Bismarck and German Empire: 1871-1918, 2nd edition (Lancaster Pamphlets)

Bismarck and the German Empire 1871–1918 Lynn Abrams provides a concise and accessible introduction to this important period in German history. The author examines the political, economic and social structures of the Empire and how Bismarck consolidated his regime as well as the Wilhelmine period and the factors which led to the outbreak of the First World War. Bismarck and the German Empire 1871–1918 is both a narrative of events and an analysis of social and cultural developments across the period. This second edition has been fully updated and expanded, responding to the latest research in the area. It has a new introduction and further reading section, which includes a guide to useful websites. Lynn Abrams is Professor of Gender History at the University of Glasgow. Her publications include Workers’ Culture in Imperial Germany (Routledge, 1992) and The Making of Modern Woman: Europe 1789– 1918 (2002).

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la n c a st e r pa m p h l et s

Bismarck and the German Empire 1871–1918 Second Edition

Lynn Abrams

First published 1995 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Second edition 2006 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. o purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s “T collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

© 1995, 2006 Lynn Abrams All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Abrams, Lynn. Bismarck and the German Empire, 1871–1918 / Lynn Abrams. – 2nd ed. p. cm. – (Lancaster pamphlets) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–415–36309–8 – ISBN 0–415–33796–8 (pbk.) 1. Bismarck, Otto, Fürst von, 1815–1898. 2. Statesmen – Germany – Biography. 3. Germany – Politics and Government – 1871–1918. I. Title. II. Series. DD218.A54 2006 943.08092 – dc22 2005030708 ISBN 0-203-44824-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0–415–36309–8 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0–415–33796–8 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0–203–44824–3 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–36309–9 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–33796–0 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–203–44824–3 (ebk)

Contents

Foreword

ix

Glossary and abbreviations Chronological table of events

x xii

Map: The unification of Germany 1867–71 1 Introduction

1

The Sonderweg thesis and its critics Personalities

2

5

2 The new German state

9

Nationalism and unification

10

Political structures

13

The economy Society Conclusions

17 20 24

3 Bismarck and consolidation 1871–90 vii

xiv

26

Bismarckian ruling strategies Foreign policy

28

43

Conclusions

46

4 Confrontation and integration 1890–1914 Wilhelm II and the Bismarckian inheritance Pressure groups and politics Conclusions

66

The road to war

68

The experience of war

70

Revolution

74

Conclusions

77

6 Interpretations Notes

viii

78

82

Further reading Index

51

54

5 War and revolution 1914–19

85 90

49

68

Foreword

The Lancaster Pamphlets series presents up-to-date, concise accounts and interpretations of major historical topics. The books span all periods from the ancient world to the late twentieth century. They are of particular value to those wanting to get an accessible overview of themes relevant to courses in universities and in other institutions of further and higher education. They can also be used with confidence by students preparing for AS and A2 examinations. Without being allembracing, they bring the key themes and problems confronting students into sharper focus than the textbook writer can usually do. They explicitly provide the reader with the results of recent research which, again, the textbook may not provide. Since they are written by practising professional historians, they also convey individuality of approach as well as a synthesis of existing ideas. Above all, each volume in the Lancaster Pamphlets series gives readers an understanding of a topic sufficient to imbue confidence and, thereby, enthusiasm to move on to more detailed study if required.

ix

Glossary and abbreviations

Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) Bund Deutscher Landwirte Bundesrat Burgfriede Flottenpolitik Grossdeutschland Grunderzeit Honoratiorenpolitik Junker Kaiser Kleindeutschland Kulturkampf Landflucht Landtag Lumpenproletariat Mittelstand Reformvereine Reichsfeinde Reichstag Sammlungspolitik Sonderweg Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD)

Federation of German Women’s Associations Agrarian League Federal Council Civil truce Naval policy Greater Germany Foundation years Politics of notables Prussian landowner Emperor Lesser Germany Struggle of civilizations Flight from the land Regional parliament Rough working class Lower middle class Reform associations Enemies of the Empire Parliament Policy of gathering together Special path German Social Democratic Party

x

Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD) Vormärz Weltpolitik Zollverein

Independent German Social Democratic Party Pre-March (pre-1848 revolution) Foreign or world policy Customs Union

xi

Chronological table of events

1806 1814 1815 1834 1848–9 1849 1862 1864 1866 1867 1870–1 1871

1873–9 1873 1875 1878 1879 1881

Dissolution of Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon I Defeat of Napoleon Congress of Vienna Establishment of German Confederation Formation of Zollverein (Customs Union) Revolutions in the German lands and Habsburg Empire Defeat of liberals, conservative resurgence Bismarck becomes prime minister of Prussia Schleswig–Holstein crisis Austro-Prussian War,defeat of Austria at Königgrätz Establishment of North German Confederation Franco-Prussian War, defeat of France at Sedan Proclamation of German Empire Bismarck launches Kulturkampf (anti-Catholic legislation) Economic depression Three Emperors’ Alliance (Prussia, Austria, Russia) Formation of Socialist Workers’ Party (becomes Social Democratic Party) Anti-Socialist Law Shift to protectionism Dual Alliance (Germany, Austria) Social insurance reforms announced xii

1882 1884–6 1887 1888 1890

Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria, Italy) Quest for overseas colonies Reinsurance Treaty (Germany, Russia) Accession of Wilhelm II Fall of Bismarck Lapse of Anti-Socialist Law Caprivi becomes chancellor 1891 Sunday working abolished 1892 Conservative Party adopts Tivoli Programme 1893 Founding of Pan-German League 1894 Resignation of Caprivi, Hohenlohe becomes chancellor Founding of Federation of German Women’s Associations 1898 Founding of Navy League 1900 Bülow becomes chancellor Introduction of new Imperial Civil Code 1905 First Moroccan Crisis 1908 Daily Telegraph Affair Reich Law of Association 1909 Resignation of Bülow, Bethmann Hollweg becomes chancellor 1911 Second Moroccan Crisis 1912–13 Balkan wars 1914 (June) Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (July) Germany offers Austria a ‘blank cheque’ (August) Germany declares war on Russia and France, invades Belgium Britain declares war on Germany Kaiser announces a Burgfriede (civil truce) 1916 Hindenburg and Ludendorff establish military dictatorship 1918 (October) Military hands over power to civilian government Prince Max von Baden becomes chancellor (November) Naval mutiny at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel revolutionary unrest Abdication of Wilhelm II Scheidemann proclaims a republic 1919 (January) Elections to National Assembly in Weimar (August) Enactment of Weimar constitution xiii

Border of the German Empire, 1871

The unification of Germany 1867–71

1 Introduction

The Second German Empire was proclaimed on 18 January 1871, the culmination of a political, economic, diplomatic and military process concluded by Prussia’s military defeat of Austria in 1866 at Königgrätz and her victory over France at Sedan in 1870. The disparate German lands were unified by ‘blood and iron’. Prussia thus established her military but also her economic and political supremacy in a small German (kleindeutsch) state which excluded Austria under the Prusso-German Kaiser, Wilhelm I, and the Prussian prime minister and German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. More than a century later, having experienced authoritarianism, republicanism, Nazism and division after the Second World War, the two Germanies – the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic – united on 3 October 1990 following a peaceful revolution and the breaching of the Berlin Wall, a process far removed from the militarism that characterized the unification of the nineteenth century. The new German Reich (also known as the Kaiserreich) rapidly established itself as a leading world industrial and military power. From the mid-nineteenth century Germany experienced rapid industrialization accompanied by urbanization and social upheaval and yet this astonishing social and economic change occurred within a political and constitutional framework that has been labelled at worst pseudoconstitutional, semi-absolutist and at best autocracy based on consent. The new state, then, was something of a paradox. In the words of one 1

nineteenth-century historian, ‘the proud citadel of the new German Empire was built in opposition to the spirit of the age’.1 The Second Empire lasted forty-seven years. In 1914 Germany embarked upon a disastrous war. Military defeat and exhaustion and disillusionment on the home front precipitated a revolution in 1918. The Kaiser abdicated and the old regime collapsed, to be replaced by the short-lived Weimar Republic. After merely fourteen years of a democratic republican regime, in 1933 Germany experienced the assertion of a form of authoritarianism which bore little relation to that perpetrated by the Second Empire, when the National Socialists, led by Adolf Hitler, came to power and embarked upon twelve years of totalitarian rule and another traumatic and costly war (a topic covered in another Lancaster Pamphlet).2 Defeat in 1945 was followed by occupation by the Allied powers. In 1949 Germany was divided into the communist East and democratic West. It was to be another forty-one years before the German people would be reunited. The Sonderweg thesis and its critics Interpretations of the German Empire have been heavily influenced by attempts to explain Germany’s more recent troubled past; in particular historians have sought to discover the origins of the Third Reich. In contrast to those historians who had argued that Nazism was contrary to all the traditions of German history and that Hitler and the National Socialists were a bunch of misfits, railing against the modern state that had been shaped from Bismarck onwards, those who advocated continuity suggested that the roots of Nazism were to be found in the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine era; that the Third Reich was not an aberrant or unique regime which had no precursors or origins in Germany’s history, but rather it grew from Germany’s failure to develop a liberal parliamentary system in the nineteenth century. Imperial Germany, in the view of this school of historians, followed a Sonderweg, a peculiar or special path, divergent from the political roads taken by other western states, notably Britain and France. Given the influence of the Sonderweg hypothesis over historians’ interpretations of the Second Empire for at least the last thirty years, the main arguments are summarized here, followed by a brief account of some of the objections to this view. According to the proponents of the Sonderweg theory, Germany’s political misdevelopment in the nineteenth century was at the root of her descent into illiberalism, chaos, fascism and war in the twentieth 2

century. And at the heart of this political course was the failure of the bourgeoisie to assume political responsibility. It is argued that Germany never experienced a bourgeois revolution (encompassing the bourgeoisie’s assumption of political power from the aristocracy) as occurred earlier in England and France, and thus Germany’s political development under the rule of Bismarck and then Wilhelm II diverged from the western democracies. This divergence stems from the ‘failed’ 1848–9 revolutions in the German lands when, according to Fritz Fischer, Germany came to a turning point and ‘failed to turn’, that is, the bourgeoisie failed to usurp the aristocracy. At this moment bourgeois liberals did not succeed in creating either a nation-state or a constitutional state and thereafter the German bourgeoisie was excluded from power, effectively abandoning the fate of the new German state to traditional elites, that is the landowning aristocracy, the bureaucracy and the officer corps. When Bismarck was appointed to resolve a Prussian constitutional crisis in 1861 presaged by the attempts of liberals to achieve constitutional reform he pre-empted a so-called ‘revolution from below’ by instituting a ‘revolution from above’: national unity was forged at the expense of liberal political reform. Germany became a nation-state on the foundations of Prussian conservatism avoiding the institution of liberal democracy. The bourgeoisie, it is argued, capitulated, forgoing political reform for economic success and cultural pre-eminence for deference and the assumption of aristocratic modes of behaviour (a process described as the ‘feudalisation of the bourgeoisie’). Thereafter Germany experienced the problems associated with the mismatch between an authoritarian political system which had not adapted to meet the demands of economic and social change and a rapidly modernizing economy and society. And, instead of accommodating the new forces arising from industrialization as Britain had done with a series of reform acts designed to incorporate the new middle and working classes into the political system, the German ruling elites tried to deflect them. This strategy has been described as a ‘Flucht nach vorn’, a flight forward, ‘a resolute – if enforced – attempt to stabilize the prevailing political and social system by making limited concessions to progressive forces and thus to preserve the pre-eminence of the traditional elites despite the changes that were taking place in German society’.3 When this failed and the elites felt their position threatened they began to pursue an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy which culminated in the ultimate diversionary tactic, the First World War. This view of Germany before 1918 as anachronistic and illiberal, a 3

dangerous combination of backward and modernizing forces, dominated interpretations of modern German history until the 1980s. It was reinforced by studies of the ways by which the ruling elites retained their power. It was argued they sidestepped the Reichstag, reducing parliament to a talking shop, and they resorted to repressive and manipulative strategies to maintain their privileges and influence at the expense of the middle and lower classes. This scenario has been graphically described as ‘a puppet theatre, with Junkers and industrialists pulling the strings, and middle and lower classes dancing jerkily across the stage of history towards the final curtain of the Third Reich’.4 However, the picture described here is rather simplistic. It tends to portray the German people as passive and easily manipulated and the elites as calculating and backward-looking. It also airbrushes the bourgeoisie from the history of the German Empire. Recent studies have chipped away at the Sonderweg thesis, revealing it to be too deterministic and certainly too sweeping in its dismissal of the desire and agency of the bourgeoisie to effect reform. In the first instance, historians who shifted their attention from party politics and national leaders began to examine the hidden areas of German society such as the everyday lives of the working class, women, young people, Catholics and Jews. They showed that the repressive and manipulative strategies enacted by the political elites frequently failed. They described a heterogeneous society which could not be boiled down to a conflict between pre-industrial elites and the masses. Moreover, when historians started to look more closely at the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie they discovered a group which was far more dynamic than the proponents of the Sonderweg thesis had led us to believe. In the work of David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley the bourgeoisie is to be found reclaiming civil society and actively engaging in politics at a regional and municipal level as well as achieving economic and professional success. Far from aping the aristocracy the bourgeoisie created its own values and organizations. To return to the image of imperial Germany as a puppet theatre, in this interpretation the strings snapped and the puppets took on lives of their own. Finally, even the political elements of the Sonderweg thesis have been subject to revision. Wolfgang Mommsen suggests that the political system put in place by Bismarck should not be described in Wehler’s words as a ‘Bonapartist dictatorial regime’ but as a ‘semi-constitutional system with supplementary party-political features’ which nevertheless was resistant to change because of the severe social tensions present within German society.5 And the liberal–bourgeois model against 4

which Germany’s political development was measured by those who emphasized Germany’s peculiarity has been seriously questioned. Every nation experiences its own ‘peculiar’ path of development dependent upon a mixture of external and internal factors. There is no ideal path to liberal democracy. What remains of the Sonderweg thesis perhaps is that Germany’s path was a somewhat more extreme version of the routes to modernization taken by other western states. Today the Sonderweg thesis is not widely accepted as a universal explanation for the course of German history from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich and historians are more likely to stress the particularities of Germany’s development as opposed to the peculiarities and are keen to highlight the plurality and complexity of German society undergoing modernization. In short, the German Empire needs to be understood on its own terms, as a discrete historical epoch, with its own political dynamics, social trends and cultural proliferation, albeit we should not close our eyes to continuities between this era and later regimes. Personalities Proponents of the Sonderweg thesis tended to downplay the role of individuals in the course of German history, focusing instead on structures and social and economic processes. More recently, however, Bismarck and Wilhelm II have re-entered the story as key players, perhaps because structural factors have lost the explanatory power they once had and the historian reverts to the role leaders have in shaping events. Even Hans-Ulrich Wehler, in a book which revises his original argument, positions Bismarck closer to the centre of his narrative of the period.6 The period of the German Empire is often neatly divided into two: the Bismarckian era (1871–90) and the Wilhelmine era of Kaiser Wilhelm II (1890–1918), indicating the prime importance of these two personalities, at least to a generation of political historians. Whatever one’s view on the role of leaders and personalities in shaping history, historians of nineteenth-century Germany cannot afford to ignore the role of Otto von Bismarck, the most commanding political figure in Germany for almost three decades. Bismarck has been lauded as a hero, a man of action, a truly great statesman, architect of German unification and Prussia’s and Germany’s great-power status. Others have cast him in the role of villain, arch-manipulator or puppet-master, and the primary cause of Germany’s failure to embrace liberalism and democracy before 1918. Neither of these polarized approaches does Bismarck justice although Bismarck’s own attempts to 5

justify his policies in his memoirs, published in the year of his death, 1898, are not to be relied upon either. Bismarck remarked after his fall from power: ‘One cannot possibly make history, although one can always learn from it how one should lead the political life of a great people in accordance with their development and their historical destiny.’ Yet few historians would agree entirely with this self-assessment. Bismarck was a key player in the making of Germany’s history, not least in his role as architect of the Second Empire’s constitutional and political system. At the same time, however, having set certain forces in motion – in short, having set Germany upon the path of economic modernization and social and political change – Bismarck was forced to ‘cling to God’s coat-tails as He marched through world history’.7 Far from being the puppetmaster, personally responsible for the tensions and difficulties of the Reich, he was instead, in the words of one of his biographers, Lothar Gall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a victim of forces which he was at least partially responsible for unleashing. Most historians would now agree that Bismarck bears considerable responsibility for the problems that beset Germany following unification and more especially those tensions that escalated following his fall from office in 1890. Both his style – he could be arrogant, ruthless and a bully at times – and his policies were not in tune with a Germany whose economic maturity was increasingly some way ahead of its political structures. His attempts to govern by exploiting a fragile equilibrium between old and new forces, between the monarchy and parliament, ultimately brought about his downfall. By 1890 he had become an anachronism; he no longer had anything to offer a Germany which had changed immeasurably since he had assumed office. Moreover, most historians would concur that he left a ‘poisoned chalice’ for his successors. According to David Blackbourn, the system Bismarck bequeathed to his country was ‘designed by and for one man’.8 Moreover, that system was not fit for the purpose of forging social stability at a time of great economic change. The governmental system gave precedence to the traditional forces in German society at the expense of the new so that when tensions arose – for instance when the working classes demanded greater political recognition and influence – the constitution prevented change. Kaiser Wilhelm II, on the other hand, was traditionally credited with far less personal influence over the course of German history. Indeed, it has been suggested that after Bismarck’s fall no one effectively ruled in Berlin and one contemporary, his uncle Edward VII, described him as ‘the most brilliant failure in history’. The Kaiser’s personality traits and 6

character defects have been minutely documented and this information tended to bolster the view of a meddlesome monarch as opposed to an influential one. Wolfgang Mommsen for instance argues that Wilhelm’s character was simply too inconsistent for him to fulfil a leadership role. Wilhelm II certainly does not fall into the category of great statesman. Recently though, historians have been reassessing the Kaiser’s role, the extent of his personal rule and the influence of his court entourage, mostly in negative terms. According to Seligmann and McLean, ‘many of the disasters which befell Germany after 1888 can be attributed to the actions of Wilhelm II’ and while he may have contributed little coherent to policy-making, his views on foreign policy and in particular his desire to turn Germany into a world power had concrete and disastrous consequences in the decade before 1914.9 In the following chapters the aim is to provide a rounded insight into the Germany of Bismarck and Wilhelm II between 1871 and 1918 by drawing on old and new interpretations and new lines of research. Political developments will be discussed as part of a broader canvas of economic, social and cultural shifts incorporating the lives of the mass of German people and not merely politicians and diplomats. Chapter 2 describes and analyses the political, economic and social structures of the new German state upon its foundation in 1871. The main theme of the chapter addresses the paradox of an authoritarian political system superimposed upon an advanced industrial economy and one of the most diverse social structures in Europe, and the problems this presented. Against this background I shall examine the consolidation of the Empire under Bismarck between 1871 and 1890 in Chapter 3. The strategies adopted by Bismarck and the ruling elites to maintain power and influence in the face of mounting challenges will be assessed. Following the resignation of Bismarck in 1890 the Germany of Wilhelm II was characterized by increasing confrontation as various interest groups began to mobilize on a collective basis to express their grievances, while, at the same time, nationalist sentiment was mobilized behind an increasingly aggressive foreign policy. Chapter 4, then, examines the diversity and polarities that emerged in Wilhelmine Germany and suggests that the Bismarckian nation-state was a temporary or even an illusory entity. Chapter 5 describes the foreign policy conducted by the Kaiser and his chancellors which culminated disastrously in 1914. The experience of the First World War on the fighting and home fronts resulted in revolution in 1918–19 which ultimately brought about the downfall of the German Empire and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic. The final chapter 7

presents some broad conclusions as well as placing this particular period in German history in a broader context of German nationmaking. In essence this study attempts to analyse the German Empire for its own sake, as an immensely dynamic period in Germany’s past, rather than as a precursor to what was to happen in the twentieth century.

