Landscape," brought in 460 visitors, although it was thought that some people visited several times. This heavy participation put a strain on the volunteers who accompanied the visitors and explained the pictures. Like the exhibitions at Whitechapel in the East End that began in 1881 and were inspired by the writings ofJohn Ruskin, the rooms at the People's Home were meant to approximate the intensive learning of a museum experience. Visitors could gaze at art in silent communion with its timeless values or could recognize their own experiences in paintings and sculpture and see their lives as worthy of artistic representation. This was the effect of the second exhibition given at the People's Home in the summer of 1902, where the general theme of the pictures was "Work." As the report of the exhibition stated, "even large-scale factories were represented 61. 62. 63. 64.

Schultze, "HamburgerVolksheim."' 307. StA HH, Library, A 507 I 30: pamphlet, January 1902. Rackow, "Hamburger Volksheim," 45· StA HH, ZAS, A 753: "Religiose Vortdige," Hmnlnnger Nachrichten, Dec. 31, 1910.

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in pictures, which certainly led many of our visitors to see in their daily work a piece oflife that is worth artistic attention and care." The more popular art exhibitions were of this type. Two prints showing simple working-class homes, "the first with friendly sunlight and red roofs and the other in a twilight mood, a picture of evening peace after work is done," resonated with their audience. By contrast, the mythical pictures of sphinxes and nymphs by the artist Hans Thoma, in the modish style of the fin de siecle, were "not understood" and "were even partially experienced as off-putting."65 Pictures that participants enjoyed could be purchased by them. At the Whitechapel exhibitions original paintings were hung, while at the People's Home the displayed pictures were mainly reproductions rather than original works. This had the added benefit that they could be bought by visitors to the exhibition, thus encouraging collecting and the ownership of artistic objects by working-class people. To the delight of the organizers, many people bought pictures when the exhibition closed, carrying the edifying power of art home with them. Sometimes the exhibited pictures were simply cut from popular illustrated magazines (the Munich Art Nouveau magazine jugend was a favorite), mounted on heavy cardboard, displayed, and then sold. At the conclusion of the first exhibition, "The Colorful Landscape," 182 pictures were sold for 30 to So pfennig. 66 The architect]. Oltmanns, who lectured in Hamburg's branch of Naumann's National Social Association on the topic "Art and the People" and who designed the Home's Jugendstil meeting hall, wanted to exhibit and sell copies of sculpture as well. 67 In addition to encouraging Bildungand self-cultivation through art, the People's Home encouraged the reading of "quality" literature and the collecting of art objects. In this endeavor they were not alone; an expanding number of associations in Hamburg, both middle class and working class, were taking it upon themselves to direct the cultural consumption of workers. Projects focused on art and literature brought members of the People's Home into contact with members of the numerous groups working in similar directions. Together with the Barmbeck Teachers' Group, the Alliance for Cooperative Outdoor Relief, and the Association for Art Appreciation, the People's Home sponsored an exhibition of "household effects and interior decoration for the working-class home" for an "artistic Christmas exhibition" in 1906. Held at the apartment community of the Production cooperative, the exhibition displayed a "complete set of furnishings for a working-class apartment ... selected in the taste of the mod65. StA HH, Library, A c,o7 I 32: "Die Bilderausstellungen," Volksheirnjahresbericht, 1902-3, 22-26. 66. Ibid., 22-24. 67. StUB HH: Gustav Schiefler Papers, letterbook 4, 1901-2: Oltmanns to Schiefler,June 16, 1902.

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ern aesthetic movement." The objects were designed to be "tasteful, solid, and inexpensive."G8 Participants were to observe the furniture and decorations and to immerse themselves in the practices of edifYing cultural consumption. Clothing, dishes, pictures, sculptures, and "metal objects" crowded the exhibition tables and competed for attention. A lecture series on topics from knickknacks to books and the modern aesthetic movement offered additional information. By transforming the interiors of their homes, organizers hoped, "the workers will themselves again give form to their lives," in the sense of formality and manners. 69 Beginning at the turn of the century, book exhibits dotted the calendar. Together with the working-class Association for Art Appreciation, the Teachers for Aesthetic Education, and the Commission for Children's Literature, the People's Home staged numerous activities on the reading and purchasing of good books. The Commission for Children's Literature distributed lists of recommended books in the public schools; a yearly Christmas fair run by the SPD offered edifYing entertainments. These groups spent a great deal of energy on what should be read, what should be avoided, and the exposure of children and adults to commercial entertainment. In 18gg the Patriotic Society, together with women's groups and teachers' organizations, placed the public library at the center of the Gangeviertel, the slum alleyways close to the harbor.7° The library, founded to lure workers from penny dreadfuls, was an outpost of Bildung in the heart of darkness. The opening of its doors was followed by increasing attention to the publishing and distribution of inexpensive books. These activities were part of a larger social and ethical project to substitute the museum, library, and school for the pub, the movie house, and the corner newsstand with its comics, romances, and detective stories. Such projects were yet another way of "transforming the interior landscapes of the poor." Books and the Education of Taste

The public library was a great success. On its heels Lichtwark founded the Hamburg Home Library in 1901, a "charitable endeavor" to print and sell quality literature at low prices. 71 Similar in intent to the People's Home, 68. Johannes Schult, Die Hamlntrger Arbeiterbeweg;ung als Kulturfaktur (Hamburg, 1954), 81. 69. StUB HH: Gustav Schiefler Papers, letterbook 1 1, 1906, no. 2: Vereinigung fiir Kunstpflege Hamburg-Klein Borstel to Schiefler, Nov. 28, 1906; StA HH, HS, 731-1, 1190: Gisela Grau, "Vereine fiir Kunstpflege in Hamburg, 1901 -1914: Arbeiterkultur-Organisationen zwischen Sozialdemokratie und biirgerlicher Reformbcwegung," Examensarbeit, Universitiit Hamburg, 1982. 70. Geralde Schmidt-Dumont, "Der Hamburger Jugendschriftenausschuss um 1900," Infurmationen Jugerulliteratur und Medien ( 1990): 33; Peter-Hubertus Piclcr, A nfange der Hamburger Offentliche Bucherhallen und i hre Entwicklung bis I 9 3 3 (Hamburg, 199 2) . 71. StAHH, 614-1 I 56-1: minutes of the GesellschaftHamburgischer Kunstfreude,Jan. 17, 1901, 154-55·

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the Home Library sought to "provide the population with a certain amount of uniform education" (gleichartiger Bildung). 72 That same year Dr. Ernst Schulze-the new public librarian, a member of the Patriotic Society, and a national authority on the danger of trashy literature-founded the Foundation for the Commemoration of German Poets, with national headquarters in Hamburg. It supplied rural libraries with books and printed its own line of inexpensive editions. 73 Both projects directed their attention at two perceived threats: that Bildung would be overtly politicized by the Social Democratic Party and that it would be overwhelmed by an advancing commercial culture. As the commercial culture was commonly seen as the greater danger, many Social Democrats in Hamburg joined with liberal reformers in attempts to regulate and control its influence on the public. 74 On the board of the Home Library sat representatives of both groups-members of the Patriotic Society and elementary school teachers active in the Commission for Children's Literature and the Teachers for Aesthetic Education. For the reformers the success of the public library was evidence that Hamburg's public hungered for good reading material. As the letter establishing the Home Library stated, it was "proof" of the public's "need for spiritual nourishment." 75 The reformers wished to capitalize on this success by encouraging not just the reading of good books but their ownership. As members emphasized, books transformed the home into a site of ethical education much like the museum and the library. In the opinion of the district medical officer Georg Sieveking, a book that one owned was "a purer source of joy" than a book borrowed from the library, for it had "a deeper and more enduring influence on the owner. "76 Sieveking sounded notes familiar to many of the Home Library's supporters. He emphasized book ownership as a means of schooling the public's taste and discrimination. Believing that the potential for individual improvement was democratic-that all individuals were capable of improving themselves-he lamented that the larger issue of how this development should be directed had been neglected. Public immaturity, he 72. Schiefler, Hamln.trgishe Kulturgeschichte, 270; Gustav Schiefler, "Alfred Lichtwark und die Hamburgische Hausbibliothek," Literarische Gesellschaft 3, no. 7 (1917): 217-26. 73· Kratzsch, Kunstwart undDiirerln.tnd, 346. 74· In the 188os the battle against Schund (trash) created an expanding network of publishing houses and middle-class associations devoted to regulating the market in inexpensive literature. See Schenda, Lesestoffe der Kleinen Leute, 78-99. 7 5· StA HH, 614-1/16-4, vol. 1: "Entwurffiir einen Brief von dem Vorstand der Gesellschaft Hamburgischer Kunstfreunde an die Lehrervereinigung zur Pflege der kiinstlerischen Bildung und an die Harnburgische Gesellschaft zur Beforderung der Kiinste und niitzlichen Gewerbe"(1901). 76. G. Herman Sieveking, "Die Hamburgische Hausbibliothek,"jahrln.tch der hamln.trgischen Gesellschaft zur Beforderungder Kiinste und niitzlichen Gewerbe, 1904, 80-81.

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wrote, could be measured by the inability of individuals to resist the voluptuous pull of mass entertainment and steamy stories. Their taste remained unschooled, not yet developed to the point where they could distinguish the good from the bad. Moreover, the cheaper books became, the more dangerous they were to the public. "How tremendously many books exist only from the excitement of base impressions," Sieveking wrote, "and through how infinitely many channels they force their way poisonously into our people."77 Sieveking was appalled by the "unending" floods of cheap books that sowed "class hatred" and stimulated "voluptuousness." Proper private libraries would regulate the release of such passions, he wrote; the growth of the good could counteract the "pressure of the bad." Most private libraries, however, were woefully inadequate. What sorts of books, he asked rhetorically, did one find in the typical apartments of both the educated man and the worker? In the apartment of the educated, "if anything, the proud row of attractively bound classics unread in a splendid bookcase." The books found in a worker's apartment were at least read and used. But they were much too functional and their selection was too limited. There one found, "moth-eaten on a broken bookshelf, most likely a Bible, a songbook, and a few old schoolbooks, close by Platen's New Healing Methods or Bilz's bulky concoction on natural healing and nothing else." 78 For years Lichtwark had been working on the same problem. Coming up with the idea for a "home library" -a small collection of books on Hamburg and the classics of German literature for popular distribution-he hoped to interest the Patriotic Society in his venture. Intrigued by the possibilities offered by a "young people's library" as a way of counteracting the influence of Hamburg's elementary school teachers over children's literature (as the Patriots feared they were all Social Democrats), the society invited Lichtwark in but treated him badly, as if he were still a schoolteacher himself. Outraged, he stormed out of the meeting. But Lichtwark was a stubborn man, and a few years later he succeeded in seating the Patriotic Society and the elementary school teachers at the same table. With the help of his Society of Hamburg Friends of Art, the project was born. 79 The Friends of Art, the Patriotic Society, and the Teachers for Aesthetic Education formally joined together to publish and distribute classical and modern German literature, regional and foreign books (in translation), autobiographies, memoirs, fairy tales, and some light scholarly works. 80 They dedicated themselves in particular to "the care of heimatlich literature" and to autobiographies, as types ofliterature that would educate but 77. 7S. 79· So.

Ibid., 79Ibid., So. Schiefler, "Alfred Lichtwark"; StA HH, 6q-1 /16-4, vol. StAHH, 614-1/16-2, vol. 1: meeting of Mar. 3,1902.

1:

"Entwurf fiir einen Brief."

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not needlessly stimulate readers. 81 Autobiographies, which laid out their authors' journeys toward Bildung, taught through example. Autobiographies were so popular that the Friends of Art wanted to begin the project with Goethe's From My Life and a memoir of the Hertz family, Our Family Home, by Paul Hertz, Wilhelm Hertz's uncle. 82 The group decided to begin with instructive books with regional and popular character: Hertz's Our Family Home and the German Fairy Tales of the brothers Grimm. They decided on an initial print run of s,ooo copies each, designated for the Hamburg market. 83 In the years before 1914, the Home Library published regional novels and a rich menu oflocal stories. 84 At its meetings members hashed out the merits of regional and local literature and suggested books for publication: the poems and childhood memories of Friedrich Hebbel, Jeremias Gotthelf's Low German novel Servant Uli, Gottfried Keller's Romeo and juliet in the Village, and Otto Ludwig's Between Heaven and Earth, along with novels by Wilhelm Raabe and Theodor Fontane. 85 Next to regional literature, they discussed "special works that describe Hamburg's city life and the larger Hamburg or Low German cultural circle. "86 Books by the Hamburg poet Gustav Falke, those of the north German authors Theodor Storm and Timm Kroger, and the Low German fairy tales collected in East Holstein by Wilhelm Wisser (and previously published by the elementary school teachers) were all suggested for publication. 87 They published family memoirs (Paul Hertz's Our Family Home, Emma Dina Hertz's Grandparents Beets, and Berend Goos's Memories of My Youth), memoirs of Hamburg under Napoleon (From the Time ofFrench Occupation), and a "new row" of books devoted to local cultural history (Lichtwark's Hamburg Essays and the memoirs of Baron Caspar von Voght). The project was not primarily a business venture; the members preferred to think of the Home Library as a "charitable endeavor" that should be run with business sense. As Lichtwark hoped, private patrons provided 81. StA HH, 614-1 I 16-3: "Abschrift." The project "must be' hamburgisch,'" Lichtwark wrote to A. N. Zacharias at the Patriotic Society on Sept. 2, 1899. "[A] Home and Young People's Library that does not bear this local character is a colorless book-selling enterprise and interests me not a bit." Quoted in Schiefler, "Alfred Lichtwark," 223. 82. StA HH, 614-1116-4, vol. 1: "Entwurffiir einen Brief." 83. StA HH, 6q-1l 16-2, vol. 1: meeting of Nov. 27, 1902. Each book sold 3,300 copies in the next three months, and another 3,000 copies of each were printed. Meetings of Mar. 25 and May 27, 1903. 84. Ibid., meeting of Mar. 3, 1902. 85. Ibid., meetings of Feb. 25, Mar. 25, and May 27, 1903. 86. StA HH, 614-1 I 16-3: "Abschrift." 87. StAHR, 614-1 I 16-2, vols. 1 and 2: Meetings of Nov. 3, 1904; Mar. 6, 1905; Apr. 20 and Sept. 21, 19o6;july 14andOct. 18,1907.

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funds. 88 The Hertz family donated 1,8oo marks for Our Family Home. 89 Lichtwark raised 1,500 marks for the German Fairy Tales. Members appealed to like-minded groups for money. 90 But numerous publishers were distributing similar books, and the need to rely on private funds caused unending difficulty. Money was always short. The group scraped together enough for printing costs shortly before printing began, and their publisher, Alfred Janssen, operated on credit. 91 Realizing that they had to operate like a business although they did not wish to, they dabbled in modern advertising methods-printing posters, setting up displays in book and stationery stores, inserting ads in the local papers-which helped to move books and bring in money. 92 They networked with the People's Home and affiliated organizations: workers', apprentices', and white-collar professional groups. They tried to sell their books through the Production cooperative.93 Members advertised at meetings and reached out to the schools, using mailing lists provided by the Commission on Children's Literature. 94 They sent brochures to rural libraries, distributed 5,000 to bookstores, and hired the local artist Arthur Siebelist to design a poster. 95 In 191 o the Home Library sent books to public schools and a total of 3o,ooo leaflets to bookstores. 96 Their work brought results. By 191 o, they had sold 124,647 books. 97 This was a lot of effort for modest success. The Home Library attempted to make use of modern production and advertising methods, but it couldn't effectively compete with a more wily local entrepreneur, Ernst 88. Ibid., vol1: Meeting of May 5, 1902. 8g. StA HH, 614-1/16-4, vol. 1: Wilhelm Hertz to Schiefler, Oct. 6, Oct. 8, and Nov. 12, 1902. go. StAHH, 614-1/16-2, vol. 1: Meeting of Nov. 7, 1902. See also 614-1/16-4, vol. 1: Lichtwark to Schiefler, Oct. 2 1, 1902. 91. The members used their connections to the heads of Hamburg's private foundations, many of whom were relatives or business associates, to gather funds. StA HH, 614-1/16-2, vols. 1 and 2: meetings held Feb. 6, 1904 (Kellinghusen Stiftung, 1,ooo marks); Mar. 2, 1906 (Gesellschaft der Freunde, 100 marks; Godeffroy estate, 2,ooo marks); Aug. 24, 1906 (Patriotic Society offers 3,000 marks in credit). Individual members appealed to wealthy families for donations. See Schiefler's appeal to the Warburg family reported in the meeting of Apr. 22, 1904. The Home Library became better established financially after 1906, and a year later increased the number of participants. Meetings held Sept. 21, 1906, and Jan. 17, 1908. 92. Ibid., vol. 1: meetings ofNov. 27, 1902, and Jan. 21, 1903.]anssen reported to the commission on various advertising methods at the meeting of june 4, 1902. 93· Ibid., meeting ofJuly 8, 1903. 94· StA HH, 614-1/16-2, vols. 1 and 2: meetings of Dec. g, 1903, and Apr. g, 1907. 95· Ibid., meetings of Apr. 22, 1904, and Oct. 19, 1906. g6. They sent only 772 books to 50 public schools, far fewer than the Commission on Children's Literature. Ibid., vol. 2: meeting of Nov. 18, 1910. 97· Ibid., meeting of Nov. 18, 1910.

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Schulze. The Foundation for the Commemoration of German Poets, which Schultze established in 1901, became a book publishing and distribution machine. According to its brochures, it aimed to establish a "monument in the hearts of the German people" by distributing inexpensive copies of recommended literature, stressing the universal appeal of Bitdung in contrast to narrow specialties. It aimed to disseminate "the best of German writing" and never relaxed in its struggle against bad literature, "free of religious and political goals." Its patrons came from every corner of the empire and from a range of social classes. Chancellor von Biilow, the empress, and numerous wealthy patrons contributed to the foundation's financial support. Supported financially from above, it was staffed and populated from below. Dues were 2 marks a year, low enough to encourage wide participation. For their 2 marks members received a book for their own libraries. The group grew rapidly, doubling its membership each year. By 1909 it had 9,ooo members and 192 branches across Germany. Its headquarters were in Hamburg. 98 Schultze's foundation and the work of the elementary school teachers made Hamburg a leading city in a national fight against bad literature. The teachers Otto Ernst and Jakob Loewenberg worked with Schultze on the foundation's steering committee, and the list of its local supporters yielded familiar names: Marie Hirsch, Gustav Falke, Detlev von Liliencron, Werner von Melle, Senator Heinrich Traun, Gustav Schiefler, Alfred Lichtwark, Siegfried Heckscher, the lord mayors Burchard and Monckeberg, Senator Behrenberg-Gossler, Senator Predohl. Elites were represented as well as the broad "educated middle strata" (gebildeta Mittelstand). The Goethe Association, the General German Women's Association, the Literary Society, the Teachers for Aesthetic Education, the Hamburg Teachers' Association, and the People's Theater chorus-in short, groups active in Lichtwark's movement on both sides of the political spectrum-supported Schultze's foundation. 99 In keeping with the movement's emphasis on inculcating middle-class values and the importance of personal sacrifice for the community, the foundation claimed to "work only for the common good," not for profit. 100 Although most of its members belonged to the Protestant middle classes, a Jewish newspaper supported the project, par98. StA HH, 33I-3, PP, S 92 53: "Aufruf ftir die Versorgung von Krankenhausern mil guten Biichern"; Werbeblatt der Deutschen Dichter Gediichtnis Stiftung (I909). 99· Ibid., "Aufruf fUr die Versorgung von Krankenhauscrn" lists supporters of the project; StA HH, Library, A 542 I I: ''Verzeichnis der eingeganenen Beitrage," Deutsche Dichter Gediichtnis Stiftung: Erster jah,-esbericht iiber die jahre I90I-I90J, IR-27. The Warburg family donated I ,ooo marks to the project, one of the largest donations. 100. See the language used in StA HH 33I-3, PP, S 9253: "Aufruffiir die Versorgung von Krankenhansern."

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ticularly its publication of works by the respected Jakob Loewen berg, a friend ofSchiefler and Otto Ernst and a founder of the Literary Society. 101 The foundation's primary work was outfitting Germany's public libraries ( Volksbibliotheken), and the group distributed books all over Germany and abroad. Impoverished rural and small-town libraries received its particular attention, and the foundation shipped books to German-speaking settlements and to colonies overseas. By 1909 it had supplied more than a thousand libraries with a total of 168,565 books. 102 For the foundation's supporters, Germany's rural public libraries were suitable monuments for a nation defined through the words of its poets and writers. They may have seemed small and nondescript, but they were everywhere. 103 The foundation also published and distributed its own line of inexpensive books through Schultze's publishing house, the Gutenberg Press. Also called the Home Library, it supplied good books that were "practically yet attractively bound. "104 Books sold for 1 mark. Print runs were set at s,ooo, and several books went through multiple printings. 105 Its "people's literature" in pamphlet form was even more popular; 38o,ooo of these pamphlets, priced at 15 pfennig, had been published by the end of 1908. 106 As the group was fond of mentioning, the pamphlets and books "won friends in all sectors of the population." 107 Like Lichtwark's Home Library, they selected literary classics and regional novels. Works by Goethe, Schiller, and the Grimm brothers represented classical and vernacular national traditions; Detlevvon Liliencron's War Novels, Gotthelf's Servant Uli, and works by Wilhelm Raabe, Friedrich Hebbel, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, and Peter Rosegger showed their support of regionalliterature. 108 In the foundation's populist vision, the reading of regional literature would create an authentic national community. It was by the people and about the people, distributed by them in their towns and read in their homes. As the number of books and pamphlets published indicates, Schultze's project was more ambitious than either the People's Home or Lichtwark's Home Library. His desire to influence public behavior was correspondingly inflated. He wanted to encourage not just reading but whole sets of 1o 1. Ibid., lsraelitisches Familienblatt, Nov. 24, 1905. 102. Ibid., Werbeblatt der Deutschen Dichter-Gediichtnis-Stiftung ( 1909). 103. Ibid., "Aufruf der Deutschen Dichter-Gedachtnis-Stiftung," Neue Hamburger Zeitung, June 2, 1902. 104. Ibid., General A nzeiger, Dec. 1, 190 5. 105. Ibid., lsraelitischesFamilienblatt, Nov. 24, 1905. 106. Ibid., Werbeblatt der Deutschen Dichter-Gediichtnis-Stiftung ( 1909). 107. Ibid., Volkszeitung, Feb. 16, 1906. 108. Ibid., list compiled from Volkszeitung, Mar. 1, 1903, and GeneralAnzeiger, Dec. 1, 1905.

