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This collection of original essays by prominent historians from the
United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Germany provides new
insight into the social, political and intellectual components of
German conservatism from its origins in the late-18th century
through to the end of the Third Reich. The essays combine fresh
empirical research with new theoretical and historiographical
perspectives to provide the basis for a collective reassessment of
the role that conservatism has played in Germany's national
development. The collection thus serves to fill a prominent gap in
the existing body of secondary literature on modern German history
and to provide the history of German conservatism with the sort of
detailed attention that German liberalism and socialism have
recently received.
What was distinctive-and distinctively "modern"-about German
society and politics in the age of Kaiser Wilhelm II? In addressing
this question, these essays assemble cutting-edge research by
fourteen international scholars. Based on evidence of an explicit
and self-confidently "bourgeois" formation in German public
culture, the contributors suggest new ways of interpreting its
reformist potential and advance alternative readings of German
political history before 1914. While proposing a more measured
understanding of Wilhelmine Germany's extraordinarily dynamic
society, they also grapple with the ambivalent, cross-cutting
nature of German "modernities" and reassess their impact on
long-term developments running through the Wilhelmine age.
What was distinctive-and distinctively "modern"-about German
society and politics in the age of Kaiser Wilhelm II? In addressing
this question, these essays assemble cutting-edge research by
fourteen international scholars. Based on evidence of an explicit
and self-confidently "bourgeois" formation in German public
culture, the contributors suggest new ways of interpreting its
reformist potential and advance alternative readings of German
political history before 1914. While proposing a more measured
understanding of Wilhelmine Germany's extraordinarily dynamic
society, they also grapple with the ambivalent, cross-cutting
nature of German "modernities" and reassess their impact on
long-term developments running through the Wilhelmine age.
The German Empire was founded in January 1871 not only on the basis
of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's "blood and iron" policy but also
with the support of liberal nationalists. Under Bismarck and Kaiser
Wilhelm II, Germany became the dynamo of Europe. Its economic and
military power were pre-eminent; its science and technology,
education, and municipal administration were the envy of the world;
and its avant-garde artists reflected the ferment in European
culture. But Germany also played a decisive role in tipping
Europe's fragile balance of power over the brink and into the
cataclysm of the First World War, eventually leading to the
empire's collapse in military defeat and revolution in November
1918.
With contributions from an international team of twelve experts in
the field, this volume offers an ideal introduction to this crucial
era, taking care to situate Imperial Germany in the larger sweep of
modern German history, without suggesting that Nazism or the
Holocaust were inevitable endpoints to the developments charted
here.
On the eve of the First World War, the German Social Democratic
Party (SPD) was the largest and most powerful socialist party in
the world. German Social Democracy through British Eyes examines
the SPD's rise using British diplomatic reports from Saxony, the
third-largest federal state in Imperial Germany and the cradle of
the socialist movement in that country. Rather than focusing on the
Anglo-German antagonism leading to the First World War, the book
peers into the everyday struggles of German workers to build a
political movement and emancipate themselves from the worst
features of a modern capitalist system: exploitation, poverty, and
injustice. The archival documents, most of which have never been
published before, raise the question of how people from one nation
view people from another. The documents also illuminate political
systems, election practices, and anti-democratic strategies at the
local and regional levels, allowing readers to test hypotheses
derived only from national-level studies. This collection of
primary sources shows why, despite the inhospitable environment of
German authoritarianism, Saxony and Germany were among the most
important incubators of socialism.
On the eve of the First World War, the German Social Democratic
Party (SPD) was the largest and most powerful socialist party in
the world. German Social Democracy through British Eyes examines
the SPD's rise using British diplomatic reports from Saxony, the
third-largest federal state in Imperial Germany and the cradle of
the socialist movement in that country. Rather than focusing on the
Anglo-German antagonism leading to the First World War, the book
peers into the everyday struggles of German workers to build a
political movement and emancipate themselves from the worst
features of a modern capitalist system: exploitation, poverty, and
injustice. The archival documents, most of which have never been
published before, raise the question of how people from one nation
view people from another. The documents also illuminate political
systems, election practices, and anti-democratic strategies at the
local and regional levels, allowing readers to test hypotheses
derived only from national-level studies. This collection of
primary sources shows why, despite the inhospitable environment of
German authoritarianism, Saxony and Germany were among the most
important incubators of socialism.