8

2 The new German state

Before 1866 Germany as a political entity did not exist. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, a loose confederation consisting of thirty-eight states was established. The rulers of the individual states possessed sovereignty over their territories and there was no German head of state or parliament, only the rather ineffective Federal Diet which met at Frankfurt. Prussia and Austria were the largest and most powerful members of the Confederation. During the period 1815 to 1848, known as the Vormärz (literally pre-March or the period prior to the March 1848 revolutions) Prussia began to consolidate her economic strength aided by the formation of the German Customs Union (Zollverein) while Austria, which chose to remain outside this trading network, continued as the dominant political and cultural force within the Confederation. However, in economic terms, while Prussia was busy building railways and exploiting raw materials, Austria, under the arch-conservative Metternich remained a comparatively unmodernized state. Having said that Germany did not exist politically, it is clear that a cultural idea of Germany did exist. For sure this was a geographical area characterized by great diversity but it did possess a sense of cultural identity, based upon a common language and mediated through the education system and the printed word. And it was the expansion of what is described as the public sphere (encompassing the 9

communication of news and information and the development of public opinion) that facilitated popular politics across the German lands that crystallized into opposition to the old regime. However, cultural identity did not necessarily map onto political identity and there was nothing inevitable about the political transformation of the German lands into a nation-state. The revolutions which swept through the German lands in 1848 and 1849 were sparked off by news of revolution in France, but they were fuelled by a combination of social and economic grievance among peasants and artisans and intellectual activity in the region. Nationalist sentiment was expressed by German liberals during the 1848 revolution and the new Frankfurt parliament established in May 1848 began to formulate a vision of a unitary and constitutional German state. It would be a united, federal state with a monarch or Kaiser and a parliament elected by universal manhood suffrage. It would also, however, be a small-German (kleindeutsch) state excluding the German lands, as opposed to a greater Germany (Grossdeutschland) including Austria. However, national idealism was overtaken by regional practicalities and liberalism was defeated in 1849 by conservative rulers who were unwilling to cede power and a Prussian monarch, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who refused the crown of a united small Germany (Kleindeutschland) describing it as a ‘crown from the gutter’.10 Nationalism and unification In 1848 there had been little evidence of popular or grass-roots nationalist sentiment in favour of a nation-state, and despite the emergence of nationalist associations and the spread of education, which promoted a greater sense of cultural and linguistic unity among the Germanspeaking peoples, the same was true in 1871 when the German lands were eventually unified. As James Sheehan has argued, a sense of nationalism was not a contributory factor in the unification of these disparate lands where ‘geography, language, culture, and politics combine to confound attempts to find a natural, objectively defined nation’.11 The German question was resolved not by speeches and majority verdicts favoured by the liberals who arguably saw the creation of the nation-state as a means to obtain liberal political reforms, but by blood and iron (military victory and economic advancement) as Bismarck had predicted in 1862. In practice, German unification can legitimately be seen as a form of Prussian expansionism. In 1864 Prussia flexed her military and 10

diplomatic muscles over the Schleswig–Holstein question, defeating Denmark’s attempt to integrate the two northern duchies into the Danish kingdom and in the process stirring up nationalist passions in Prussia where nationalists had consistently staked a claim to the territories. The Gastein Convention (1865) agreed Prussian and Austrian administration of Schleswig and Holstein respectively but in the longer term Prussia became the dominant power in northern Germany. In the same year Prussia, now the most powerful state in the Confederation, won an economic victory over Austria by securing her continued exclusion from the Customs Union which facilitated free trade among its members. By this date Bismarck was set upon resolving the relationship between Prussia and Austria in Prussia’s favour before the two states smothered one another in the competition for power and resources, although this is not to say that he was intent on the creation of a unitary state. Indeed William Carr has argued that the aim of Bismarck at this point was a greater Prussia, not a unified Germany.12 Austria was finally defeated militarily at Königgrätz in 1866 in a war with Prussia ostensibly fought over Austria’s refusal to renounce her independent policy interests in Holstein, but in reality it was Prussia’s attempt to eliminate Austria from the Confederation. The frontiers of the North German Confederation, forming the core of what was to become the unified German state, were now established (see map). Having achieved Prussian dominance, however, in 1869 Bismarck admitted that ‘German unity is not at this moment a ripe fruit’, while at the same time acknowledging that war was a necessary prerequisite for political unification. In 1870 Bismarck’s exploitation of a crisis over the succession to the Spanish throne, resulted in just such a war. Bismarck’s promotion of the Hohenzollern candidate for the vacancy in Spain enraged the French who interpreted Bismarck’s move as a claim for Prussian dominance in Europe. Following the notorious Ems Telegram incident when Bismarck edited a dispatch reporting a conversation between the Kaiser and the French ambassador to exaggerate the Prussian rebuff of the French, public opinion in France was outraged, prompting Napoleon III to declare war on Prussia. The support of the south German states (Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria) for Prussia in this war guaranteed their eventual affiliation to the North German Confederation and thus their inclusion in a Kleindeutschland. Following a Prussian victory over France at the Battle of Sedan the German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles on 18 January 1871. The question of whether Bismarck planned German unification has been much debated by historians. Certainly Bismarck himself denied 11

playing a determining role in the process. In 1869 he wrote: ‘At least I am not so arrogant as to assume that the likes of us are able to make history. My task is to keep an eye on the currents of the latter and steer my ship in them as best I can.’13 In fact Bismarck rejected a carefully planned policy since he believed there were too many unknown factors to complicate events. What seems certain is that he recognized that the political and economic ambitions of Prussia could only be realized at the expense of Austria, and, moreover, the allegiance of the south German states to a greater Prussia could be assured only by a war fought in a common cause. The war against France, which aroused German nationalist sentiment, fulfilled this condition. Further, it is clear that unification was a means to an end. It allowed Bismarck to maintain political power by appealing to the national idea, particularly after 1866 when he believed the concept of nationalism and German unity possessed the potential to paper over loyalties of a different nature, for example religious, dynastic or political. The unification of Germany, then, can be seen as the result of Bismarck’s skilful diplomacy in promoting the interests of Prussia by harnessing national and economic sentiment in favour of a kleindeutsch solution to the German question. This ‘interventionist’ interpretation which regards Bismarck as a pragmatist, is subtly different from the ‘intentionalist’ argument which states that Bismarck planned the process. Indeed, William Carr has written of Bismarck that he was ‘much more the inveterate gambler running great risks than the accomplished crystalgazer of popular legend’.14 At the same time though, as Jonathan Sperber asserts, the timing of the creation of the new state was propitious; in his words it coincided with ‘the aspirations of the nationalists, but also with the path of market expansion, commercial contacts, railway-building, and industrialization, with the shape of organized participation in public life, with the structures of secondary and university education and the state bureaucracies’.15 Bismarck’s Germany did not assume the true identity of a nationstate for several decades. Arguably it was not until 1914, when the German people came together as a nation to defend the fatherland, that a national identity and a spirit of unity emerged. In spite of being a geographical and political entity and not suffering the same degree of cultural and linguistic diversity of another new nation-state, Italy, Germany remained regionally heterogeneous, and the new constitution confirmed the federal nature of the new regime by permitting local rulers to retain control over the internal affairs of their states, including education, justice and local government. The south and east 12

of the country retained its predominantly rural character while industrialization and urbanization gained a firm foothold in the north and west. Germany’s social structure was increasingly complex as new groups such as the industrial working class and the bourgeoisie grew in number and importance, while the old, consisting of the peasantry, artisans and landed aristocracy, remained numerically significant and influential. Religious and ethnic differences overlaid this regional pattern. Around 60 per cent of the population was Protestant while Catholics, reduced to a minority after the exclusion of Austria, were to be found mainly in the south and the Rhineland. In addition, the new state embraced many minorities within its borders – Poles in Prussia’s eastern provinces, Danes in Schleswig and French in Alsace–Lorraine – and it exluded ethnic and linguistic Germans outside the borders of the new state, most notably German-speaking Austrians but also Sudeten Germans in the Habsburg lands. The imperial government in Berlin held responsibility for defence, communications, currency and law codes, although a unified civil code for the Reich was not implemented until 1900. German unity was a process, not something that was accomplished in 1871. And political, economic and social developments of the early years of the new state hardly accelerated the process of nation-making. Political structures The new Germany was a federal entity, an amalgamation of states bound together by a new constitution. The constitution was a complex document which on the face of it appeared relatively liberal but in practice gave a great deal of power to the monarch, a structure that has been described as ‘autocracy by consent’.16 The most liberal, some might say revolutionary, element of the 1871 constitution was the parliamentary regime, with the 400 deputies to the Reichstag elected by universal manhood suffrage (all males over the age of 25) in a secret ballot. No other European state with the exception of France and Greece possessed such a broad suffrage. Most political parties had rather limited social and economic bases and as the German social structure and population distribution altered the Reichstag became increasingly unrepresentative. The Conservatives and Free Conservatives on the right drew support mainly from landed interests but also from some industrialists. The two liberal parties, the National Liberals and the Progressives, represented the professional classes, the bulk of the industrialists and the wealthy middle class. 13

The emerging working class was represented by the socialist Social Democratic Party. The Catholic Centre Party, founded in 1870, was the most broad-based political grouping which drew support from across the Catholic constituency so that it consistently won over ninety seats in the Reichstag. Conservative on moral issues it had a progressive edge when it came to campaigning for social reform. The 1871 Reichstag was dominated by National Liberals with 125 seats; with the support of the Progressives with forty-six seats and the Free Conservatives with thirty-seven, they managed to secure a parliamentary majority until 1879. In theory the Reichstag did possess significant power. It had the power to enact legislation including new legal codes, budgets and army financing and its 400 freely elected deputies enjoyed the right to free speech. The frequency of elections (every three years) and the level of popular participation in them (generally over 60 per cent) suggests the Reichstag was a body with a degree of political legitimacy. But in practice the powers of the Kaiser and of the Bundesrat (Federal Council) were extensive – the Bundesrat could veto the Reichstag’s decisions, which effectively negated the liberal potential of the parliament. The Reichstag then had limited independent power and could be dissolved by the Kaiser on the recommendation of the chancellor. Neither the government nor the chancellor was answerable to the Reichstag. The powers invested in the Kaiser included control of foreign policy, command of the armed forces and the right to declare war as well as internal martial law. In addition he had the power to appoint and dismiss chancellors and to interpret the constitution. In the last resort he was empowered to dissolve the Reichstag or even suspend it indefinitely, effectively amounting to a monarchical coup. In theory, the chancellor was the Kaiser’s agent but in practice this relationship was more ambiguous, as we shall see. Under Bismarck’s chancellorship the regime has been described, perhaps not entirely accurately, as a plebiscitary dictatorship; after 1890 with Wilhelm II at the helm of a ship served by a series of chancellors – Caprivi, Hohenlohe, Bülow and Bethmann Hollweg – it has been termed an authoritarian polycracy, meaning dictatorship by a number of different groups. The Bundesrat consisted of unelected representatives of all the twenty-five federal states, with each state holding a number of votes in relation to its size. Hence the Bundesrat was dominated by Prussia with its seventeen votes to the smaller states’ far fewer. It has been described as an upper chamber to the Reichstag in that it had the power to 14

approve or dismiss proposed legislation, and thus of course it could frustrate the Reichstag’s attempts to implement reforms. Prussia’s dominance of the Bundesrat is a reflection of its influence much more widely in the government of the new Empire. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the new state was a Prussified Germany. As Michael Hughes has noted, ‘Arguably 1871 saw not the unification of Germany but its partition and colonization by Prussia, so significant was Prussia’s political power in the empire.’17 Prussia was by far the largest state, stretching from the border with Russian Poland in the east to the river Rhine in the west. It was economically powerful, containing the major industrial centres of the Ruhr valley and the Silesian coalfields, as well as thousands of kilometres of railway track. However, Prussia’s political structure was among the most undemocratic of the German states despite it being the most advanced German state in economic terms. Prussian traditional elites ran the state’s bureaucracy, diplomatic service and armed forces and dominated the Prussian parliament (Landtag) which was elected by a three-class franchise heavily weighted in favour of property owners, thus ensuring the vast majority of property-less citizens had little say in the running of the internal affairs of the Prussian state. The German Empire was, in theory, a constitutional monarchy, yet in practice it was governed by a Prussian oligarchy. With the Prussian capital of Berlin also the centre of political power in the Empire, Prussia’s presence was overwhelming. Prussia dominated the top two layers of the pyramidal political structure established by the new German constitution. The king of Prussia automatically filled the post of German Kaiser; the Prussian prime minister became the German chancellor and Prussia dominated the administrative and legislative machinery of the Empire. It is this Prusso-German character of the new empire and its apparent failure to embrace bourgeois liberalism that Wehler cites as a key element to explain Germany’s alleged continuous path from unification to Nazism. These three corners of the triangle – the Reichstag, the Kaiser and the Bundesrat – formed the basis of German government and politics in the era of the German Empire. The government was appointed by the Kaiser and members of the government were not drawn from elected representatives. Throughout the life of the Empire, effective political power was held in the hands of a few belonging to the aristocratic elite. In a country undergoing fundamental economic and social change in the second half of the nineteenth century, the effective silencing of the vast majority of the population in the political process 15

was potentially destabilizing. Political liberalism, the ideology of the western European middle class, appeared to have been defeated in the 1848–9 revolution and it has been suggested that the bourgeoisie, the traditional standard-bearer of liberal values, was largely acquiescent in the political sphere. Having achieved economic power the industrial middle class had no need to reform the political system, permitting Bismarck to continue with his reactionary politics. Pressure groups making very specific demands took the place of political parties. Karl Marx described the German Empire in 1875 as ‘a military despotism cloaked in parliamentary forms’. Wehler’s verdict was that the constitution was a fig-leaf hiding an authoritarian political system. More recently historians have drawn back a little from this assessment and Mommsen’s description of the imperial political arena as a ‘semi-constitutional system with supplementary party-political features’ offers a compromise. 1871 did not mark the terminal date of the unification process but merely the start. Unification was largely a political process lacking any deep roots in the German culture; hence the political structures described above were imposed upon an immature state. Consequently, it took Bismarck another eight years to reshape the state and the parliamentary system and arguably a further twelve years of attempts to manipulate nationalist sentiment in order to integrate particularist interests into the nation-state. The period 1871 to 1873, known as the Gründerzeit (foundation years) saw considerable economic growth stimulated by the currency reform in 1871, but the crash of 1873 signalled the onset of a severe economic recession. Until 1878 Bismarck relied on the support of the National Liberals to carry through his policies consisting of measures to facilitate free trade and economic growth. Steps were also taken to strengthen central government at the expense of the federal states which had retained considerable jurisdiction over areas such as education, health and policing. However, Bismarck came under increasing pressure from landowners and industrialists, who were struggling to compete in a free market full of cheap foreign grain and imported manufactured goods, to introduce protective tariffs. In 1879 Bismarck broke free from his dependence on the National Liberals after the 1878 elections which established a Bismarck-friendly coalition consisting of Conservatives, Free Conservatives, the Catholic Centre Party and a section of the National Liberals who supported tariffs. This enabled Bismarck to introduce protectionism and therefore placate the agrarian and industrial interests. Thus began the shift away from liberalism, presaging a 16

period of conservatism which continued throughout the 1880s. Indeed 1878 also saw the passing of a law to outlaw socialist activities. By 1879 it is not unreasonable to suggest that ‘Bismarck’s aims were first to interweave the interests of the various producing classes of Prussia and to satisfy them in the economic field, and secondly, to bind these classes to the monarchical state which was led by him’.18 The economy From the 1850s until the First World War the German economy shifted from being predominantly agrarian with a significant industrial sector to being predominantly industrial but still retaining a strong agrarian sector. Broadly speaking Germany’s economic fortunes can be divided into three phases. The period from the 1850s to 1873 witnessed more or less continuous growth with a boom in 1870–1. From 1873 until around 1894 Germany experienced what is known as the ‘Great Depression’, now regarded by historians as a period of fluctuations in the economic cycle and slower growth rather than a sustained downswing. Thereafter the period up to the outbreak of war was characterized by economic expansion, sometimes described as a second industrial revolution, particularly in new sectors of industry such as chemicals and electrical engineering. In the mid-nineteenth century the economy of the German lands was still predominantly agrarian. In 1852 the majority of the labour force, around 55 per cent, worked on the land; in some areas, like Posen in the east, the figure was closer to 75 per cent. By unification the German economy was still dominated by agriculture and craft production but the beginnings of a shift from agriculture to industry were now evident. This was a society in transition. From 1857 economic growth significantly increased, stimulated by rises in investment, trade and labour productivity, and it was given an extra fillip by unification. A single system of weights and measures, a single currency and common administrative procedures facilitated greater cooperation and increased trade throughout the German Empire. Between 1871 and 1914 the population of Germany increased from 41 million to almost 68 million, and by 1907 industry was the greatest employer, providing work for almost 42 per cent of the labour force. But the agricultural sector remained important and by 1900 Germany could be described as an industrial state with a strong agrarian base. Compared with Britain, Germany was a late starter in the industrial race – her industrial revolution did not get under way until the 1850s – yet 17

her transformation into a major industrial state was both rapid and remarkable. By the turn of the century Germany was challenging the first industrial nation, Britain, for economic dominance in Europe. But it is the combination of agrarian revolution, industrial take-off and political change that concerns us here, and in particular the reactions of traditional and new social classes to this economic revolution. Many social commentators regarded the rural Germany of the early nineteenth century as a bulwark against revolution. They idealized agrarian society and praised its way of life centred upon the household economy, the church and traditional practices. Urban society, on the other hand, was regarded as alienating and a breeding ground for irreligiosity and immorality. But rural society was not static and not at all idyllic. Indeed, historians have recently shown how rural Germany was a dynamic and modernizing society. Between 1840 and 1880 the agrarian sector almost doubled its productivity following the agrarian reforms removing feudal bonds in the late eighteenth century and legal reforms of the early nineteenth which in Prussia resulted in redistribution of land (to the benefit of large estate owners) and the freeing of peasants from the obligation to remain on the land. This agrarian revolution was also stimulated by transport improvements, regional specialization and technical innovation. More land was brought under cultivation and more attention was paid to the intensive production of commercial cash crops such as potatoes and sugar-beet. The estate-owning aristocracy, particularly the Prussian Junkers east of the river Elbe, profited from the agrarian revolution. Until 1861 their land was exempt from taxation and these aristocrats retained their economic and political influence at the top levels of the bureaucracy, the military and the diplomatic service. Rural society was also profoundly altered by technical advances such as mechanization, the introduction of artificial fertilizers and improved irrigation as well as changes in the structure of the rural labour market. Farmers were obliged to produce goods for the market in order to survive which required the intensification of production. The peak of the landowners’ power coincided with increasing uncertainty for wage-earning rural labourers who were affected by agricultural reorganization. As wages rose almost everywhere from around 1850, farmers began to invest in machinery enabling them to lay off farm workers and hire seasonal labourers when necessary. Subsistence farmers found survival increasingly difficult. Small farms (those under 2 hectares) became unviable. They were not large enough to support a family, so family members had to find additional employment, either as 18

day labourers on larger farms or as industrial workers in the expanding and better-paid factory sector. The vast majority of landless labourers found work in the new industrial centres. This Landflucht (flight from the land) was most marked in the east which experienced the greatest out-migration of people mainly to the new urban centres of Berlin and the industrializing Ruhr and Rhine regions. Also between 1850 and 1870 around 2 million people left Germany for overseas, mainly for the USA. In these circumstances, including the introduction of universal manhood suffrage, the politicization of the peasantry left behind was inevitable. Peasant insurrection had contributed to the 1848 revolutions. By the 1890s peasant grievances were being articulated by pressure groups and political parties. It was this internal migration that created Germany’s industrial society. Districts which had been predominantly rural urbanized rapidly. Towns and cities grew at a phenomenal rate fuelled by migration from the countryside as opposed to a rising birth rate. For example, Bochum, a village in the Ruhr valley with a population of only 2,000 in 1800, grew so rapidly that by 1871 over 21,000 people had made the town their home, rising to over 65,000 by 1900. In cities the population explosion was just as remarkable. Hamburg’s population grew from almost 265,000 in 1875 to close to 1 million in 1910, an increase of some 250 per cent. The inhabitants of Berlin multiplied from 826,000 in 1871 to more than 2 million in 1910. The number of cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants increased from 271 in 1875 to 576 in 1910. Until the 1860s, artisans still outnumbered factory workers in most towns but German industrialization was founded on heavy industry’s exploitation of raw materials – coal, iron and steel and engineering were the leading sectors – so that by 1882 workers in industry constituted almost 40 per cent of the workforce. Traditionally it has been argued that the construction of railways acted as a catalyst for the development of other industries owing to the requirement for a high output of iron and steel and thereafter the stimulus to trade and communication they provided. But Robert Lee suggests that while railways were significant, they speeded up growth that was already proceeding.19 The Ruhr valley was the powerhouse of German industrialization, where towns like Essen, Bochum, Dortmund and Duisburg, surrounded by pits and steelworks, attracted a huge labour force, but other regions such as Upper Silesia and the Saar coalfields and cities like Leipzig, Chemnitz, Hamburg and Düsseldorf also contributed to the prolific growth rate. Gradually, large-scale enterprises took precedence 19

over small workshops. By 1907 around three-quarters of industrial workers were employed in enterprises with more than fifty employees. Germany was privileged by her possession of abundant raw materials and the ability to exploit technology already tried and tested in Britain and Belgium, the so called ‘advantages of backwardness’. In the early years of mechanized textile production for instance, foreign expertise and technology was crucial. But other explanations have been put forward to explain the particular pattern of industrial development, including the mode of financing German industry, the advantageous trading conditions and the expansion of the education system. In the 1970s historians emphasized the interventionist role of the state and more especially the central importance of the banks in encouraging the amalgamation of different industrial sectors into very large corporations. ‘In Germany our banks are largely responsible for the development of the Empire’ asserted an official from the Dresdner Bank in 1908.20 More recently though less importance has been ascribed to the banking sector’s role. Prussia’s membership of the Zollverein contributed to the early years of growth as this system of tariff protection against foreign competition and maintenance of low internal tariffs stimulated trade in the long term. Prussia was also fortunate in possessing territories containing essential natural deposits and resources enabling her to establish early dominance over Austria. Finally, Germany placed great faith in the value of education. Compulsory elementary education had been introduced in Prussia in 1812; technical institutes were opened in the 1820s; and a network of vocational schools was soon set up to train workers for industry. It is fair to assume that improvements in literacy rates would have a positive impact on the quality of the labour force but a direct linkage between educational improvements and industrial growth has not been proven. In the first two decades of the Empire, Germany had been transformed from a mainly agrarian to a predominantly industrial state. Yet this had been achieved under a political system which had not adapted to the demands of a modern industrial economy. When the economy faltered the reaction of the political system was to shore up the ruling elites by giving in to their demands for protection. Society Germany’s transformation into a modern industrial economy was accompanied by major changes in her social structure. The most striking development was the rise of two new classes – the industrial 20