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behaviors centered on books. Reading rooms were established as disciplinary spaces in which working-class adults and children could be taught proper forms of conduct. In 1go8 the Patriotic Society established children's reading rooms where working-class children learned disciplined reading and concentration. Taken for a few hours out of their homes, which the reformers feared were too noisy and filled with distractions to permit quiet concentration, the children sat in the rooms provided for them and learned the virtue of reading a book through to the end rather than idling and wastefully skipping about in it. They learned to pick up books with clean hands and to turn the pages carefully. Schultze called the reading rooms "physically and morally pure" and approved of this "strong form of a day nursery." A children's reading room was set up at the People's Home, where it was watched over by female volunteers from the social aid groups. 109 Schultze was still thinking about inculcating values and behavior when he set up his most ambitious project, the "mass distribution of quality people's literature." This project aimed to place books in unlikely places: hospitals, lighthouses, sanatoria, tugboat captains' stations, guardrooms, navy and merchant vessels, lounges for railway workers-basically any place where workers had time on their hands. Schultze outfitted libraries for the military and in factories to make books available to soldiers and industrial workers. 110 Since trashy literature was everywhere, the project reached into all corners of modern life with the goal of spreading enjoyment and improvement. The foundation was particularly interested in targeting areas where people spent unproductive time, such as hospital beds and waiting rooms. In a typical maneuver it appealed publicly for donations to outfit hospitals with "good" reading material. Three million people a year lie in the hospital with nothing to do, the appeal stated, and quality reading material would have a strong and positive effect on them as they lay immobilized.111 To guard against boredom and idleness, traveling libraries of twenty to thirty books would circulate so that the books could be changed from time to time.U 2 Schultze's project and the eclectic groups united behind it testified to the widespread local and national interest in cultural reform. Lichtwark capitalized on this interest, and his success buoyed the work of Schultze and other men like him. Their interest in "interior transformation"was eminently social in its concerns, but as a vision and as a prac109. Schultze quoted in Schmidt-Dumont, "Hamburger Jugendschriftenausschuss," 34· On the Kinderlesezimmersee ibid. 110. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 9253: GeneralAnzeiger, Nov. 2, 1905. 111. Ibid., "Aufruffiir die Versorgung von Krankenhausern." 112. StA HH, Library, A 542 I 5: "Aufruf zur Versorgung von Leuchttiirmen, Feuerschiffen und Lotsenstationen mit guten Biichern," February 1908.

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tice it had no particular political stamp. Projects that began in this fashion could go in any political direction, even while claiming to be operating outside of politics, as many of them did. Politically the idea of transforming people's behavior and value systems was itself both potent and malleable. Patrons, Publics, Politics Contemporary sources remind us that Hamburg's Biirgertum was not a united front cemented together through fear of Social Democracy. A range of opinions on social and political change existed within the two groups as well as between them. Although "inner reform," self-discipline, and the education of character were the main focus of the reformers, different ideas of education could lead to very different ideas of political organization and participation. Among the educated and wealthy opinions varied widely on the role of patrons and the shaping of public character, and on how these concerns translated into politics. At the People's Home alone different visions of "raising" the public vied with each other. Even in the narrow company of the founders only-Hertz, Traun, and Classen-radically different visions emerged. The philanthropic humanism ofjudge Wilhelm Hertz coexisted with the authoritarian paternalism of the "worker-friendly" Senator Heinrich Traun, and both men came up against the radical and racially charged visions of the theology candidate Walther Classen. Wilhelm Hertz's liberal vision can best be described as humanistic. It was the most inclusive. "Community by nature includes all social strata," wrote Hertz, "the big and the small, educated and spiritually impoverished, strong and weak, worthy and unworthy, loving and bitter. "113 The branches of the People's Home he called "people's and cultural communities in working quarters" where the privileged offered their time and their "common humanity." Hertz believed that communities had a basis in shared culture and depended for their existence on shared norms. Moreover, his stance toward social change was evolutionary; change would come through education. Correspondingly, he believed in the custodianship of the middle classes and the power of Bildung. Drawing on Hamburg's traditional ethic of personal social responsibility of the privileged for the well-being of the community, Hertz wrote to Schiefler of feelings of "social patriotism" that motivated his interest in the project. 114 This vision, with its noblesse oblige and its religious emphasis, was the most traditional, echoing as it did forms of patriotic activity active in the city since the eighteenth century and present since the Reformation. Hertz didn't assign the People's Home an overt political responsibility; 113. StA HH. FA Hertz, 622-1-I-6: Hertz, "Wir Akademiker." 114. StUB HH: Gustav Schiefler Papers, letterbook 25, 1912, no. 2: Hertz to Schiefler,July 9· 1912.

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by definition the home was not a political organization. His terminology, however, revealed his political views. The home was to counteract what he called "associations of conflict"with "associations of understanding" within which "'all classes [could interact] inwardly [and privately]with one another as equals.' "ll 5 We can assume that by "associations of conflict" Hertz meant the associations of the SPD and of the other new political groupsthe German National Employees' Union and the Anti-Semites' clubs. "Associations of understanding," such as the People's Home, maintained bonds between people defined as innately equal-as men, as members of humanity, as souls before God-but in reality socially and politically unequal. In Hertz's view, individuals would be transformed through education and communities would arise through Bildung. His uncle's memoir, Our Family Home, portrayed the family reading quietly together, each individual involved in an act of quiet self-improvement. 1 16 Hertz was very fond of this little book, and its vision of his relatives reading silently together in the evenings encapsulated his vision of the process through which a new public would emerge from the private spaces of family rooms and the public ones of the lecture hall and the library stack. The new emerged from the old in an act of silent civic patriotism; individual self-improvement was defined as an act of civic duty. Heinrich Traun had a different vision of the future and a different ideal for the public. His programs were based on a productivist rather than humanist ethos, and his idea of education was more functional and instrumental than Hertz's. For Traun, education for the lower classes was job training. Whereas Hertz viewed educational programs as the proper vehicle for the social and political integration of the working classes in both a practical sense (giving basic instruction, reading, writing) and in an extended ethical sense (creating a wider community of shared values), Traun wanted to train a workforce and detach workers from Social Democracy. Traun eschewed Hertz's religious language and spoke of national efficiency based on a productive, regulated, and controlled workforce. Interestingly, on a national level both Hertz's and Traun's discourse had affinities with the political vision of Friedrich Naumann. Hertz drew on Naumann for inspiration, but Naumann also envisioned a form of social organization based on industrial relations. Focusing on productivity, efficiency, and quality work, he envisioned the state as a large firm run by educated experts and staffed by a skilled, educated, and socially integrated population.ll 7 115.]ochmann and Loose, Hamburg, 243· 116. Paul Hertz, Unser Elternhaus (Hamburg, HJOS), 49· 117. Werner Conze, "Friedrich Naumann: Grundlagen und Ansatze seiner Politik in der nationalsozialen Zeit ( 1895 bis 1903)," in Schicksalswege deutscher Vergangenheit: Beitriige zur ~ schichtlichen Deutung der letzten hunderifiinftig]ahre, ed. Walther Hubatsch (Dusseldorf, 1950),

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Though Traun wanted to integrate the working class with the rest of the population, he did not want to enfranchise them, particularly if they exercised their free will and joined Social Democracy. The "worker friendliness" that his fellow senators remarked on had its limits. The financial support he offered to his workers came with strings attached: in return he expected subservience and gratitude and an end to their unionizing efforts. According to the Hamburger Echo, only workers who belonged to "patriotic" (staatstragend) associations received Traun's Christmas bonuses, and Traun conducted his own inquiries to ascertain whether they belonged to veterans' associations. 118 Workers complained that they would rather receive higher wages than his charitable support; those who wished to organize labeled Traun an authoritarian. 119 His programs to "raise" his workers did have a strong element of authoritarian control. Schiefler, after visiting one of Traun 's "festivities for workers," noted that Traun "was concerned to give his people's social enjoyment" a definite content and direction, as Schief1er too nicely put it. 1 2° Traur1 's attitude came out in smaller ways as well. His stance toward the Thursday lectures and discussions at the People's Home was a case in point. These discussions should be free, all agreed, but some thought they should not be too free. Billed as the free exchange ofideas, in practice they were hemmed in by rules of conduct and participation. The posing of questions and the manner of speaking from the audience were regulated. Traun was nervous about the effects of instituting a space for democratic discussion. In his view, uncontrolled public discussions could easily degenerate into 'just a soapbox for the Social Democrats." 121 Classen, too, expressed doubts about the uneducated's ability to conduct themselves properly, but on ditlerent grounds. He found the workers' manner of speaking too "rough" and in need of refinement. Classen was another matter entirely from either Hertz or Traun. He went beyond the humanitarian and the productive to focus on the moral and racial connotations attached to the word "character." In his essay "Schopenhaucr as Educator" the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche took an 3.~s-86. On Naumann's extensive connections to Wilhelmine reform movements see Joan Campbell, The German Werkbund: The Politics of &form in the Applied Arts (Princeton, 1978); Kratzsch, Kunstwart und Diirerbund; Theodor Reuss, Friedrich Naumann: Der Mann, das Werk, die Zeit (Stuttgart, 1937); and Naumann's essays, Ausstellungslniefe (Berlin, 1909). 118. StA HH, ZAS, A 77o: Hamburger Echo, Dec. 24, 1903. 119. Ibid.: HamburgerFremdenblatt, Aug. 22, 1905, which defended Traun against these accusations. Wages in his factorv started low and rose with level of skill. The llamburger Echo stated that workers' complaints and wage issues were handled in an authoritarian fashion. Traun himself supported the suffrage restriction of 1go6. Hamburger Echo, Dec. 2 2, 1go6, and Jan. 15, 1908. 120. Schief1er, Ham!JUrgische Kulturgeschichte, 330. 121. Classen, "Wic wir anfingen."

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organic view of national culture. "Culture is liberation," Nietzsche wrote, "the removal of the weeds, rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender buds of the plant. "122 The organic language and the violence implicit in it would have suited Classen's transformation ofthe liberal Bildungsidee into something approximating a racialized concept of character. This change in his thinking came through clearly in the distance between his small book Social Chivalry in England, published in 1900 and a basic text for the People's Home, and his urban anthropology of 1go6, Urban Homeland: Observations on the Natural History of the People of the Metropolis. In Social Chivalry Classen remained closer to the cultural humanism of Wilhelm Hertz; with Urban Homeland he found a different voice, more original and more disturbing. Urban Homeland addressed the issue of urban poverty in a new way. Playing anthropologist, Classen traversed the spaces of the city, entering workers' homes and claiming to read their minds and hearts. Bent on educating an upper-class audience (future contributors to the People's Home?), Classen assessed conditions in the modern city in order to recommend measures for improvement. His book was a sort of primer on urban poverty and working-class alienation to pinpoint the causes of political unrest. ''We are the ignorant ones," he wrote, sounding the pedagogical note dear to the hearts of his benefactors Hertz and Traun. Claiming to stand on the solid ground of social science, he cited social theorists from Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl to Thomas Carlyle, Walter Besant, and Paul GOhre. He recommended that his audience familiarize themselves with these writings, as well as with the reports of the Senate commission on the dockworkers' strike, the writings of the socialist intellectual Eduard Bernstein, and those of Walter Sombart and Sidney Webb. 123 Classen promoted a vision of urban community based on organized masses of healthy, well-behaved workers striving toward a common goal, but his focus on population and the urban environment progressed toward racial hygiene and eugenics. He characterized modern society as marked by isolation, atomization, and "disrupted, distressed existence." The city produced "uniform teeming masses ofmen"without initiative and without character. Characterized by "dull indifference," "laxity," and "lack of vigor and enterprise," these masses were incapable of reforming themselves. They could not independently create Classen's ideal city dweller, his "worker of the future." Classen had definite ideas about character, where it came from, and its potential for reform. Character was not only a matter of religion or education; it was an innate quality that determined peo1 2 2. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Schopenhaucr as Educator," in Untimfly i\!Ieditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, 1983), 129-30. 1 2 3. W. F. Classen, Grojlstadtheimat: Beobachtungen zur Naturgeschichte des Grojlstadtvolks (Hamburg, 1906), 131-32.

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pie's lives. "All of the people around us, the thousands of swarming children, carry within themselves a definite natural character just as we do," which determined their lives ''with physical necessity. "124 Every human being, Classen believed, possessed an inner core of character, but proletarians suffered from a "moral absence." Since their inner core had not been properly schooled, they remained "inwardly wild." True reform addressed this inner core. "Character" for the older men was lodged in the mind; for Classen it was lodged in the body. The older programs that focused on reforming individual behavior became in Classen's vision a more sinister program of reforming the race. Clearly the kind of cultural reform represented by the People's Home was supported by people of disparate views and could have taken a variety of political directions. The story of Walther Classen as savior to the poor so often told is much too simple. 125 Adding to the confusion is the variety of political groups in Hamburg that claimed the People's Home as part of their tradition. The Social Democrat Johannes Schult claimed it for the labor movement-albeit only after the war-and it is cited as the forerunner of the Adult Education Program ( Volkshochschule) established by the Social Democrats in 1919. 126 Schiefler placed it squarely in the tradition of religiously motivated patriotism-looking mainly toward Wilhelm Hertz-and as part of nineteenth-century social reform, of a piece with older welfare programs. Schiefler himself went farthest in transforming his political thinking through this experience, emerging from his philanthropic work to support democratic sensibilities in the suffrage debates of 1905-6. Contributing to the Hamburger Echo an article entitled "Against the Suffrage Robbery!" Schiefler argued for the enfranchisement of the working class on the basis of his own definition of a properly functioning social order. His vision was both productivist and humanist and combined a deep belief in the rule of law with support for democracy. "A statesman who concerns himself with the inner development of his people needs above all to direct his attention to two things," wrote Schiefler in 1906. "He must try to make the living forces present in the polity useful for the common good and to strengthen those forces that have already worked toward this goal. " 127 To his

mind, Hamburg's working class had done so and should be enfranchised. As "productive forces" they would strengthen the social order. Schiefler be-

lieved that cultural democratization led to political democratization (the former was the necessary first step), albeit slowly and gradually, and his 124. Ibid., 169, 170, 147, 152, 153, 138. 125. See, e.g., Rackow, "HamburgerVolksheim," 46. 126. Schult, Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung; StA HH, ZAS, A 7 53: Hamburger Abendblatt, Apr. 6, 1961. 127. StA HH, 241-2, A 490: Gustav Schiefler, "Gegen den Wahlrechtsraub!" Hamburger Echo, Jan. 29, 1906; emphasis in original.

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views on education, character development, and "productive forces" led him to support universal male suffrage on the local level, a position different from Traun's and certainly far removed from Classen's. With their focus on culture, education, and the development of "character," the reformers' programs worked within a zone of conflict and consensus, of discussion and possible alliances. But conflict was never absent. As time passed, Lichtwark's project of bringing "culture to the people" became for some working-class observers a cosmetic reform that went no further than the right of the "masses" to be instructed in bourgeois cultural traditions. It did not allow a genuine popular culture to develop, they claimed; culture was being defined and disseminated from above. For many liberal reformers the culture of the "masses" was just that, the mass culture of trash and disreputable entertainment purveyed by the market. Liberal reformers understood the workers' "hunger for Bildung' as a sign of their genuine desire to be educated and elevated toward full membership in bourgeois society; for the "cultural experts" in the SPD, the education of the working class was an important weapon in the class struggle. It was along these lines that fissures were revealed-between Volksbildung (on the whole a bourgeois liberal movement for national consolidation) and Arbeiterbildung (working-class associations whose programs ran the gamut from classical education to basic literacy) .128 Between the leadership of the SPD and the liberal Burgertum a dynamic of accommodation and rejection circled around the concept of culture and the liberal value of neutrality and split culture into two concepts, the bourgeois aesthetic and the partypolitical. Lichtwark's movement was able to accommodate these tensions, at least for a while. The virtue of his program lay in its elasticity, and anumber of working-class cultural associations founded during the 18gos furthered aesthetic education in Lichtwark's sense. 129 Between 18go and 1914, aesthetic education was being implemented on several fronts-in schools and museums, working-class cultural organizations, the teachers' association, and throughout Hamburg's emerging modern public culture. u~S. Friedrich Stampfer, "Kunst und Volk," Die Neue Zeit2o, no. 2 (1901-2): 248-51; Heinrich Schulz, "Volksbildung oder Arbeiterbildung?" Die Neue Zeit 22, no. 2 ( 1903-4): 522-29. 129. See the files of the Verein fiir Kunstpflege: StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-5, 2968-5 UA1, 2968-5UA2, 2968-6. For an overview see Grau, "Vereine fiir Kunstpflege"; Wilkending, Volksbildung, covers the integration of the Social Democratic Commission on Children's Literature into the larger bourgeois reform movement in Hamburg.

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{4}

PeoDie's Educators We've lost faith in the ideals of this society with its fine linens and trailing garments. It has taught us to feel disgust at the sort of beauty that exists at the expense of others .... Naturalism-that is our badge of honor! AUGUST STRINDBERG,

"Realism"

On a January evening in 18g8, a group of men and women gathered on the street outside a local pub. They did not seem to be bent on drinking, nor did they want to play cards or smoke. As they crowded into the pub and took seats, it became clear, as they turned toward the speaker, that edification was on the schedule. On this evening in this pub, members of Hamburg's Literary Society-teachers, writers, poets, booksellers, editors, lawyers, and working-class politicians-took up the issue of taste. Defining it as a public phenomenon, they discussed taste as a modern form of social influence and as a new form of national power. They debated differences between Germany and France. They discussed the issue of national culture and national taste and whether such norms had been defined and internalized in Germany. By Germany they meant local and regional Germany-the halls and pubs in cities and towns much like the one where they were sitting. In their eyes such issues did not have only national dimen-

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sions, nor were they merely cultural. "It is not just an artistic matter," they claimed, "but rather a social issue, and most important, an issue that can be seen as central to the future of the German people." Anew national culture was forming in cities and towns all over Germany, as attested by notices of regional theater, music, literature, modern painting, arts and crafts, and architecture published in mass-circulation magazines such as the Kunstwart. Its columns and articles informed readers of the presence and growth of diverse local cultural publics-in literature, music, or around the theater-that contributed to the making of an imperial German culture. As readers of the Kunstwart, the members of the Literary Society chastised their native city for its deficiencies in taste. Hamburg lagged behind in the movement toward a modern, ethical culture, they claimed, and northern Germany was shamefully backward. "The North German," they claimed, "is particularly clumsy and coarse in matters of taste. "1 Discussions of cultural politics by shopkeepers, barkeeps, writers, teachers, and members of the "respectable" working classes gathered in smoky restaurants and rented halls were a prominent feature of Hamburg's public life during the 18gos as Lichtwark's influence reached into all sectors of society. Local newspapers bloomed with notices ofliterary readings, poetry recitations, musical evenings, vaudeville, and theater, of cultural evenings both organized by working people and intended for them. On a given evening men and women could listen to recitations of the poetry of Heinrich Heine or to the music of Franz Lizst, sometimes both together when an amateur soprano sang the "Lorelei." Lichtwark's words inspired members of the old elite and the new professional classes to mobilize BiZdung within a program of social action. They instrumentalized it into a program for educating working-class men and women. For the non bourgeois strata, those for whom the possession of Bildungwas something new, Lichtwark's words had a more immediate appeal, their application a more lasting impact. The ideal of aesthetic education and the freedom it promised motivated autodidacts of all sorts. The ranks of Germany's Social Democratic Party, as of the Liberal Party in England, were filled with self-taught men. 2 The appeal of Bildung and aesthetic education was quite possibly even stronger in Germany. Inspired by Lichtwark's programs, new public cultural organizations came into being, many of them sharply critical of the existing cultural establishment. Under the slogan "Art for the people," lower-middle-class and working-class men and women voiced their frustration with cultural institutions that were closed to them and resistant to new ideas. "How Can the Germans Be Made into a Cultured Public?" 1. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 4274: "Wie macht man die Deutschen zu einem Kunstpublikum?" Hamlntrgischer Correspondent, Jan. 23, 18g8. 2. See Joyce, Democratic Subjects.