This collection of essays presents the work on Germany's stormy and
problematic encounter with mass politics from the time of Bismarck
to the Nazi era. The authors - sixteen scholars from the United
States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany - consider this problem
from novel and sometimes surprising viewpoints. The history of
elections, narrowly conceived, is abandoned in favor of a broader
inquiry into roots of German political loyalties and their
relationship to the historic cleavages of class, gender, language,
religion, generation and locality. The essays not only present
archival findings, but they also pursue more theoretical or
conjectural paradigms, and raise questions. Collectively, the
authors explore the twin problems of electoral politics and social
dislocation with language that is intentionally familiar,
inventive, and allusive all at once - in a sense reflecting the
Germans' own unfinished search for political consensus and social
stability.
As wars and other conflicts increase on a worldwide scale, the
alleged 'new wars' of the present day have taught that military
victory does not necessarily result in a sustained state of peace.
Rather, societies in conflict experience a 'status mixtus' - a
transformative period that includes substantial changes in economy,
politics, society and culture. Focusing on these decades of
reconstruction in Europe and North America, this book examines the
transformation of state systems, international relations, and
normative principles in international comparison. By putting the
postwar decade after 1945 into a long-term historical perspective,
the chapters illuminate new patterns of transition between war and
peace from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Experts in the
field show that states and societies are never restituted from a
'zero hour'. They also demonstrate that foreign and domestic policy
are intermixed before and after peace breaks out.
What makes a person call a particular place 'home'? Does it follow
simply from being born there? Is it the result of a language shared
with neighbours or attachment to a familiar landscape? Perhaps it
is a piece of music, or a painting, or even a travelogue that
captures the essence of home. And what about the sense of belonging
that inspires nationalist or local autonomy movements? Each of
these can be a marker of identity, but all are ambiguous. Where you
were born has a different meaning if, like so many modern Germans,
you have moved on and now live elsewhere. Representing the
'national interest' in parliament becomes more difficult when
voters demand attention to local and regional issues or when ethnic
tensions erupt. In all these situations the landscape of 'home'
takes on a more elusive meaning. Localism, Landscape, and the
Ambiguities of Place is about the German nation state and the
German-speaking lands beyond it, from the 1860s to the 1930s. The
authors explore a wide range of subjects: music and art, elections
and political festivities, local landscape and nature conservation,
tourism and language struggles in the family and the school. Yet
they share an interest in the ambiguities of German identity in an
age of extraordinarily rapid socio-economic change. These essays do
not assume the primacy of national allegiance. Instead, by using
the 'sense of place' as a prism to look at German identity in new
ways, they examine a sense of 'Germanness' that was neither
self-evident nor unchanging.
As wars and other conflicts increase on a worldwide scale, the
alleged 'new wars' of the present day have taught that military
victory does not necessarily result in a sustained state of peace.
Rather, societies in conflict experience a 'status mixtus' - a
transformative period that includes substantial changes in economy,
politics, society and culture. Focusing on these decades of
reconstruction in Europe and North America, this book examines the
transformation of state systems, international relations, and
normative principles in international comparison. By putting the
postwar decade after 1945 into a long-term historical perspective,
the chapters illuminate new patterns of transition between war and
peace from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Experts in the
field show that states and societies are never restituted from a
'zero hour'. They also demonstrate that foreign and domestic policy
are intermixed before and after peace breaks out.
This collection of essays presents the most recent work on Germany's stormy and problematic encounter with mass politics from the time of Bismarck to the Nazi era. The authors--sixteen scholars from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany--consider this problem from novel and sometimes surprising viewpoints. The history of elections, narrowly conceived, is abandoned in favor of a broader inquiry into roots of German political loyalties and their relationship to the historic cleavages of class, gender, language, religion, generation and locality. The essays not only present archival findings, but they also pursue more theoretical or conjectural paradigms, and raise new questions. Collectively, the authors explore the twin problems of electoral politics and social dislocation with language that is intentionally familiar, inventive, and allusive all at once--in a sense reflecting the Germans' own unfinished search for political consensus and social stability.