bourgeoisie and the proletariat – but traditional social strata, such as the agrarian elites and urban artisans, also found themselves forced to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. The landowning aristocracy, far from dwindling in size and influence, consolidated and even strengthened its economic and political position with the help of the state. Once feudal ties had been dissolved, many landed aristocrats expanded their landholdings at the expense of peasant farmers. Some of them diversified and made fortunes from sugar-beet production and distillation of potato schnapps, forming a new agrarian entrepreneurial elite. Another traditional group did less well. Shopkeepers, artisans and small business owners, described collectively as the Mittelstand (lower middle class), initially benefited from industrialization as the market for their products and services increased. A rise in urban consumers created a demand for manufactured items and retailers. Yet increased competition from larger concerns producing manufactured goods more cheaply and the appearance of early department stores threatened to push this middle stratum down into the mass of the wageearning proletariat, destroying its fragile independence. The Mittelstand regarded itself as the backbone of a stable society but its members found themselves squeezed between big capital and the industrial proletariat, unable to compete with the one but always in danger of falling into the latter. If the Mittelstand was to some extent the victim of industrialization, the bourgeoisie should have been the beneficiary. The bourgeoisie, consisting of two rather disparate groups – the industrial or propertied bourgeoisie (Besitzbürgertum) and the educated bourgeoisie or professional classes (Bildungsbürgertum) – represented the new elite in the German Empire, the social class most likely to assume civic responsibility and political power. However, the bourgeoisie has been blamed by proponents of the Sonderweg thesis for abdicating political responsibility and failing to impose bourgeois ideals such as liberal democracy, equality before the law and positive citizenship on the new regime. Germany, it was said, ‘failed to develop a parliamentary-democratic and participatory political culture based on positive ideals of citizenship’ on account of the bourgeoisie’s impotence.21 In fact some argued that the bourgeoisie had been ‘feudalized’; that is, it assumed the values and lifestyles of the aristocracy (buying landed estates, assuming titles, adopting aristocratic modes of behaviour) and effectively withdrew from politics. However, this view has been seriously questioned and it is now possible to show how the German bourgeoisie did have a 21

significant impact upon German society and culture if not necessarily on its politics. Both propertied and educated bourgeoisie flourished in this period. The 1850s and 1860s witnessed the rise of the industrial entrepreneur, the successful business owner who invested in and profited from the new industries. Its members began to extend their influence in economic and cultural spheres, dominating local chambers of commerce and municipal councils. Some of them were almost like feudal landlords. Men like Alfred Krupp represented the pinnacle of this industrial elite. Krupp, whose steelworks dominated the Ruhr town of Essen, acted like the owner of a landed estate, playing the generous paternal employer by providing workers with carrots in the form of housing and recreational facilities while simultaneously wielding a stick against those who tried to join trade unions or the Social Democratic Party. But as the Krupp steel works grew and enveloped the town with its smoke and pollution, Krupp and his family moved out of the dirty town to an ostentatious villa set in magnificent parkland, emulating the lifestyle of a landed aristocrat. Others, though, were less ostentatious with the founder of AEG, one of Germany’s largest engineering companies, allegedly refusing to move into his mansion so angry was he with himself for having spent so much money on it. Members of the educated bourgeoisie, on the other hand, consisting of professionals such as doctors and lawyers, carved out for themselves a leading role in the creation of a civic society based on the rule of law and the recognition of professional principles. Not only did they influence the establishment of the new civil and criminal codes for the new state which incorporated the recognition of bourgeois property rights but they also established what David Blackbourn describes as a ‘society of expertise’. The medical profession is a good example. The number of doctors grew markedly during the Empire from just over 13,000 in 1876 to more than 30,000 in 1909, and as the profession expanded it claimed a leading place in society by imposing values of hygiene, cleanliness, discipline and authority in all kinds of spheres from housing reform to environmental pollution. And through these activities these men – and they were only men until women entered professional life after the First World War – became involved in municipal politics. Their influence on national politics, however, was markedly less. In Mommsen’s words, ‘a specifically middle-class culture was indeed taking root, despite the fact that the semi-constitutional structure of the Empire guaranteed the continuing dominance of the traditional elites’.22 22

The other new class created by industrialization was the industrial proletariat. This was an extremely heterogeneous labour force. Longstanding town dwellers mixed with migrants from the rural hinterland; native Germans rubbed shoulders with Polish migrants; Protestants and Catholics worked side by side down the mine or on the factory floor; skilled and unskilled, former peasants and artisans, men and women, provided the muscle-power behind Germany’s industrial growth. In some of the fastest growing towns more than three-quarters of industrial workers originated from elsewhere. Many took time to adapt to their new surroundings and maintained contact with their native villages, returning frequently and upholding traditions like absenting themselves from work on Monday (known as Saint Monday) after a weekend of festivities. Cooperation among workers to improve their working conditions was inhibited by residential segregation of particular groups, especially Poles and miners, and the high mobility rates of young male workers who moved from town to town, company to company, in search of higher wages. The new working class was fragmented. There was more to divide it than to unite it, at least until the 1880s. The living and working conditions of the vast majority of workers were extremely poor in these early years. Housing and public amenities had not kept up with the population influx so that single male workers were frequently housed in barrack-style accommodation or they became lodgers, sharing the same makeshift bed with a colleague on a different shift. Almost one-third of working class households in 1914 had one or more lodgers. Forty per cent of workers in Hamburg inhabited just one heated room in 1875. Many towns were unhygienic; sanitation was often primitive. In Hamburg the failure to provide clean drinking water was responsible for the loss of around 9,000 lives in the 1892 cholera epidemic, the majority of victims coming from the lower classes. The infant mortality rate, an indicator of general levels of health among the population, reached more than 300 per 1,000 births in urban centres, with no significant decline until the turn of the century. Working conditions were little better. In the 1870s workers typically laboured a twelve-hour day, six days a week and many endured a long journey to and from work. Even by 1900 workers in most industries, with the exception of coal mining, were still working 60 hours a week. Overtime could be demanded at short notice and it was not uncommon for miners to work one eight-hour shift immediately after another. Accident rates were high, especially in the mines and on construction sites. Although real wages had risen steadily before 1873 and 23

workers were able to change jobs to take advantage of better conditions, during the Depression conditions worsened and workers began to suffer unemployment and falling real wages as the cost of living – especially food prices – increased. For many families meat was a luxury and potatoes and bread formed the staple food items. It was not until the 1890s and 1900s that workers capitalized on their collective experience, and began to overcome their differences in order to challenge the power of the employers by joining trade unions and engaging in collective action in order to improve pay and working conditions. How did these changes in the social structure of the German Empire, and especially the emergence of new social classes with specific interests, impact upon the political process? Historians have argued that there was little immediate change. Whereas one might have expected the bourgeoisie and the working class to challenge the traditional politics of the elites, in fact this did not occur. The bourgeoisie has been described as supine, apathetic and passive in the political sphere in contrast with its active engagement in professional and cultural arenas. Business owners generally failed to exert political influence on the national stage once the prime aim of protective tariffs (to protect German industry from cheap imports) had been achieved. From the end of the 1870s these industrialists gradually abandoned the ideal of liberal competition and shifted towards what has been termed organized capitalism, one of the manifestations being the formation of cartels (syndicates of businesses working together) in order to protect themselves from the uncertainties of the market. The working class’s lack of engagement with politics is explained by lack of unity and purpose in a state which had already granted all men the vote. Most ordinary workers and their families had little interest in formal politics. Conclusions By the time she was unified Germany was on the road to becoming a major industrial power. Bismarck inherited a state that was already in the process of economic and social transformation. These changes were accelerated by political unification, but no attempt was made to adapt political structures to economic and social realities so that there existed a disjuncture between the two. This was a socially and economically vibrant society governed by an authoritarian system. Between unification and the First World War a dramatic transformation had altered the face of the new nation-state so that the land-based 24

population had fallen to around 40 per cent and over 20 per cent lived in cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants. And yet this state of Bismarck and Wilhelm II was ill-equipped to establish a comfortable relationship with the new social classes. Political power remained in the hands of the traditional conservative elite despite the transfer of economic power to the industrial bourgeoisie. In an attempt to consolidate this diverse and inherently unstable state Bismarck and his government between 1871 and 1890 embarked upon a series of political strategies which, instead of opening up the political system to represent those upon whose backs the state was being built, succeeded in cementing in place the structures of power more suited to a previous age.

25

3 Bismarck and consolidation 1871–90

Otto von Bismarck was appointed prime minister of Prussia in September 1862. He was born on All Fools’ Day in 1815, the son of a Prussian Junker (member of the lesser nobility) and a mother from a successful family of civil servants. His background, combining liberal intellectualism on his mother’s side and traditional Prussian noble values from his father, is said to have gifted the young Bismarck a breadth of vision and an ability to understand diverse attitudes and ambitions. He was well educated in Berlin, a city he was said to hate, and after university in Göttingen he embarked upon a career as a civil servant. When he was still only 24 years old he resigned his post and returned home to the family estate in Pomerania, but boredom soon found him engaging in Prussian politics. From 1851, in his position as Prussian representative to the Federal Diet of the Confederation in Frankfurt, he fought to maintain Prussian supremacy in the face of the Austrian challenge. In 1859 he was moved to a new diplomatic posting in St Petersburg but he continued to champion the cause of Prussia within the Confederation. Until 1860, as a diplomat, Bismarck had been at the margins of power, but a constitutional crisis in Prussia, which saw open conflict between the sovereign and the parliament over the issue of the reorganization of the army, resulted in the recall of Bismarck from his then posting in Paris to head a new cabinet. Between 1862 and 1866 Bismarck ruled Prussia unconstitutionally, ignoring the parliament, illegally raising the necessary finance by 26

taxation and pushing through the army reforms. In his new position as prime minister of Prussia, Bismarck sought to enhance the position of Prussia at every available opportunity. Just nine years later he had achieved his aim of securing Prussia’s position within Germany and setting her on the path of economic success and political dominance. Historians may disagree about Bismarck’s intentions, about his achievements and failures and his legacy, but few would deny the extent of his impact on German politics and the shape of the German Empire. This acceptance of the centrality of one man has prompted numerous biographical studies and personality assessments in an attempt to probe beneath the pugnacious façade. In his time as Prussian prime minister and German chancellor he created a ‘charismatic myth’ of indispensability which even present-day historians have found difficult to shake off, with Hans-Ulrich Wehler recently describing Bismarck as a charismatic leader with ‘devoted followers’, who inspired ‘fanatic enthusiasm’ and who hung on to power by manufacturing and then solving crises.23 As Katherine Lerman has stated, Bismarck’s ‘exceptional status’ is not in doubt, whether one judges him positively as a clever tactician or – more likely – critically as a man who saddled the new state with an immense problem.24 The negative view of Bismarck as an archmanipulator presiding over a ‘Bonapartist dictatorial regime’ is today regarded as too trite a description of the man and his system, and historians are more apt to find some agreement with Bismarck’s own assessment of his place in German history when he said ‘I, at least, am not so presumptuous to believe that history can be made by the likes of us. It is my task to observe history’s currents and to steer my ship within them. I cannot guide the currents themselves, let alone create them.’25 It has been said of Bismarck that he protested too much and argued too much, ate too much and paraded too much, but it is undeniable that he was a skilful manipulator, a successful diplomat and something of a pragmatist. Upon his appointment as Prussian prime minister one liberal critic labelled him an adventurer and predicted his occupancy of office would be short. On domestic policy he was seen as a reactionary, an enemy of liberalism and not afraid of violating the constitution. Another critic predicted ‘the rule of the sword at home’ and ‘war abroad’. There was some truth in this prediction as we have already seen. But after 1871, and particularly after 1878 as chancellor of the German Empire, his policies, particularly at home, appeared increasingly out of step with social and economic reality. New social forces had been unleashed by industrialization and Bismarck’s system could 27

kindly be described as crisis management in an attempt to contain the middle, but also the lower classes. A more critical analysis purports that Bismarck, in alliance with the ruling elites, attempted to consolidate and stabilize the new German state by means of overtly repressive and manipulative ruling strategies. So-called ‘enemies of the Reich’ (Reichsfeinde) were suppressed, the German people were subjected to a regime of indoctrination, and attempts were made to manipulate nationalist sentiment in order to deflect political challenges and tie citizens to the benevolent state. As a consequence of the emasculation of opposition politics and grass-roots dissent, Germany under Bismarck, and increasingly under Wilhelm II after 1890, developed into a society of competing interest groups, manipulated from above while tensions gathered beneath the surface. By means of what is known as a Bonapartist ruling strategy – a combination of repression of opponents, plebiscitary elections, concessions to progressive, liberal demands and diversion of domestic pressures into foreign adventures – the German elites managed to resist challenges to their privileged position and, indeed, maintained their power and influence until the 1918 revolution, having entered the First World War as a last-ditch attempt to deflect increasing social tensions and dislocations which threatened the political status quo. Such an interpretation of the period 1871 to 1890 places Bismarck centre stage as arch-villain, manipulator extraordinaire, master of Realpolitik (the pursuit of self-interest in the absence of ideology) and the architect of authoritarian rule. However, one could also interpret such strategies more charitably, as pragmatic attempts by Bismarck and the elites to deal with the forces unleashed by industrialization and unification using the only tools they had at their disposal, a strategy more desperate than Machiavellian. Either way, there was little space within Bismarck’s political system for the accommodation of alternative voices and interests which found the German Empire an uncomfortable place to be. Bismarckian ruling strategies The heterogeneity of the German Empire was a thorn in Bismarck’s side. Some of its constituent elements – namely Catholics, Jews, ethnic minorities and socialists – were identified as less than enthusiastic supporters of the nation-state or as useful scapegoats in a game of political manoeuvring. Although these minorities never posed a serious threat to the state, Bismarck chose to label them Reichsfeinde and 28

subjected them to policies ranging from discrimination to outright repression. Enemies of the Reich Catholics were the first group to be labelled and subjected to repressive policies. After 1866 Catholics were a minority in Germany. Constituting almost 40 per cent of the population they were concentrated in predominantly rural areas in the south-west and the Rhineland. Dubbed enemies of the Reich on account of their primary allegiance to Rome, and regarded by liberals as backward-looking and superstitious, a brake on Germany’s development, they were seemingly ideal candidates for a policy arguably designed to deflect attention away from demands for political and social reform and onto a common enemy. The weakening of Catholic religious and political power was also an attempt to bolster the Prussified German Empire given that the centre of gravity for Catholics was Austria, now outside the borders of the Empire. Thus, as Lerman argues, the Kulturkampf along with other political moves against minorities ‘represented the continuing struggle to achieve the national state’.26 Hence, swiftly following unification the so-called Kulturkampf was launched, literally a struggle of civilizations but effectively a programme of discrimination against the Catholic Church. In 1870 the first Vatican Council issued the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and in its wake, fearing the threat posed by clerical politics, Bismarck introduced the first of a series of laws aiming to negate the economic and ideological power of Catholicism. In 1871 the Reichstag passed the ‘pulpit paragraph’ which prevented the ‘misuse of the pulpit for political purposes’. A series of Prussian measures followed which removed Catholic influence from the administration and inspection of schools. Then, in 1872–3 the Reichstag passed a series of far-reaching laws known as the May Laws or Falk Laws after their architect, the Prussian minister of culture. Adalbert Falk was motivated by his unshakeable belief in the complete separation of church and state. The Catholic section of the Prussian Ministry of Culture was abolished, Jesuits were expelled from German territory and the Catholic Church was subjected to considerable state regulation. The political voice of Catholics, the Centre Party, was also attacked on the grounds that the mere existence of a denominational party implied its opposition to the state although Bismarck’s accusation that the Centre was a rallying focus for elements hostile to the Prussian state and the Empire perhaps provides greater 29

insight into his motivation for attacking the party. In 1874 the articles of the Prussian constitution guaranteeing religious freedom were repealed; priests could be expelled if they violated the May Laws; the 1875 ‘bread-basket’ law denied state subsidies to any priest who refused to sign a declaration in support of government legislation; and finally, in 1876, civil marriage was made compulsory thus abolishing the pre-eminence given to religiously sanctioned matrimony. The Kulturkampf was seemingly motivated by two issues. The nation Bismarck was trying to consolidate was founded upon Protestant Prussia. The Catholic Church was regarded as a dangerous independent authority, capable of mobilizing the Catholic population against the state and of stirring up nationalist passions among Polish Catholics on Germany’s eastern border. Second, the Kulturkampf had a pragmatic political dimension. Bismarck was reliant upon the National Liberal Party for support in the Reichstag. Despite classic liberal principles such as freedom of the individual the liberals supported the Kulturkampf by arguing that the regressive influence of the Catholic Church had to be dismantled if the German people were to be emancipated as individuals. For liberals, Catholic schools, seminaries and even charities were symbols of closed minds and backwardness. Thus, the campaign can be interpreted as a means employed by Bismarck of securing National Liberal support for the government while simultaneously appeasing liberal demands for greater parliamentary democracy. The Kulturkampf failed on both counts. In the short term Catholics were alienated still further from the German state. Ordinary lay Catholics demonstrated their hostility to the regime by refusing to celebrate national holidays like Sedan Day which usually took the form of patriotic displays of military pomp and ceremony in celebration of the victory over France in 1871. In strong Catholic areas like the Rhineland there were demonstrations involving thousands of people, public meetings and attacks on state officials. So-called passive resistance was widespread, such as flying the papal flag and providing sanctuary to priests on the run. Most states lacked the administrative apparatus to effectively enforce the repressive measures. In the longer term the Kulturkampf forced the Catholic community to look to itself for a sense of identity in a hostile Protestant state. An identifiable Catholic subculture emerged consisting of social groups, welfare organizations, trade unions, leisure associations and, of course, the Catholic Centre Party. Until 1890 the Centre Party retained the allegiance of around 80 per cent of Catholic voters and was the largest party in the Reichstag with around 100 seats. The rise of Centre Party strength subsequently 30

forced Bismarck to abandon his alliance with the National Liberals. This also coincided with his abandonment of another tenet of liberal principle – free trade – and may be seen as the beginning of a more conservative era, signalled by liberal electoral decline. By 1878 it was clear the anti-Catholic campaign had failed. In 1879 Falk resigned and the same year Bismarck switched to a protectionist policy with the support of the Catholic Centre Party. Indeed, the Centre seemed to replace the National Liberals as the party of government. Many of the anti-Catholic measures were repealed between 1879 and 1882 but the campaign had rendered serious long-term damage to relations between the state and the Catholic Church. Moreover, Catholic citizens continued to lag behind their Protestant and Jewish counterparts in terms of educational gains and employment opportunities, a trend which is partly explained by the concentration of Catholics in rural Germany and their strength in the lower social classes but also suggests continued discrimination against this religious minority. Jews were another religious minority who suffered prejudice, discrimination and anti-semitic attacks although they were not specifically targeted as enemies of the state. Jews were formally emancipated throughout the German lands in the early nineteenth century and legal equality allowed them to integrate and to participate fully in economic and cultural life. Of the more than 500,000 Jews, more than half were employed in trade and commerce by the 1890s and their appreciation of the importance of education meant that their occupational mobility was far higher than the rest of the population. Yet Jews were intermittently subjected to anti-semitic attacks and discrimination. For instance, after the 1873 economic crash prominent Jews in finance and business became targets of resentment. Between 1873 and 1890 there were around 500 publications on the Jewish question expressing anti-semitic sentiment. In Berlin especially, where there was a well established and sizeable Jewish community, Jews were the targets of anti-semitic street gangs and their properties were damaged. The Jew was treated as a scapegoat for Germany’s economic and spiritual ills. In the 1880s anti-semitism became more organized with the formation of anti-semitic political parties like the Christian–Social Party led by Adolf Stöcker who was elected to the Reichstag in 1881, and the German Social Reform Party, although single-issue parties were never very successful at the polls. Of course anti-semitism was never official government policy but these organizations received tacit support from the highest levels. 31