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queried members of the Literary Society on that January evening, signaling by their choice of title and the audience they addressed their claim, audacious to some, that the nonbourgeois classes were that new public in formation. Their new reading societies and those for theater and music became how-to manuals. They admonished their members to sit quietly in their seats, take off their hats in the theater, and prepare diligently for scheduled lectures. Through their rules and the commitment associations expected from their members, they demonstrated the cultural norms that would create the new public. By entering the hall, buying a ticket, listening to the lecture, and participating in the discussion, participants took part in an unfolding set of rituals that defined for them what it meant to be "civilized" and "cultured." Bildungstood at the center of these new associations that enshrined the principle of criticism and highlighted the presence of writers who attacked the cultural establishment and its conservative repertoire. Criticism was the lifeblood of the new groups as they defined themselves in opposition to existing institutions and sought to challenge established forms of elite cultural authority. The commercialization of culture, which began in earnest in the 188os, unleashed this democratizing effect and made this new development possible. A good deal has been written on the commercialization of culture in imperial Germany, much of it using the Frankfurt School's analysis of "mass culture." But the effect of the introduction of new forms of commercial culture-most notably the new availability of books and reading materials in an inexpensive format -was not uniform. 3 Commercialization did not simply cheapen forms of high culture or corrupt the ideal of Bildung, as conservatives would have it. Nor did it immediately produce modern and individualistic forms of consumption or create an urban commercial culture prefiguring the present, as others have described. Rather, the effect was an interesting combination of the two. Copious commentary on commercial culture at the turn of the century, much of it negative, has often obscured what people did with the products and how they used the opportunities. The story of the decline of Bildung and the rise of a commercial mass culture overlooks the fact that the two fitted together, and did so in ways that eroded older forms of social and cultural authority. Hamburg's elite, its professional middle classes, 3· On commercial literature and workers' culture see Dieter Langewiesche and Klaus Schonhoven, "Arbeiterbibliotheken und Arbeiterlektiire im Wilhelminischen Deutschland," Archiv fur Sozialgeschichte 16 ( 1976): 135-204; Langewiesche, "Arbeiterbildung in Deutschland und Osterreich: Konzeption, Praxis und Funktionen," in Arbeiter im Industrialisierungsprozess, ed. Werner Conze and Ulrich Engelhardt (Stuttgart, 1979), 439-64; Langewiesche, "'Volksbildung"'; Rob Burns, ed., German Cultural Studies (Oxford, 1995), 9-52. Berget a!., Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgechichte, outlines the technical developments that underlay the commercialization process.

Provincial Modernity

and its lower middle and working classes reacted in distinctive ways to the process, some wishing to shore up their authority, others seeing the opportunity to lay siege to it. But all were caught up in a larger process of democratization that destabilized the ground on which they stood. By 18go, in a city such as Hamburg, democratization through association was happening across the board, as new professional, cultural, and political organizations mushroomed out of the ground and gathered members. The people who wanted to shake up the status quo did not always have a political goal in mind, but in general the formation of the new groups sounded a vociferous desire for change. Some associations formed more quietly, but their impact was still felt. When the Antisocialist Law was lifted in 18go, workers' educational associations appeared in several sectors of the city. These associations picked up the tradition of the Workers' Educational Association of 1845, which advanced a plan for the political empowerment of working men through education and self-improvement. These ideals linked the fledgling labor movement with popular liberalism at mid-century-many members of the Educational Association of 1845 supported the progressive Constitutional Assembly of 1848. 4 The new associations in the 18gos also gravitated toward the labor movement, but the SPD, engaged in rebuilding its base after twelve years of repression and with limited resources to combat the organized strength of the shipbuilders, was cold to supporting uncoordinated educational measures. When requests were made, it refused its financial support. Consequently, after a promising start, several associations withered and died. 5 The Hamburg SPD's lack of a coherent educational and cultural policy (which would be instituted fifteen years later at the Party Congress of 1go6) opened up opportunities in the 18gos for new cultural organizations that were not strongly politically aligned. 6 It created the possibility for Lichtwark's movement, with its cross-class membership and its language of cultural politics. These new groups supported a variety of cultural activities and drew their audience out of the ranks of the culturally "excluded," which in Hamburg included men and women from across the lower middle and working classes. In this milieu Lichtwark's words had their strongest effect. Some participants in the new associations, such as the teacher and Heimatwriter Otto Ernst, explicitly connected the unfolding cultural struggle with hopes for political change. Opening the doors of cultural institutions to the general public, he claimed, sent out the important message that excluded groups had the right to social participation. "In front of the trea4- Breuilly and Sachse, Joachim Friedrich Martens; Hurd, Public Spheres. 5· See StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2493-9 and V 574· 6. Grau, "Vereine fur Kunstpflege," 24.

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People's Educators sure houses of our society gather the excluded ... [the] masses who want to share in the goods designated only for the privileged few." The time had come, Ernst wrote, for enlightened individuals to recognize the absurdity ofkeeping workers impoverished and uncultured in an effort to keep them obedient. Ernst championed the rights of "the people" to participate in national and local cultural life and attacked the elitist basis of municipal theaters, concert halls, and reading associations that barred the laboring population with high prices and exclusionary admissions policies. He put his energy into creating counterassociations, in the process helping to generate a populist cultural sphere. "There is no easier way to advance the masses than by giving them access to the pleasure of cultural treasures," Ernst claimed, "and we teachers stand in the front line to open these treasure houses called libraries, museums, concert halls, and theaters." 7 Mter 18go elite associations, such as the Association for Art and Science, found themselves challenged by new associations with large memberships and a clear sense of purpose. Such a group was the Literary Society, which members of the Association for Art and Science derided as plebeian. In their opinion, such a group, disproportionately .Jewish and female to boot, was by definition incapable of exercising proper judgment on issues of public cultural importance. These elites did not lack invective, but time was not on their side. The Association of Art and Science became increasingly irrelevant to Hamburg's public culture, a victim of its exclusivity, while the Literary Society had Soo members in the weeks after its first meeting. While the Literary Society offered serious readings and lectures, the Association of Art and Science offered activities that even its own members found somewhat silly, such as a weekend traipsing through the woods outside of Hamburg in search of Bismarck, who was rumored to be picnicking there. 8 Mter a few months the Literary Society had over a thousand members, something the Association of Art and Science could only dream of. The association continued to entertain its elite members, but its claim that it spoke for "cultured" Hamburg was becoming increasingly hollow. This mantle was passing to the Literary Society, which battled for recognition ever attuned to the fact that many of its members had little formal education. As Schiefler admitted, the society was not from "society." It was not "fine manners" to belong. Consequently, few members of Hamburg's bourgeoisie did so. Schiefler served as the society's secretary and edited its journal, but he was one of the few professionals to actually belong to the group rather than support it from a distance. It drew its main membership from Hamburg's lower middle and working classes. Its edi7· Otto Ernst (0. E. Schmidt), "Was soil unci kann die Schulc fiir die kiinstlcrische Erziehung thun'" in Lehrervereinigung, Versuche undErgebnisse, 10. 8. Vercin fur Kunst und Wissenschaft, Gedenkbliitter zur Feier (Hamburg, 1893).

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tors presided over small trade union newspapers; its teachers taught the children of the poor in the public schools. This chapter analyzes the emergence of this new public, its challenge to the cultural establishment and its support for oppositional culture, both modernist and regional. It examines particular groups of participants, namely Heimat writers and elementary school teachers who played an important role in the process. Examining two organizations in detail-the Literary Society and the People's Theater, which was begun by members of the Literary Society-it analyzes how these new associations transformed older models of sociability and supported new forms of culture. The Literary Society, for example, modeled itself on the reading societies of the Enlightenment but with one major difference. While the older associations were reserved for a local elite, the Literary Society welcomed all who had a serious interest in literature, women as well as men. 9 The new associations wanted to democratize the title of "educated man" and its mantle of cultural authority. Writers and editors such as Franz Laufkotter and Emil Krause, both former elementary school teachers turned Social Democratic politicians, were the new men of this new public sphere. A whole new group of intellectuals -including writers and editors of small newspapers and organizers of workers' educational associations-participated in a project they termed "social-pedagogical work" with important "educational tasks." 10 The most important group in this sense were Hamburg's elementary school teachersY Carl Gotze, Friedrich von Borstel, William Lottig, Heinrich Wolgast, and C. A. Hellmann translated Lichtwark's ideas into practical work in the schools, in Social Democratic educational associations ( Bildungsvereine), and in new pedagogical associations such as the Teachers for Aesthetic Education, founded in t8g6. They profoundly influenced the transformation of Hamburg's public culture, a fact that was not lost on Lichtwark. He emphasized repeatedly to his audiences of elites and professionals the necessity of forming alliances with the teachers in order to create the largest possible audience for cultural programs. They were the conduit to Hamburg's working classes, and Lichtwark never lost sight of this fact. While the teachers bypassed older forms of exclusion, however, others remained entrenched. Despite their claims to democracy and openness, the new societies replicated gender exclusions more than they effectively g. The chairman of the Literary Society, Leon Goldschmidt, compared his society with the Hamburger literarischen Lesegesellschaft of I 790. See Goldschmidt, Die litterarische Gesellschaft zu Hamburg (Hamburg, I go I), I o. I o. Georg Clasen, "Hamburger Volksbildungsarbeit," Die Tat. Monatsschrift for die Zukunft deutscher Kultur; Apriligq, I-2. II. StA HH, 6I4-I I 39-I: Koster's notes emphasized the work of elementary school teachers for the movement.

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People's Educators challenged them. Open as the Literary Society was to new forms of literature, women's literature was a source of anxiety; some of its prominent male members identified writing by women with the worst excesses of commercial literature. The extensive participation of women at the society's meetings-sitting mainly in the audience-was a source of dismay to many male organizers. 12 The People's Theater, which was attacked for its open affiliation with the labor movement, achieved additional notoriety by flouting gender norms. The male elementary school teachers, the most active members of both groups, were often joined by their female colleagues (who accounted for the majority of teachers in the city), but these women are seldom mentioned in recorded proceedings, since many were allowed to play only supporting roles at public events. The Literary Society

In 1891 the Literary Society created itself in the image of an Enlightenment reading society, the Lesegesellschaft of 1790, with one small difference: it was open to all members of the public. 13 Founded by five male intellectuals-two teachers, an editor, a writer, and a bookseller-it tried to stimulate public interest in contemporary literature and promote the "free exchange of opinions" on topics from literature to politics. Otto Ernst and his friend Jakob Loewenberg advertised the founding of the group in the newspapers and invited interested participants to attend its first meeting, expecting a modest but respectable turnout. On September 24, 18g1, more than two hundred people pressed into the rented hall, signed subscription lists, and filled the room with noise. This crowd turned a routine meeting into an event and signaled the arrival of a new, more diverse, and rowdier audience for cultural activities. The sight of teachers and local writers commandeering the podium was exciting, as testimony from the poet Detlev von Liliencron attested, as was the description of the group's pedagogical goals. Putting forward their version of the aesthetic theory of Friedrich Schiller, Ernst and Loewen berg claimed that public discussions of literature had social value. Readings of literature and poetry would uplift, educate, and empower participants by teaching them to exercise their reason and their aesthetic sense and by creating them as "free individuals." The zeal of the autodidact was a powerful force. Instant success crowned the effort as in the following weeks hundreds of people paid dues and became members. 14 On the heels of its spectacular opening, the group launched a regular 12. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 4274: Hamburger Nachrichten, Feb. 3, 1892. 13. Goldschmidt, Litterarische Gesellschaft, 1 o-11. 14. Ibid., 6-H. Loewenberg wrote positively that the society and its new board had jewish members. Ernst Loewenberg, 'Jakob Loewenberg: Excerpts from His Diaries and Letters," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 15 ( 1970): 183-209.

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program of public readings and lectures. 15 They rented halls and invited speakers from Berlin and Munich to lecture on modern literature, specifically literary naturalism, to read from their works, or to speak on literature's social role. Local writers and teachers lectured, read their poems and prose, and gave dramatic recitations of literary and poetic works (a form of artistic performance that was widely admired then but has since vanished). Readings alternated with musical numbers and dramatic tableaux, as the society sought to sponsor educational evenings that were also entertaining. This was, at times, a tricky point, for the exact location of the line between edification and tawdry entertainment was not too clear in anyone's mind. That Goethe belonged on one side and circus entertainment on the other was obvious-but where did one place frequently bawdy local humor, the frivolity of a Bunter Abend (variety program), or, for that matter, the racier parts of Shakespeare or Goethe himself? Consequently, evenings of Low German humor that looked decidedly low alternated with readings from classical poets in a mix of cultural offerings that at times mimicked the diversity of the music hall. The society proudly opened itself up to members of all sorts, advertising its distance from the cultural establishment by its embrace of the excluded, both socially (in its audience) and culturally (in its support for oppositional forms of literature). It pointed to its democratic intentions, and the presence of women on the steering committee and as lecturers, performers (reciting, singing, or playing dramatic roles), and authors was progressive for the times. It could be measured by the number of unfavorable comments that the level offemale participation drew from more established and exclusive associations. The radical stance of the group toward modern literature-its promotion of naturalism, the new poetry of Liliencron and the Symbolist poet Richard Dehmel, and regional dialect (Low German or Plattdeutsch) authors-corresponded to their more open stance toward the cultural participation of minority groups of all sorts. It was supported by a group of Jewish intellectuals led by Jakob Loewen berg and including mainly teachers and booksellers, who sat on its steering committee and filled seats in the audience. Who could become an author and what kind of writing constituted literature worthy of public attention were issues for discussion rather than settled matters. "A literary society that essentially represents a modern spirit" was the assessment of the writer Bruno Wille, a member of Berlin's Social Democratic People's Theater, after observing Hamburg's new Literary Society.l6 Wille came to Hamburg several times, as did Michael Georg Conrad, the editor of Die Gesellschaft, the Munich journal that instigated the literary 15. See StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 4274 and the articles contained therein. 16. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 4274: police report (Graumann), Apr. 28, 18g8.

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experiments of both naturalism and Heimatart in Germany. Other leaders of modernist culture lent the Hamburg society their authority. Members of the Friedrichshagen Poets' Society-Johannes Schlaf and Gerhardt Hauptmann-traveled from Berlin to Hamburg, where they provided inspiration for the society's members as well as targets for surveillance by Hamburg's police. Members of the Social Democratic People's Theater in Berlin, founded in 18go and supported by Wille and Hauptmann, came to Hamburg to support a similar program of literary naturalism and political criticism. From Berlin to Munich to Hamburg poets, playwrights, and editors traveled, creating national networks of publishing, literary, and theatrical production and the dissemination of news that would sustain the first wave of modernist culture in Germany. The social realism of the naturalist painters and writers was not supported by the elite but was rather the creation of expanded local publics of artists and writers knitted together through print and travel into national and international communities. A playwright such as Hermann Sudermann could lecture in Berlin, read from his new play in Hamburg, and see it performed in Munich. The Literary Society enthusiastically supported the internationalism of the movement and claimed the new aesthetic as an important step in creating a new society. Large crowds supported this view and routinely assembled at the meetings of the Literary Society to listen to the work of Gerhart Hauptmann or the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (who was universally revered), to hear lectures from the Munich playwright Hermann Sudermann, or to hear him read from his new work, The Battle of the Butterflies. Lectures alternated with readings; the high moral seriousness of topics such as "Literary Education and Creation of the People [ Volksmassen]" or "Morality and the Theater" alternated with evenings devoted to Low German literature, with its populist humor and critical edge. An ideology of individual and social liberation mediated through art and criticism motivated the leaders of the society, who not only lectured on it but also attempted to live it. Educational and technical developments of the period after 185o-more and better schools, the beginnings of a mass reading public, an increase in journalism-had made such liberation possible for people of all political persuasions, from Social Democrats to volkisch nationalists. Teachers, such as Ernst and Loewen berg, rubbed elbows with many working-class intellectuals, with whom they shared anumber of similarities(many of Hamburg's elementary school teachers became Social Democrats in 1918, when they were allowed to join political parties). As petty intellectuals, they were characterized by both a feeling of social inferiority and a sense of cultural mission. 17 They were "climbers" in the clas17. The following information is from the excellent article by Klaas Jarchow, "Lebenssituationen und literarische Situation en bei Detlev von Liliencron, Gustav Frensscn und Gorch Fock, "' in "Heil uber Dir Hammonia, "Sg-1 o8.

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Provincial Modernity sic sense of the word. They were provincials and they were writers. Most were born outside ofHamburg as the sons of village artisans and first came to the city as adults. The educational qualifications granted by the teachers' training seminar in Hamburg elevated their social standing. Back home as "educated men" they were something special. Many were autodidacts with an intense belief in the possibility of social advancement through education, schooling themselves at home and in private. The democratization of cultural and political life opened up chances for such men, particularly for men who could write. With the commercialization of literature, the possibility of becoming an author became available to greater numbers of people. 'The special feature of the opening up of the market in literature," wrote the literary historian Klaas Jarchow, was that it created an open situation where entrance was not governed by traditional educational qualifications. Even a bankrupt bourgeois, the principal persona non grata of bourgeois society, could resuscitate his living by selling his writing. 18 "For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers," wrote Walter Benjamin. "This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers-at first, occasional ones. "19 Many of the teachers and new intellectuals began by publishing in nonliterary venues, such as trade union newspapers and those of special-interest groups, where they assumed positions as "experts" vis-a-vis their working-class audiences. They made their living and won their sense of social authority by writing and lecturing, in the process constructing their identities as artists, writers, and experts. Their lives read like the novels of individual development (Bildungsromane) that they recommended as instructive reading for their working-class audiences. Many wrote autobiographical novels themselves, Bildung~romaneofthe small and unimportant, which celebrated the universalizing civilizing force of Bildungas it carried them from village to city, from lives framed by the strictures of artisanal work to that of "educated men."~ 0 The writer and working-class activist and politician Franz Laufkotter is a good example of this type of intellectual. Born in 1857 in Altenbecken, on the border between Hanover and Westphalia, he attended a Catholic teachers' college and became a schoolteacher. In 188o he moved to Hamburg, where he taught at St. Michael's parochial school before moving to 18. Ibid., g8. 19. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1g6g), 231-32. 20. Jarchow also makes this point in "Lebenssituationen." For an example see Jakob Loewen berg, A us zwei Qudlm: Die Geschichte eines deutschen Juden (Berlin, 1919).

People's Educators

the factory school of the Krupp steelworks in Essen. Fired from Krupp when he began to lecture to workers' educational groups, he returned to Hamburg as a freelance writer and made his living by writing articles on Bildung and social policy for small trade union newspapers. An early advocate of the working-class consumer cooperative movement, Laufkotter worked as the business manager of a bakery at a cooperative from 1886 until18g2, when it went bankrupt. 21 With the loss of his job, Laufkotter turned to a full-time career as a writer and lecturer. He gave lectures at the Society for Ethical Culture ("Class Conflict and Ethics"), at the Dockworkers' Union ("Social Policy and the Struggle for Existence"), at the National Social Association, and at the United Workers' Educational Associations. The Hamburger Echo mentioned that Laufkotter was well known for his lectures and courses in working-class educational associations. 22 He lectured at the Sailors' Union, taught political economy at the Social Democratic Association in Wandsbek, and lectured on topics ranging from medieval history to Marxist theory. 23 He also was a familiar lecturer at the People's Home, where he covered such topics as "Class Conflict and Social Ethics." As the Rothenburgsort 7Pitung reported, Laufkotter "understood how to discuss current social problems in a simple, yet clear and penetrating way." 24 Writing under the pen name Brutus, he composed articles on a range of topics for such newspapers as the Fachzeitung for Schneider, Der Arbeiter: Organ fiir siimmtliche Bau- und gewerblichen Hiilfsarbeiter Deutschlands, Der Zimmerer, the Holzarbeiterzeitung, and the Biicker-Zeitung. Many of these articles

focused on political and economic themes of importance to his workingclass readership. For Der Arbeiter he wrote articles on wages and contracts; in Der Zimmerer he wrote on the worker as consumer. 25 By the time of his death in 1925, Laufkotter was a Social Democratic representative in Parliament and was known throughout Germany from his many lecture tours and his work for party and trade union newspapers. Fittingly, he died on a train on his way to a speaking engagement, felled by a stroke. Laufkotter's female counterpart was Helma Steinbach, whose belief in "art for the people" made her into a force behind the People's Theater movement. Steinbach's level of activity for the Social Democratic Party rivaled Laufkotter's, and she was known for her fine speeches and gift for recitation. Joining the party during the period of the Antisocialist Law, she organized Hamburg's laundresses and represented the ironers' union at 21. StA HH, ZAS, 761: "Todesanzeige for Franz Laufkotter," Hamburger Echo, Nov. 16, 1925. 22. StAHH, 331-3, PP, S 2029, vol. 2: Hambwger Echo, Mar. 29 and Apr. 21, 1901, and Oct. 7, 1906; Hafenarbeiter,June 1, 1902. 23. Ibid., Hamburger Echo, Aug. 6, 1908, and jan. 3, 1909. 24. Ibid., Rothenburgsort Zeitnng, Feb. 28, 1908, and vol. 3: Rothenburgsort Zeitnng Jan. 7, 1910. 25. Ibid., vol. 2: Der Arbeiter, Jan. 5, Feb. 23, and june 28, 1901; Der Zimmerer, Feb. 22, 1902.

