Ruminations on the onus of modern German history. Columbia
University historian Stern tries to evoke such nebulous and
unquantifiable phenomena as the "self-image of the German Burgher"
and the Vulgaridealismus of the Second Reich; he sees in the
prevalent 19th century deprecation of political life and the
exaltation of Kultur by the intelligentsia a dangerous symptom of
civic irresponsibility which paved the way for the perversions of
the Nazis - an insight borrowed from Leonard Krieger's The German
Idea of Freedom (1957). The Failure of Illiberalism is a collection
of disparate essays written over the last dozen years; suggestive
rather than rigorously analytical, they go after nuance ("the less
tangible elements of milieu"), atmosphere, and character. Sketches
of Gerson Bleichroder, Bismarck's Jewish banker, and Bethmann
Hollweg, the Hamlet-like Chancellor who floundered into World War
I, are psychologically astute, though the mantle of tragic grandeur
which Stern tries on Bethmann is a poor fit. Like his mentor, the
French historian Elie Halevy, Stern rejects the distinction between
domestic and foreign politics and offers a damning critique of
Bismarck's pernicious impact on the evolution of political parties.
Striving for a totality of vision, he draws freely on literature
for his broad but sometimes platitudinous characterizations of
German society - e.g., the umbrella label "illiberalism" seems
especially namby-pamby. The book presupposes a thorough familiarity
with the historiography of modern Germany; it supplies some
footnotes, shadings and modulations, more synthetic than original.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Fritz Stern argues that the best way to describe the character of
Imperial Germany after 1878 is "illiberal", which describes the
German commitment in mind and policy against any further concession
to democracy. Stern argues that from Bismarck to the end of World
War II, German society embraced the impulse toward totalitarianism
that this illiberal stance fostered. He also examines the efforts
of German scholars to explain the phenomenon of Nazism, the attempt
of the German people to come to terms with their past, and the
failure of illiberalism in the 1950s.
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