Although several of those closest to Bismarck were Jews, his banker and doctor for instance, he never publicly opposed anti-semitism and, indeed, on occasion he sanctioned blatant anti-semitic acts such as the expulsion of around 10,000 Polish Jews from eastern Prussia in 1885. Bismarck’s son Hubert was openly anti-semitic. Moreover, the Conservative Party became an outspoken adherent of anti-semitism. In 1892 it adopted the Tivoli Programme which officially incorporated anti-semitism into the Party manifesto, thereby tacitly sanctioning discriminatory policies against Jews. Most Jews, though, saw themselves as Germans of Jewish faith; their membership of the nation-state and their religious and cultural identity were not mutually exclusive. Poles, Danes and citizens of Alsace–Lorraine were also labelled Reichsfeinde. Poles constituted a significant minority in eastern Prussia and Bismarck systematically attempted to undermine them and Germanize them. In 1886 a Settlement Law encouraged the movement of German peasants into the eastern provinces, thus delimiting the power of the Polish aristocracy. More drastic was the forcing out from the Prussian eastern provinces of more than 30,000 Poles who could not prove their citizenship status. Moreover, a series of language laws made German the official language. In 1873 German was the only language permitted in Prussian schools reducing Polish to a foreign language. In 1876 and 1877 a similar law made German the official language of the administration and the legal system. By 1908 the use of Polish was even banned in private clubs. This last measure particularly affected the thousands of Poles living in industrial centres who had been recruited by desperate mine-owners in a period of labour shortage. Indeed, by the outbreak of the First World War there were more than 300,000 people of Polish descent living and working in the Rhineland. Despite the fact that they were contributing to Germany’s economic growth they were victimized for their continued espousal of Polish nationalism. It was not possible to identify oneself as a German of Polish descent and celebrate one’s Polish identity. Nevertheless, Poles continued to form their own clubs, publish Polish newspapers, worship as Polish Catholics and they even formed their own political party. Ultimately then, Poles who had initially supported cultural integration and who had hoped for a peaceful coexistence with their German neighbours were forced into a defensive position as the state refused to acknowledge a minority who wished to integrate while maintaining their own cultural traditions. Just as Poles were regarded as enemies of the Empire on account of their allegiance to Polish nationalism and Catholicism, so inhabitants 32

of Alsace–Lorraine, a territory ceded to Germany by France after the Franco-Prussian War, were suspected of harbouring dangerous sentiments for the French motherland. Here, too, German was made the official language of instruction in 1873 but here French was permitted to be used as a second language and the peoples of Alsace–Lorraine tended to look to the German Empire for their prosperity while endeavouring to retain their cultural identity. Similarly, language laws and expulsions were used against the Danes of Schleswig–Holstein with the result that numerous Danes refused to take German citizenship and the most vociferous opponents of integration with Germany were deported. It was not only religious and ethnic minorities who found themselves targeted by repressive policies. The Social Democrats bore the full brunt of Bismarck’s policy to uphold the authoritarian system against internal or external threats. Social democracy had been slowly making progress among the industrial working class during the 1860s and 1870s. In 1875 a Socialist Workers’ Party was formed from an amalgamation of Ferdinand Lassalle’s Workers’ Association and the Eisenach Party of August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. Standing for equality and democracy – values sadly lacking in Bismarck’s Germany – the socialists were a potential threat to a system based on patronage and privilege. Although they secured a mere two seats in the 1871 Reichstag elections their political fortunes were on the rise as they increased this tally to twelve seats in 1877. At the grass-roots level trade unionism was gaining strength. Membership of the socialist Free Trade Unions numbered 50,000 in 1877 increasing to over 350,000 by 1890. Bismarck used an opportunity to clamp down on social democratic activity in 1878 following two attempts on the life of Wilhelm I. The first involved a plumber who fired two shots at the Kaiser’s carriage, harming no one. On the second occasion, however, Dr Karl Nobiling fired at the Kaiser and wounded him quite severely. Neither attempt had anything to do with the socialists but Bismarck had been looking for a chance to kill two birds with one stone: damage the Social Democrats and simultaneously weaken the Liberals. Bismarck undoubtedly wanted to vanquish the growing socialist presence in Germany but at the same time the anti-socialist legislation introduced in 1878, following the dissolution of the Reichstag and a swing to the right in elections, was designed to weaken liberal opposition to his policies. In the event Bismarck partially succeeded in the second of his aims as some liberals supported him while others voted against the anti-socialist 33

legislation, thus splitting the largest party. The Anti-Socialist Law introduced in June 1878 and which remained in force for twelve years had a similar effect on the labour movement as the Kulturkampf had on the Catholic community. The legislation did not outlaw the socialists altogether. The Socialist Workers’ Party was permitted to fight elections and its deputies were allowed to take their seats in the Reichstag, but all other extra-parliamentary activity was strictly suppressed. Socialist agitators were arrested, imprisoned and could be expelled; socialist clubs were forced to dissolve (although many maintained an underground existence); socialist newspapers were banned; and the Party was forbidden to collect financial contributions. Despite constant harassment and vilification socialism gained in strength throughout the 1880s as the economic situation worsened and the industrial working class gained in confidence, partly aided by the re-emergence of trade unions. Workers continued to vote socialist, both in defiance of the state and in recognition that this party was the only political party to represent their interests and those of their families, so that by 1890 when the Anti-Socialist Law was not renewed the Party, now renamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratischer Partei Deutschlands, SPD) had thirty-five Reichstag deputies and almost 20 per cent of the popular vote. By 1914 it had more than 1 million members and was the largest parliamentary party with 110 deputies out of 397. Bismarck’s policy had failed to weaken socialism; in fact the movement emerged from twelve years of repression stronger and more resolute. Parliamentary representation did little to overcome the hostility and discrimination faced by ordinary socialist men and women in their everyday lives. In order to try to combat this, the SPD embarked upon the task of building a socialist subculture consisting of a cradle-to-grave network of subsidiary social clubs, sporting facilities, educational institutes and cooperative organizations, to some extent paralleling the Catholic and Polish subcultures. Many workers and their families were thus provided with a support network which lessened their feelings of alienation from a hostile state which had attempted to destroy their political representatives. The Bismarckian strategy of repression of ‘enemy’ groups was arguably effective in the short term in that those affected were forced to retrench while Bismarck scored important political points and secured his political position. But Catholics, socialists and minority ethnic groups were not reconciled to the Bismarckian state and emerged from their repression stronger and better organized. However, they still had 34

to struggle against a more pervasive and subtle attempt to consolidate and legitimate the new German state. Ideological conformity The policy of repression targeted specific ‘enemy’ groups. The imparting of a nationalist, monarchist and conservative ideology via the Protestant Church, the education system and the army was more pervasive in everyday life. The values instilled by these institutions were designed to perpetuate the social structure and the hierarchy of power in German society and to aid in the creation of an integrated and unified nation-state. In some respects there is little distinctive to the German case about such a policy. New nation-states are inclined to use the agencies of socialization to transmit common norms. In France, for instance, the task of turning a country of diverse peasants into Frenchmen was achieved via the education system and a policy of uniformity and standardization applied to many aspects of everyday life from the French language to school textbooks. In Germany it has been argued that this policy was part of an anti-democractic strategy designed to coerce citizens into conforming with the state’s wishes. However, while there is little doubt that there were attempts to socialize the German nation into conformity the effectiveness of such policies are in doubt. The Protestant Church was a key institution for the dispersal of promonarchical values. Under the Holy Roman Empire each individual ruler was free to determine the official religion of the state. The state thus exerted considerable influence over the church and this situation continued until 1918 in Protestant areas of the German Empire. After 1871 the Kaiser was the head of the Protestant Church and in turn the church recognized the legitimacy of the state and used its influence via the pulpit and the classroom to ensure the compliance of the German people, instilling into them the values of obedience, discipline and orderliness. Through the sermon and religious instruction the legitimacy of the Kaiser was reinforced. The Protestant Church undoubtedly preached allegiance to the German state and it upheld the conservative paternal hierarchy, reinforcing the authoritarian role of the father within the family, the employer in the factory and the Kaiser in the nation. The relative absence of dissenting Protestant religious sects (in contrast with Britain) meant there was no alternative religious identity for those Protestants who rejected the overt alliance between church and state. 35

However, the Protestant Church was losing some of its authority as early as the 1850s owing to falling membership and declining church attendance. The exceptions were wealthy districts where aristocrats, officers and higher civil servants followed the example of the royal family in attending church regularly and supporting religious charities. But the story was different in working class districts. The Protestant clergy soon became alienated from the labouring population on a day-to-day basis. Church building did not keep up with the population increase in working class areas and church attendance on Sunday declined, especially among men who needed one day to recover from the exertions of the working week. Indeed women consistently formed the majority – around two-thirds – of churchgoers, and women’s religious organizations flourished in contrast with the paucity of those for men. Only 8 per cent of Hamburg Protestants took communion in 1906–8 and while the Church was still used for major lifecycle rituals – baptisms, marriages, burials – many workers reported they no longer believed in God. In Berlin’s poorest parishes only 5 per cent attended communion and of these inhabitants one social commentator remarked on the ‘frightening degree of indifference with regard to anything that is not directly concerned with the business of making a living’.27 The German Protestant Church increasingly became the preserve of the bourgeoisie who publicly ascribed to the values of decency and hard work propounded by rather puritanical pastors. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, had traditionally appointed local priests and had maintained contact with the new generation of industrial workers by means of its social and welfare network. Secularization rates were consequently lower in Catholic areas. One might have expected the Catholic Church to have adopted a more confrontational stance towards the German state after the discrimination of the Kulturkampf but in many respects the Catholic Church and its subsidiary organizations may have helped to maintain the stability of the Empire by aiding the integration of Catholics into the state. On the whole Catholicism in Germany did not challenge the values propagated by the state even though it adopted a strong stance on the family and education. What has been called the Catholic milieu, including welfare and reform associations, women’s and youth groups, and even trade unions, tended to provide Catholics with a spiritual home in a hostile Protestant state, effectively deflecting or redirecting dissatisfaction away from the state. Indirectly, despite rising secularization both churches continued to exert a powerful influence on German society: in the community via schools, hospitals and social clubs; in the 36

workplace via the Christian trade unions, with 350,000 members by 1912; and in political life through the nominally Protestant National Liberals and the Catholic Centre Party, which lent an air of legitimacy to the status quo. A second institution valued for its efficacy in disseminating pro-state values was the education system. The German education system was relatively advanced compared with the rest of Europe. Most states had passed laws requiring attendance at elementary school at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1871 there were more than 33,000 primary schools (Volksschulen) in Prussia educating almost 4 million children. By 1911 these figures had increased to almost 39,000 schools and 6.5 million children. As a consequence literacy rates were very high. By the end of the nineteenth century fewer than five Germans in 1,000 were unable to read and write. With a formidable number of schools the education system was in a prime position in 1871 to take on the task of encouraging a sense of nationalism among Germans who were still divided by regional, community, ethnic and religious loyalties. Values such as loyalty to the monarchy, obedience to the state, discipline and hard work were instilled in pupils especially since conservatives were convinced that the schools were partly to blame for the revolutions of 1848–9 by ‘poisoning the minds of the young’. Schools were instrumental in the so-called Germanization of non-Germans through the teaching of the German language, culture and history. History was given particular significance. ‘Experience shows’, wrote one primary-school teacher, ‘that the child must be acquainted with the history of the Fatherland and with the lives of men known to the Volk.’ Schoolchildren regularly celebrated national victories and state occasions, participating in flag-waving and street processions, and nationalist and monarchist propaganda was disseminated through textbooks. Pupils read that their Kaiser was ‘a man of true piety . . . with an unshakeable belief in God’ and were encouraged to emulate him. At the same time, socialist ideas were also actively discouraged. Wilhelm II was especially keen to use the education system for this purpose and an education bill put forward in 1890 explicitly stated that its main purpose was to ‘strengthen the state in its battle against the forces of revolution’. Following this evidence scholars suggested that the education system indoctrinated German children and even helps explain the enthusiasm of the German people on the outbreak of war in 1914. Recently a more complex story of the education system has emerged. Some teachers resisted the imposition of a national curriculum emphasizing German military 37

victories and others continued to teach about regional differences within the German borders. Moreover, class sizes which could reach 100 in the cities may well have militated against the success of an effective system of indoctrination. The education system did not greatly promote social mobility. Rather, it functioned to keep every citizen in his or her place. Few were encouraged to continue their schooling at secondary level – fewer than 8 per cent of children under 14 had completed their schooling at secondary level as late as 1910 – and only those who had the financial resources could afford to do so. Some did benefit from an advanced technical education which created a pool of skilled labour. The system as a whole perpetuated the power of the traditional elites. Only wealthy and well connected young men progressed to grammar school and university. Women’s secondary education offered a different curriculum from that of men’s and crucially did not train them to take the school-leavers’ examination, the Abitur, which was necessary for university entrance. Rather, girls’ education tended to train them for a restrictive role at home. In contrast with the school system where the state could exert some control, the universities might be expected to have challenged traditional ideas and perhaps broken down some of the social stratification perpetuated by the state school system. This was not the case. Numbers of university students increased but in 1890 fewer than one in a 1,000 were sons of workers. Women were not admitted to the universities until the 1900s after a long struggle. Once admitted to higher education, students were rarely encouraged to adopt a critical perspective. They were trained to reproduce the views of the political and professional elite, and conformity among the student body was reinforced by student fraternities who perpetuated codes of honour, including the duel. Indeed after unification the student body abandoned any vestiges of radicalism and tended to adopt a nationalist stance. Most historians of higher education tend to agree with Thomas Nipperdey’s view that ‘the greatest failure of the universities was that they did not educate’.28 In summary, the education system did perpetuate the social structure of the Empire and to some extent it was used as a means of bolstering deferential attitudes towards the elites. The expansion of the education system had the long-term potential to offer up challenges to the Bismarckian system but there is little to suggest that this happened. Even the very limited democratization of the student body to include more middle-class men, more Jews and more women seems not to have resulted in political liberalism but rather its opposite. 38

The army is the final institution to be examined here. Described as the ‘school of the nation’ it was believed the army was a force for stability and conservatism in the new state. The army, states Förster, ‘was the praetorian guard of the monarchy; it was to be used, if necessary, against parliament and the general public in order to defend the existing social and political order’.29 Military victory had sealed the unification of Germany and henceforward the military possessed considerable prestige, power and a good deal of popularity. The army was responsible to the Kaiser alone. Article 63 of the constitution stated that ‘the Kaiser determines the peacetime strength, the structure and the distribution of the army’. Following military reorganization in 1883 the army strengthened its independence and neither the chancellor nor the Reichstag could limit its power. It has often been said that imperial Germany was an excessively militarized society. The size of the army more than doubled from approximately 400,000 men in 1870 to 864,000 in 1913. Conscription ensured that all men had two to three years of experience of army life during which time they were imbued with a sense of national consciousness as well as discipline and ideological conformity. It was the unstated function of the army not merely to defend Germany against external aggressors but to preserve the internal status quo against alleged enemies like the socialists. To this end major efforts were made to maintain the conservative and aristocratic outlook of the officer corps and to prevent Social Democrats from infiltrating the ranks. Army recruits were not permitted to be members of the SPD and they were indoctrinated with patriotic notions. One war minister even admitted publicly that he preferred ‘a monarchist and religious soldier to a Social Democrat even if he is not as good a shot’.30 There is little evidence to suggest these measures worked, but former members of the armed forces were recruited into the police force, lending that organization a distinctly militaristic character. Upon leaving the army many Germans joined a local ex-servicemen’s association which enthusiastically participated in public ceremonial engineered by the state. Local shooting associations too regularly held festivals incorporating military-style ceremonies, much marching, wearing of uniforms and firing of cannon. Along with the education system, the army, and particularly the Prussian officer corps, served to perpetuate the existing system of power and privilege. In 1860, 65 per cent of officers in the Prussian army were from aristocratic families. Although this proportion did decline to around 30 per cent by 1913, aristocrats were still 39

over-represented in the highest ranks. In fact the General Staff became even more aristocratic. Men from the middle class were accepted into the prestigious officer corps – a necessity when many sons of the aristocracy were following more lucrative careers in industry – but their background was subject to detailed scrutiny beforehand. Middleclass officers were not accepted as equals and in Prussia were derisively called ‘Compromise Joes’. Jews were not accepted at all. Once a man was accepted into the system of privilege and honour he was unlikely to challenge the power base of the military elite. In view of the background of those recruited, it is not surprising that the officer corps was an excessively conservative institution. It jealously protected its code of honour which included the right to defend that honour in a duel, and consciously demarcated itself as a special caste. Under Wilhelm II this conservatism was manifested in the officer corp’s determination to assert Germany’s position in the world, thus supporting the aggressive and expansionist foreign policy of the Kaiser and his chancellors, coupled with a willingness to defend the state from the so-called enemy within. Social reform and social imperialism The third strategy in the attempt to produce a collective loyalty to the German state has been identified as a combination of manipulation and diversion. According to Wehler, Bismarck and the ruling elite adopted the strategy of the carrot and the stick: an attempt to suppress the unsettling and allegedly dangerous forces in German society and to indoctrinate all Germans with the ideology of the conservative elites was combined with a counter-tactic of social reform and social imperialism to head off the possibility of revolution and convince the workers of the state’s benevolence. As with the previous two strategies of repression and indoctrination historians have recently questioned the efficacy of the policies although few doubt Bismarck’s intentions. Bismarck is reported to have said, ‘the citizen who has a pension for his old age is much more content and easier to deal with than one who has no prospect of any’. He also remarked some time after the social insurance scheme had been introduced that his ‘idea was to bribe the working classes’. Clearly, when Bismarck introduced social reform legislation in the early 1880s, it was not his sole intention genuinely to improve the working and living conditions of the workers. Rather, he was additionally concerned to maintain the stability of the system, and head off the threat of unrest, by showing that the state could offer more 40

to the workers than the Social Democrats could. He was implacably opposed to measures such as reducing the length of the working day, restricting female and child labour and imposing a minimum wage since such reforms, although undeniably of benefit to the workers, would have alienated the industrialists upon whom Bismarck relied for support. The reforms implemented in the 1880s were hailed as progressive by other industrial nations but in practice they were of limited value. The Kaiser announced a social insurance package in 1881. What followed was sickness insurance in 1883, accident insurance a year later and old age and disability insurance in 1889. Few derived much comfort in their old age from the pensions legislation since payments were low and the qualificatory period far too long. Similarly, the sickness and accident schemes were riddled with drawbacks for the worker. A man injured in a workplace accident was still likely to spend the rest of his life in poverty. Only 10 per cent of claims were successful. It is unlikely, then, that these reform measures would have pacified the workforce. After Bismarck’s fall in 1890 more progressive reforms were introduced by chancellor Caprivi. Sunday working was abolished in 1891; accident insurance provisions were extended in 1900; in 1901 industrial tribunals were set up and some funds were directed towards the provision of workers’ housing. Children were protected by employment legislation in 1903–5 and in 1911 all salaried employees were covered by an insurance scheme. State social reform did not pacify workers especially since these reforms were accompanied by the hard line and sometimes violent repression of Social Democrats. Employers also saw little benefit in state welfare legislation. They offered their own schemes which could be more directly targeted at specific workers. Company-owned workers’ housing colonies, for instance, were one way of establishing a controlled and orderly environment and a stable workforce. The loyalty of entrepreneurs and industrialists was bought more successfully by the embarkation on foreign adventure and the quest for colonies. Domestic politics and foreign policy are never mutually exclusive and in imperial Germany the two spheres were closely entwined. Germany’s rapid ascent to become a major economic power threatened to throw the domestic situation off balance and the disruption of the hitherto smooth growth of the German economy prompted calls for a more aggressive foreign and trade policy. After the downturns in the economy of 1873 and 1882 a consensus emerged in favour of foreign trade and the acquisition of colonies as one answer to Germany’s 41

overproduction. In addition to the potential (though not proven) economic advantages to be gained from a colonial policy, arguably a second purpose may also have been in Bismarck’s mind: to divert destabilizing energies at home into enthusiasm for foreign adventure and expansion. However, it is more likely that this was a secondary consideration for Bismarck for whom the quest for an overseas empire was a means of improving Germany’s standing with her European neighbours. We know that Bismarck harboured little enthusiasm for so-called formal colonies in contrast with his opposite numbers in Britain and France. ‘Your map of Africa is very fine’, he remarked to one colonial supporter, ‘but my map of Africa is here in Europe.’ Nevertheless, between 1884 and 1886 a number of informal colonies or protectorates were established in Africa: Cameroon, Togoland, South West Africa, East Africa, as well as one or two in the Pacific. Kiao-Chow in China was added later. For Bismarck an imperial policy was of most benefit in securing economic stability at home and thus pacifying the economic interest groups he relied upon. Already, by the early 1880s, other European powers were actively pursuing imperial policies, Britain and France in particular. Pressure groups within Germany, like the Colonial Union, founded in 1882 and the Society for German Colonization, which was formed two years later, made it appear there was considerable popular enthusiasm for overseas colonies. In fact this enthusiasm was limited to those who were most likely to profit from colonial acquisitions. Germany did not witness spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm for colonies as occurred in Britain. Under Bismarck, an imperial policy was pursued for three main reasons. The least important was its economic rationale, that is as an attempt to maintain economic prosperity. More important was probably its political and diplomatic rationale in that it pacified the ruling elites at home while enabling Bismarck to demonstrate to other European powers that Germany was an imperial force to be reckoned with. Finally, and of least importance to Bismarck, an imperial policy was regarded as a social pacifier. Imperialist adventure would, it was hoped, stimulate nationalism and divert pressures away from liberal reform. This third policy, known as social imperialism, was followed more deliberately by Wilhelm II and chancellor Caprivi as tensions at home grew more dangerous after 1890. In 1897 Miquel, the Prussian minister of finance, explicitly stated that the maintenance of the status quo at home depended on ‘diverting revolutionary elements towards imperialism, in order to turn the nation’s gaze abroad and bring its 42