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the first Congress of Free Trade Unions in 1892. Like many of Hamburg's Social Democratic activists, she joined the cooperative movement after the dockworkers' strike of 18g6 and co-founded the SPD cooperative "Production" in 18gg. 26 Stein bach's presence at party meetings was invaluable, as she was such an effective speaker that even at a listless rural party meeting in the village ofTondern, the papers reported, her speech "Our Weapons in the Class Struggle" won fifteen new party members. 27 She was born in 1847 to a small businessman's family in Hamburg, and her dismal economic future was sealed by her father's failure as a broker. Forced to learn a trade, she became a laundress, specifically a skilled ironer and presser. Steinbach achieved her adult notoriety as a speaker on political and cultural topics, and she flourished in the more open situation of the 18gos. She lectured at numerous clubs, and her list of interests was long and impressive, ranging from the Freethinkers Society to the Association to Promote Natural Healing. Her life choices showed her lack of concern for convention, as did her fiery speeches and her independence. Divorced at age twenty-eight, she took up with the Social Democratic politician Adolf von Elm, several years her junior, and counseled young girls not to marry. Her political awakening began during her work as a seamstress for private clients, undertaken after her divorce, and as a governess in the villas of the wealthy in Harvestehude, another type of occasional work. When the organization of women in Hamburg's trade unions was being debated in 1891, she gave numerous speeches and was paid for her efforts. It was her skill as a speaker and as an organizer that brought her success. The Hamburg police described her as a "radical Social Democrat [and] a dangerous political and trade union agitator." One of her key topics was the provision of "good art" for the working classes in place of commercialized Tingeltangel. To promote this cause she became a leader of the People's Theater. 28 The list of new intellectuals and organizers can be extended. The fisherman's son Johann Kinau, born in a fishing village on the island of Finkenwerder, across the Elbe from Hamburg, had an unfortunate susceptibility to seasickness, which barred him from following his father's career.29 Kinau was a gifted student and took advantage of the island's new 26. StA HH, HS, 731-1,2025: Kirsten Hakke, "Helma Stcinbach-Eine Reformistin in der Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung zur Zeit des Kaiserreichs," master's thesis, Univcrsitat Hamburg, 1992; StAHR, 331-3, PP, S 2029, vol. 2: Hamburger Echo, Apr. 16, 191 2; StA HH, ZAS, A 768: HamburgerFremdenblatt,Juiy 9, 1918. 27. StA HH, 331-3, PI', S 2029, vol. 2: Hamburger Echo, Sept. 13, 1905. 28. Quoted in Hakke, "Helma Steinbach," 24-25. 29.]archow, "Lcbenssituationen"; Klaas Jarchow, "'Soweit, was Johann Kinau betrifft: Im ubrigen bin ich Gorch Fock': Eine Sozioanalysc," in "Liebe, die im Abgrund Anker wirft": Autoren und literarisches Feld im Hamburg des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Inge Stephan and Hans-Gerd Winter (Hamburg, 1989), 83-110.

PeojJle:5 Educators

public library to supplement what he learned at the public school. Unable to become a fisherman (and without much desire to do so, either), he left Finkenwerder, became an office worker, and began to write. In 1904 he moved to Hamburg and published dialect plays and novels in High German. In his journey from petty white-collar worker to author he also changed his name. The fisherman's son and nondescript office worker Johann Kin au became the muscular and manly Gorch Fock, a popular writer of regional literature. Fock was joined by the young Fritz Stavenhagen, hailed as the "Low German Shakespeare," by the writer Ilse Frapan, whose Hamburg Stories were praised as representative of literary naturalism, and by Otto Ernst and Jakob Loewen berg. Poets from the everyday, they became poets of the everyday, writing and recommending stories emphasizing the detailed rendering of everyday life and the individuality of places, a trait of both regional art (Heimatkunst) and the modern naturalist style. 30 Loewenberg, the son ofaJewish peddler, came from the village ofNiederntudorf, near Paderborn. After attending the Jewish Teachers' Training College in Munster at the age of fourteen, he left Niederntudorf to become a teacher, author, pedagogical activist, and poet. He came to Hamburg in 1886 to work at the Realschule der reformierten Gemeinde in St. Pauli after his quest for employment elsewhere in Germany foundered on the rocks of anti-Semitism. 31 In Hamburg he stood at the center of several young .Jewish intellectuals and authors-the schoolteacher and pedagogical reformer Meier Spanier and the bookseller Leon Goldschmidt, who helped found and run the Literary Society. In the writings of these new intellectuals the everyday became art and the life of the common people became the stuff of dramatic allegory. The People's Theater likewise transformed everyday themes into the subject matter of melodramatic theater. For Gustav Schiefler, the activities of these new intellectuals were evidence of the growing importance of culture and spiritual concerns (Geist) in public life, which he celebrated as "the beginning of a new era," the "bright light of an unfolding new world, a world of strengthened spiritual and aesthetic interests."32 The growing interest in popular education at the turn of the century created opportunities for such intellectuals throughout the empire, particularly for teachers. "Through my career I stand closer to those social strata to which the People's Home particularly is dedicated," claimed the elementary school teacher Friedrich von Borstel. 33 Their claims to Bildung were claims to social authority, and they styled themselves as a "new type 30. Erika jenny, Die Heimatkunstbewegung: Ein Beitrag zur neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte (Basel, 1934), 22. 31. Loewen berg, ':Jakob Loewen berg," 183-209. 32. Schieflcr, HamlmrgischeKulturaufgrzbPn, 6, 13-14. 33· Borstel, "Zur gemeinsamen Frage," 6.

127

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of educator. "34 In the new educational associations, wrote the literary historian Rudolf Schenda, "a field of activity was created for German teachers that was eminently suited to give this career group, which was still not integrated into the dominant classes, a new feeling of self-worth .... They could identifY themselves as educators of the nation through their work in popular education. "35 Bildung became their path to financial selfsufficiency, to social mobility, and to a heightened sense of self-esteem. Beginning in the 188os, Hamburg's elementary school teachers became increasingly active as public lecturers on art, history, literature, and culture. They lectured at the People's Home, at the Literary Society, in the Teachers' Association, and at the People's Theater. In working-class educational societies they encouraged their audiences to undertake to educate themselves and recommended artworks to look at and books to read. They read and recited in "people's educational evenings" at the Literary Society and generally established themselves as popular authorities on art and literature. As cultural experts they gave advice on proper reading material and aesthetic home furnishings. 36 They stood at the podium rather than sitting in the audience. Rather than singing in the choir, they were its leaders.37 Under their influence, the focus of the Literary Society gradually 34· Carl Gotze, "Gustav Schiefler-dem Burger," Der Kreis: Zeitschrift for kiinstlerische Kultur 4, no. 12 (December 1927): 679. 35· Schenda, Lesestoffe der Kleinen Leute, 82-83. 36. As Borstel wrote, elementary school teachers were perfectly positioned to be people's educators, given their social place between the Gebildete and the Volk. "Volksbildungsbestrebungen und Lehrerschaft," Jahresbericht der Gesellschaft der Freunde (Igoo-Igoi), g. Many teachers were active on several fronts. Borstel worked for the Hamburg Home Library, the Commission for Children's Literature, and the People's Home. William Lottig was active in the Commission for Children's Literature, the People's Theater, the Association for Art Appreciation, and the People's Home. On Lottig, see Grau, "Vereine fUr Kunstpflege," and his police file in StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 8gg7, which documents his participation as a lecturer for educational societies friendly to the SPD. See also Lottig, "Aus einer Bekenntnisschrift," Literarische Gesellschaft, 1917,4-10,46-52, 93-99· 37· They have been seen as a reactionary influence on the Social Democratic educational associations, directing them on a reformist path of accommodation and inculcating bourgeois values. Grau, "Vereine fUr Kunstpflege," and StA HH, HS, 731-1, 975: Wiebke Lohmann, "SPD, Freie Gewerkschaften und sozialistische Arbeiterbildung: Zur Organisation und Tatigkeit der Arbeiterbildungsvereine in Hamburg vom En de 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges," Universitat Hamburg, 1978, address this point. The Hamburg teachers, however, were known as radicals for their activities in Social Democratic educational associations, their stand on the Einheitsschule, and their stance on "neutrality" as a standard for judging literature. On the Social Democratic politics of the Hamburg teachers see Wilkending, Volksbildung und Piidagogik; Johannes Tews, A us Arbeit und Leben: Erinnerungen und Riickblicke (Berlin, 1921); Emil Krause, "Die hamburger Volksschullehrer im Kampfe gegen die Reaktion," Die neue Zeit 23, no. 2 ( 1904-5): 736-37, and "Noch einmal der Kampf der hamburger Volksschullehrer gegen die Reaktion," Die neue Zeit 24, no. 1 ( 1905-6): 595-97.

People's Educators

shifted, as a fiercely defended naturalist ideology of political and cultural liberation through art began to be overtaken by the pedagogical mission lying just below its surface. As the society became better established, the teachers began to lecture more frequently not just on literature but on its proper usc. In 18g8 the Literary Society began offering "people's educational evenings," thereby initiating a new trend in public entertainment. 38 These were literary readings, accompanied by recitations and singing, meant for the edification of hundreds and directed primarily at workingclass audiences. Tickets were distributed through the Social Democratic Party. 39 The "educational evenings" were the invention of Leon Goldschmidt, a Jewish bookseller from Lower Franconia, whose family had moved to Hamburg when he was small. As a bookseller, Goldschmidt promoted regional and local authors and became one of Hamburg's largest publishers of North German Heimat literature. In 1894 he purchased the bookstore of M. Glogau Jr. and expanded its business in used books by bringing in new authors and setting up a publishing house. He published the northern, primarily Hamburg, authors Gorch Fock, Fritz Hoi, Fritz Stavenhagen, Jakob Loewenberg, Otto Ernst, and Carl Mueller-Rastatt. Goldschmidt's conversion to the Low German cultural universe was so complete that, as the Hamburgische Correspondent claimed, he "had entered into the spirit of Low German feeling and experience so completely that as a publisher he became one of the strongest supporters of young Low German writers." 40 As chairman of the Literary Society from tgoo to 1910, Goldschmidt transformed the group by strengthening its pedagogical direction. He liked to draw attention to the large crowds at the "people's educational evenings"-the tumult and hubbub of the audience before the speaker's appearance and the satisfYing hush after the speaker had mounted the platform. Both represented his ideals: the vitality of popular participation and the discipline exercised by a "cultured" audience. Police reports testified to the popularity of this public entertainment. Hamburg's political police routinely sent officers to report on the society's proceedings, and in their documents one sees that audiences of 300 to 400 to a whopping 1,500 for a reading of Hermann Sudermann's Battle of the Butterflies were routine. 41 38. According to Grau, this project was "an initial success," with audiences of around 1,500 workers: "Vereinc fiir Kunstpflege," 14. 39· Goldschmidt, Littemrische Gesellschafl, 53-61; StAHR, 331-3, PP, S 4274: police reports, Mar. 22 and Apr. 2S, 1S98, and Oct. 21, 1SCJCJ, which record audiences of 1,200, 180, and 8oo, respectively. 40. StA HH, ZAS, A 757: Hamburgerischer Correspondent, Feb. 28, 1919, and Jan. 2, 1931. 41. Police surveillance of public gatherings was routine in Hamburg before 1914. Even the elite men's debating club, the 1894 Club, had a file.

129

Litterarischer

'olks- Into Fhal tun gsab and veranstaltet von der

Lltterarlschen Gesellscllaft zu Bam~vg am Montag, d. 21. Marz 1898 bei TUtge. o

Programm. L 1'ortraar des Herrn IW. J. Loewenberg:

Beeltatlonen:

Uhland, eln Volksdlchter.

Ludwig Uhland : Taillefer Klein Roland Das Schlo.li am :Meer Der wei.lie Hirsch

J Herr Otto Ernst.

D. Marie von Elmer- Eschenbach: Krambambuli, Erzahlung . . Herr EmU MUan. Paul Heyse: Die Mutter des Siegers } Frau Fr. Hebbel: Ba.llade vom Heideknaben Marie MeloHdt.

III. Holger Draehmann: De Geschichte vun } denn Krabbenfischer. Ins Plattiibertragen von Otto Ji.Jrnst

Herr Otto Brnst.

deutsch~>

Der Uberschuli der Vcranstaltung fiillt der Eimsbllttler

Volks-Lesehalle zn.

Literary Society program for a "people's educational evening," 18g8 (courtesy of Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 331-3, PP, S 4274)

People's Educators

The large numbers of participants at the Literary Society's functions caused initial police concern, but as the crowds were well behaved and the subject matter was edifYing, the meetings did not arouse undue suspicion. In fact, as time passed, the success of the Literary Society appeared to cause more consternation to its own members. Success, while enjoyed, also aroused suspicion that it might be an indication of lowered standards, a sign that the schoolhouse was treading perilously close to the fairground. The fear that the society was seen to be offering not much more than idealized entertainment, pulp dressed up as literature, obsessed its members. 'The rumor is going around that the Literary [Society] at Tuetge's offers a lot of good, stimulating, educational and edifYing things for cheap prices and without a lot of obstacles," reported the Hamburger Fremdenblatt. "As a lecturer can appear repeatedly only if he speaks honestly and to the people, and no literary cream puffs but rather plain refreshing food is expected [by the audience], the steering committee of the Literary Society often finds its halls easily filled. "42 One needed to raise the masses into a public, not pander to their worst tendencies. Indulging the lowest tastes of the audience ruined one's chance to create a Volkspublikum, claimed one observer, using a hybrid term that captured the distance to be traversed before the Volk became a Publikum. At the core of their conundrum was what they saw as literature's dual capacity. It had the power to uplift and to destroy. The mass production of literature exacerbated the problem and strengthened the need for vigilance and high standards. One lecturer put his finger on the delicate intersection of opportunity and danger, the fine line between healthy excitement and anxiety. Speaking of the theater, which had a similar dual function, he mused that "the theater has the capacity to exercise moral influence on the hearts and souls of men, but ... also noxious and harmful seeds [schiidliche Keime] can be planted in the hearts of men by the theater. "43 The line needed to be policed, as it threatened to become blurred. On more than one occasion members discussed how the public should be addressed and the right mix of education and entertainment that they should use. They worked themselves into a lather on these issues. The public's interest should be caught, but its tastes should also be refined. The pitch of the lectures, their difficulty and length became matters of strategic importance. They should be witty and interesting, instructive and pleasurably stimulating. The tone aimed for was decidedly middle of the road-not too easy yet not too hard, popular yet not common, amusing but also educational. According to one participant, the society's success could be boiled down to the formula of Sophocles followed by jokes. 44 42. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 4274: Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Mar. 23, 1902. 43· Ibid., Hamburger Nachrichten, Feb. 17, 1892. 44· Ibid., General-Anzeiger,Jan. 22, 1904.

Provincial Modernity

"Certainly the performances needed and ought to serve not only as entertainment for the participants," wrote one observer, although amusement was a good thing, as it stimulated the mind and led to higher pursuits; "they should challenge [the audience] and further educate them by captivating them. "45 With time the teachers' interest in the effects of commercial culture began to overtake other concerns. Their efforts to democratize Bildung by printing books, opening museums, and staging concerts of Bach and Beethoven had as their underside a wholesale rejection of mass cultureadventure and detective stories, kitschy melodramas, the honky-tonk and alcoholic haze of music halls. 46 The Literary Society could make common cause with the Social Democratic Party on this point, and perhaps for this reason the party willingly distributed tickets to the society's functions. The SPD was to run its own campaigns against mass culture (Schund:)in the years before the war, and on this point liberal reformers and Social Democrats understood each other perfectly. Agreement on the educational influence of art and the detrimental effects of Schund brought together left liberals with the reformist wing of the SPD. Interestingly, in the Literary Society kitschy melodrama was easily and often equated with women's writing. Otto Ernst used the opportunity provided by a lecture he gave on literature for the family to attack the popular author Nataly von Eschstruch, whose novels were serialized in the family journal Die Gartenlaube. Eschstruch was arguably one of the most popular authors in imperial Germany, and Ernst drew a straight line between her commercial success, her femininity, her writing, and what he saw as the detrimental effects of reading her novels. He ridiculed her work in terms that slid from a description of her personal character to a description of Schund. The faults of each were the same. He warned the audience against reading works by women who suffered from delusions, wrote unrealistic plots, and had a weak command of grammar. Outlining the "countless weaknesses" in her novel, he criticized its "frivolity" and "recklessness." Her lack of control as an author was mirrored in her characters, who Ernst claimed lacked moral control. Eschstruch did not educate her public of readers, he claimed, but dangerously seduced them. Her writing was pulp of the worst sort. One "cannot protect young people enough against such literature," Ernst proclaimed. "It is inconceivable that in the catalogs of many public libraries this author ... is represented by her entire oeuvre while one often finds only one work by our best authors." At the end of the lecture Ernst distributed a packet of materials to warn read45· StA HH 331-3 PP S 4274: HamburgerFremdenblatt,Jan. 23, 1904. 46. StA HH 3cV-;l PP, S 17290: Hamburger Echo, Mar. 11, 1910.

People's Educators

ers away from Eschstruch 's works, "so that gradually a breach can be opened up in her large circle of admirers." 47 Despite such invective, the society was actually more open than Hamburg's other cultural associations to women's literary production, but it was obviously not without prejudice. The topic of women's writing appeared on the lecture schedule twelve times during the society's first decade. The regional novels of Ilse Frapan were part of a "Hamburg authors' evening"; another evening was devoted to the work of the novelist Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff. Readings of works by Clara Viebig, Anna Ritter, and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach complemented lectures on the poetry of Johanna Ambrosius, Maria delle Grazie, and Ricarda Huch. Women's writing was praised when it was thought to illustrate feminine virtues: love of family, quiet devotion, and attention to detail. It was also thought to be particularly emotive. At a memorable evening, a reading of Ebner-Eschenbach's Krambambuli, a story of a boy and his dog, brought the audience to collective tears. Her book reinforced the idea that women were particularly talented at writing about animals, about children, or for children. Women were often asked to participate in evenings devoted to children's literature or fairy tales and were praised for their ability to paint in miniature. The AltonaNachrichten praised the work ofllse Frapan, specifically her novel Der Fleetenkiecker, a milieu study of the city, for its detailed reportage. 48 Female members participated in the society's meetings but mainly as performers: they sang, recited poems, acted in dramatic ensembles, and read aloud, particularly fairy tales or other stories for children. Only on rare occasions did they give lectures. Women's abilities did attract notice and could be described in glowing terms. The actress Franziska Ellmenreich, who often read aloud for the society, was described as "magnificent," but the reference was to her beauty and the femininity she conveyed. 49 Ilse Frapan harshly criticized the society's discrimination against female authors. She had been one of its original members, but her enthusiasm for the venture had quickly cooled. In her book We Women Have No Fatherland she criticized the inability of a wealthy city to give stipends and scholarships to members of its female population, a thinly veiled jab at Hamburg's modes of patronage. Unable to make a living as a writer in Hamburg, she went to Zurich, where she lived with a female companion and married an Armenian political agitator. We Women Have No Fatherland described the life of a single woman in Zurich attending the university but without money 47· Ibid., S 427+ Hamburger Nachrichten, Apr. 28, 1897. 48. Ibid., Altonar>r Nachrichten,Jan. 10, 1896. 49· Ibid., HamburgerFrrmrlenblatt,Jan. 23, 1904.

1 33

Provincial Modernity

and without the prior education that would enable her to succeed. She doesn't, and by the end ofthe book she is dead. Afire with enthusiasm for the opportunity to study, she is defeated by its practical difficulties. This story-an autobiography in disguise-showed Frapan's awareness of the opportunities presented to women by Hamburg's new educational associations, and an equal awareness of their limits. 50 People's Theater

With a growing membership and a full plate of activities, the Literary Society continued on the road to success. By 1900 it had 1,250 members and claimed a place in civic literary life. 51 Other projects grew from it. Beginning in 1892, members of the society began to explore the possibility of setting up a "People's Theater" similar to the one founded in Berlin in 1889. 52 A public meeting was scheduled for March 20 to discuss the topic "Where does Hamburg's population stand on the founding of a people's theater?" 53 In the spring of 1893 notices began to appear in the newspapers. The Hamburg Altona Volkszeitungreported on a group "that wishes to present modern social dramas for the general population at an affordable price." The Freie Presse asked interested readers to register with the teacher Adolf Sonn and gave his address. The Social Democratic newspaper Hamburger Echo approvingly noted the many indications of interest. The Volkszeitungreported, "Since registrations are still flowing in every day, it looks like the enterprise has a chance of success."54 The People's Theater had come to town. "The People's Theater Association of Hamburg Altona has established a branch here," reported the Hamburger Echo in October 1893. "Members are registered at the address of R. Gierdsorf. "55 The success of Berlin's People's Theater, with its promotion of socially critical drama, led to its imitation in other German cities. "Following the model of the association that was recently formed in Berlin, an association will also be created in Hamburg," wrote the Hamburg Altona Volkszeitung. 56 Not long afterward Leon Goldschmidt, Franz Laufkotter, and Adolf Sonn formally an50. lise Frapan, WirFrauen haben kein Vaterland (I899; Berlin, I983). On Frapan see StA HH, 33I-3, PP, S II086; StA HH, ZAS, A 756, and Inge Stephan, "'Wir Frauen haben kein Vaterland': lise Frapan (I849-I908) und ihre 'Vaterstadt' Hamburg," in Stephan and Winter, "Heil iiber Dir Hammonia, "369-94. 51. StA HH, 33I-3, PP, S 4274: HamburgerFremdenblatt, Nov. II, I900. 52. The most complete work on the Hamburg Volksbiihne is an unpublished and undated typescript in StA HH, HS, 73I-I, II32: Paul Mohring, "Verein 'Freie Volksbiihne' Hamburg Altona, I893-I899." 53· StA HH, 33I-3, PP, S 2968-3, UA I: letter to Polizei-Behorde, Mar. I5, I892. 54· Ibid., HA: Hamburg Altona Volkszeitung, Mar. 25 and Apr. I6, I893; HamburgerFreiePresse, Apr. I2, I893; Hamburger Echo, Apr. I6, I893· 55· Ibid., Hamburger Echo, Oct. 5, I893· 56. Ibid., Hamburg Altona Volkszeitung, Mar. 25, I893·

1

34

People's Educators nounced the founding of a new kind of theater association. The state of current commercial theater, they wrote, left no place for people with a serious interest in art. Criticizing the state of Hamburg's commercial theaters-their high prices, low standards, and reactionary repertoire-they issued a call for a new type of theater cooperative, a "people's theater" dedicated to socially critical drama. By the mid-18gos Hamburg had five main commercial theaters: the Thalia Theater, under the direction of Bernhard Pollini; the Carl Schulze Theater and the Yolks-Theater, both run by Jose Ferenczy; the Ernst Drucker Theater, run by Ernst Drucker; and the Concerthaus Hamburg, run by the Ludwig brothers. 57 Commercial theater at the turn of the century was a lucrative business. Historically it had been one of the city's most respected and most successful commercial cultural ventures. During the seventeenth century Hamburg's theaters had been known throughout Europe for their lavish sets and technologically innovative stagecraft. 58 But by the end of the nineteenth century, members of the People's Theater complained, theater in Hamburg had reached a low point. Rather than a "source of moral pleasure," it was thoroughly commercialized, particularly in the hands of the theater magnate, the Jewish businessman Bernhard Pollini. That "Germany needs a true popular theater was proved again on Thursday, October 26, by the almost overflowing Emperor's Hall in Altona," claimed the Freie Presse. "In typical fashion the director forged ahead, allowing only one-act, easily done little romances, farces, and buffoonery to be presented. "59 The criticism was that the repertoire at commercial theaters stupefied their audiences; they played Schund, which corrupted the noble mission of the theater. Echoing sentiments familiar to members of the Literary Society, Goldschmidt, Laufkotter, and Sonn designed their new venture to bypass the market in the name of serving community interests. "The theater should be a source of high artistic pleasure, moral uplift, and powerful encouragement to contemplate the most important questions of our time," they wrote in the Hamburger Echo. "But it is generally degraded to the level of weak salon talk and literary entertainment, pulp novels, the circus, the joke pamphlet." The new cooperative was intended for those "who are serious about the care of true moral art, as it is created for the people."60 It would attempt to upend the organization of the theater by removing its commercial and class basis. It would not operate for profit, nor would it work together on a 57· Ibid., Hamburger Theater ]ournal3 (1R95). 58. Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg, 286-g2. 59· StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2g6R-3, HA: HamlmrgerFreie Presse, Oct. 2R, 1893. 6o. StA HH, 331-3, S 2968-3: "Aufruf zur Grundung einer 'Freien Volksbiiline,'" Hamburger Echo, Apr. g, 1893. The article was signed by Leon Goldschmidt, J. Maschmann, Karl Moller, Fr[anz] Laufkottcr, A. Ruben, and Ad[olf] Sonn.