Despite recent studies of imperial Germany that emphasize the
empire's modern and reformist qualities, the question remains: to
what extent could democracy have flourished in Germany's stony
soil? In Germany's Second Reich, James Retallack continues his
career-long inquiry into the era of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II
with a wide-ranging reassessment of the period and its connections
with past traditions and future possibilities. In this volume,
Retallack reveals the complex and contradictory nature of the
Second Reich, presenting Imperial Germany as it was seen by
outsiders and insiders as well as by historians, political
scientists, and sociologists ever since.
Red Saxony throws new light on the reciprocal relationship between
political modernization and authoritarianism in Germany over the
span of six decades. Election battles were fought so fiercely in
Imperial Germany because they reflected two kinds of
democratization. Social democratization could not be stopped, but
political democratization was opposed by many members of the German
bourgeoisie. Frightened by the electoral success of the Social
Democrats after 1871, anti-democrats deployed many strategies that
flew in the face of electoral fairness. They battled socialists,
liberals, and Jews at election time, but they also strove to
rewrite the electoral rules of the game. Using a regional lens to
rethink older assumptions about Germany's changing political
culture, this volume focuses as much on contemporary Germans'
perceptions of electoral fairness as on their experiences of
voting. It devotes special attention to various semi-democratic
voting systems whereby a general and equal suffrage (for the
Reichstag) was combined with limited and unequal ones for local and
regional parliaments. For the first time, democratization at all
three tiers of governance and their reciprocal effects are
considered together. Although the bourgeois face of German
authoritarianism was nowhere more evident than in the Kingdom of
Saxony, Red Saxony illustrates how other Germans grew to fear the
spectre of democracy. Certainly twists and turns lay ahead, yet
that fear made it easier for Hitler and the Nazis to win elections
in the 1920s and to entomb German democracy in 1933.
The German Empire was founded in January 1871 not only on the basis
of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's "blood and iron" policy but also
with the support of liberal nationalists. Under Bismarck and Kaiser
Wilhelm II, Germany became the dynamo of Europe. Its economic and
military power were pre-eminent; its science and technology,
education, and municipal administration were the envy of the world;
and its avant-garde artists reflected the ferment in European
culture. But Germany also played a decisive role in tipping
Europe's fragile balance of power over the brink and into the
cataclysm of the First World War, eventually leading to the
empire's collapse in military defeat and revolution in November
1918.
With contributions from an international team of twelve experts in
the field, this volume offers an ideal introduction to this crucial
era, taking care to situate Imperial Germany in the larger sweep of
modern German history, without suggesting that Nazism or the
Holocaust were inevitable endpoints to the developments charted
here.
Red Saxony throws new light on the reciprocal relationship between
political modernization and authoritarianism in Germany over the
span of six decades. Election battles were fought so fiercely in
Imperial Germany because they reflected two kinds of
democratization. Social democratization could not be stopped, but
political democratization was opposed by many members of the German
bourgeoisie. Frightened by the electoral success of the Social
Democrats after 1871, anti-democrats deployed many strategies that
flew in the face of electoral fairness. They battled socialists,
liberals, and Jews at election time, but they also strove to
rewrite the electoral rules of the game. Using a regional lens to
rethink older assumptions about Germany's changing political
culture, this volume focuses as much on contemporary Germans'
perceptions of electoral fairness as on their experiences of
voting. It devotes special attention to various semi-democratic
voting systems whereby a general and equal suffrage (for the
Reichstag) was combined with limited and unequal ones for local and
regional parliaments. For the first time, democratization at all
three tiers of governance and their reciprocal effects are
considered together. Although the bourgeois face of German
authoritarianism was nowhere more evident than in the Kingdom of
Saxony, Red Saxony illustrates how other Germans grew to fear the
spectre of democracy. Although twists and turns lay ahead, that
fear made it easier for Hitler and the Nazis to win elections in
the 1920s and to entomb German democracy in 1933.
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