sentiments . . . on to common ground’. For Bismarck though, his colonial adventure was short-lived. No new colonies were added after 1885 and he continued to believe that an overseas empire was more trouble than it was worth. It seems, then, that neither the policy of social reform nor the embarkation upon imperial adventures could be said to have endeared the state to its peoples. Foreign policy In the realm of foreign policy Bismarck liked to portray himself as an honest broker. Having fought three wars in succession prior to unification, and having defeated both Austria and France militarily, Germany was now firmly established as a major player on the European and international stage. Bismarck claimed that Germany had reached saturation point, meaning she had no further demands and wished to consolidate her position. Thus, Bismarck embarked upon a system of complex European alliances in order to maintain the balance of power in Europe and secure Germany’s position within this while placating those states which felt understandably nervous and resentful of the power of unified Germany, namely Austria–Hungary and France. At the same time, Bismarck’s altogether more peaceful foreign policy after 1871 was designed to complement his domestic policy. An expansionist and aggressive foreign policy would have endangered the fragile equilibrium at home, yet Bismarck’s moves to placate domestic interests, such as grain producers and industrialists, eventually set Germany on a collision course with its erstwhile friends in Europe. Thus, in foreign policy, as with imperial policy, domestic politics were never far from view. Relations with the other major European powers were influenced by the wars of unification. Austria, understandably, was nervous of her neighbour possessing far greater economic and military power. There were also still many in Austria who aspired to membership of the German state, but Bismarck gave them no encouragement and instead concentrated his efforts on winning Austria’s friendship, hoping she would refrain from entering an anti-German coalition with another power. In 1872 the emperors of Germany and Austria inaugurated a special relationship between the two powers that was to culminate in the signing of the Dual Alliance in 1879. This alliance not only provided Germany with a degree of security in central Europe, it bolstered Bismarck’s position at home by gaining the support of the Catholic Centre Party and others who had once hoped for a greater Germany 43

incorporating Catholic, German-speaking Austria. In 1882 the Dual Alliance became the Triple Alliance with the inclusion of Italy. Under the terms of the Alliance the signatories agreed to mutual assistance in the event of conflict between one of the members and another power, or in the event of an attack by France on Italy or Germany. France had also suffered defeat at the hands of Prussia, but she had also relinquished territory, Alsace–Lorraine, to the victor, and ownership of this territory remained a thorn in the side of Franco-German relations up until the end of the First World War, when it was returned to France under the Treaty of Versailles. Diplomatic hostility between France and Germany was heightened by the so-called ‘Is War in Sight?’ crisis of April 1875. France had completely reorganized her army after the 1871 defeat and Germany now began to feel mildly threatened by a resurgence of France’s military strength. The name of the crisis derived from the title of an article in a Berlin newspaper which raised fears of a French military threat. For Bismarck, who may have had a hand in the publication of the article and in any case was determined to see France isolated in Europe, the crisis backfired when the British and Russian governments made it clear they would not stand for the confrontational stance of Germany against France. The crisis served to remind Bismarck of Germany’s potential diplomatic and geographical isolation and, in particular, he feared a FrancoRussian alliance. The failure to come to an agreement with France, despite attempts to ally with her against Britain in the colonial arena in the early 1880s, left open the possibility of a war on two fronts in the event of conflict. These fears spawned the Schlieffen Plan, a strategy to defeat France quickly before turning to face Russia; a plan that was altered at the last minute and failed to work when it was put into practice in 1914. Germany’s relations with Russia were not immediately affected by Germany’s new and powerful position at the centre of Europe and the Three Emperors’ League (Dreikaiserbund) of 1873 between Germany, Austria and Russia, a rather vague agreement which did little more than bind the signatories to an association aimed at maintaining peace in Europe, appeared to affirm peaceable relations. But a nationalist flare-up in the Balkans in 1876, with the Russians seemingly backing the Balkan peoples against the Ottoman Turks, threatened to engulf Europe in a conflict. In 1877 Russia declared war on the Ottoman rulers, rapidly defeated them and became the dominant power in the Balkans. Throughout this crisis Germany had remained neutral and Bismarck established himself in the role of mediator, not wishing to 44

embroil Germany in a Balkan conflict or destabilize relations with other European powers, particularly Russia and Britain. In the wake of this crisis, Bismarck enunciated his foreign-policy objectives, his ‘system’, which envisaged ‘an overall political situation in which all powers except France have need of us and are as far as possible kept from forming coalitions against us by their relations with one another’. Indeed, it was Bismarck’s role in 1877–8 that established him in the eyes of Europe as a peacemaker rather than a troublemaker. After 1879 domestic concerns increasingly began to have an impact on the conduct of foreign policy. Protective tariffs against imports of Russian grain, and a ban on trading in Russian securities on the Berlin stock exchange, imposed to placate both agrarian and industrial interests within Germany, were interpreted negatively in St Petersburg where the Russian government was attempting to industrialize on the back of income from grain exports and foreign capital. Germany’s hostile commercial policy, coupled with Bismarck’s refusal to tie the fortunes of Germany to Russia following overtures from the Russian tsar, Alexander II, and the conclusion of the Dual Alliance in 1879, inexorably pushed Russia towards an accommodation with France. The revival of the Three Emperors’ League in 1881, which, in addition to guaranteeing neutrality in the event of a conflict between one member and a fourth power, committed all three to respect of mutual interests in the Balkans, did little to cement Russo-German relations. As early as 1886, after Austria had intervened on behalf of Serbia against Russian interests in the Balkans, St Petersburg declared the Three Emperors’ League dead. Strained Russo-German relations once more aided Bismarck at home when, in 1887, a majority of the Reichstag supported an army bill proposing an increase in military spending. That same year, amid complex negotiations and alliances centred upon control of the Mediterranean and North Africa, Germany signed a secret treaty with Russia, known as the Reinsurance Treaty, which guaranteed German neutrality in the event of Russia protecting her interests in the Balkans, but this agreement was to be short-lived. The Reinsurance Treaty lapsed when the new German Kaiser refused to renew it in 1890. Germany’s relationship with Britain was less strained but better described as coexistence rather than cooperation, despite the close links between the respective royal families (Crown Prince Frederick’s wife was the daughter of Queen Victoria). Britain, a parliamentary democracy, was always regarded as a political risk as an alliance partner. However, although in the 1880s the rival commercial and colonial 45

interests of the two countries threatened to undermine even this peaceful coexistence, it was not until the post-Bismarckian era that the Anglo-German relationship took a turn for the worse with the expansion of the German battlefleet. Bismarck certainly undertook European negotiations with some skill, but historians have debated whether the whole alliance system was constructed with any long-term aims in mind or whether it was simply a method of crisis management. There is some evidence from Bismarck himself that by the mid–1880s it was the latter. Each alliance, each treaty, gained Germany a breathing space. A war would have been disastrous for the German Empire and therefore Bismarck did everything he could to keep the peace in Europe. Perhaps it is this that partly explains the increasing failure of the alliance system to reconcile the competing interests of the European powers. It was constructed on an ad hoc basis with little attention paid to alternative centres of power outside Europe. As Lothar Gall remarks, Bismarck’s foreign policy ‘was bound up with a particular period of European history’. While he has been criticized for keeping his diplomats in the dark – when Bismarck left office the Foreign Service was ill-prepared to step into the vacuum – the real legacy Bismarck left his successors in the realm of foreign policy, apart from two decades of peace, was a system ill-suited to the new configuration of power in Europe determined by colonial expansion and economic interests in the world outside Europe. Conclusions Between 1871 and 1890 Bismarck’s domestic policy was largely designed to shore up the fragility of the new German state. Blood and iron had been used to forge the nation-state, but after 1871, when steady growth in the economy was punctuated by recession and Bismarck was no longer able to use the threat of war to rally support, rather different tactics had to be employed to maintain the power and influence of the elites against the tide of socialism. Once political and economic unification had been achieved, authoritarian and diversionary strategies were implemented to fend off the inevitable challenge of democratizing and modernizing forces. Lerman states that Bismarck increasingly resorted to ‘dramatic posturing and short term expedients’.31 He treated parliament like an inconvenience and political parties were not accorded the status of representatives of legitimate interests to be taken into account. All this approach achieved, however, 46

was a temporary lull. Problems were swept under the carpet and social tensions were left to smoulder. By 1890 it was clear that the Bismarckian approach to domestic policy was no longer practicable and his departure left his successors with a legacy of unresolved problems at home. It is the failure of liberalism to gain a strong foothold in the political arena that lends weight to the view that Bismarckian Germany was governed in the interests of the elites. And at first sight it would seem Bismarck was successful in subduing liberal demands, reducing liberalism to political impotence. Little progress had been made towards a liberal democracy by the time of Bismarck’s fall from power. Yet, before 1878 liberals were in the ascendancy. They welcomed unification and they supported the Kulturkampf. Free trade, a plank of liberal ideology, was an element of the Bismarckian system until 1879. Moreover, even after the setback of 1878–9 with the introduction of protectionism and the Anti-Socialist Law and the cessation of the Kulturkampf, coinciding with Bismarck’s abandonment of the National Liberal Party, liberal values in the economic and civic spheres were far from impotent. Many elements of German social and economic life – a free press, an independent judiciary, a strong commitment to the concept of citizenship, the development of the free professions and cultural life and, of course, economic success – indicate that bourgeois liberal Germany was thriving outside the formal political sphere. There is then a paradox here. Political liberalism was organizationally and ideologically split – between the right-wing National Liberals and the more socially minded Left Liberals who themselves split into a number of smaller parties in the 1890s. It was also frustrated within an unreformed and illiberal political system. On the other hand, German society was becoming more bourgeois and liberal values were in the ascendant in all areas of German public life – with the exception of politics. In the foreign-policy arena the Bismarckian legacy was equally problematic in the long term. His complex alliance system was unlikely to be sustained since it overlooked major tensions between the European powers and failed to take into account the changing face of European power relations. Almost immediately following Bismarck’s resignation the decision to allow the Reinsurance Treaty to lapse brought about the collapse of this painstakingly crafted system. Nevertheless, at least until the early 1880s Bismarck’s foreign policy did bolster his domestic position. He maintained the support of the agrarian and industrial interests by securing for them profitable markets in Europe and overseas, and by protecting them against cheaper imports. He achieved a modus 47

vivendi with the supporters of a greater Germany by sustaining a friendly relationship with Austria. And he could claim to be indispensable by virtue of preserving peace more generally in Europe. Bismarck did not succeed in smashing, subduing or integrating liberal and democratic impulses in German society. The picture of a passive, manipulated populace, repressed by authoritarian, discriminatory policies, indoctrinated by nationalist rhetoric and with reformist energies satiated by social reform and social imperialism, is an exaggerated one though it contains more than a kernel of truth. We can conclude that under Bismarck steps towards greater parliamentary government – the ultimate liberal aim – were largely frustrated. Rather, emancipatory and modernizing movements increasingly articulated their demands outside the arena of party politics, a tendency that increased in the years following Bismarck’s fall from office.

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4 Confrontation and integration 1890–1914

Bismarck offered his resignation to Wilhelm II on 18 March 1890 after twenty-eight years as first Prussian prime minister and then German chancellor. The young Kaiser had no hesitation in accepting. Indeed, he had twice requested Bismarck’s resignation letter and was becoming impatient. Ever since the accession of Wilhelm II the Kaiser and chancellor had been boxing for positions. The precipitating factor in Bismarck’s fall from office was his apparent intention to engineer a constitutional crisis over the renewal of anti-socialist legislation and Wilhelm II’s determination to impose himself on the political scene, but the longer-term cause was Bismarck’s increasingly anachronistic policies and his inability to conceive of a future German state without himself at the helm. Bismarck’s political position was based upon his ability to present himself as the supreme protector of the status quo and foremost servant of the state. He had benefited from exploiting the fears of the traditional elites who believed their position was threatened by new social forces, namely the working class and its political mouthpiece, the Social Democrats. But this confrontational policy was beginning to pall and, along with the new Kaiser, people were beginning to question his tactics and demand compromise instead. Bismarck showed himself to be out of touch with the mood of the people and, more crucially, the mood of Wilhelm II who was keen to promote an image of himself as a sympathetic and reforming monarch. The ‘red threat’ was no longer 49

regarded in such a menacing light and Bismarck’s tactics were rather incongruous in a modernizing Germany. In May 1889 Bismarck once more chose confrontation during a nationwide miners’ strike instead of searching for a settlement. It appears that Bismarck would have been happy for the strike to continue, to ‘get out of hand’, providing him with the justification for his next step: an extension of the Anti-Socialist Law for an unlimited period of time. Wilhelm failed to support Bismarck on the socialist laws and began to pursue a project of his own concerning social welfare legislation. In January 1890 Wilhelm introduced his ideas for a programme of labour protection measures, bringing him into conflict with the chancellor. Bismarck remained inflexible to the last, reportedly remarking that the social question was ‘not to be solved with rose water but called for blood and iron’. There is some evidence to suggest that in his desperation, particularly after the February 1890 election which produced a poor result for the ruling coalition of Conservatives, Free Conservatives and National Liberals and gains for the Social Democrats and the Centre, Bismarck was seriously considering measures to smash the Reichstag and guarantee his position once and for all. He underestimated the desire of the Kaiser to be his own man. Following another attempt to introduce an even more restrictive anti-socialist bill for which he received minimal support, Bismarck received an upbraiding from Wilhelm including the criticism that he was a danger to the state. Bismarck resigned, no longer having the support of his Kaiser, the German people – who now knew the state would survive without him – and the majority of the Reichstag. Although many were sad to see him go, many others were relieved, a feeling expressed by the writer Theodor Fontane who wrote: ‘It is fortunate that we are rid of him, and many, many questions will now be handled better, more honourably, more clearly than before.’ Unfortunately these hopes were not to be fulfilled. Interpretations of the Wilhelmine period (1890–1918) tend to concur that it was fraught in political terms and characterized by an almost permanent sense of crisis. Explanations for this state of affairs are varied though ranging from personal rule by the Kaiser to systemic ungovernability as a result of disjunction between Germany society and politics which had been allowed to fester during the Bismarckian period. As a proponent of the latter view Mommsen states, ‘the German Empire had already become, in principle, an almost ungovernable entity by the early 1890s’.32

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Wilhelm II and the Bismarckian inheritance While all historians would agree that Bismarck had a profound effect on German state and society, whether for good or ill, such unanimity cannot be found with respect to the impact of the new Kaiser. On one side historians like John Röhl have emphasized Wilhelm’s personal rule, meaning that the political system was dependent upon the Kaiser’s views and his active engagement in and influence on policy. Others such as Wehler regard his influence as marginal to the oligarchical forces that governed the state and depict him as, at most, a meddlesome monarch. Some contemporary observers certainly regarded his influence as negligible; as one general noted in 1915, ‘we haven’t had a working head of state for the last twenty-five years’. In 1918 Wilhelm was widely denounced in vitriolic terms by all and sundry as the prime cause of the devastating war and his character was universally savaged. The judgements of historians today tend to be more measured and focused upon his place within the broader context of the imperial political system. The circumstances in which Wilhelm acceded to the throne were unfortunate. His grandfather, Wilhelm I, died in 1888 at the age of 91. The immediate successor was Wilhelm’s father, the Crown Prince Frederick who reigned for just ninety-nine days before his life was cut short by cancer of the throat. Hence Wilhelm unexpectedly became Kaiser at the age of 30. Wilhelm had an unpredictable personality, and in view of the power invested in his position – he had ultimate decision-making powers in foreign policy, controlled the army and could veto legislation – it is worthwhile considering some of his character traits. Born to a German father and English mother, afflicted from birth with a withered arm, Wilhelm was a complex personality whose contradictory character pervades contemporary accounts. While some who met him regarded him as intelligent, confident, astute and good company others close to him saw a man tortured by self-doubt, prone to mood swings, mental instability and easily led. He exhibited serious problems in playing his exalted role. He loved dressing up in uniform, he played childish pranks and interpreted any setback as a personal insult. Foreign dignitaries were witnesses to extraordinary exhibitions of Wilhelm’s odd sense of humour and inappropriate behaviour. On one such occasion during a visit of the Italian King Victor Emmanuel II to the Kaiser’s ship, Wilhelm is said to have remarked in reference to the diminutive monarch, ‘Now watch how the little dwarf 51

climbs up the gangway.’ Practical jokes were regularly played on members of his own entourage. Wilhelm was also easily influenced by a badly chosen circle of advisers. Some observers of his behaviour expressed the view that he was insane. If Wilhelm was a marginal figure in German politics than these insights into his character are merely titillating rather than significant. However if, as recent interpretations suggest, he was at the hub of political life, if he was responsible for major policy decisions and indeed practised what has been described as ‘personal rule’, it is legitimate to try to understand his personality. Indeed, there is evidence that he was personally involved in decision-making, most convincingly in respect of the policy of naval expansion and the construction of a battlefleet to rival Britain’s, but also in social policy. Wilhelm did not act alone but was advised and supported by an entourage of advisers and sycophants – notably his friend and confidant Count Philipp zu Eulenberg – who constituted a separate power base around the monarch, supplemented by his military entourage. These factors go some way towards supporting the view that, in Lerman’s words, ‘Wilhelmine Germany remained a military monarchy rather than a constitutional state.’33 Compared with Bismarckian Germany, which was a society coming to terms with unification and industrialization, Wilhelmine Germany was undoubtedly more mature and culturally diverse. The new social classes established themselves in Wilhelm’s reign as conscious, active and persuasive entities. The bourgeoisie, the lower middle class, the working class, peasantry and women began to find ways of expressing their demands within a political system still dominated by the traditional elites. While the parliamentary system remained unreformed, interest groups began to mobilize often outside formal political structures. This era witnessed the rise and maturation of mass politics in Germany encompassing right and left. This mobilization suggests that the effectiveness of the anti-democratic structures and strategies pursued by Bismarck has been overstated. All that had been achieved was a polarization between the state and society. Wilhelm’s reign began on an optimistic note. The new chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, was keen to adopt a more conciliatory approach, and pursued a course of non-alignment with the parties in the Reichstag. The so-called ‘New Course’ – a deliberate change of political direction encompassing a desire for cooperation to achieve the common good in the national interest – incorporated welfare legislation to appease the left and tariff reductions benefiting industrialists and workers. He also lifted some of the restrictions that had been imposed in the 52

Bismarckian era: the Polish language was now permitted to be used in schools in Prussian Poland for instance. Caprivi was perhaps rather naive in hoping for greater party cooperation. Party politics was polarized with the Social Democrats gaining support (they received the highest proportion of the vote in the 1893 elections at 23 per cent), the Liberals divided and the Conservatives moving further to the right, embracing aggressive nationalism and anti-semitism. By 1892 Caprivi had alienated support from all sides – piecemeal social reforms and concessions to commercial interests pleased no one – but his resignation in 1894 came about following an attempt to reform the army, a parliamentary defeat and moves by others to manufacture a crisis by introducing another bill to combat so-called ‘revolutionary tendencies’. Caprivi did not support the bill but no longer had the will to continue serving a monarch he no longer respected. Thus he resigned instead of seeking to defeat the bill and the intrigues behind it. The new government of the elderly Prince Hohenlohe, described as the ‘straw chancellor’, was supremely ineffective. In fact it has been said that during his chancellorship (1894–1900) ‘Wilhelm II was his own chancellor’.34 Under constant pressure from the Kaiser – who had by now abandoned any residual concern for the working classes – and others on the right to introduce new restrictions on the activities of the Social Democrats and trade unions, Hohenlohe shifted towards the right in an attempt to achieve a kind of Bismarckian anti-socialist consensus. This Sammlungspolitik as it was called (the gathering together of the agrarian and industrial elites) coincided with the beginning of a more aggressive foreign policy and expansion of the navy. Between 1900 and 1914 chancellors Bülow (1900–9) and his successor Bethmann Hollweg (1909–14) were dogged by the instability of parliamentary politics and became increasingly reliant upon the unpredictable Kaiser as well as the army and bureaucracy to govern the country. Bülow did restore authority and a semblance of stability during his chancellorship but by fashioning himself as the ‘king’s minister’ he simply perpetuated a system of rule that marginalized parliament and disdained collective government. Throughout the period 1890–1914 no concerted effort was made to resolve the internal structural problems inherited from the Bismarckian system. In 1908 the so-called Daily Telegraph crisis had the potential to change Germany’s constitutional condition but the opportunity was squandered by a weak and divided Reichstag. The London newspaper published an interview with Wilhelm II in which he made tactless remarks likely to damage Germany’s relations with Britain and Russia. Chancellor 53