1

35

Provincial Modernity

commercial basis with other theaters. Modeling itself on the people's theater movement in Berlin, the cooperative would put on performances for its own members, lower-middle- and working-class people. It would promote the cause of modern naturalist drama with its socially critical themes. The group would rent theater space, engage directors and actors, stage performances, and hold a lecture series for the education and pleasure of its members. Interested persons were asked to register by mail or in person. Monthly dues were set at 50 pfennigs, with no additional charge for performances. 51 There would be no tickets, no waiting in line, no class-stratified seating. Seats would be distributed by lottery, "so that the difference in seating is abolished. One will receive a reserved seat in the orchestra or in the balcony, depending on one's luck." 62 Chance, rather than class, would determine one's place in the audience. The group quickly elected a steering committee and grew to over 150 members. Six months later its membership had increased more than tenfold and stood at an even 2,ooo. 63 Goldschmidt, Laufkotter, and Sonn signed the call for members, and the theater drew its membership from the same social strata as the Literary Society. Teachers and tailors, office workers, a seamstress, and a plumber sat on its organizing committee. 64 An assortment of small businessmen of various sorts-mainly booksellers and tobacconists-mixed with an equally diverse group of lower-class intellectuals-reporters, editors, music teachers, and painters. 65 Men and women worked together and women functioned as organizers and leaders. As vice chair of the group in 1893, 1894, 18g6, and 18gg, Helma Steinbach gave lectures and helped to choose the plays. 66 She and the radical lawyer Dr. Berthold were among the cooperative's most active members, and they tried to give the group a sense of mission in raising the cultural level of working-class entertainment. In spite of the group's evolving sense of politics, notices about the theater were greeted calmly by even the conservative Hamburger Nachrichten, which remarked with equanimity that together the Berlin and Hamburg theaters had over 6,ooo members. 67 Hamburg's political police, however, took instant notice of the theater. 61. Ibid., HA: Ham/mrgerEcho, Oct. 5· 1H93· 62. Ibid., UA;r Ham/mrgerFremdenblatt, Oct. 14, 1893. 63. Ham/mrgerEcho, May 3, 1H93; StA HH, 331-3, PP. S 2968-3: police report no. 5330, May 19, 1893; HamlmrgerH·emdenblatt, Nov. 24, 1893. 64. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-3, HA: handwritten list of "Vorstandspersonen," 1896-99. 65. Ibid., police report no. 112 I 1 13, "Aufnahme in den sozialdcmokratischen Verein 'Freie Volksbiihne Hamburg Altona," ca. 1899, lists 22 new members, all tobacconists (Cigarrenhiindln). Grau, "Vereine fur Kunstpflege," has commented on the absence of the industrial working class from the cultural associations of Hamburg's labor subculture (25). 66. Haake, "Helma Steinbach," 27. See also StA HH, 3;)1-3, PP, S 2968-3: ''Vorstandspersonen," HamlmrgerErho, Feb. 3,1896. 67. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-3, HA: Hamlmrger Nachrichten, Nov. 15, 1893.

Peoples Educators

Down at the police station they already kept files on many of its members. They took particular note of Adolf Sonn, who was listed in their files as a notorious "freethinker," a member of the Social Democratic employees' union, Vorwarts, and a teacher in Eimsbiittel's continuing education association. They also kept their eyes on the booksellers Matthias Ockelmann and Franz Diedrich, Laufkotter, and Steinbach. 68 The People's Theater did go further than the Literary Society in forging connections to the labor movement. They didn't just give out tickets, they attended union meetings, distributed leaflets, and lectured at educational associations. Members agitated inside the unions for the linking up of cultural and political criticism. 69 Steinbach pressed the case at a meeting of the central committee of the trade unions, of which she was a member, that the unions should support the theater as a pr~ject run by and for Hamburg's working people. 70 Speaking at the Metalworkers' Union, Dr. Berthold stressed the necessity of seeing social and cultural struggle as one and the same. 'With the development of material interests a change has also taken place in intellectual relationships," he claimed. Such changes "have also influenced the theater, whose heads still refuse to present the new realistic plays. The People's Theater has made it its task to break through this barrier.'m In actual fact, the theater's connections to the Social Democratic Party were tenuous, despite Steinbach's promotions and Berthold's lectures. As the police themselves noted, "the Social Democratic Party has a cool relationship to the group, as does the Freethinkers' Society, and it does not trouble itself with this enterprise." 72 When questioned by the police, Adolf Sonn could truthfully say that the theater was for cultural activities and stood at a remove from politics. "It is not a public association where politics is pursued," Sonn told the police, "but only an association for charitable purposes. "73 As the police themselves noted, "it should ... present only popular little plays for the people [ volksthiimliche Stiicken]. "74 The People's Theater didn't need to discuss politics per se, however, to be labeled as Social Democratic. Their democratic mode of association, anticapitalist goals, organization, and diversity did that for them. "The People's Theater Association emphatically refuses any discussion of political issues, but the same association -as a pure social democratic mode of agitation-tries to influence public activities indirectly through lectures and 68. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-3: police reports no. 5464, May 12, 1893 (listing many members with no information but their names), and no. 5330 II, May 19, 1893. 69. Ibid., police report no. 10390, Aug. 9, 1893. 70. Haake, "Helma Steinbach," 27. 71. Frrie Presse, Feb. 25, 189472. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-3: police report no. 5330 II. May 19, 1893. 7:1· Ibid., police report no. 5330 II (Beutel), May 13, 1893. 74· Ibid., police report no. 5330 II, May 19, 1893.

1 37

Provincial Modernity

the performance of naturalistic plays and dramas written in a radical Social Democratic sense, and in this way is actively disseminating Social Democratic ideas," wrote a policeman in 1894. 75 Moreover, its first meeting showcased a lecture by Curt Baake, an SPD member from Berlin, who spoke of the cooperative's purpose as liberating Hamburg's theater from the monopoly of the commercial bourgeoisie. 76 This was, in fact, its main battle. The specific targets of the Hamburg group were the commercial theaters, particularly Pollini's Thalia Theater. What the cooperative saw as an ethical struggle with political implications, Pollini saw as straightforward economic competition. Troubles between the People's Theater and Pollini began immediately. The People's Theater wanted to present dramas that "speak the truth" and "will not be presented by the bourgeoisie," as Steinbach put it, 77 and its members insisted on their novelty and daring. Yet Pollini had previously tried to bring naturalistic drama to Hamburg as a business venture and found that it played to empty houses. His production of Gerhart Hauptmann's Lonely People in 1891 was a commercial failure. Performances of Ibsen's Enemy of the People in 1888 and of Hermann Sudermann and Max Halbe had been more worthwhile, and Pollini was not so closed to modernist drama as the group made him out to be. 78 He saw its coming popularity and knew it would make money. But his success in this field could not match the wildly successful promotion of naturalism set off by the People's Theater, which ignited the competition between them. It is generally thought that the Hamburg police was the group's undoing, but in the end it was also Pollini who vowed to run the group out of town and out of business, a venture in which he was successful. Trouble for the cooperative began soon after its founding in squabbles over copyrights, theater space, and actors, as Pollini made common cause with the police in harassing the group. 79 From the beginning the group was clear about its desire to present socially critical dramas. Laufkotter and Sonn outlined a modernist program. Aware of the trouble surrounding the presentation of Gerhart Hauptmann's naturalistic drama The Weavers in Berlin a year earlier, they decided to begin their run in Hamburg in a similarly provocative fashion. They planned a debut performance of Hauptmann's Before Sunrise, with an introductory lecture beforehand at Tuetge's pub, a favorite spot for lectures and recitations. 80 Members of the cooperative seconded their choices. 75· Ibid., police report no. 2329, Mar. 2, 1894. 76. Ibid., HA: draft of police report, Dec. 13, 1898. 77· Steinbach quoted in Haake, "Helma Steinbach," 28. 78. On this point see Mohring, "Verein 'Freie Volksbiihne,"' 3-4. 79· Support for this interpretation can be found in Willi Kitzerow, "Die Hamburger Volksbiihnen-Bewegung," Hamburger jahrbuchfur Theaterund Musik, 1947-48, 257-77. So. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-3, UA 3: GeneralAnzeiger Hamburg Altona, Oct. 13, 1893.

People's Educators

They requested "good pieces .... that will contribute to cultivation [BiZdung] and exaltation," wrote one member who signed himself "a man from Mecklenburg." "So good pieces, that is certainly the same as naturalism, isn't it?" he wrote. "The contents of their scenes show how the world is."81 Others pleaded for a bit more humor, claiming that the choices, while good, were awfully serious. 82 In its first year and a half the theater put on Fritz Reuter's popular play Kein Husung, Ludwig Anzengruber's The Pastor from Kirchfeld and The Crossmakers, Otto Erich Hartle ben's Education for Matrimony, and Max Halbe's popular drama Youth. These plays were followed by Hauptmann's Weavers and Lonely People, Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, Friedrich Hebbel's Maria Magdalene, Uncle Braesig (an adaptation of Fritz Reuter's Ut Mine Stromtid), Richard Voss's Guilty, and Heinrich von Kleist's Broken Jug. Some of these plays had already run successfully in Berlin. The group promoted the naturalism of Berlin and Munich (Hermann Sudermann and Gerhart Hauptmann, among others) and the modernism of Vienna (Hermann Bahr and Arthur Schnitzler) and Norway (Henrik Ibsen and Bj0rnstjerne Bj0rnson). Favorite pieces criticized bourgeois institutions: marriage (Ibsen's A Doll's House and Hartle ben's Education for Matrimony), government (lbsen'sEnemy of the People), and the law (Voss's Guilty and Ibsen's Pillars of Society) .83 The taste of members clearly ran toward naturalism and melodrama, and they liked to see social conflicts played out on stage. In Patrick joyce's estimation, the connection between naturalism, melodrama, and Social Democratic or Labor politics was close and tight. "The melodramatic theater was one of the vital means by which simple moralities were made available for political narrativisation," he wrote, a connecting of cultural struggle with political visions that spoke to Steinbach's hopes. 84 Moreover, the dramatization of social tensions was popular and performances routinely drew hundreds of spectators. During 1894 a typical performance brought in between 400 and 500 people. Some plays drew far more. Ludwig Fulda's criticism of traditional gender roles in The Female Slave brought in an audience of 1 ,ooo. Twelve hundred came to see Hermann Sudermann's Battle of the Butterflies. An equal number appeared for a 1895 performance of Henrik Ibsen's Wild Ducks. In 1 8g6 Hermann Sudermann 's play Heimat brought in the largest audience to date, a crowd of 1,500 people. Even a first play, and not a particularly good one but the work of a local favorite-Illusions by Carl Monckeberg-drew a crowd of 1,200. 85 81. Ibid., HA: HamburgerFremdenblatt, Dec. 1, 1893. 82. Ibid., "Ein altes Mitglied des Vereins 'Freie Volksbiihne,"' Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Apr. 25, 189+ 83. See ibid. and UA 3: Theaterauffiihrungen, 1893-99. 84. Joyce, Democratic Subjects, 135. 85. For attendance numbers see police reports in StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-3, UA 3·

1

39

Provincial Modernity

Like the Literary Society before them, the group was adamant that their success was to funnel into educational rather than commercial channels. Lessons were to be learned; this project was not for entertainment alone. The group presented its plays within a fairly rigid pedagogical structure of lectures and programs. Introductory lectures, several of which were given to encourage attendance, preceded showings by a few days. They laid out the plot of the play in detail and discussed its major themes. The programs handed out at each performance went over this terrain once again. Thus members learned about the play before they saw it, repeated what they had learned during the performance, and reflected upon it afterward. When one takes the number and earnest tone of the lectures into account, the plea of the one "old member" for more comedy was apt. However, this pedagogical apparatus was important to the group's self-image and was popular to boot. Their introductory lectures were well attended, sometimes astonishingly so. Two thousand people listened to a lecture introducing Richard Voss's Guilty, a critique of the legal system, and inexpensive copies of Voss's drama sold out at local bookstores. 86 But the cooperative had difficulty carrying out its ambitious program, as it was shadowed by the police and pressured by Pollini. The Literary Society had been subjected to similar police scrutiny, but the police did not interfere with the running of the group itself, and it was generally left alone. The theater, in contrast, was under such constant police scrutiny that carrying on its affairs was very difficult. The problem was the group's political direction and their attempt to reorganize the business of performance in Hamburg. Although the theater enjoyed a wave of popularity-the newspapers reported on the "lively interest that all strata of the population have recently shown in the People's Theater,"87 and one performance was even attended by a member of the Senate when Lord Mayor Monckeberg attended his son's play-the group could not stand up against the power of the established theater owners. Their vulnerability was as apparent as their bravado. As an association ( Verein) rather than a business, they had to rent theater space, directors, and actors for their performances. They rejected the idea that the members should give performances themselves-they were not an amateur theater company-and worked hard to ensure that performances reached a suitable level of professionalism. But their difficulties began immediately and continued to mount. For their debut performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's Bifore Sunrise in 1893 they had arranged to rent Cheri Maurice's theater. Maurice appeared happy to provide his theater for a fair price. Dr. Berthold's intro86. Ibid., Hamfntrger Echo, Sept. 7, 1894. 87. Ibid.

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People's Educators

ductory lecture at Tuetge's would be followed by recitations from Fritz Reuter's work by Fritz Rieck to advertise their next play.RR But that was as far as it went. "It appears they don't want to make it so easy for an ambitious association when it seeks to offer something to its members," wrote the Hamburger Echo. As the date of the performance approached, news began to circulate. Pollini had signed a contract with the late Gustav Maurice forbidding any performances by the People's Theater in Maurice's playhouse. Confronted with this signed contract between his son and Pollini, Cheri Maurice was forced to cancel the performance. 89 This was the first sign ofPollini's stance toward the new association. Resorting to the courts, the People's Theater compelled Maurice to let them use the theater, and he was slapped with a large fine. 90 But the performance still did not take place as planned, and the group had to make do with an impromptu set of recitations in a bar close by. 91 Theater members gathered in vain at the Barmbeck beer hall Pferdemarkt for the seat lottery, and a listening policeman wrote down a conversation he overheard that afternoon on capitalism and art: Since the capitalists, who want to grind the worker down to nothing, don't even want to give him the right to enjoy theater pieces he likes and understands ... that's why the director is pressured to refuse the theater if it's for the use of the People's Theater. But that doesn't matter. Every worm turns when it's stepped on and every difficulty brings us new comrades rather than losing us members, and Social Democracy will still come out on top and the time will come when we'll have our own theater and we'll never go to the others. Hardly anybody understands the works they show now anyway. 9 2 Some members gathered around Maurice's theater and wanted to open it by force. As they saw it, they had a right to do so as a consequence of their contract and their victory in court. Assuming that the police would enforce what the courts had decided, they asked a strolling policeman for protection while they broke into the theater. When he would not assist them, somewhat dumfounded by the request, they puzzled over his reaction and then left peacefully. 93 Other police reports gave no hint of a disturbance. Complaints, speeches, and recitations were the extent of the day's activities. But it was a bad sign. H8. Ibid., UA 4: Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Nov. 11, 1893; General-Anzeiger, Nov. 15, 1893. 8g. Ibid., llamlmrgrr Echo, Nov. 18, 1893; Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Nov. 17, 1H93. go. Ibid., Hamburger Freie Presse, Nov. 19, 1893, printed copy of the court proceedings. Berthold let the members know the result at an impromptu meeting on Nov. 19. 91. Ibid., police report, Nov. 20, 1893 (Grimmelshiiuser). 92. Ibid. (Stegemann). 93· Ibid., police report, Nov. 19, 1893 (Hugo).

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Provincial Modernity

With this beginning behind them, the group was hounded from theater to theater. Finding willing directors, troupes of actors, and theaters became an ongoing problem. Forced to try to rent the facilities of their competitors, they went to the Carl Schulze Theater, even to the Thalia Theater, and ended up using the Emperor's Hall in Altona for their first season, in 1893-94. 94 They thought about giving performances in pubs rather than in theaters, and members inquired with pub owners as to whether they could use their bars. Yet suspicion followed them, and pub owners showed a distinct aversion to letting anything interfere with their business. One pub owner, "the proprietor of a concert bar at Spielbudenplatz No. 23," turned the group away, according to the police, "due to rumors that they were all Social Democrats." At least, that's what he told the police officer who interviewed him. He didn't want his bar to get a bad reputation with the police, and besides the time didn't suit him. He had a lecture to go to himself at five o'clock. 95 Yet for every show of disapproval there was one of support. Undeterred, the group tried to hire a troupe of actors from a theater in Harburg, a town in Lower Saxony, across the river from Hamburg. Its director, a man named Gerlach, willingly pledged his actors. The Hamburg police notified the police in Harburg, and the Harburg police harassed Gerlach. 96 Gerlach stood firm, however, and contracted with the People's Theater for a few months' worth of performances. 97 A big break came in 1895 with a contract for thirty-six performances at the Ernst Drucker Theater in Hamburg, which allowed the group to plan three years' worth of presentations.98 They continued presenting plays by Ibsen, Sudermann, Bj0rnson, Anzensgruber, Max Dreyer, Johannes Schlaf, and others. Otto Ernst's play The Biggest Sin and Hermann Sudermann's End of Sodom went across the boards in 1895. 99 In 1896 they put on Sudermann's Heimat, The journalists by Gustav Freytag, and Ibsen's Enemy of the People, as well as several classics: Schiller's Cabal and Love and Lessing's Nathan the Wise. A play written by the local newspaper editor Heinrich Hauert, Honorable Men, was even presented at the Altona City Theater, owned by Pollini. 100 Goethe's Faust was presented in 1899; Shakespeare's Merchant ofVenicewas performed in 1897, when they added a summer season (an idea that the Hamburg SPD would later use). 101 94· Ibid., UA 3: Hamlmrger Fremdenblatt, Sept. 1o, 1894. 95· StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2968-3: police report no. 9811, Oct. 3, 1894. 96. Ibid., Polizei Direction Harburg to Polizei Behorde Hamburg, division II, Nov. 12, 1894;policereportno. ll821,Nov. 23,1894. 97. Ibid., police report no. 1982 1, Dec. 11, 1894. 98. Ibid., Hamlmrger Correspondent, Aug. 1, 1895; Hamlmrger Fremdenblatt, Aug. 11, 1895. 99· See StA HH, 331-3, PP 2968-3, HA and UA 3: Theaterauffiihrungen, 1893-99. 100. Ibid., HamlmrgerEcho,Jan. 8, May 23, and Nov. 24, 1896. 101. Ibid., June 9, 1897.

People's Educators

The People's Theater added to its respectability with its performances of Shakespeare and Schiller, but it was quickly brought to financial ruin. In 1899 it was placed under a brief military boycott when a captain stationed in Altona deemed some pieces unsuitable for his men. This action brought the group to its knees. Electing the local poet Gustav Falke as its chairman (no one could accuse the mild-mannered and nationalistic Falke, the only poet to receive an honorary pension from the Hamburg Senate, of being a Social Democrat), the People's Theater attempted to carry on, but to no avail. They had to close up shop, but the ideas on aesthetic quality and popular education that they promoted still had power. With the demise of the theater, some of its members reorganized into a mixed chorus, the Gemischter Char Freie Volksbiihne, before founding a cultural organization specifically for workers, as its statutes claimed. This group, the Association for Art Appreciation, fostered aesthetic education in Lichtwark's sense. Its members concentrated on promoting local culture, naturalism, and modernism, and on self-cultivation and public education through books, exhibitions, and lectures. They cooperated with the SPD in various ventures, including a joint effort with the party press, Auer & Co., for a Christmas exhibition in 1904. 102 Many teachers were active in the Association for Art Appreciation. As state employees, they were officially forbidden to engage in cooperative ventures with the SPD, but many of them continued to work in organizations affiliated with the party and unions. The educational organizations of Hamburg's SPD grew tremendously in strength and organization in the years after 1900. Those that had managed to scrape through the lean years of the 189os were reorganized in 1902 into the United Educational Associations under the direction of the trade unions. Their coffers filled up, their membership lists ballooned, and their curriculum shifted from general promotion of Bildung through the arts to a more practical plan of study focused on the acquisition of basic skills. 103 Working-class education was taken very seriously, and a variety of programs emerged out of cooperative work between the party and affiliated organizations, some of which were middle class. 104 Members of the Commission for Children's Literature, for example, worked with the Teachers' Association to sponsor Sunday-afternoon lectures for working102. For the Verein fUr Kunstpflege see StA HH 331-3, PP, S 2968-5 (in addition to UA 1 and UA 2) and S 2968-6; Grau, "Vereine fiir Kunstpflege." On the Christmas exhibition of 1904 and the subsequent disciplining of teachers see Jorg Berlin, "Politisch-padagogische Konflikte in Hamburg: Die 'Gesellschaft der Freunde des vaterlandischen Schul- und Erziehungswesens' urn 1900," in I 75 jahre Gesellschaft der Freunde des vaterliindischen Schul- undErziehungswesens, ed. Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (Hamburg, 1980), 82-98. 103. See StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 2493-9. 104. See the summary given in Schult, Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung; Elisabeth Domansky,

1 43

Provincial Modernity

class families. 105 As the teacher Heinrich Wolgast noted, "It is frequently observed that the politically organized or unionized working class makes the most receptive public for efforts to reform children's literature. "106 Moreover, the SPD was moving toward the teachers' position in its thinking about popular education, as the labor movement ran its own campaigns against Schund. The goal of "cultivating nobler kinds of popular leisure-time activities" than those purveyed by the movie palaces and the newsstands was achieved with the founding of the Central Commission for Workers' Education in 1909, in which the Hamburg SPD advocated "reading one's way up" (hinaujlesen) and supported the pedagogical mission of leading workers to immersion in "true art. "107 Though teachers' status as civil servants precluded open support for any political party, their belief in Bildung drew them to Lichtwark, and their commitment to democratize knowledge and educational opportunities, their belief in freedom of speech and association, and their rejection of censorship by the church or the state connected them to liberal intellectuals and professionals and at the same time carried them from the schools into the organizations of the Social Democratic subculture. By social background and interest, they passed between the two and belonged to both worlds. They participated in the Goethe Association, a national movement for free speech and against censorship peopled by Liberal and Social Democratic intellectuals, and as lecturers in both the Literary Society and Hamburg's Social Democratic educational associations. 108 The state did not necessarily appreciate their ability to move between the fronts, and the school administration sought to reprimand individual teachers for participating in activities sponsored by the SPD. In 1905 the teacher William Lottig received a stern reprimand for his work with the Association for Art "Der 'Zukunftstaat am Besenbinderhof,' ''in Herzig eta!., Arbeiter in Hamburg, 373-86. On the role of cultural activities in the labor movement see Dieter Langewiesche, "Die Gewerkschaften und die kulturellen Bemiihungen der Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland und Osterreich ( 189oer bis 192oerjahre),'' IWK18, no. 1 ( 1982): 1-17; Adelheid von Saldern, 'Wilhelminische Gesellschaft und Arbeiterklasse: Emanzipations- und Integrationsprozesse im kulturellen und sozialen Bereich,'' IWK 13, no. 4 (December 1977): 469-505; and Vernon Lidtke, The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany (New York, 1985). 105. Jahresbericht der Gesellschaft der Freunde, 1909, 54-55· 106. Quoted in Schmidt-Dumont, "Hamburger Jugendschriftenausschuss,'' 45· 107. StA HH, 331-3, PP, S 17290: Hamburger Echo, Mar. 11, 1910. Historians have differed sharply on the effects of these cultural programs. See Wilkending, VolksbildungundPiidagogik; Langewiesche and Schonhoven, "Arbeiterbibliotheken"; Langewiesche, "Arbeiterbildung"; Langewiesche, "Arbeiterkultur: Kultur der Arbeiterbewegung im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik: Bemerkungen zum Forschungsstand,'' Ergebnisse 26 ( 1984): 9-29. 108. StAHH, 331-3, PP, V 742: Goethe Bund; ibid., HS, 731-1, 2294: Elisabeth Meyer, "Der Kampf urn die offentliche Sittlichkeit im Deutsch en Kaiserreich: Die 'lex Heinze' und die Gegenagitation des liberalen Biirgertums am Beispiel des 'Goethe Bundes,'" master's thesis, Universitat Hamburg, 1994.

People's Educators

Appreciation because of its cooperation with the SPD. Hamburg historians have made much of Lottig's punishment, but it actually was a fairly isolated incident. 109 The state observed and kept records, but it meted out its punishments inconsistently and ineffectually. The strongest opposition to Hamburg's progressive teachers came from their own colleagues. The criticism that rained down on Wolgast, Lottig, and others came mainly from more conservative teachers, particularly those in the "higher schools," who opposed their projects to reform reading lists and distribute pictures. With the conservative Hamlmrger Nachrichten on their side, they denounced this challenge to their authority by upstarts from no-name villages, out ofblacksmith's forges, and the homes of factory craftsmen. The teachers, however-Heinrich Wolgast, Carl GOtze, and H. L. Koster in particular-pressed forward with their cultural activities and their campaigns against Schund. Organized into the Commission for Children's Literature, they advised school libraries on book purchases and drew up and distributed lists of recommended literature for children. 110 They blanketed the empire with pamphlets and "agitation packets," organized public educational programs, and alerted the public to the dangers of commercial literature by distributing pamphlets and setting up exhibits where people could exchange trashy fiction for volumes of good reading material. 111 Together with Lichtwark, these teachers were instrumental in the revival of interest in local history at the turn of the century. In the schools they agitated for the introduction of what became known as Heimatkunde, or local studies. wg. Lottig, "Aus einer Bekenntnisschrift." 110. Begun in 1888, the Hamburg Commission for Children's Literature (Jugendschriftenausschuss, or JSA) was founded as part of a national network of commissions devoted to reforming children's literature. Established all over Germany during the late 188os, they moved their center of operations from Berlin to Hamburg in 18g6. They busied themselves primarily with creating and distributing their "Indexes of Recommended Children's Literature" and informing parents and consumers through pamphlets and leaflets of the dangerous effects of Schund. The Hamburg JSA was one of the most prominent and progressive of these groups. On the JSA see Schmidt-Dumont, "Hamburger Jugendschriftenausschuss"; Geralde Schmidt-Dumont, "Kunsterziehungsbewegung und Reformpadagogik," Infarmatianen ]ugendliteratur und Medien 1 ( 1990): 56-7o; Wilken ding, Volks/Jildung und Piidagogik. 111. See materials in StA HH, 361-2V, 487b.

{5}

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place For a sensitive person the Heimat is the ground that provides nourishment. It is also an object of aesthetic pleasure. Its outward forms stimulate the desire to research. It is full of signs of the past, which tell the story of the earliest people upon this speck of earth. It has its own local deities, which, however, perhaps fully appear only to people living in a spiritual age. EDUARD SPRANGER,

The Educational Worth of Local Studies

Pardon me? A detestable word? A word with a dark history? ... I realize that the word has a bad reputation, 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? SIEGFRIED LENZ,

Heimat Museum

In 1979 the West German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on a public resurgence of what Germans call Heimatgefuhl, a feeling of personal connectedness to local and regional cultures. Untranslatable into English, the concept of Heimat, meaning "home" or "homeland," is rich in emotional vibrancy and political complexity. As Der Spiegel reported, this wave of Heimatfeeling had become a national phenomenon expressed through lo-

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place

cal cultural programs: neighborhood and city festivals, historical exhibitions, plans for urban renewal, environmental protection initiatives, and a revival of interest in dialect literature. 1 But this turn toward Heimat in German society at the end of the 1970s was not a development with a clear set of meanings. Complexity, ambiguity, and opacity reside in the term, which has meant diflerent things to different people at different times and in different places. The idea of Heimat has a universal emotional currency, but its deep connections to Germany's troubled national history have often given it a powerfully negative resonance. The "renaissance of Heimatgejuhl" reported by Der Spiegel sprang "from a spirit of opposition," as the magazine was careful to note, drawing a clear line between this revival of regionalism and its past instrumentalization. 2 The role of Heimat in fascist cultural politics, with its cult of blood and soil, is the most tainted and familiar version of this story. Generally traced to the writings of the mid-nineteenth-century writer Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, who tramped through the Bavarian countryside after the revolutions of 1848 in search of a pure "people's culture," the dominant meaning of Heimat celebrated the preindustrial rural culture of the Volk and its racial and cultural embeddedness in the natural landscape. Riehl loaded the term with additional antiurban and antimodern meanings useful to political conservatives and radical nationalists, who recommended a return to a preindustrial corporatist society, away from the "asphalt cities" and industrial modernity of the German Empire. 3 Riehl's conservative definition of Heimat and the politicization of the term after 18go obscured the other meanings and practices that accumulated around it as well as its alternate histories. Recent historical studies of the Heimat idea and the Heimat movement in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany have revealed this conservative instrumentalization to be only one of several meanings. 4 Pried loose from its position in volkisch ideology, Heimat becomes a term with no fixed or dominant mean1.

Wilfried von Bredow and Hans-Friedrich Foltin, Zwiespaltige Zufluchlen: Zur Renaissance

des Heimatgefohls (Berlin, 1981), 7-8. 2. Ibid., 7. For the fascist instrumentalization of regional culture see Kay Dahnke, Norbert Hopster, and Jan Wirrer, eds., Niederdeutsch im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur !Wlle regionaler KulturimFaschismus (Hildesheim, 1994). 3· On Riehl see his Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen Social-Politik, 4 vols. (Stuttgart, 1866-73); Woodruff D. Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, r84oI920 (New York, 1991), 40-44; Bredow and Foltin, Zwiespiiltige Zujluchten, 23-49; George Masse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of tlw Third Reich (New York, 1964), and Karlheinz Rossbacher, Heimatkunstbewegung und Heimatroman (Stuttgart, 1975). 4- Applegate. Nation uf Proviruials; Celia Applegate, "Localism and the German Bourgeoisie," in Black bourn and Evans, German Bourgeoisie, 224- 54; Matthew Jefferies, Politics and Culture in Wilhelmine Germany: The Case of Industrial Architecture (Oxford, U)95): William H. Rollins, .'1 Greener Vision of Home: Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz A1ovement, I 904- I 9 I 8 (Ann Arbor, 1997); Confino, Nation as a Local Metaphor.

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in g. For the residents of the Pfalz 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 Heimat the residents of towns and villages negotiated the lived reality of the modernization process as it transformed their local environments. The term likewise played a mediating role in Alon Confino's The Nation as a Local Metaphor; as he described how the nationalizing of the Germans occurred through local metaphors, spaces, and idioms. Both reversed the social and political valences of the term by highlighting aspects that were capitalist and bourgeois rather than antimodern and reactionary. Implicit in these studies was the larger point that the idea of Heimat democratized authority over the past and was itself a creature of a period of mass political mobilization.5 As Wilfried von Bredow and Hans-Friedrich Foltin remind us in Zwiespiiltige Zufluchten, however, Heimatwas not only the creation of a period of mass politicization but also a politically potent term in itself, with its focus on authenticity, nostalgia, and the overcoming of alienation, three functions central to human experience. "Homeland" found a place in most twentieth-century ideologies. Next to Riehl's conservative articulation of Heimat are nationalist, Marxist, and socialist versions. 6 Or, as Alon Confino asserted, the term could carry no political charge whatsoever other than a fuzzy populism. One aspect of Heimat has evaded rethinking: its influence on liberal culture conceived in the broadest sense. Traditionally this has been seen as an open-and-shut case. The cultural revolt of the turn of the twentieth century of which Heimat was a part, was understood to be destructive to liberalism and opposed to everything it stood for. With its collective emphasis, it was hostile to individualism. Its racialist and biological connotations were directly opposed to liberal imaginings of community based on the rule oflaw and the rights of the individual. In Confino's work, the decline of liberalism's influence on the national level and the waning of broad-based support for its narrative of national history supported the rise of an apolitical idea of Heimatwith the power to draw together socially diverse audiences. Clearly Heimat drew its emotional power from its embeddedness in local history and geography. The most cursory investigation of the term reveals a wealth of regional specificities. What, then, did it mean in Hamburg? The example of imperial Germany's second-largest city complicates the issue of Heimat for the imperial period. The emergence of Heimat was part and parcel of the transformation of Hamburg's public life after 18go 5· See Applegate, Nation of Provincials, and Confino, Nation as a Local Metaphor. 6. Bredow and Foltin, Zwiespiiltige Zujluchten, 15-16.

q8

A Sense ofSeif, a Sense of Place

with its large-scale social charges. 7 With the unfolding debate on suffrage, in liberal circles there was great interest in creating more up-to-date and flexible versions oflocal tradition. For Hamburg's liberals, attention to the specificities of local culture fitted together with furthering liberal ideals and a liberal conception of society. Instruction in local history, which was meant to generate a sense of community and belonging that would ripen into mature individual political responsibility, had essentially civics at its core. Heimatkunde, the study of the local place, was seen as an important aspect of socialization and as the first step toward the acquisition of citizenship (Burgerrecht). As it took shape in Hamburg's public schools, Heimatkunde articulated an ideal of the self that was brought into focus through its connection to larger communities-the city, the region, and the nation, in that order. Officially, Heimatkunde was not pursued in the interest of preserving a conservative worldview. Rather it was conceived of as education in and for the metropolis ( Gro}Jstadterziehung), with emphasis on urban culture and productivity. With the formal introduction of Heimatkunde into the public schools in 1912, Hamburg's teachers even invited the left-liberal politician Friedrich Naumann to come and endorse the furthering of liberal politics by local cultural means. 8 In Hamburg's schools, museums, and lecture halls, the interest in Heimat reinterpreted older forms of local tradition, modernizing and updating them. Narratives and images of Heimatin schoolbooks and artworks painted by regional artists created new forms of social imagining. They focused on the present and future rather than the past and were modernist in both form and content. A culturally conservative and politically reactionary interpretation of Heimatexisted in Hamburg as in other cities, and it sounded a particular note in local political discourse. Mter unification, the city was attacked for the rootless lives of its inhabitants and the destruction of Hamburg's organic "lifeworld" through the twin threats of organized labor and emancipated Jewry. 9 But local ideologues and antiSemites did not have sole control over the meaning of Heimat, and they were forced to enter into dialogue with others in the public realm. Many other articulations of Heimat were simple and individualistic rather than 7. On the "new politics" after 18go set> Geoff Eley, &shaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (Nt>w Haven, 1g8o); Carl Schorske, "Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio," in his Fin-de-Sierle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), 116-8o, and the essays in Retallack and jones, Elections. For a comparison with Saxony's "governmental crisis" sec James Retallack, "Liberals, Conservativt>s, and the Modernizing State: The Kaiserreich in Regional Perspective," in Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, I87oI9JO, ed. GeoffEley (Ann Arbor, 1996), 221-56. 8. StA HH, 612-5/20-520: Friedrich Naumann to Theodor Blinckmann, Apr. 15, 1912. g. Grolle, Hamburg und seine Historiker, 99-12 2.

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Provincial Modernity strident and social, found in small written melodramas of self and community based on personal experience and rooted in the nostalgia of childhood memories. 10 Liberal and modernist articulations of Heimat that became part of official cultural policy are the subject of this chapter. They will be studied in two separate but connected sites: through the curriculum changes in the public schools on the topic of local history and the introduction of local studies (Heimatkunde), and through Alfred Lichtwark's program to revitalize local culture at the Hamburg Art Museum. Before 1914 a diverse public discussion on Heimat produced popular concepts of history remote from the intellectual concerns of academics. Heimat activities restored voices to common people as narrators and collectors of the past. In this sense its function then was similar to its function now. In the hands of professionals such as Lichtwark, Heimatwas used to criticize the larger, more abstract paradigms of social analysis, such as class and nation, in order to focus on particular forms and local expressions of subjectivity and identity. The popularization of the idea of Heimat, which occurred in tandem with processes of cultural democratization common to the empire as a whole, changed narratives about the past and images of the present. Cultural democratization created new stories and new storytellers, altering and transforming both the image of the past and the social uses to which it could be put. In Hamburg it transformed definitions of local tradition and gave them a new social location and a new political relevance. Heimatltunde and the Modernization of Tradition

Hamburg's schools introduced local history as a subject of study many years after national unification in 1871. In 1889 it officially entered the curriculum of the city's secondary schools ( hohere Bildungsanstalten), but as an addendum to the teaching of national history rather than as a subject in its own right. Behind its introduction stood Hamburg's revered lord mayor, Gustav Heinrich Kirchenpauer, an avowed local patriot whose family had come to Hamburg in the seventeenth century. Kirchenpauer's long political life as senator and lord mayor had focused on the preservation of local sovereignty under the new empire. Deeply distrustful of the imperial chancellor, the Prussian Otto von Bismarck, and his plans to bring Hamburg into the German Empire either willingly or forcibly, Kirchenpauer saw the city through the complicated negotiation process that attended German unification, even quitting the Imperial Federal Council at one point in a fit of anger over Bismarck's tactics. 11 IO. Examples include Hertz, Unser Elternhaus; Loewenberg, A us zwei (2uellcn; lise Frapan, Hamburger Bilderfiir Kinder (Hamburg, Igio). II. Wohlwill, I Iamlnngischen Burgermeister, 2-3, 5, I2, 20-21.

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place First joining the Senate in 1843 after a stint as librarian for the Chamber of Commerce, Kirchenpauer had been a founding member of the Association of Hamburg History in 1839 and was an active amateur naturalist and author of a history of Hamburg's stock exchange. As senator and lord mayor he pledged to "promote the historical sciences to their broadest extent. "12 Mter unification, Kirchenpauer headed the first and second sections of the new school administration ( Oberschulbeharde) and argued that more attention needed to be paid to local history in the secondary schools. His pleas fell on deaf ears. Fourteen years later, after long discussion, the school administration investigated the possibility of introducing local history into the curriculum. The decision that it should indeed receive more attention in the classroom soon followed; moreover, it was deemed important enough to commission the writing of a separate text for the purpose.13 Interest in local history built within a small group of teachers supported by Kirchenpauer, and in 188g instructors were asked to address events in local history in the classroom. However, they would be taught only as side issues in a nationally focused narrative; teachers were asked to integrate important names and dates into the general instruction where they were appropriate. Students were also required to know a little something about Hamburg for their examinations. 14 This format for teaching local history fitted well with private rituals of socialization practiced by Hamburg's merchant elite throughout the nineteenth century. A sense of pride in local tradition was part of the merchants' code of ethics.l 5 Sons of the elite were raised to be proud of the city's past, and knowledge oflocal events were expected to contribute to a sense of self and position. The private sense of oneself as the keeper of tradition that these rituals fostered had a powerful public effect, for they underwrote the defense of the merchant families as the city's historically legitimate rulers. Introduced as part of the curriculum of only the higher schools, local history retained this kind of exclusivity, and although the new program fostered the transmission of local knowledge through the school rather than through the family and firm, it continued to support 12. Ibid., 20. Kirchenpauer's publications included Diealte Borse, ihre Gn"inderund ihre VorstehPT: Ein Beitrag zur hamhurt,rischen Handelsgrschichte (Hamburg, 1841) and Die Seetonnen der Elbmundung: Ein Beitrag zur Thier- und Pflanzen Topographie (Hamburg, 1862). 13. StA HH, 361-2V, 6o8a: "Auszug aus dem Protocolle der Zweiten Section der Oberschulbehorde," Sept. 12, 1885; Carl Redlich, director of Hohere Biirgerschule vor dem Hoistentor, to Kirchenpauer, Oct. 12, 1885; Redlich to Oberschulbehorde, Apr. g, 1887. 14· Ibid., "Protokoll der Zweiten Section der Oberschulbehorde," Feb. 23, 1888. 15. One of the strongest proponents of this view was the historian Percy Ernst Schramm, whose books melded merchant tradition with local history. See his Hamburg, Deutschland und die Welt: Leistung und Grenzen hanseatischen B1"irgertums in der Zeit zwischen Napoleon I und Bismarck: Ein Kapitel deutscher Geschichte (Munich, 1943), and Neun Generationen. For criticism of this perspective see Grolle, Hamburg und seine Historiker; 203-28.