Bülow, it emerged, had been shown the transcript in advance but had neglected to read it. When asked to explain himself, Bülow concealed his role in the affair and merely requested that the Kaiser take more care with his comments in future. Here had been a chance for the Reichstag to demand greater parliamentary power and greater responsibility of the chancellor to parliament at the expense of the diminution of royal privilege. Nothing, however, was done. Bethmann Hollweg, who replaced Bülow in 1909, was more sympathetic to limited political reform, but his feeble attempt to reform the three-class Prussian voting system had to be abandoned, and his failure to get the so-called staatserhaltende parties (parties of the status quo) to unite behind his policies meant he relied on extra-parliamentary forces to govern the country. From 1900 on, foreign policy was increasingly used as a substitute for domestic reform. The consequence of this was that the masses became progressively alienated from the formal political process. The result was a series of grass-roots challenges to elite dominance and counter-strategies by the elites to deflect these challenges. Pressure groups and politics During the 1890s Germany entered an era of mass politics. It is important to remember that every man over 25 had a vote in imperial Germany, and that voters continued to regard Reichstag elections as meaningful events (between 1887 and 1912 voter turnout in national elections never fell below 70 per cent except in 1898). There was mass mobilization of voters, party structures were modernized and electoral tactics and national issues increasingly dominated election campaigns. Yet, as we have seen, the Reichstag became increasingly impotent. Votes cast may have reflected the mood of the country but they did not affect the way the country was run. A space, therefore, existed for alternative interest groups, which operated outside party politics on the margins of the political system but nonetheless influential. What has been called a ‘political mass market’ emerged in which the electorate was courted by demagogues, gradually replacing what was known as the Honoratiorenpolitik (politics of notables). Workers, women, peasants, shopkeepers, publicans, nationalists and anti-semites among others began to bypass formal political channels and instead articulated their demands and grievances in public via pressure groups. Temperance campaigners, social-welfare reformers, feminists and pacifists existed alongside the more mainstream national organizations such as the Agrarian League, Peasant Leagues and the labour movement. 54

The labour movement Once the Anti-Socialist Law was allowed to lapse in 1890 the Social Democratic Party (SPD) went from strength to strength. It received more votes than any other party and by 1912 it was the largest party in the Reichstag with 110 seats. The socialist cultural and educational network expanded rapidly; almost every town had its Social Democratic choral society, sports club, library and cycling association. The very success of the SPD in this period suggests that the German working class was now stronger and less divided by religion, ethnicity and skill and that it was moving towards greater political maturity. The twelve years of the Anti-Socialist Law had a notable impact upon the German labour movement and undoubtedly influenced its attitude and ideological position in the years before the First World War. During the outlawed years the movement put a great deal of effort into effective organization and parliamentary representation and it was not prepared to throw this away once the ban on extraparliamentary activity was lifted. When the Party published its manifesto in 1891 – the Erfurt Programme – the combination of a reformist commitment to parliamentary representation with revolutionary ideology led to some fierce battles within the Party, primarily between Karl Kautsky who had drafted the revolutionary sections of the programme, and Eduard Bernstein, the leading revisionist, who believed it was time to work within the state to achieve concrete improvements in the condition of the labouring masses. This debate between the revolutionaries and the revisionists was to cause quite a rift in the Party – a rift that was to become a chasm after the outbreak of war. The SPD in this period was, by and large, a law-abiding parliamentary party. The Party leadership was understandably afraid of the reimposition of repressive measures and was reluctant to undertake any action that would give the government the opportunity to justify even harsher measures against it. Indeed, even after 1890 socialist activists were still liable to be arbitrarily arrested and prosecuted for a variety of offences. The legal system continued to discriminate against the labour movement. This concentration on organization meant the Party became increasingly bureaucratic, concerned with rules and procedure, and consequently it lost touch with many of the rank and file of the working class. Young workers in particular failed to identify with the ageing SPD leaders, and the formation of the Social Democratic Youth Movement in 1904 was an attempt by the Party to encourage young people to join while at the same time suppressing the militancy of 55

young workers. In fact this policy failed. Young people deserted the SPD en masse after 1914. Women too found the SPD not wholly sympathetic to their demands. Although the SPD was the only party to support women’s suffrage and equality of the sexes, in practice it was afraid of the Social Democratic Women’s Movement and often adopted quite chauvinistic attitudes towards women members. After decades of isolation the SPD was increasingly becoming part of the Wilhelmine political system. Although the leadership continued to refuse to cooperate with other parties, thereby confining the SPD to a life of parliamentary opposition, it participated in the political system by allowing its deputies to take their seats in the Reichstag and campaigning for reform. At the same time, the associational network of sports, social and educational clubs played its part in integrating the organized working class into Wilhelmine society at the local level. It was the aim of the Social Democrats to raise the class consciousness of the workers through cultural activities. In turn this would, it was hoped, increase the political awareness of the working class. Certainly large numbers of workers joined these organizations. By 1914 around 600,000 workers belonged to at least one socialist cultural club, be it a gymnastic club, a singing group or theatrical society. But this figure was a minority of the working class as a whole and most participants were skilled workers. Moreover, some of these clubs were not particularly socialist in outlook. Singing clubs often sang hymns and classical works as opposed to socialist anthems; sports clubs naturally engaged in competition even though they were encouraged to value cooperative efforts; and the books borrowed from workers’ libraries were invariably the novels rather than works by Marx. The labour movement consisted of more than simply the SPD. Trade union membership expanded rapidly after 1890 – by 1914 combined union membership numbered around 3.3 million – but this did not necessarily indicate a radicalization of the workforce. The unions were becoming more effective in bargaining with employers on behalf of workers and saw their role as extracting concessions from employers within the existing system rather than engaging in revolutionary activity. Trade union leaders were primarily concerned with long-term achievements and were frustrated by workers who engaged in spontaneous militant activity to achieve short-term gains. In many areas the unions were confronted with a workforce which had little in common other than the experience of work, and in order to overcome these divisions the unions stressed organization, discipline and a cautious approach so as not to alienate workers who might not have agreed 56

with a militant line. The unions were pragmatic, they freed themselves from the SPD leadership and concentrated on practical issues: wages, hours, welfare provision and so on. The organized labour movement in Wilhelmine Germany increasingly rejected confrontation with the ruling system in favour of accommodation to it. But the labour movement did not represent the entire working class and the activities of what has been called the Lumpenproletariat (rough or unorganized working class) suggest there was considerably more confrontation between the lower classes and the state than a focus on the parliamentary party would suggest. Workers often defied the law or earned the disapproval of the SPD by engaging in activities that were seen as violent, criminal, deviant and immoral. They pilfered goods from the dockside, smuggled schnapps into factories when it was forbidden, and inflicted sabotage at the workplace. Parts of the Ruhr were described as resembling the Wild West and several towns in this industrial region experienced major incidences of labour unrest. Industrial unrest throughout Germany escalated in this period. Three general miners’ strikes in 1889, 1905 and 1912 lasted up to a month – the 1889 national miners’ strike involved 150,000 workers – and numerous small-scale disputes, generally over wages and hours, as well as lock-outs instigated by employers, disrupted German industry. In 1910 almost 700,000 workers came out in over 3,000 strikes; in 1914 over 1 million workers withdrew their labour. The vast majority of strikers were not members of the SPD; many did not belong to trade unions either and trade union leaders attempted to bring spontaneous strikes under control. Workers were also involved in more overtly political protest in this period. In Berlin there were violent riots in 1892 and 1910. In Hamburg, one of the states still to possess unequal suffrage laws for elections to the local assembly, the ‘Red Wednesday’ riot in 1906 brought thousands of workers onto the streets on the day of the debate in the Citizens’ Assembly on the reform of the suffrage laws. The SPD encouraged the city’s workers to come out on strike and to attend public meetings in protest at the limited nature of the reform proposals. In the event it was estimated that up to 80,000 people heeded the SPD’s call for disciplined protest but later in the day the protest turned into a full-scale riot – to the dismay of the SPD – involving the police hacking at the protesters with sabres. Observers of the riot made inappropriate allusions to the 1905 Russian Revolution. The Hamburg riots were not revolutionary and there were no revolutionary leaders, but the city’s workers did demonstrate their profound dissatisfaction with a political 57

system that disenfranchised them. There was a big gap between the skilled, respectable labour movement committed to disciplined and orderly protest and the rough members of the Lumpenproletariat who felt the political system (including their own political representatives) did not represent them and their needs. Upon the outbreak of war in 1914 the SPD’s parliamentary party supported the government and voted in the Reichstag in favour of credits to finance the war, an act that some interpreted as a betrayal of revolutionary ideals and of its internationalism. In view of the reformism of the parliamentary party throughout the Wilhelmine period, the SPD’s support for the government in 1914 was not surprising particularly since the war was presented as a defensive war against Tsarist aggression. But the capitulation of the left brought to the surface many of the tensions which had been simmering since the debate between the reformists and the revolutionaries, and it was not long before the socialists split, revealing considerable grass-roots support for a more radical agenda. Those who opposed the war broke away from the SPD to form the Independent Social Democratic Party (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, USPD) in 1917. The final break came in December 1918 when another left-wing group, the Spartacists, formed the German Communist Party (KPD). Between 1890 and 1914 the SPD and the trade unions gradually accommodated themselves to the Wilhelmine system, avoiding confrontation in favour of integration. The working class rank and file on the other hand, only a minority of whom belonged to the organized labour movement, did confront the system on both an individual and a collective basis. The problems left by Bismarck were not resolved under Wilhelm II. The working class still did not have an effective voice, despite the fact that the SPD became the largest party in the parliament, and workers still felt their interests were in conflict with those of the state. This divergence of interests between a reformist labour movement and a radicalized working class culminated in the revolution of 1918–19 when the new parliamentary republic was protected by the SPD without pushing through any of the fundamental changes in the socio-economic structure of Germany demanded by the revolutionaries. Women, feminism and politics In Bismarckian Germany women were second-class citizens with no representation; oppression was manifested in the legal system, politics, 58

within marriage and the home and in the workplace. During the 1870s and 1880s the position of women in German society began to change, yet there was little possibility of real improvement until the 1890s on account of changes in social and economic conditions and as a result of feminist agitation for reform. Inequality between men and women was endemic in all spheres of German society, summed up by the phrase ‘the state for the man, the family for the woman’. The law discriminated against women by treating them no better than children. Married women gave up all their rights and property upon marriage, and they had few rights regarding the guardianship of their children. Women were not entitled to equal pay or equal education and, of course, they did not have the vote. Moreover, until 1908 and the enactment of a Reich Law of Association, women in Prussia were not permitted to engage in political activities, which meant they could not join a political party or a trade union, attend political meetings or form a political organization of their own. Women’s public activity was largely confined to charitable and philanthropic work. Both middle- and working class women experienced major changes in their lives during the final quarter of the nineteenth century. Women of the lower classes had always worked for a living but in the industrial towns and cities women were forced to find employment outside the home – either in domestic service, in factory work (predominantly textiles) or in any of a multitude of servicing jobs which were seen as an extension of women’s domestic role, such as laundry work and sewing. Wages were inadequate. Employers often used the notion of a family wage to justify lower wages for women workers (men were regarded as breadwinners, women merely worked for ‘pinmoney’) and generally women received only between 40 and 60 per cent of male wages in spite of the fact that few families could survive on the husband’s wage alone. Despite this the proportion of married women in paid employment rapidly increased from just 9 per cent in 1882 to 26 per cent in 1907. Employment for women was also unstable. Women could be hired and fired at will; they were most vulnerable to seasonal fluctuations in the trade cycle; and women living in towns dominated by heavy industries like mining and iron and steel had difficulty in securing paid employment at all. Few working class women escaped the cycle of poverty. Whether a woman was single, an unmarried mother or a married woman her secondary status in the labour market coupled with the dominant ideology that a respectable woman did not undertake paid work meant 59

that she was trapped in an enduring struggle to conform to society’s expectations while earning enough to survive. One means of escaping the poverty trap was to limit family size, but limited access to contraception before the First World War and the prohibition of information about birth control meant family limitation was only possible with the cooperation of husband and wife or by a woman’s resort to illegal abortion. On average before 1905 working class couples had four to five children and some women spent their entire adult lives either pregnant or caring for young children. By the 1910s though the figure had declined to around three children and was even lower in the higher social classes. In 1878 women were prohibited from returning to work within three weeks of giving birth but few were lucky enough to be able to afford even this luxury. In these circumstances, with their health weakened by hard work and frequent childbirth, it is surprising that female life expectancy marginally exceeded that of men. The lives of middle-class women changed too, but in different ways. The daughters and wives of the bourgeoisie were undoubtedly more privileged than their working class sisters but they were trapped by a middle-class domestic ideology which confined them to a life centred on the home, the so-called private sphere. Few middle-class households were wealthy enough to be able to afford more than one servant which meant that the lady of the house had to undertake a great deal of work in order to maintain the appearance of a respectable bourgeois lifestyle. This was a period of greater opportunities in the world of paid work, particularly in the professions and white-collar employment, but these opportunities were barred to all but a few women. Not only was women’s education inadequate to permit them to access the new professional areas of employment which were opening up for the sons of the middle class, respectable middle-class women were expected to marry. Only unmarried women of this social class could respectably support themselves and even then there were few areas of work deemed appropriate. Clearly, then, women’s horizons were limited by a discriminatory system. Working-class women were forced to take poorly paid, monotonous jobs while middle-class women were lucky if they became primary-school teachers. The professions – law, medicine, higher education – were out of reach for all but the very persistent. It was not until the 1900s that girls could realistically aspire to more than a domestic life. By 1911 women made up around 20 per cent of primary-school teachers and by the First World War they were taking up jobs in the expanding white-collar sector. Most political parties paid scant attention to the position of women. 60

Only the Social Democrats supported women’s demands for equal rights and even they failed to back up their statements with action. So women who wished to see changes began to organize independently of political parties. The first women’s organization, the General German Women’s Association founded by Louise Otto-Peters in 1865, had been primarily concerned with equal education for women and access to the professions, but had achieved little by the end of the Bismarckian era. In the 1880s and 1890s two organizations began to campaign for women’s rights: the bourgeois women’s movement which, as the Federation of German Women’s Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, BDF) had around 12,000 members in 1894, and the Socialist Women’s Movement led by Clara Zetkin and later Luise Zietz which became the most successful socialist women’s organization in Europe by 1914 with 175,000 members. The relaxation of the political atmosphere following Bismarck’s fall benefited the women’s movement but it also brought the woman question to public prominence, revealing another hornet’s nest for the Wilhelmine regime to deal with. As long as the women’s movement concentrated on issues like education and equal pay the government lost little sleep over what it called the woman question, particularly since these early feminists were keen to emphasize that women possessed different qualities from men rather than arguing for absolute equality. But around the turn of the century the movement became more radical, especially when women realized that the new Civil Code for the unified Germany, due to be implemented in 1900, would do little to improve women’s legal position and in some respects made things worse; for instance, the divorce law was made more restrictive. Women activists received little support from the men in the Reichstag, prompting the view that if women were to play a full part in decision-making they had to be given the vote. The BDF under a new leader, Marie Stritt, began to campaign for women’s suffrage as well as opposing state-regulated prostitution and supporting the legalization of abortion, policies that were extremely radical for the time. This brief radical phase came to a halt in 1908 when women were given the right to engage in politics following the Law of Association. As a consequence thousands of women who had been reluctant to join the women’s movement beforehand flooded into the BDF, and a majority of these women were conservative in outlook. For example, 8,000 members of the German Evangelical Women’s League joined the BDF in 1908. Marie Stritt was replaced as leader by the more 61

moderate Gertrud Bäumer, and henceforward the BDF reverted to extolling the virtues of motherhood and women’s special qualities. At the same time the Social Democratic women’s organization was recruiting working class women and campaigning for improvements in women’s working conditions. Under the inspiration of Clara Zetkin the movement fought against restrictions on women’s employment and encouraged women to join the SPD since emancipation could be achieved, according to the socialists, only after a socialist revolution. On International Women’s Day, 8 March, thousands of women regularly demonstrated for the vote. The socialist women’s organization supported women’s suffrage and involved itself in female and child welfare. It refused to cooperate with the BDF even when they had much in common, since although the BDF claimed it was campaigning on behalf of all women the socialist women maintained that women’s emancipation would come about only with the emancipation of the entire working class. Bourgeois women in the BDF were seen by some socialist women as just as exploitative of working class women as men. Under Bismarck the women’s movement had been immature and somewhat shackled by restrictions on women’s ability to organize collectively. After 1890 feminists adopted a more confrontational stance with the state. They raised the woman question to an issue of national importance and found a voice outside the confines of party politics. By the outbreak of war there had been some limited improvement in the position of German women. The length of the working day had been reduced; there were improvements in female education (notably women had been admitted to universities); women had made inroads into the lower levels of the teaching and the healthcare professions; and married women now had full legal status. But women had to wait for a new regime after the war and revolution for full constitutional equality and the vote. Peasants and Peasant Leagues During the 1890s politics infiltrated the countryside as peasants and landlords mobilized to protect their interests. Peasants and farmers had been affected by industrialization and competition from overseas and the Junker–landowner dominated Agrarian League (Bund Deutscher Landwirte) was formed in 1893 as a pressure group to campaign for protection for domestic agricultural produce from cheap imports. The Agrarian League masqueraded as an independent force but it was 62

clearly aiming to attract peasant votes away from the SPD, who had already made inroads in some rural areas, and it aimed to do so by adopting the tactics of mass politics: mass meetings in marketplaces and pubs, mass membership, propaganda and continual campaigning. The League soon became a dominant force within the Conservative Party. The Agrarian League was most successful in attracting peasant support in the Protestant north of the country and it achieved some success in mobilizing votes on the protection issue in the Reichstag elections of 1898 and 1903. In the south, however, and especially in Catholic Bavaria, the peasantry tended to reject the old elites as their representatives. Instead, during the 1890s the peasantry mobilized from below, forming radical organizations called Peasant Leagues. These successfully articulated the fears and needs of the rural electorate. Their organizations represented a challenge to the old style of politics, and in some parts of Germany, notably Bavaria, they gained considerable electoral support at the expense of the Catholic Centre Party, forcing the Centre to adapt and create its own peasant associations. The Peasant Leagues reacted to the economic pressure on peasants who had been suffering for years from high land prices, high interest rates and a decline in income after 1890 which meant there was little available capital to plough back into improvements. Southern Germany was also affected by a severe drought in 1893. In order to remedy this situation the Peasant Leagues called for a reduction in the financial burdens on peasants combined with a reduction in state expenditure, especially the vast amounts spent on the military. This final demand brought the Leagues into conflict with the Agrarian League which supported increases in military expenditure. Central to the Peasant Leagues’ stance was the attack on authority and state bureaucracy. The peasantry in Wilhelmine Germany had matured as a result of economic pressure and greater political mobilization in the countryside. The Leagues succeeded in arousing considerable concern within the government who likened them to the Social Democrats, radicals who threatened political stability. They also inspired the Centre Party to start actively mobilizing peasants and listening more carefully to their grievances instead of merely relying on them for electoral support. The Centre had relied quite heavily on rural voters but it was losing out to the more radical programme of the Peasant Leagues. In the 1890s Catholic Peasant Associations began to emerge – by 1907 they had almost 350,000 members – adopting a similar programme to the Leagues. The existence of the Leagues and the Catholic Peasant Associations 63

indicates another group in Wilhelmine Germany which challenged the existing system with radical politics and which succeeded in mobilizing a sector of the population behind a radical agenda. The Agrarian League was successful in Protestant areas, adopting a programme of economic conservatism and thinly veiled anti-semitism to attract small farmers and peasants but in Catholic regions grass-roots peasant organizations were more representative of peasant discontent. Nationalist pressure groups Pressure-group politics and agitation were not confined to the left. The 1890s and 1900s saw the formation of a number of nationalist pressure groups which soon boasted extensive support. But these organizations were not always challenging the status quo. Rather, they served as a useful tool of the ruling classes for the purpose of mobilizing popular support in favour of government policy, especially an aggressive foreign and colonial policy and the development of a large navy. All these policies furthered the interests of the dominant classes, especially representatives of heavy industry whose success depended on government contracts for arms and military hardware and the development of overseas markets. The most prominent and largest of these organizations were the German Colonial Society (founded in 1887), the Pan-German League (1891), the Navy League (1898) and the Army League (1912). These pressure groups did manage to mobilize a significant sector of the population. At its peak in 1902 the Pan-German League, which campaigned on a programme of völkisch (radical conservative) nationalism and an aggressive warship construction policy, had more than 22,000 members. The Navy League, probably the most important among nationalist pressure groups, which explicitly supported Admiral von Tirpitz’s battleship programme, boasted around 200,000 members after just eighteen months. The Navy League was founded by Krupp, the steel magnate, and was primarily financed by heavy industry. Krupp was in an ideal position to benefit from the battleship-building programme since his company was the only manufacturer of the armour-plating used for warships. But other industrialists were also happy to support a programme which not only secured the jobs of those in the shipbuilding industry but helped to stabilize the economy as a whole by stimulating production. These pressure groups occupied the middle ground in German politics between the government and the political parties. They have 64

been described as ‘parallel action groups’, used by the political parties to mobilize support behind particular policies. They ran effective propaganda machines – they made good use of new forms of campaigning such as lecture tours, pamphleting and posters – and foisted themselves onto the political stage, attracting attention for their clear aims and objectives, in contrast with the wheeling and dealing of party politics under Wilhelm II. In fact, groups like these did not, in the main, try to directly influence election campaigns, neither did they try to challenge the established parties. They simply helped to define the electoral agenda. The most notable exception was the so-called Hottentot election in 1907 (so named because it followed Bülow’s dissolution of the Reichstag in the wake of a defeat on the issue of the approval of expenditure to suppress an indigenous uprising by the socalled ‘Hottentots’ in German Southwest Africa). The radical nationalist organizations were used to amass support for the government against the ‘enemies of the Reich’, in this case the socialists and the Centre who voted against the bill. However, it is doubtful whether these organizations succeeded in mobilizing widespread popular opinion behind government policy. Right-wing pressure groups inevitably drew support from a particular sector of the population, namely urban, middle-class men. Among the officeholders of the Pan-German League, for instance, merely 1 per cent had a working class background and only 2 per cent came from the nobility. While the middle class may also have seen the economic benefits to be gained from a stimulation of trade and protection, they were more concerned with the threat of the socialists on the one hand and the status of Germany as a world power on the other. These two motives for supporting nationalist groups were closely connected. It was thought that the patriotism engendered by colonial expansion and naval supremacy would act as a palliative against the Social Democrats. In short, these pressure groups aimed to stabilize the political system by diverting the energies of destabilizing elements while at the same time gathering together conservative forces behind the government, socalled Sammlungspolitik. They did succeed, to some extent, in radicalizing right-wing politics but they failed to make any deep-seated impression on the mass of the German population. Indeed, the SPD made political capital from the demands for increased expenditure by these groups. Working people began to question the proportion of their taxes spent on the armed forces in contrast with the proportion spent on welfare. Anti-semitic groups should also be mentioned here. Reformvereine 65