Provincial Modernity

the idea that local history was personal property, a private memory warehouse belonging to the elite. At the turn of the century some merchants, flush with wealth and hubris, continued to lay claim to local history as personal property. In 1902 the shipbuilder Adolf Woermann complained to the school administration about a teacher at the Johanneum who he claimed had denigrated Hamburg's merchants in the classroom. Woermann wanted the teacher reprimanded. Most likely he had in mind humiliation and dismissal, but he could not exercise his will directly with the Johanneum's rector; he had to register his complaint with the administration. The school administration investigated the matter and split the difference, recommending better instruction in local history as the best remedy for wounded pride. Any "inclination to wrongly interpret and denigrate the meaning of the merchant class" would be counteracted by "a most thorough handling of civic history."16 However, the fact that Woermann had to go through the bureaucracy to have his complaint addressed, plus his touchy defensiveness and the administration's placid handling of the matter, clearly revealed that by 1902 things had changed. Local history could no longer be claimed as private property, and the merchants were no longer its spokesmen and defenders. It had gone public, administered by bureaucracies and schools functioning in and for the public realm. This shift should not be underestimated, for it changed the content, pedagogical method, and class basis of local history practices. The initial focus on local history supported by Kirchenpauer had been narrowly defined as a text-bound, politically centered narrative and as part of the curriculum only in Hamburg's secondary and more exclusive schools. By the turn of the century and the introduction of Heimatkunde, this situation had changed utterly. Rather than integrating a few questions on local history into the national history lesson, by 1903 elementary school teachers were requesting permission from the school board to take their students on field trips through the city streets. 17 This was a complete change of program. The changes instituted in the method of teaching local history, moreover, were themselves bound up with larger processes of institutional restructuring. In 1870, as "the old Hamburg changed over to the new," in the words of the Senate secretary Julius von Eckardt, the Senate passed a new education law that created Hamburg's first system of public schools. Kirchenpauer had initially supported the inclusion of local history in the curriculum, but the man responsible for the institutional 16. The administration recommended that teachers inform their students of the value of the merchants in particular, and of business in general, for local and national developments. For this incident see StA HH, 361-2V, 6o8a: "Auszug aus dem Protocolle der Zweiten Section der Oberschulbehorde," Sept. 1 8,1go2. 1 7· Ibid., Johann Corens to Schulrat Gustav Dilling, June 26, HJO'J.

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place

structure within which Heimatkunde developed was Kirchenpauer's opposite number, Senator Johannes Versmann. A nationalist and a liberal who was not a small-state particularist, Versmann entered the Senate in the I86os and began to engineer several large-scale reforms in order to synchronize Hamburg's institutional situation with that of the empire. This effort included the long overdue modernization of the city's schools and the creation of a system of public schooling. 18 The institutional and intellectual shift was apparent at the opening of the new teachers' training seminar in I872, as Versmann spoke on the importance of "raising society for society," an idea that would have sounded preposterous to local ears only ten years earlier. 'This idea belongs to the future," Versmann told his audience, "it is one of its characteristic features." 19 Versmann's idea of "raising society for society" was radical in the light of the city's previous pitiful educational situation. Hamburg was the last German state to institute a public school system, and the situation before I87o was bleak. Public schools had been established in the early nineteenth century in Bavaria and Prussia, where they had become an indispensable state instrument for the shaping of society. In Hamburg the general aversion to state social programs had had a negative effect on educational policy, and during much of the nineteenth century schools were run by the family, the church, and the marketplace. Defined as "free enterprise" (freies Gewerbe), schooling was a private matter rather than theresponsibility of the state. The city boasted a colorful assortment of schools, varying widely in quality. Excellent schools-the Johanneum, the Jewish Foundation School of ISis-coexisted with messy one-room schoolhouses where children clustered around a single text, learned the basics of Christian religion, and sang songs. In the absence of state interest, there were no general educational standards, no effective school supervision, and no public schools, outside of schools for the poor run by the municipal poor relief. Most schools were privately run, many were religiously based, and those that existed only to turn a profit would have been grist for Charles Dickens. The state supervised only those schools attached to the poor relief system, and the only parents who were obliged to send their children to school were those who received welfare payments. This situation was complicated, messy, and ineffective. Throughout the nineteenth century educators and pastors had tried in vain to reform it. But it was generally ignored as individual communities established a few exemplary private schools and numerous substandard ones. In I836 several pastors attempted, against the Senate's protests, to establish schooling as both a public matter and the responsibility of the state. The Senate re18. Von Eckardt, Lebenserinnerungen, 2:18, 16-17. 19. Quoted in Jiirgen Bolland, Die "Gesellschaft der Freunde" im Wandel des hamburgischen SchulundErziehungswesens (Hamburg, 1957), 30-31.

1

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sponded with its usual argument on the private status of education in Hamburg: public schools were for "public" children, those raised by parents on the welfare rolls, or those who ran wild and became a public burden. In 1843, after the Great Fire, the Patriotic Society had argued for ending this "state of confusion." Schooling had to be redefined as a general public matter, and they asserted the importance of schools as instruments in the shaping of future citizens. The situation of stratified and private schooling, with subsets of Hamburg's population schooling their own members, needed to be overcome by a general system of education intended for all children. Bildung needed to become a general, common property, they argued; otherwise "the easily obtainable license to exercise the rights of a state citizen would be without value for the individual and without fruit for the community. "20 They argued for protecting the substance and quality oflocal citizenship by ensuring that those who acquired it could be assumed to have attained a minimum level of instruction; as was traditional, however, such arguments came to naught in the Senate. Ultimately national unification would accomplish what revolution and decades of political pressure and local constitutional reform could not. With the entrance of Hamburg into the North German Confederation in 1867, the Senate began to move to establish a system of public schools in an effort to bring Hamburg into step with the rest of Germany. The passing of the Education Law ( Unterrichtsgesetz) of 1870, as engineered by Versmann, at last made basic education a government concern.21 It transformed the schools run by the municipal poor relief into a system of public schools ( Volksschulen) and established a state seminar for the training of teachers. It also restricted the influence of the Lutheran Church over schooling by turning educational issues over to a new state administrative apparatus, the Oberschulbehorde. Yet the new law did not completely remove the influence of the Lutheran churches over the public schools, as two pastors sat on the school bureaucracy's new board. 22 As the educational historian Hildegard Milberg has argued, this late modernization had definite benefits. The public elementary schools established in Hamburg in the 187os were considerably better organized and their curricula more secular, systematic, and demanding than those found in similar schools in other parts of Germany. The restricted influence of the pastors and the organization of a separate representative body for the ele20. Hildegard Milberg, Schulpolitik in derpluralistischen Gesellschaft: Die politischen und sozialen Aspekte der Schulreform in Hamburg, r890-I935 (Hamburg, 1970), 28-29. 21. On the transformation of 1870 see Bolland, "Gesellschaft der Freunde"; Manfred Heede, Die Entstehung des Volksschulwesens in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1982); Franklin Kopitzsch, "VaterJandisches Schul- und Erziehungswesen," in Plagemann, Industriekultur in Hamburg, 2 18. 22. Their influence was fairly insignificant in comparison with the situation in neighboring Prussia. See Milberg, Schulpolitik, 30.

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A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place

mentary school teachers-the School Synod, through which they could interact directly with the state school administration-provided space for the discussion of secular issues by the teachers themselves and provided them with a position from which curriculum reform could be implemented. In Milberg's opinion, Hamburg's new public schools had a remarkable amount of freedom in comparison with those in other parts of the empire: they were subject to fewer state controls and had their own representative body, were under restricted influence by the churches, and promoted an updated and demanding curriculum. This "demanding type of 'public school'" was appropriate for a liberal state, wrote Milberg. In its organization, goals, and curriculum the liberal fathers of the education law saw "a product of the freedomseeking state," which recognized "that the roots of its freedom lay in the greatest possible cultivation of all its members" and was therefore "prepared with its resources and with the resources of the whole community to step in for all those who cannot reach this goal through self-help." 23 Versmann's educational system sat firmly on a liberal foundation: it went as far as it could to separate church from state, substituted secular for clerical control over the schools, and espoused the teaching of modern secular subjects. Boys and girls were instructed separately, as was conventional. The idea of "raising society for society," which included promoting "the greatest possible cultivation of all its members," gave public schools the new responsibility of educating future citizens. These future citizens now included the poor, who were taught according to a standardized curriculum and a generalized pedagogical routine. Children who had previously had a disorganized education or none at all were now required to attend school to the age of sixteen. Versmann's law established an ambitious new system of public instruction. Now scores of new teachers were hired to staff the schools. 24 Many of the new teachers were women (the law of 1870 allowed for female teachers, although Versmann himself thought that women teachers were a "problem"), and as a group they were idealistic and politically mobile. 25 Arriving from Prussia in large numbers and from towns and villages around Hamburg, this new workforce would be of the utmost importance 23. Ibid., 30-31. 24. The system grew from 25 public schools with 11,000 students in 1877 (18,ooo students still attended the remaining 150 church and private schools) to 209 in 1914 serving 1 17,00o students. By 1914 the number of private schools had dwindled to 78. From 1870 until the mid 18gos over 12 million marks alone were budgeted for the construction of new school buildings. See Kopitzsch, "Vaterlandisches Schul- und Erziehungswesen," 218-19. 25. Bolland, "GeselL,chaft der Freunde, "33· A teachers' training seminar for women was established in 1 876, four years after the founding of the men's seminar.

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for the further development of the school system, as they would soon push the system to its liberal limits. Upon arrival they began to reorganize the city's pedagogical associations. A large number of male elementary school teachers quickly broke away from Hamburg's established Teachers' Association, the Gesellschaft der Freunde des vaterlandischen Schul- und Erziehungswesens of 1805, which they felt was too traditional and unrepresentative of their interests, to launch the Hamburg Elementary School Teachers' Association ( Verein Hamburger Volksschullehrer, or VHV) in 1873, and in 1877 started a newspaper dedicated to pedagogical innovation, the widely influential and progressive Pedagogical Reform, which addressed a national audience. 26 Through its pages Hamburg's teachers became nationally known as pedagogical reformers and political radicals who worked to implement Social Democratic educational policy. 27 They supported the ultimate goal of the breakdown of social hierarchy through the democratization of the public education system, implemented by creating a comprehensive grammar school for all children (Einheitsschule). On a day to day level they criticized existing teaching methods and advocated thoroughgoing reform of the curriculum and of pedagogical thinking generally, as the title of their journal implied. As advocates of reform pedagogy, one of imperial Germany's most organized and impressive reform movements, they campaigned for introducing new vitality into education by making instruction as creative, concrete, and child-centered as possible. Mter 18go, as part of their pedagogical critique they supported first the art education movement and later the teaching of local history and culture, moving toward what would become known as Heimatkunde. The art education movement in Hamburg got its start in 1882 when one intrepid teacher lectured to the VHV on the benefits of instructing children in music and poetry. 28 Two years later, in 1884, Otto Ernst issued a sharp critique of the entire imperial educational system embedded in a seemingly tame lecture on Goethe, and Heinrich Wolgast took direct aim at the school system in a lecture on hierarchy and bureaucracy in the schools. In 1886 Ernst took his critique on the road and began giving recitations in local teachers' associations, a form of social and literary engagement that he continued in the Literary Society after 1891. 29 The pedagogical goals of the elementary school teachers, expressed in a growing number of lectures and discussions, were simple. They wanted to depart 26. Kopitzsch, ''Vaterliindisches Schul- und Erziehungswesen," 219; Bolland, "Gesellschaft der Freunde, "36. See also Blinckmann, Die offentliche Volksschule in Hamburg, 151-59· 27. See Johannes Tews's outline of the opposition between the Hamburg and Munich teachers in 1go6 in A us Arbeit und Leben. 28. The following analysis draws on Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark, 68-70; Wilkending, Volksbildung und Padagogik. 29. Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark, 70-72.

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place

from mechanized forms of learning-the drills and memorization remembered by generations of students for their numbing effect-to focus on the free expression of the student and the creativity of the teacher. Wolgast and Carl Gotze wanted to humanize a system of education that they felt had become too abstract in its methods and distant in its goals from the real concerns of children, as well as too militaristic with its emphasis on drilling and corporal punishment. 30 They criticized traditional pedagogical methods as authoritarian in content and method, capable only of creating underlings ( Untertanen). 31 Hamburg's new elementary school teachers were demonstrably active in the two decades before 1 914, founding associations, editing newspapers, and working with Lichtwark at the museum in the cause of local culture and aesthetic education. The most active among them-Ernst, Wolgast, and Gotze-were similar in age and background. Carl Gotze, who became the Social Democratic head of Hamburg's public school system in 1920, came from the Prussian village of Pinneberg, northwest of the city. Gotze's father stood out in agricultural Pinneberg, being the father of seven (which wasn't so unusual) and a carpenter in a factory (which was). Born in 1865, GOtze lightened the family's financial burden when hereceived a place as a teacher's assistant at the Alsterdorf Institutes, which he won by virtue of his good grades and test scores at the village school. In 1884 he entered the teachers' training seminar in Hamburg during the initial phase of the art education movement. By 1887 he was teaching in the public elementary schools. 32 Heinrich Wolgast's path to Hamburg was similar and not atypical for a bright village boy. Born in a small town in Holstein as the son of a blacksmith, he entered the teachers' training seminar, became a teacher, and moved to Hamburg, where he taught at the city orphanage before moving on to a position in the public school system in 1895· Remembered for his passionate lectures on political history, particularly on the French Revolution and the revolution of 1848, Wolgast dedicated his magnum opus, The Wretchedness of Our Young People's Literature, to Karl Marx, thereby stressing his belief in the social and political importance of all cultural issues. 33 In this pedagogical bombshell of 1896, 30. Wolgast's position is outlined in Berlin, '"Politisch-piidagogische Konflikte," 87-91. 31. For a description of "the school in the last century" see Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von gestem: Erinnerungen einesEuropiiers (1944; Berlin, 1990), 38-71. 32. StA HH, ZAS, A 757: Hamburger Echo, Sept. 30, 1930, and May 9, 1947; Hamburger Anzeiger, Oct. 1, 1930; Hamburgischer Correspondent, Nov. 25, 1920; Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Dec. 17, 1919. 33· Heinrich Wolgast, Das Elend unsererJugenrlliteratur: Ein Beitrag zur kiinstlerischen Erziehung rlerjugend (Hamburg, 1896). See StA HH, 7AS, A 77:r Neue Ham/mrger Zeitung, Sept. 3, 1920; R. Biedermann, "Heinrich Wolgast zum Gediichtnis," Hamburger Echo, Aug. 27, 1920. This former student remembered how his teacher had impressed upon the class the importance of democratic suffrage when he lectured on the revolution of 1848 and the importance of

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which argued for the importance of high-quality literature in the raising of children as free individuals, Wolgast maintained that Germany's lower classes deserved better forms of culture than the commercial trash generally peddled to them. His arguments against Schund and for art contended that the working classes were not superfluous to national life but were central to it. They were themselves the national public, Wolgast claimed, and as such they had the right to greater access to the sources of national culture and quality education. Wolgast agitated for artistic and ethical reform of children's literature as the editor of the newspaper Jugendschriftenwarte, a central organ of the movement against Schmutz and Schund, and Gotze began editing a new newspaper for pedagogical reform (also called Padagogische Reform and later renamed Der Saemann) in 1904. Together in 18g6 they formed a new association, the Teachers for Aesthetic Education, to promote high-quality cultural programs for children. The group took working-class schoolchildren to the city's theaters for productions of Schiller's plays; they brought artworks into the classroom to brighten the walls and assembled new readers of poetry and prose designed to be morally uplifting and aesthetically pleasing. 34 They promoted local modernism and naturalism in their reader by mixing regional stories and naturalist poems with more traditional selections. Wolgast was a convert to the cause of local art, and he became so involved with Lichtwark that critics complained that they saw him more often at the Art Museum than at the school. Through this first generation of village intellectuals the older ideal of aesthetic education received a new lease on life. The teachers wished to reconnect to the humanistic tradition of Bildungwith its goal of "universal humanistic education," believing in the possibility of creating "whole men" (ganze Mens chen) through immersion in art and literature. 35 Passionate converts to the liberal cause of aesthetic education, they also updated it to critique class privilege and to support the establishment of uniform primary schooling favored by the Social Democrats. 36 collective labor organizations. See also R. Ballerstadt, "Heinrich Wolgast," Hamburger Echo, Aug. 26, 1920. Wolgast's specific pedagogical contributions are summarized by Malte Dahrendorf, "Die Bedeutung Heinrich Wolgasts fiir die Jugendbuchkritik und Jugenbuchdidaktik," Auskunft 9, no. 3 (September 1989): 183-88. See also Wilkending, Volksbildung und Piidagogik. 34· Lehrervereinigung, Versuche und Ergebnisse, describes theatrical, musical, artistic, and literary activities. For their reader see Jakob Loewen berg, ed., Vom goldenen Uberjluss: EineAuswahl aus neuern deutschen Dichternfur Schute und Haus (Leipzig, n.d.). Meyer Spanier, Kunstlerischer Bilderschmuckfor Schulen, 2d rev. ed. (Hamburg, 1900), outlines the movement to bring artworks into the classroom. For theater visits see StA HH, 331-3, S 424o-27, UA 6. 35· Heinrich Wolgast, "Die Bedeutung der Kunst fiir die Erziehung," in Die Kunsterziehungsbewegung, ed. Hermann Lorenzen (Bad Heilbrunn, 1966), 17-20. 36. Both Milberg, Schulpolitik, and Wilkending, VolksbildungundPiidagogik, outline the Lib-

Jakob Loewen berg (courtesy of Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Plankammer Lo

112)

Carl Gotze (courtesy of Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Plankammer Go 176)

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place Heimatkunde and art education were vehicles for wide-ranging criticism that began with pedagogical issues but soon went beyond them. They became a springboard for criticism of the municipal bureaucracy, Prussianism, and nationalism in the schools, militarism and the glorification of violence, class inequality and the decline of the schools from vehicles of Bildung to the sorry remnants of a culture dedicated only to reason. The VHV and Pedagogical Reform provided a forum for such discussions and opened up others in the teachers' organizations and in the schools themselves as teachers moved away from the old curriculum. 37 Given the teachers' commitment to aesthetic education, Heimatkunde initially developed out of their interest in art as a pedagogical tool. As the "most complete expression of all the forces at work in human life," in Wolgast's words, art had "far-reaching pedagogical effect." It trained the faculties of reason, recognition, perception, and observation and validated instinctual and emotional responses. 38 The teacher G. Holler made similar points in a lecture held at the Teachers' Association on the social value of intense and sustained interaction with art. The study of art "increases the fitness of the individual and the people," Holler claimed; it "ennobled" the individual's "ability to experience pleasure" and was "of equal status with intellectual and moral" experiences. Aesthetic education, Holler stated, included "the systematic training of the senses, furtherance of local culture, and emphasis on the aesthetic in all areas of instruction, as well as offering worthy artworks of all sorts." Students were to "train their senses" through intensiYe study of individual works of art; they were also to receive instruction in drawing and writing to improve their own powers of expression. 39 While the teachers agreed on the positive pedagogical effect of studying art, the question of which types of art to use remained open. Holler supported the teaching of "local culture," as did Wolgast. "If the observation of actuality in nature and in human existence is one of the most important elements of artistic pleasure," Wolgast wrote,

knowledge and observation of the local community [Heimat] must claim a preeminent place in the training of aesthetic pleasure. As only era! and Social Democratic ideas informing the pedagogical reform and art education movements in Hamburg, which distinguished them from their counterparts in other regions of Germany. Aesthetic education in particular often took on a reactionary cast in other German cities, as it was drawn from the \Hitings of Julius Langbehn. For the reactionary side of the movement see Kratzsch, Kunstwart undDiirerbund. 37. Initially the Oberschulbehiirde reprimanded the teachers for changing the curriculum. Gebhard, Alfred Lichtwark, 68-6g. Berlin, "Politisch-padagogische Konflikte," 82-gS, outlines numerous conflicts between the teachers and the school administration. 38. Wolgast, "Bedeutung der Kunst," 17-18. c\9· G. Hiiller, "Die Bedeutung der Kunst fur die Erziehung, "Jahresbericht dr:r Gese/Lschaft der Frewule, H)OO/ 1901, 8-g.

Provincial Modernity

art that springs from its native soil [landwuchsige Kunst] is genuine, so the highest and most intimate features of art can only be grasped naturally from the perspective of the locality [aus der Heimat heraus] .40 In general Wolgast praised "the work of less exalted spirits" for their ability to bring "the common gifts of a people and of humanity to their purest and most complete form." 41 His populism celebrated the everyday "artistic spirit of the people" as a desired form of national culture. This populism was not necessarily reactionary, although that is how it is often interpreted. Wolgast married it to his Social Democratic politics, emphasizing that the "less exalted" could also be artists, while also retaining his strict ideas about artistic quality. Interest in the local, moreover, could go in several directions, and discussions of local culture transcended narrow discussions of art per se. The ideal of the local as an antidote to abstraction made its mark on several of the social sciences at the turn of the century.42 The locality, with its particular qualities and its immediate physicality, was praised for its vitality, its groundedness and authenticity. Local observation, the teachers thought, could serve to revive more abstract branches of knowledge. As one of Hamburg's elementary school teachers emphasized in 18g6, "heightened attention to the locally [heimatliche] and the practically valuable is to be sought in all courses of study," and what the teacher Heinrich Schumann called the "immediate observation oflocal nature and culture" became increasingly important to curricular reform in Hamburg's elementary schools. 43 Public opinion supported the turn to Heimatkunde. In fact, private citizens had been writing to Hamburg's newspapers to complain that the schools had done too little to generate interest in the Heimat. All over Germany Heimatvereine and beautification societies were reawakening interest in local history, wrote one complainer, through tourism, the preservation of historical buildings, and the conservation of natural landscapes. But in Hamburg the lack of local knowledge was embarrassing. He reported the results of a random survey he conducted on a tram: one passenger thought the Johanneum, Hamburg's most respected school, was "an English church," and one mistook the famous statue of the poet Lessing at the Geese Market for Goethe. This was an embarrassing and impossible situation, he claimed, and the schools had the responsibility to rectify it. Such 40. Heinrich Wolgast, "Die Aufgaben der lokalen Priifungsausschiisse," quoted in SchmidtDumont, "Hamburger Jugendschriftenausschuss," 38-39. 41. Wolgast, "Bedeutung der Kunst," 18. 42.james Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 53· 43· StA HH, 612-5/20-520: "Blatt 2," May 2, 1896, and 361-2V, 6o8a: Heinrich Schumann to an unnamed senator (likely Senator Mumssen), Apr. 6, 1913.