(Reform Associations) as the first anti-semitic pressure groups were deceptively known, were founded in 1879, after the historian Heinrich von Treitschke wrote, ‘the Jews are our national misfortune’. By the Wilhelmine period there were Reformvereine in every German town, but in contrast with other right-wing pressure groups the anti-semites did contest regional and national elections as independent candidates. In 1890 anti-semites won five Reichstag seats. They achieved a breakthrough in the Reichstag elections of 1893, in some regions receiving up to 15 per cent of the popular vote, but anti-semites never transcended their status as a focus for protest. After 1898 anti-semitic parties fragmented and were isolated once they lost the support of the Conservative Party. Political anti-semitism in general failed to establish itself as a permanent feature of the German political scene. Its constituency was small – mainly disaffected regional, rural Protestant voters – it never attracted support from across the political or social spectrum, and thus remained marginal. Conclusions Wilhelmine Germany is often described as a turbulent period, certainly somewhat less stable than the Bismarckian regime. Bismarck had succeeded, to some extent, in consolidating the state by the suppression of potentially destabilizing elements and manipulation of the political system. But Bismarck achieved short-term stability at the expense of long-term solutions. He succeeded only temporarily in consolidating the German state because potential opposition had its attention elsewhere: on social problems arising from industrialization, on dealing with political repression, on establishing successful industrial enterprises. After 1890 the growth of mass politicization and the more sophisticated articulation of grievances via pressure groups as well as political parties, in the context of a rapidly modernizing society, threatened to destabilize the fragile status quo painstakingly constructed by the ruling elites. The politics of notables no longer satisfied a more sophisticated and volatile electorate. Workers, women, peasants and the middle class challenged the elites by casting their votes for alternative parties, forming pressure groups or by taking direct action: strikes, marches and public demonstrations and disturbances were not uncommon in this period. Despite these challenges the political system did not change during the Wilhelmine era. What has been described as political stasis is contrasted with dynamism in the economy and society. German politics, although appearing to become more attuned to 66

the masses, in fact seems to have merely affirmed the traditional divisions between socialists and conservatives, rural and urban, Catholics and Protestants. The elite response to these challenges was not gradual reform but rather recourse to radical nationalism which lobbied in favour of an acquisitive imperialism, aggressive foreign policy and military build-up. Wilhelmine Germany erected a commanding façade of monarchical splendour and military power but this concealed political impasse and heightened social tension. The outbreak of war in 1914 achieved only a temporary national consensus.

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5 War and revolution 1914–19

The road to war German foreign policy assumed a more aggressive and expansionist character under Wilhelm II. From the late 1890s, under the governments of Hohenlohe and Bülow, foreign and imperial policy took on greater importance on the domestic scene. As we have seen, there had been attempts to whip up nationalist enthusiasm at home in support of the expansion of the German naval fleet (Flottenpolitik) and a more assertive foreign and imperial policy (Weltpolitik). The existence of these policies does not lead inexorably to laying blame on Germany for the outbreak of the First World War but certainly German leaders in pursuing such policies had prepared the country for military engagement and when the opportunity arose they were willing to take the ultimate step. Recent interpretations of Wilhelmine foreign policy have been sceptical of the view that Weltpolitik and Flottenpolitik were a deliberate policy to deflect social tensions by rallying disparate interests behind the government and the status quo. Indeed, it is difficult to discern clear objectives for this aggressive policy apart from Germany’s intent to become a world power on a par with Britain. What is clearer is that the European powers perceived Germany and her ambitions as a threat. Wilhelm II’s first diplomatic mistake was his refusal to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1890, having been badly advised 68

by Caprivi and the Foreign Ministry that it offered Germany few advantages, and this pushed the Russians towards an alliance with France. Britain, whose attempts to draw closer to Germany had been frustrated, began to seek an understanding with the French, and an Anglo-French entente was signed in 1904. Thus, in a short space of time the Bismarckian alliance system had been dismantled and Germany found herself isolated, surrounded by potentially hostile powers, exposed to a potential war on two fronts, with only Austria– Hungary as a friend. Wilhelm II’s influence over the direction and character of some aspects of German foreign policy, particularly the battleship programme, was evident. The Kaiser was strongly influenced by Admiral von Tirpitz, who nurtured in him a love of the navy. Tirpitz had already contributed to the alienation of Russia by seizing Kiao-Chow in 1897, a territory regarded by Russia as within her sphere of influence in northern China. At the head of the Admiralty Tirpitz embarked upon a campaign which was to alienate Britain too. With Wilhelm II’s support Tirpitz began to transform the navy in order to rival Britain’s naval power. This campaign had the side-effect of enabling chancellor Bülow to rally behind the government all those who supported the policy and who were afraid of the socialists. These included industrialists, chambers of commerce and the finance industry, as well as the Pan-German League, the Colonial Union and, after 1898, the Navy League. In 1898 Tirpitz’s naval bill which provided for an increase in the number of battleships to nineteen, and a supplementary bill two years later which doubled that number, proceeded successfully through the Reichstag. It is not surprising that this naval expansion undermined relations between Britain and Germany. Wilhelm II was probably more belligerent than his final chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, who did try to adopt a calmer and more conciliatory foreign policy, but by this time it was impossible for him to achieve a parliamentary majority in support of his policies and the country was being governed by the military with the support of the Kaiser. Bethmann Hollweg tried to reach agreement with Britain over the escalating naval race in order to bring the seemingly endless and futile competition to an end, but his internal position was weak and he was unable to counter the Kaiser and Tirpitz who refused to come to an agreement with Britain. External events then further exposed the chancellor’s weakness. During the second Moroccan Crisis of 1911 Germany’s isolation in Europe was highlighted and the military and patriotic interests within Germany lost confidence in the chancellor’s ability to deal with the international situation. When troubles flared in 69

the Balkans in 1912, threatening to embroil all the major European powers in a war, Bethmann Hollweg lost his nerve, hoping at best for a settlement and at worst a limited war. This is not the place to rehearse the events leading up to the First World War; another Lancaster Pamphlet deals with this in detail.35 Suffice it to say, when Germany agreed to support Austrian retaliatory actions against Serbia, giving the famous ‘blank cheque’ in response to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austrian heir to the throne, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, neither Bethmann Hollweg nor Wilhelm II, nor even the military fully appreciated the consequences of their actions. None expected the ensuing war to be so long or to be so destructive. Germany’s responsibility for the outbreak of war has been debated at length. In 1961 Fritz Fischer controversially argued that Germany not only bore full responsibility for the war but, furthermore, under Wilhelm II she had planned a war in order to achieve great-power status. In the 1970s Hans-Ulrich Wehler developed a parallel argument to the Fischer thesis. Wehler emphasized the primacy of domestic policy in the development of foreign policy and proposed that the anachronistic character of the Second Empire was to blame for the descent into war. Wolfgang Mommsen argues that ‘weakness and confusion’ within the ruling elites rather than a deliberate policy to seize a place on the world stage was much to blame for the ensuing events. There is no agreement among historians on the aims behind German foreign policy in the years leading up to 1914 or the degree to which she was responsible for the outbreak of war. As Lerman clearly states, ‘the “men of 1914” were not merely guided by their individual and collective concerns but also conditioned by their positions within the wider institutional and political structure’.36 Clearly, though, German foreign policy had been perceived by her neighbours as aggressive and decisions taken in other European capitals may well have been influenced by their decision not to bow to German bullying tactics. However, when we examine Germany’s experience of war on the home and the fighting fronts it becomes clear that even if Germany was responsible she had not prepared for the conditions of ‘total war’ that were to characterize the years 1914–18. The experience of war The outbreak of war in August 1914 was greeted in Germany with mixed emotions. While considerable jubilation and patriotic 70

enthusiasm were in evidence, many Germans responded to the announcement with ambivalence and fear. Certainly thousands rushed to enlist in the war effort but there were many others who took part in peace demonstrations and hoarded food. Germans may have been convinced they were fighting a defensive war against Russia, a war they had been provoked into entering once the Russians had mobilized against Austria in defence of Serbia, but even the belief in the justifiable defence of the fatherland was little compensation for the mass unemployment that followed on the heels of mobilization. All the political parties rallied to the war effort, including the SPD. With the words, ‘I no longer recognize parties; I only recognize Germans’, Wilhelm II announced a civil truce (Burgfriede). Many on the right believed the war was an ideal solution to the conflicts and problems which had beset Wilhelm’s reign. The threat of an attack from Tsarist Russia permitted the majority on the political left to abandon their blanket opposition to imperialist wars although the SPD and the trade unions expected to be rewarded for their support with the reform of the political system. Few could have anticipated the degree of popular unrest and political and civil disintegration that was to ensue during the next four years. The soldiers who marched to war in August 1914 were acting in accordance with the now notorious Schlieffen Plan. This plan, drawn up in 1905, envisaged the invasion of France via neutral Belgium in order to defeat France in six weeks before turning to meet the Russians, thus avoiding a war on two fronts. Despite initial successes, the plan was a failure and the vision of a short war was snatched away. Belgium put up quite a fight, which delayed German entry into France and allowed the British time to marshal troops to defend her ally. Thenceforth, German, French and British troops became bogged down in trench warfare which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of men for no gain as successive battles ended in stalemate. Not even the vastly expensive navy fulfilled expectations. Several cruisers were lost as early as August 1914 and, although the German fleet suffered fewer losses than Britain at Jutland in May 1916, by then submarine power was superseding battleships. Tirpitz, the architect of the costly battleship programme, was forced to resign. On the eastern front the Germany army, commanded by generals Hindenberg and Ludendorff, had greater success in driving Russian troops out of east Prussia as early as the end of August 1914 but this victory was short-lived. On the home front the war affected civilians immediately as military regulations were imposed in place of civil law. Some in leading circles 71

believed a short victorious war would justify such measures and result in a return to traditional values and a society in debt to its military leaders. But the war was not over by Christmas and it was not long before civilians began to suffer. No plans had been made for a long war. Indeed, some historians have argued that Germany had no plans for a war at all; no preparations had been made to ensure adequate food supplies, resources for the military or labour for industry. As early as October 1914 there were shortages of bread and potatoes and prices doubled, affecting the working classes disproportionately since they relied heavily upon these foodstuffs in their diet. The British naval blockade prevented much needed imports of grain from reaching German ports and subsequent harvests were poor. Bread rationing was introduced in June 1915 and potatoes were in such limited supply that farmers were forbidden to feed them to their animals. Shortage goods, which included meat and animal fats, were distributed unevenly and prices were high. The only people who profited from this situation were the black-marketeers and, as conditions worsened in the towns, there were food riots, looting of food shops and strikes, often by women and young people. In Berlin, for instance, there were reportedly thousands of women and children queuing for potatoes resulting in ‘mob scenes’ and the storming of shops. The Kaiser’s civil truce was at an end. 1916 was a turning point on the fighting and home fronts. Stalemate in the trenches and huge casualty figures in France and in the east combined with a worsening of the food situation at home. On the western front alone three-quarters of a million soldiers from both sides were lost in a futile ten-month stalemate. The winter of 1916–17 was dubbed the ‘turnip winter’ because this unappetizing vegetable formed the staple ingredient of people’s diets. The supply of bread was inadequate, and many farmers stopped taking their wares to market to prevent them from being snatched out of their hands by desperate women. It is estimated that around 700,000 Germans starved to death on the home front during the war. After the cessation of hostilities a high level of malnutrition was discovered and many young people were pronounced unfit for work. The fragile sense of community spirit which had accompanied the first few months of the war had given way to a heightened awareness of social inequality. The working class witnessed a decline in living standards as real wages fell. The poor were indignant and angry at the profiteers and the rich, who hoarded goods, could afford to buy on the black market and were not fighting at the front. To add fuel to the fire in December 1916 an Auxiliary Service 72

Law drafted into the army or the munitions industries all men between the ages of 17 and 60. Food shortages were accompanied by a munitions crisis. All stocks of ammunition had been used up by October 1914, and because so many industrial workers had been sent to the front (by 1918 almost half of all German men between the ages of 15 and 60 had been called up) factories were short of labour-power (particularly skilled labour), a situation partially alleviated by the employment of women in the war industries. By 1918 there were 2.3 million women employed in industry compared with 1.6 million in 1913. Wages for munitions workers were somewhat better than those paid in non-war industries, particularly for women, but on the negative side working conditions were worse as hours increased and welfare protection laws were lifted for the war’s duration. Workers who were not getting enough to eat suffered from illness and fatigue and were more likely to suffer an accident at work. In contrast, the entrepreneurs profited from the war, leading to more resentment among the workers. In April 1917 there were strikes across Germany and again, on a larger scale, in January and February 1918. In Berlin the police warned that the population was ripe for revolution. Class differences were intensified rather than alleviated by the war. The combination of unrest at home and setbacks in the military campaign, an argument about submarine warfare and the entry of the USA into the war in April 1917, precipitated the resignation of Bethmann Hollweg and his replacement with a military government led by generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff in July 1917. Despite evidence suggesting the war was not progressing as satisfactorily as they might have hoped, some Germans of right-wing tendencies advocated annexation of areas in eastern and western Europe and measures to punish the enemy for their assault on Germany. In contrast, on the far left there were calls for peace. After 1916 it was no longer possible to claim that Germany was defending herself against autocratic Russia. The leading Spartacist, Karl Liebknecht, addressed thousands on 1 May 1916 calling for peace and revolution. He was promptly arrested but a wave of sympathy strikes indicated that his call had tapped a widespread sentiment among the working class. A year later the rift within the Social Democrats between the majority parliamentary party (MSPD) and the anti-war minority solidified when the latter founded the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in April 1917 and called for an immediate end to the war. It was a call that resonated with Germany’s workers bolstered by news of revolution in Russia. The 73

strikes at the beginning of 1918 in which 1 million workers participated were politically motivated. Despite the essential contribution of the working class to the war effort there had been no political reform. Historians have different opinions on the degree to which wartime conditions caused the revolution in 1918. Some suggest that the war was merely the culmination of decades of tensions between the state and society and more especially the ruling classes and the proletariat. These predominantly Marxist historians emphasize the extent to which the war intensified the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the working class and the conditions which gave rise to political militancy. Others have focused on broader sections of society, arguing that it was more than just class antagonisms that fuelled revolution. Women, the middle classes, young people and soldiers all experienced a sense of dislocation from the state which may have had its roots in the pre-war era but which was exacerbated in the 1914–18 period as the state increasingly made incursions into the private sphere. The widespread perception of the state’s ineffectiveness in dealing with food shortages and inflation spawned what has been described as a ‘crisis of political legitimacy’. In short, the people lost faith in the state and progressively gained a sense of their own political power. By 1918, when it was clear the war was lost, war-weariness was manifested in anger against the authorities. Throughout the war years the working class had become increasingly radical as a result of the deterioration of conditions and the absence of any political change. There was a total lack of confidence in the civilian authorities. The state had manifestly failed to deal with the food shortages which translated into people’s complete disenchantment with the ruling system. Women in particular, because they were on the front line in the battle for food, became alienated from the state. As a consequence of warweariness, longing for peace and, above all, anger and resentment at the ruling classes, German workers joined in the revolutionary unrest in November 1918. Revolution At the beginning of October 1918 the military leaders handed power to a civilian government led by a new chancellor, Prince Max von Baden. The purpose was both to pre-empt a harsh peace treaty imposed by the Allies and to head off further domestic unrest. The authorities were afraid that people would take power into their own hands; an ‘epidemic of Bolshevism’ was said to be present, especially 74

among women, and radical young people were already calling for more far-reaching changes. Ludendorff, who had fled to Sweden, bizarrely blamed the so-called defeatism on the home front for battlefield defeat thereby establishing the myth of the ‘stab in the back’ that was to haunt the new German government. In what has been called a ‘revolution from above’, fundamental parliamentary reforms were introduced including ministerial responsibility to parliament, civilian control of the armed forces and abolition of the Prussian three-class voting system. However, Wilhelm II refused to abdicate, despite popular pressure for him to do so. Few were contented with these limited constitutional changes and when during the armistice negotiations in October 1918, the chief of the Admiralty ordered the German fleet to sail out of Wilhelmshaven to carry out what would have been a suicidal attack on the British, a majority of the sailors refused orders. The sailors’ mutiny was the first act in a revolutionary wave that swept across Germany in November 1918 which was both an act of political protest against the military and the monarchy and a social protest by broad sections of the population in response to the intolerable conditions. On the streets crowds of workers including many women vented their fury on police. Councils of sailors, soldiers and workers were established on the Bolshevik model – from Hamburg in the north down to southern Bavaria, where a socialist government was set up under Kurt Eisner. These councils filled a power vacuum when all the other symbols of authority had collapsed. The government in Berlin had lost control. Max von Baden resigned on 9 November, handing over power to the SPD leader Friedrich Ebert. In the afternoon of that day the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann spontaneously announced, ‘The Hohenzollerns have abdicated. Long live the great German Republic.’ In the evening Wilhelm II fled over the border to Holland. Scheidemann’s rather precipitate proclamation did nothing to subdue the unrest in the country. Although officially Germany had a socialist government, power was still challenged by the radical workers’ and soldiers’ council movement and some wished to see more fundamental change. Among these were the Independent Social Democrats in the government, who eventually left the cabinet in December 1918 in protest at Ebert’s moderate policies, and the Spartacists, founded by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were disillusioned with German Social Democracy in its guise as a bureaucratic party organization bereft of ideas and out of touch with the masses. Of course Ebert was faced with massive problems: the armistice, the 75

demobilization of returning soldiers, ensuring food supplies and constructing a new constitution in the face of continuing revolutionary upheaval. Ebert chose to compromise with the elites at the expense of a thoroughgoing transformation of the German political and economic system. First of all, Ebert came to an agreement with General Groener, head of the Supreme Command. If Ebert would adopt a moderate course and suppress radicalism Groener guaranteed the support of the army for the new regime. Ebert complied and, when in the first few months of 1919 it looked as if the government was under serious threat from Spartacist uprisings, Ebert used the Free Corps – volunteer militia forces raised by former imperial officers – to brutally suppress the unrest. In the process they murdered Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Ebert’s second compromise was with the industrialists. An agreement between the trade union leader Carl Legien and Hugo Stinnes, the industrialist, appeared to guarantee improved labour conditions, including the eight-hour day. It was not long, however, in the severe economic circumstances of the new regime, before the industrialists reneged on the agreement. Historians have been critical of Ebert and the majority Social Democrats for failing to seize the opportunity for a fundamental rejection of the anti-democratic, authoritarian old regime. They argue that the revolution was a ‘history of continuous retreat’ in that instead of establishing a new political system and building upon the democratic council movement the Social Democrats placed the securing of order above radical political change. In January 1919 elections were held to elect a National Assembly. The Constituent Assembly met on 6 February in Weimar since the imperial capital, Berlin, was considered too exposed to the threat of revolutionary violence. The SPD won only 38 per cent of the vote and thus had to form a coalition government with the Catholic Centre Party and the liberal German Democratic Party. Ebert was elected president on 11 February 1919. But this was not the end of the revolutionary period. Mass protest and strikes continued to threaten the government with the Majority Social Democrats publicly condemning such activity for endangering the German economy. But in suppressing the strike activity by force the government alienated much of its natural working class support. The ultimate failure of the Social Democrats then was that, in Mommsen’s words, ‘when confronted with protests from within their own camp . . . they rushed into alliance with the traditional authorities in order to maintain their political position’.37 76

Thus, Germany had a new regime known as the Weimar Republic. It had a new progressive constitution that incorporated proportional representation, an elected president, universal suffrage and a cabinet responsible to parliament. But with the new constitution the Republic’s problems were only just starting. The Versailles Peace Settlement imposed very harsh terms on Germany; the Republic continued to face threats from the right and left until 1923 – those on the left desiring greater political change and faster economic improvements and those on the right refusing the legitimacy of the new regime. Probably the most destabilizing problem of all was the economy which plunged into a state of crisis. This is not the place to discuss the problems of the Weimar Republic but it is interesting to note that some elements of the old Wilhelmine regime survived, ultimately to challenge the Republic’s legitimacy in 1933. Conclusions The social tensions which had rumbled under the surface of the Wilhelmine regime gradually rose to the surface during the course of the war. Far from healing the wounds that had festered during the previous decades, wartime conditions had intensified class conflict and revealed the ruling elite as a conservative, unrepresentative oligarchy. The war had demonstrated that an industrially mature nation which perpetuated an immature political system could not hope to survive without a challenge to its legitimacy. The ‘politics of notables’ was thoroughly tested during the war and found wanting. The war had produced a social and political crisis prompting a desire for change, not just among the working class but within broad sections of the middle class too. Between 1914 and 1918 the structural weaknesses of the Empire, which had originated in the Bismarckian era and been perpetuated under Wilhelm II, had been fatally revealed.