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place

factual knowledge was a part of local patriotism, he wrote, and passing it on was an important part of creating future citizens and productive members of the urban community. In the interest of maintaining the civic community, "the study of the locality is exceedingly important for Hamburg's youth and its present state is sadly deficient." 44 He directed his complaints specifically at the secondary schools, presumably because the elementary schools had already begun to address the issue. Heimatkunde informally became part of Hamburg's elementary school curriculum at the turn of the century. 45 In contrast to the earlier textbased teaching of local history, the elementary school teachers emphasized visual instruction, individual observation, and group experiences. Students should not just read about local history; they should see it in front of them, experience it physically, explore it in groups. Heinrich Schumann, chairman of the teachers' new Heimatkunde committee, endorsed comprehensive observation of the Heimat as a welcome addition to the curriculum. It was, he claimed, the "most important organizational task of teaching. "46 Teachers gathered teaching materials and commissioned special texts on local history. 47 They put together a new school primer with high-quality literature-"a people's book in the best sense of the word," Carl Gotze called it-with illustrations by the local modernist painter Arthur Siebelist. 48 For the teachers the Heimat became an object of study to be observed, written about, photographed, painted, measured, mapped, and narrated. Above all they endorsed observation as the preferred method of learning. In a 1911 lecture, "Principles of Heimat Instruction," Schumann emphasized that students would learn by seeing. To this end he stressed the visual presentation of the Heimat in the classroom. 49 Reading texts wouldn't do for this project; students should experience the city directly and personally. Walking tours through the streets supplemented by paintings and photographs in the classroom were the pillars of the new discipline. Teachers drew up lists of pictures to recommend for Heimat lessons and pushed to have classrooms outfitted with viewing equipment. 50 They wrote guidebooks for field trips, which became central to the new curriculum. The guidebooks pointed out spots of historical interest and drew children's at44· StA HH, 361-2 V, 6oS a: "Ein Mangel im Lehrplan der hoheren Schul en. ·• 45· Instruction in Heimatkundewas first mentioned in StA HH, 361-2V, 6o8b. vol. 1: Oberschulbehorde to Vermessungslntro (City Surveying Office), June 23, 1904. 46. StA HH, 361-2V, 6o8a: Heinrich Schumann to an unnamed senator (likely Senator Mumssen), Apr. 6, 1913, and 612-5120-510: Lecture by Schumann, Dec. 6, 19ll. 47· Ibid., W. Gunther for Heimatgeschichtliche Gruppe to Senator Mumssen, Oberschulbehorde, May 11, 191448. StA HH, HS, 731-1, 1982: Carl G6tze, "Erinnerungen," 2 vols., typescript, 1:143-44. 49· StA HH 612-5/20-510: "Prinzipien des heimatkundlichen Unterrichts," Dec. 6, 1911. 50. Ibid.

Provincial Modernity tention to traces of the past. 'We applied ourselves ... to what remained of traditional art and architecture in our Hanseatic city," wrote Carl Gotze in his memoir. Together with the Altona artist Oskar Schwindrazheim, Gotze edited a series on German rural art, and with the local architect Paul Brocker he published a volume on the working-class area of the Alley quarters, What the Alley Quarters Tell Us, for the new series Questions of Local History. 51 Field trips were to be complemented by discussion and classroom instruction, and they proved popular with both students and teachers. The enthusiasm with which teachers took offfor the streets and woods with their students is attested to by a fat file of documents in the Hamburg State Archive; other letters in the file complain of teachers who left students unchaperoned in rural train stations at the end of the day while they headed across the fields or across the street, looking, perhaps, for a nearby pub.52 Field trips to the countryside were popular, but the city was seen as the more important site of learning, and teachers took students through the streets and around the harbor. They chose points of civic interest and sought permission for students to observe not just points of historical interest but those of the modern economy such as gas plants and chemical factories. 53 They sought admittance to the city hall, which tried to discourage the visits by charging a fee. 54 A female teacher argued with the school administration on this point, claiming that her students had the right and the need to look into local government buildings. Her letter of 1903 described the pedagogical purpose behind such expeditions: For the purpose of instruction in local studies the undersigned takes walks now and then with young female students from the Hilfsschule to show them the most striking institutions of our community, as well as the beauties of our city and its surrounding area. The great happiness that the children bring to such collective expeditions carries over into an interest in the various sites and supports their understanding of local arrangements, love for the narrower and wider Fatherland, as well as the development or our common spiritual life. At a recent on-site observation of the interior of St. Peter's Church, the stock ex51. StA HH, HS, 731-1, 1982: Giitze, "Erinnerungen," 1:140-41. 52. See StAHR, 361-2V, 225a, vol. 1. 53· Ibid., 45ob; 45oa, Ma 4· Generally the director of the gas plant restricted admission to older students or those in the higher schools. He believed that younger students were not old enough to learn anything of value and their presence would increase the likelihood of accidents. Direktion der Gaswerke to Oberschulbehiirde, sect. III, V.S. no. L24o,jan. 24, 1910; another letter repeated the request for older students only as the gasworks was being inundated by school classes on field trips. Ibid., 2907, Nov. 4, 1910. 54· StA HH, 361-2V, 450a, Ma2: Rathausherrn Senator O'Swald to Senator Refardt, Feb. 27, 1901.

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place change during the trading day, and city hall, it was a great disappointment that the interior of city hall, of which the children had been told during the teaching of Hamburg's constitution, could not be seen. The undersigned appeals to the esteemed school administration to please apply itself to this matter so that the first two classes from the Hilfsschule at Kiel Street 7 can receive a free yearly visit to city hall. 55 Despite her eloquent plea, this wish was granted only to certain classes of students after 1911, a full eight years later. 5 6 In 1912 the Teachers' Association established a special committee for Heimatkundewith nine members. "This committee," they wrote, "sets itself the task of making the qualities inherent in local nature and culture useful in the education of children." They intended to organize trips to museums and theaters; bring together local officials, heads of Heimatgroups, and local writers and artists to contribute to school programs; collect and assess materials on the Heimat for use in the classroom; sponsor lectures and after-school activities on Heimat topics, and aid and support the elementary school teachers with information about Heimatprograms and topics. 57 The new committee systematized earlier ideas and programs, and Heimatkunde became an educational apparatus. Introduced as an addendum to a national historical narrative, by 1914 it had taken center stage, redefined as not only a worthwhile subject in its own right but as the foundation of more abstract learning. Moreover, in the shift from local history to Heimatkunde, ideas about individual development also began to change. The older model of local history had supported an older idea of selfhood-the rational, autonomous, and abstract self of nineteenth-century liberal ideology. Heimatkunde, as the elementary school teachers defined it, viewed the individual as socially bound and historically developed. From the reading of historical texts, the study of local culture shifted to the observation oflocal space and visualization of one's place in it. Seeing and Selfhood

Many teachers who supported the introduction of Heimatkunde-Otto Ernst, Friedrich von Borstel, Jakob Loewenberg, Heinrich Wolgast, Carl Gotze, C. A. Hellmann, and William Lottig, to name the more prominent-were devoted followers of Alfred Lichtwark. Their engagement in pedagogical reform was connected to their support for the art education 55· Ibid., C. Hamfeld to Oberschulbehiirde, sect. III, V.S. no. 1497, May 23, 1903. 56. Free access to city hall was allowed to the Selektaat the elementary schools and the Rcalschulen after 191 1. St.i\ HH, Art. 68, Sen at. Rathausverwaltung und Bedienung: Mittheilungen der Biirgerschaft an den Senat aus deren 16ter Sitzung am 31. Marz 1911, betreffend das Staatsbudget fiir 1911. 57. StA HH, 612-5/ 2o-510: Statutes "Der heimatkundliche Ausschuss."

Provincial Modernity

movement and its program to bring art into the classroom as the secular replacement for religious instruction. Heimathunde shared intellectual roots with aesthetic education in its emphasis on detailed observation, its support of artworks of all kinds (particularly forms oflocal culture and folk art), and its promotion of creativity. Teachers found support in Lichtwark, as his goals for the Hamburg Art Museum were similar to theirs. In 18gg Lichtwark launched courses in visual observation in which he used local artworks to teach children a sense of self and community. These "Exercises in the Observation of Artworks," given for elementary school girls and boys, concentrated on paintings by local artists or those that illustrated Hamburg and its surrounding environment. A local emphasis in aesthetic education was of primary importance to Lichtwark. "When aesthetic education was spoken of before in Germany," he wrote, "one thought immediately of the important Italian masters." Local art "was passed over in silence." Attempting to create a local focus for studies of national culture, Lichtwark set out a new canon of artworks that centered on Hamburg and recommended it for the schooling of children: We call for immersion in the most meaningful works of local [heimische] art wherever possible. Those who grow up in Hamburg should become acquainted first not with Raphael and Michaelangelo but with Hermann Kauffmann, the Specker brothers, the Gensler brothers, with Oldach, Runge, Scheits, Master Francke, and then with the sixteenth-century German masters-Schongauer, Durer, and Holbein-as well as with their successors, the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century gathered around Rembrandt. This should not be

superficial knowledge based on photographs and etchings; the force of feeling and perception should be developed through interaction with the original artworks. 5 8 Aesthetic education had a national referent but a local focus. "A healthy aesthetic education must stand on Munich's ground in Munich, on Nuremberg's ground in Nuremberg, and on Hamburg's ground in Hamburg," Lichtwark wrote. 59 To promote the project he wrote books on local artists-Hermann Kauffmann, Matthias Scheits, Master Francke-to help readers develop "the ability to visualize things." Written in an accessible style for "local friends of art," Lichtwark's books also consistently directed their readers to continue their studies by analyzing the original artworks hanging in the museum. 60 sS. Alfred Lichtwark, Afeister Franck£ ( I424) (Hamburg, tSgg), !6, 17. 59· Lichtwark, Palastfenster undFliigeltur, 2. 6o. Lichtwark's Meister Francke was the first in a series of illustrated volumes on Hamburg artists. The illustrations showed mainly artworks that could be viewed in the Art Museum ( tStg).

166

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place

For his exercises in aesthetic education Lichtwark used an expanded definition oflocal culture. Heimat referred to a "whole way oflife," which included art, architecture, literature, popular culture, and the forms and colors of the natural environment. But the visual moment-the observation of the artwork, the building, the piece of land-was of primary importance, and the training of the eye was the first step toward both aesthetic education and a deepened appreciation of the local environment. Lichtwark used paintings by local artists to teach children how to see their environment from aesthetic and historical perspectives. In the "Exercises in the Observation of Artworks," Lichtwark brought children into the museum (usually school classes together with their teacher), sat them in front of a painting, and asked them what they saw. The paintings usually illustrated an aspect of Hamburg's past or present, and Lichtwark encouraged the children to sink into its details, to pay attention to the painting of light, the play of shadows, the specificity of gestures and mannerisms. He did not lecture abstractly on the place of the painting in art history or in the nation's body of art, as he didn't think the children needed to know such things. He did not want to impart abstract notions of taste or learning to the children (though he tried to do so with their parents). Rather, through the "Exercises" he wanted them to acquire a detailed sense of place. Lichtwark encouraged them to articulate and share their impressions about the painting, and they arrived at a description of it as a group. Throughout, by having them focus on details, Lichtwark imparted to them a way of seeing that was simultaneously a way of reading (by viewing) local history. He unveiled the city to them as a historical organism, as an agglomeration of things, actions, behaviors, identities. Through Lichtwark's "Exercises" Hamburg became a habitus, a place productive of a local sensibility. 61 Similarly, for Lichtwark's friend Schiefler, his biographer wrote, Heimat was "not a political or an ethnic [volkischl concept. Rather it meant in the first instance the place, really the climate, in which one can develop into an independent personality, as this conception came closest to his own essence and character."62 Lichtwark shared his friend's conviction and his idea of Heimat. Heimat was to be taken in initially through the eyes, and Lichtwark supported the teachers' emphasis on visual instruction. An early advocate of field trips, Lichtwark supported this method for learning a detailed sense of one's native city. Illustrations alone would not suffice. He advocated studies on the premises. 63 The elementary school teachers, too, emphasized the connection between seeing and learning, between absorbing the specificities of a local 61. Lichtwark, O&ungen. 62. Woesthoff, "Ghickliche Mensch," 74-75; Schiefler, "Die hamburgischc Landschaft als Kulturelement,"]GHK4 (18g8): 31-37. 63. See Lichtwark, "Kunst in der Schule."

Provincial Modernity place and the development of a sense of the self. Developing the self was central to Heimatkunde, as its supporters emphasized. Heimat "belongs to the most subjective aspects of human life," claimed the educator Eduard Spranger, nationally the most prominent supporter of Heimatkunde. Deepening one's knowledge of the local environment, "that piece of earth that we call Heimat," advanced "the spiritual development of the personality in the strongest way." 64 It would be advanced by "learning how to see." Wolgast likewise connected seeing and individual spiritual development by emphasizing the deepening of individual experience through exercises of seeing and observing. 'The child who conquers the world through these more sensitive organs will live more deeply than one with uncultivated eyes," he wrote, and "intellectual penetration of the world based on a deeper grasp of its visible aspects will provide a heightened capacity for vital ability. "65 The individual personality also developed in materially and historically specific places. Heimatkunde, while beginning with the individual's "learning to see," also generated social narratives that advanced a conception of the individual as fundamentally shaped by the local environment. The idea of the individual that emerged was not primarily that of an abstract and autonomous being but a member of a historically and geographically determined community. Wolgast wrote about observation as an intellectual and spiritual activity. The first stages of Heimatkunde, however, focused on its mechanics. The first step was to teach very young children how to see and observe. At this stage Heimatkunde was defined as Anschauungsunterrirht, learning through seeing and learning how to see. 66 Anschauungsunterricht served the same pedagogical goals as Heimatkunde.It aimed "to open the child's eyes to the wonderful beauty of the everyday environment in which it lives." Segmented into specific parts, the exercise emphasized disciplined looking and the differentiation of visual information into categories. Children were taught how to distinguish between parts and wholes, between their home and the wider community, and to be able to describe what they saw. This exercise also aimed to teach children to achieve a sense of themselves as socially defined individuals. Individual identity was described as materially embedded in a local environment and within the framework of larger social communities. They began with the family and extended upward to the state. From their earliest days children were to learn a sense of themselves by imagining their connection to communities embedded in space and time. Learning to see thus became the first step toward learning about "the dependence of the individual on a totality (of the family, later of the 64. Spranger, Bildungswert der Heimatkundt, 5, 6. 65. Wolgast, "Bedeutung der Kunst," tg. 66. For an example see T. Keliv and Alb. Kleinschmidt, eds., Der Anschauungsunterricht fur Haus und Schute auf Grundlage der Hey-Spekterschen Fabeln (Gotha. tgoo).

t68

A Sense of Self, a Sense ofPlace urban community and still later of the state and the various peoples of the entire earth) ."67 The teachers hoped that in time this kind of informed seeing would become self~motivated, supported by books written for children. As a school text stated, its intention was to "awaken the children's awareness and their desire to learn so that they will become motivated to observe with their own eyes. "68 Produdive Landscapes

A very different kind of text, Walter Benjamin's "Berlin Chronicle," also played with the connections among seeing, self, place, and field trips. It generated a map of the self out of a descriptive map of an urban environment created by an individual's experience of walking through it. "I have long, indeed for years, played with the idea of setting out the sphere of life-bios-graphically on a map,"wrote Benjamin, explaining his love of walking through Berlin. "And even without this map, I still have the encouragement provided by an illustrious precursor, the Frenchman Leon Daudet, exemplary at least in the title of his work, which exactly encompasses the best I might achieve here: Paris vecu. 'Lived Berlin' does not sound so good but is as real."69 The city was read with the feet, the body, and the mind; field trips became individual and collective journeys of selfdiscovery.70 In "Berlin Chronicle" Benjamin used the idea of the cinema to create his ideal of "lived Berlin." Lichtwark was only a few steps down this road. His frame of reference was more traditional, combining emotive aesthetic experience with a more literal reading of urban details set out by the paintings and gathered by the children on their trips through the city. But was there a particular frame of reference that created "lived Hamburg," as it was narrated in the schoolbooks and displayed at the museum? To ask the question in a different way, iflocal geography and culture were thought to teach valuable lessons about self and world, and this was the main reason for its study, what was written on its surface? Lichtwark's field trips and the visual instruction of the teachers assembled Hamburg as a collection of living pictures, but the question remains as to how these pictures were viewed. How should the city be read? Lichtwark's programs and visual instruction had the common propen67. StA HH, 361-2V, 6o8a: Heinrich Scharrelmann, "Einige Gesichtspunkte fiir die Heimatkunde und den Anschuungsunterricht," Piirlagogische Reform, Apr. 10, 1907 and Apr. 17, 1907. 68. C. Hentze, Hamburg: Heimatkunrle fur Schute unrl Haus, 8th rev. ed. (Hamburg, 1913), introduction. 69. Walter Benjamin, "A Berlin Chronicle," in Reflections, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York, 1986), 5· 70. See Michel de Certeau, "Walking in the City," in The Practice ofHveryday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984), 91-1 1 o; Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities (l\'ew York, Hjgo).

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Provincial Modernity sity to view Hamburg as a particular kind of landscape with a particular kind of history. While aesthetic education provided the impetus for Heimatkunde and gave it a working method for apprehending local places, the stories and exercises used in the classroom started with art to arrive at new narratives of local history and economy. Heimat instruction, popular histories, and regional artworks highlighted the intersection of commerce with the natural environment; they told stories and provided images that displayed the city as a phenomenon of controlled nature, as productive and picturesque, material and spiritual. The small book Hamburg: Heimatkunde juT Schute und Haus by C. Hentze, a short history textbook used in the public schools, told local history through the categories of productivity and work in the sense of a variety of productive human activities. Work transformed the natural setting of marsh and swamp. The impulse to dam the many small rivers, drain the land, and harness the power of water created the city's initial structures and spaces. Such textbook narratives did not tell a history of conquest by kings, lords, or even merchants. Their action was quieter, the conquest more oblique. Rather than focusing on the sagas or fairy tales of a remote popular culture, or celebrating the warriors, kings, and heroes peopling a history of mythologized conquest-two popular modes of narrating national and regional histories-local history texts in Hamburg described the unfolding of economic power in the city and its origin in the natural power of the land. Heimatkunde in Hamburg was education in and for the city, and these books defined trade and capitalism as the city's historical legacy. Described as something so deeply rooted as to seem natural, capitalism and exchange became in Hentze's Hamburgan organic outgrowth of the qualities of the local landscape. After an initial chapter outlining the emotional allegiances binding children to their city and nation, Hentze's narrative plunged into a description of the material environment, detailing the kinds of houses, residents, and work found in an urban setting. Work overlay the material environment, determining its structures and heightening its significance. Buying, selling, making, and doing, the flow of work, productivity, products, and trade moved through the land and between cities in Europe and overseas, creating a system both balanced and harmonious. In Hentze's telling, this essential characteristic of Hamburg imprinted all areas oflife. The rhythm of work around the Elbe continued in the leisuretime activities on the Alster. As the goods flowed in and out, so the pleasure boats traveled back and forth and the promenaders walked round and round, giving in to and representing the productive motion that dominated all areas of activity. Hentze's telling of local history-whose narrative structure and emphases can be found in other histories and local stories-displayed a truly odd pairing of the technical and the organic, culture and nature. The city,

A Sense of Self, a Sense of Place the center of technological progress and industrial change, was not shown as an artificial construct or as a blight on the natural body. Rather, the forces shaping the modern city were described as historical: the economic motives that had initially dammed the rivers and created the Alster, established the mills, and harnessed and directed the power of water and wind to the benefit of human fortunes. Hamburg's city architect, Fritz Schumacher, echoed these points when he wrote of Hamburg's peculiar status as worked and transformed nature. "Hamburg created its own nature," he wrote. "It is, as perhaps no other city is, totally and completely a product of the technical energy of its inhabitants. "71 Their labor had transformed a marsh into a productive landscape. Schumacher's organic/ technical history reconfigured Hamburg's history under the sign of nature as a locus of productivity. In Schumacher's and Hentze's telling, Hamburg emerged as a kind of nature/machine, a powerful, organic economic entity. Both Hentze and Schumacher described economic dominance as Hamburg's historical legacy and its claim to national prominence. This approach was compatible with the methods of aesthetic education and Heimatkundepromoted by the teachers and by Lichtwark. A~ teachers took schoolchildren into the streets and around the harbor, they unveiled to them a view of capitalism as something that had grown out of Hamburg's natural surroundings rather than something that had been violently and artificially imposed upon them. It had developed peacefully; the cash nexus grew naturally out of the past, embedded in the social relations that first emerged in the city's marketplaces around the churches. Similarly, the heroes ofHentze's school text were not individuals, politicians, merchants, or otherwise, but movement itself-of goods, information, and laborshown to be as natural to Hamburg as the water flowing down its river, through its harbor, and through the city (as other stories showed, however, this movement was anything but natural). Movement and productivity became signs of a naturalized capitalism, which was then mythologized into a narrative of local history. The emphasis on productivity embedded in turn-of-the-century historical narratives came to the fore in many aspects of Heimatinstruction. The first stages of Heimatkunde, focused on the visual instruction of very small children, took productivity as its central category. Heimat instruction, the teachers stressed, began at home, and the first things that children's attention should be drawn to were the kinds of labor that went on in the household: the mother's work, the work of others in the household and in the surrounding neighborhood, and the trades of the various people who 71. Fritz Schumacher, "Entwicklung des Stadtbildes," in Hamburg, ed. Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Hamburg, 1922), 20. As the liberal lawyer Geert Seelig put it, present-day Hamburg owed its founding not to the exploits of generals or prelates but to "the work of its citizens" ( Geschichtlirhf f.