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6 Interpretations

Historians have been preoccupied with the lines of continuity in German history, arguing among themselves as to whether the Bismarckian inheritance created the roots of the disaster that was to beset the country in the 1930s. The Third Reich is never far from view. It hovers at the back of our consciousness, tempting us to try to explain why Germany’s fledgling democratic Weimar Republic descended into a fascist dictatorship. In short, historians have been grappling with the question of whether or not the long-term origins of the Third Reich could be found in the Germany of Bismarck and Wilhelm II. The continuity theory of German history was first argued from the foreign-policy perspective by Fritz Fischer in his controversial book Germany’s Aims in the First World War. At the core of the Fischer controversy is the proposition that Germany had deliberately embarked upon war in 1914 in order to achieve her aggressive foreign-policy objectives, that is the annexation and domination of much of Europe, hence raising the stark similarities between the foreign policy of the Empire and that of Hitler. Continuities in respect of domestic policy were subsequently argued by Hans Ulrich Wehler in The German Empire 1871–1918, in which he stated that it was impossible to understand the rise of National Socialism without recourse to earlier episodes in the German past. Wehler’s German Empire was authoritarian, undemocratic and out of step with the forces of modernization. For him the continuities between the second and third empires were clear 78

to see: ‘Prussian traditions such as militarism, deference to authority, absolutism and autocracy, hostility to parliamentarism and democracy, joined with more novel techniques such as Bonapartism, “social imperialism” and the conscious manipulation of mass opinion to lay the foundations of the Third Reich well before 1914.’38 There is something to be said for this argument which stresses the paradox of the German Empire: the incongruity of a modernizing industrial economy overlaid by an authoritarian, semi-absolutist state. This was Germany’s so-called peculiarity. It has been argued that because she failed to modernize her political structure, denying the new social classes effective political representation and incorporating the bourgeoisie into the state, Germany travelled a different path from her western European neighbours, a Sonderweg, which ultimately led to the catastrophe of the Third Reich. For continuity advocates the key turning points in Germany’s modern history are 1848–9 (when Germany failed to have her bourgeois revolution) and 1871 with the founding of the second Reich and the imposition and implementation of the Bismarckian system which underwent no fundamental reform until 1918. The continuity theory of German history is attractive but it underplays the complexity of social and political processes. In particular it exaggerates the success of the Bismarckian ruling strategies and the degree to which the masses were manipulated into acquiescence. It may also be described as ‘history from above’, concentrating on high politics and diplomacy at the expense of social and economic forces and the everyday experiences of ordinary Germans, or ‘history from below’. From this perspective social historians challenge the Sonderweg thesis, not only arguing that the German bourgeoisie did assert themselves in economic, civic and cultural life, but also acknowledging the degree to which a range of social groups – Protestants and Catholics, workers, women, peasants and pressure groups – engaged with the political sphere, exerting pressures on the ruling elites and resisting manipulation from the top. A rounded understanding of Germany between unification and revolution depends on an analysis of the interaction between the rulers and the ruled. The German Empire was not merely a stage on the road to the National Socialist Third Reich; but the failure to accommodate the Empire’s diverse constituency did store up problems for the future which the Nazis were able to exploit. The German Empire in current interpretations is a tremendously complex and diverse society which deserves analysis in its own right, not just as a precursor to the Third Reich. It is, though, difficult to 79

characterize the period 1871–1918 precisely because of the paradoxes it contained; authoritarian on one hand, modernizing on the other. If we focus solely on political developments we might easily conclude that this was a state which changed very little so that by the outbreak of war reform of the system was long overdue. If, however, we look at German society we will discover significant changes in the way that people lived their lives. By 1914 Germany was an industrial nation, its inhabitants were geographically mobile, the social classes had developed into conscious entities and had found ways to express their grievances. Recent studies have highlighted the extent to which Germany after 1871 was still a nation in the making. Far from the lofty ideals of nineteenth-century nationalists who believed unification had replaced ‘a mess of petty particularisms with a national state fitted for the dynamism of change’, Saxons, Bavarians and Rhinelanders still had to become Germans.39 This was still a nation of distinctive regions and localities, with their own religious and cultural traditions, an ‘incomplete national state’.40 Whereas earlier studies tended to emphasize class divisions and the progressive polarization of society in the Wilhelmine period, recent analyses have focused on whether the embryonic political nation was able to bind its diverse peoples together. It would be surprising if this had occurred in the short space of forty years or so in spite of significant population mobility and indeed studies show that identification with region or with locale did coexist fairly happily with the identification with the nation. By the 1890s there is evidence that a sense of national identity was being slowly formulated and expressed by individuals and organizations at the grass roots. By 1914 Germany was dotted with national monuments, notably Bismarck-towers celebrating the former chancellor, mostly financed by local organizations; and people began to express their identity with the nation-state through local and civic activism in all kinds of associations from the avowedly patriotic to the more prosaic clubs centred on shared leisure pursuits. But regional, ethnic and religious differences remained alive, expressed in voting patterns. The exception here are women who had to wait until 1919 for the right to vote and actively engage in national politics. However, before this date the German feminist movement consistently argued that improvements in the position of women would enable them to contribute to the service of the nation-state and, during the war, put forward the proposal that women undertake a national year of service to demonstrate in practical ways their allegiance to the nation. 80

Looking back on the German Empire from the perspective of the twenty-first century aids our ability to judge this era on its own merits. Before 1990 and the reunification of East and West Germany the tendency to see the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine periods as precursors to a terrible era in German history which culminated in the division of the nation-state was all too evident. Since then a reassessment of the ‘German question’ has taken place in the light of the existence of a democratic Germany at the heart of Europe. The debate about continuity from Bismarck to Hitler will always be a live one but historians now have other preoccupations which allow this period to be studied for its own sake.

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Notes

1 Quoted in H.-U. Wehler, The German Empire, 1871–1918, Leamington Spa, 1985, p. 232. 2 D. Geary, Hitler and Nazism, London, 1993. 3 W. J. Mommsen, Imperial Germany 1867–1918: Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State, London, 1995, p. 1. 4 Quoted in R. J. Evans, ‘Wilhelm II’s Germany and the historians’, in R. J. Evans (ed.), Rethinking German History, London, 1987, p. 45. 5 Mommsen, Imperial Germany, p. 5. 6 H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Dritter Band: Von der ‘Deutschen Doppelrevolution’ bis zum Beginn der Ersten Weltktieges 1849–1914, Munich, 1995. 7 I. V. Hull, The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II 1888–1918, Cambridge, 1982, p. 304. 8 D. Blackbourn quoted in M. S. Seligmann and R. R. McLean, Germany from Reich to Republic, 1871–1918, Basingstoke, 2000, p. 74. 9 Seligmann and McLean, Germany, p. 61. J. Röhl and N. Sombart (eds), Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations, Cambridge, 1982, credits Wilhelm II with considerable influence. 10 D. E. Barclay, ‘Political trends and movements, 1830–1850’ in J. Sperber (ed.), Germany 1800–1870, Oxford, 2004, p. 65. 11 J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866, Oxford, 1989, p. 371. 12 W. Carr, ‘The unification of Germany’, in J. Breuilly (ed.), The State of Germany, London, 1992, p. 84. 82

13 L. Gall, Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, Volume I, London, 1980, p. 343. 14 Carr, ‘The unification of Germany’, p. 100. 15 Sperber (ed.), Germany 1800–1870, pp. 23–4. 16 D. Stevenson quoted in Seligmann and McLean, Germany, p. 16. 17 M. Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800–1945, London, 1988, p. 102. 18 H. Böhme quoted in G. Eley, ‘Bismarckian Germany’, in G. Martel (ed.), Modern Germany Reconsidered, 1870–1945, London, 1992, p. 12. 19 R. Lee, ‘ “Relative backwardness” and long-run development: economic, demographic and social changes’, in J. Breuilly (ed.), 19th Century Germany, Oxford, 2001, pp. 90–1. 20 Quoted in F. B. Tipton, ‘Technology and industrial growth’, in R. Chickering (ed.), Imperial Germany: A Historiographical Companion, Westport, CT, 1996, p. 80. 21 G. Eley, ‘Liberalism, Europe and the bourgeoisie 1860–1914’, in D. Blackbourn and R. J. Evans (eds), The German Bourgeoisie, London, 1991, p. 293. 22 Mommsen, Imperial Germany, p. 116. 23 Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, pp. 368–76. 24 K. A. Lerman, ‘Bismarckian Germany and the structure of the German Empire’, in Breuilly (ed.), 19th Century Germany, p. 172. 25 Bismarck quoted in Mommsen, Imperial Germany, p. 4. 26 Lerman, ‘Bismarckian Germany’, p. 177. 27 Quoted in H. McLeod, Piety and Poverty: Working-class Religion in Berlin, London and New York 1870–1914, New York, 1996, p. 10. 28 Nipperdey quoted in J. Albisetti, ‘Education’, in Chickering (ed.), Imperial Germany, p. 260. 29 S. Förster, ‘The armed forces and military planning’, in Chickering (ed.), Imperial Germany, p. 462. 30 Quoted in Förster, ‘The armed forces’, p. 466. 31 Lerman, ‘Bismarckian Germany’, p. 182. 32 Mommsen, Imperial Germany, p. 147. 33 K. A. Lerman, ‘Wilhelmine Germany’, in Breuilly (ed.), 19th Century Germany, p. 214. 34 Seligmann and McLean, Germany, p. 93. 35 R. Henig, The Origins of the First World War, London, 1989, 2nd edition 1993. 36 Lerman, ‘Wilhelmine Germany’, p. 225. 37 Mommsen, Imperial Germany, p. 254. 83

38 Evans, Rethinking German History, p. 38. 39 G. Eley, ‘Making a place in the nation: meanings of “citizenship” in Wilhelmine Germany’, in G. Eley and J. Retallack (eds), Wilhelminism and its Legacies: German Modernities, Imperialism and the Meanings of Reform, 1890–1930, Oxford, 2003, p. 19. 40 D. S. White, ‘Regionalism and particularism’, in Chickering (ed.), Imperial Germany, p. 131.

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Further reading

The following is a selection of further reading available in the English language. There are several good surveys of modern German history available which include accounts of the imperial period. The best are David Blackbourn, The Fontana History of Germany: The Long Nineteenth Century (London, 1997); William A. Carr, A History of Germany 1815–1990 (4th edition, London, 1991); Gordon A. Craig, Germany, 1866–1945 (4th edition, Oxford, 1992). On the period before unification see James J. Sheehan, German History 1770–1860 (Oxford, 1989) and Jonathan Sperber (ed.), Germany 1800–1870 (Oxford, 2004). Useful collections which contain good thematic and chronological surveys include John Breuilly (ed.), 19th Century Germany: Politics, Culture and Society 1780–1918 (London, 2001); Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (London, 1997) which takes the story up to the 1990s; and Gordon Martel (ed.), Modern Germany Reconsidered, 1870–1945 (London, 1992). See also Mary Fulbrook, A Concise History of Germany (Cambridge, 1990). Concentrating on the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine eras there are now several very readable and stimulating studies. The best are Volker R. Berghahn, Imperial Germany, 1871–1914: Economy, Society, Culture and Politics (Oxford, 1994); Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Imperial Germany 1867–1918: Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State (London, 1995); James J. Sheehan (ed.), Imperial Germany (New York, 1976); and Matthew S. Seligmann and Roderick R. McLean, Germany 85

from Reich to Republic, 1871–1918 (Basingstoke, 2000). Still the most stimulating if controversial interpretation of the German Empire is Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s The German Empire 1871–1918 (Leamington Spa, 1985). For a series of overviews of recent research on particular themes see Roger Chickering (ed.), Imperial Germany: A Historiographical Companion (Westport, CT, 1996). On the question of the German Sonderweg and Germany’s alleged peculiar development a good starting point is Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth Century Germany (Oxford, 1984). Other helpful collections include Richard J. Evans, Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (London, 1978) and his Rethinking German History: Nineteenthcentury Germany and the Origins of the Third Reich (London, 1987); David Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians (London, 1987); and Geoff Eley, From Unification to Nazism (Boston, MA, 1986). A clear introduction to the debates on Wilhelmine Germany can be found in James Retallack, Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II (Basingstoke, 1996). The unification of Germany is discussed in almost any general text but for more detailed examination see W. A. Carr, The Wars of German Unification (London, 1991); Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification 1815–1871 (Princeton, NJ, 1990); and a briefer study using primary documents by David Hargreaves, Bismarck and German Unification (London, 1991). On the question of German identity and nationalism see Harold James, A German Identity 1770–1990 (London, 1989); Michael Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800–1945 (London, 1988); and John Breuilly (ed.), The State of Germany (London, 1992). Recent research has focused on regional and local identity. See especially Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, CA, and Oxford, 1990); Abigail Green, Fatherlands: State-building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-century Germany (Cambridge, 2001); and Alon Confino, The Nation as Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997). Bismarck and Wilhelm II both have studies devoted to them. On Bismarck see A. J. P. Taylor’s Bismarck: The Man and Statesman (London, 1955); Lothar Gall’s more recent Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, 2 volumes (London, 1980); and Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, Volumes II and III (Princeton, NJ, 1990). On Wilhelm II start with Christopher Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II (Harlow, 2000) for a measured analysis and thereafter see John Röhl, Germany without Bismarck (Stanford, CA, 1967); John Röhl and Nicolaus Sombart (eds), 86

Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations (Cambridge, 1982); John Röhl. The Kaiser and his Court (Cambridge, 1994); and Thomas A. Kohut, Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership (Oxford, 1991). An influential study of Wilhlem II and his advisers is Isabel V. Hull, The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888–1918 (Cambridge, 1982). For an analysis of high politics under Wilhelm II see Katherine A. Lerman, The Chancellor as Courtier: Bernhard von Bülow and the Governance of Germany, 1900–1909 (Cambridge, 1990). On the implications of universal suffrage see Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, NJ, 2000). The position of the ruling elites in Germany is well documented. On the Conservative Party there is James Retallack’s Notables of the Right: The Conservative Party and Political Mobilization in Germany, 1876–1918 (London, 1988). On other right-wing political groupings see Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (Newhaven, CT, 1980). The officer corps has been documented by Martin Kitchen in The German Officer Corps (London, 1968), and on the Pan-German League see Roger Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League (Boston, MA, 1984). German society and social structure in this period is now very well researched. Among numerous studies of the working class and the Social Democratic Party some of the most useful include Richard J. Evans (ed.), The German Working Class 1888–1945: The Politics of Everyday Life (London, 1982); Stephen H. F. Hickey, Workers in Imperial Germany: The Miners of the Ruhr (Oxford, 1985); W. L. Guttsman, The German Social Democratic Party 1875–1933 (London, 1981); and for a longer perspective Stefan Berger, Social Democracy and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany (London, 2000). The effects of urbanization are dramatically portrayed in Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years (Oxford, 1987) and for an insight into how workers experienced their lives see Alfred Kelly (ed.), The German Worker: Working-class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization (Berkeley, CA, 1987). For information on the peasantry see Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee (eds), The German Peasantry (London, 1986). On the bourgeoisie the best starting points are David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans (eds), The German Bourgeoisie (London, 1991) and the aforementioned Eley and Blackbourn, The Peculiarities of German History. More generally on the economy see Robert Lee, ‘ “Relative backwardness” and long-run development: economic, demographic and social changes’, in Breuilly (ed.), 19th Century Germany. 87

On religion see the collection edited by Helmut W. Smith, Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800–1914 (Oxford, 2001). Catholics and the Centre Party are well documented in David Blackbourn, Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Newhaven, CT, 1980) and Jonathon Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth Century Germany (Princeton, NJ, 1984). Protestant politics is discussed in Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870–1914 (Princeton, NJ, 1995); and on the German churches in Berlin see Hugh McLeod, Piety and Poverty: Working-class Religion in Berlin, London and New York 1870–1914 (New York, 1996). On the Jewish minority see Peter Pulzer, Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority 1848–1933 (Oxford, 1992). The Polish minority is given attention in Berghahn’s Imperial Germany. On women Ute Frevert’s Women in German History (Leamington Spa, 1989) is the best general survey of women in modern Germany while the feminist movement is charted by Richard J. Evans in The Feminist Movement in Germany 1894–1933 (London, 1976). See also Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Germany, 1800–1914 (1991) and Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee (eds), The German Family (London, 1981). The foreign policies of Bismarck and Wilhelm II have been treated exhaustively. The classic study is Fritz Fischer’s Germany’s Aims in the First World War (London, 1961). In support of the Fischer thesis see Volker Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (London, 1973). See also Paul Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London, 1980). On imperial policy Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s ‘Bismarck’s imperialism 1862–1890’, in Past and Present, vol. 48 (1970) summarizes his arguments. The experience of the First World War on the home front is discussed by Jürgen Kocka in Facing Total War: German Society 1914– 1918 (Leamington Spa, 1984) and see Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War 1914–18 (Cambridge, 1998). See also Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000). Belinda Davis’s Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000) is a lively account of home front tensions and see also Ute Daniel, The War from Within: German Working-class Women in the First World War (New York, 1997). For the experience of trench warfare Modris Eksteins’ Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (London, 1989) is evocative and Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War (London, 1998) controversial. Richard Bessel’s Germany After the First World War (Oxford, 1993) deals nicely with the revolution and social conflict. 88

Useful websites http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ The German Historical Institute’s site devoted to a ten-part project ‘German History in Documents and Images’ including sections on Bismarckian and Wilhelmine Germany. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.html Internet Modern History Sourcebook contains links to primary source documents on nineteenth-century Germany. http://www.h-net.org/∼german/ contains links to a bibliography of secondary literature and primary sources on the Kaiserreich.

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Index

Africa 42 Agrarian League 54, 62–4 agriculture 17–19 alliance system 43–6, 69 Alsace-Lorraine 13, 32–3, 44 anti-semitism 31–2, 53, 65–6 Anti-Socialist Law 17, 33–4, 47, 50, 55 aristocracy 3, 13, 15, 21, 39–40 army 14, 39–40, 76 Army League 64 artisans 10, 13, 19, 21 Austria 1, 9, 43–4

policy 28–43; foreign policy 43–6; as prime minister 26–7; resignation 7, 49–50; ruling strategies 7, 25, 79; and unification 11–12, 16 blank cheque 70 Bochum 19 Bolshevism 74 bourgeoisie 3, 4, 13, 21, 79; acquiescence of 16, 21, 24; and civic society 22; feudalisation of 3, 21 Britain 2, 45–6 Bülow, Bernhard von 14, 53–4, 68 Bundesrat 14 bureaucracy 3, 18

Balkans 44–5, 70 banks 20 battlefleet see navy Berlin 1, 15, 19, 26, 36 Besitzbürgertum 21–2 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von 14, 53, 54, 69–70, 73 Bildungsbürgertum 21–2 birth control 60 Bismarck, Otto von 1, 5–6, 14, 26–8; assessments of 6, 27; as chancellor 27–8; character 5–6; domestic

Caprivi, Leo Graf von 14, 41, 42, 52–3, 69 cartels 24 Catholic: Centre Party 14, 16, 29, 30–1, 37, 43, 63, 76; Church 29–30, 36; sub-culture 36–7 Catholics 4, 13, 23, 28–31 chancellor, powers of 14 children 41

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Church see Catholic; Protestant church attendance 36 Colonial Union 42, 69 colonies 41–3 Communist Party 58 conscription 39 conservatism 3, 17 Conservative Party 13, 16, 32, 63 constitution (1871) 12, 13, 15

General German Women’s Association 61 German: history, interpretations of 2–5, 78–81; identity 9–10; language 32, 37 German Colonial Society 64 German Confederation 9, 11, 26 German Customs Union see Zollverein German Democratic Republic 1

Daily Telegraph crisis 53–4 Danes 32, 33 Denmark 11 Depression 24 diplomatic service 18 Dual Alliance 43, 45 Ebert, Friedrich 75–6 economy 17–20, 41, 77; growth in 17–18; recession in 16, 46 education 9, 12, 20, 35, 37–8 elections 14, 33, 50, 53, 54, 63, 65, 66, 76 Essen 19, 22 ethnic minorities 13, 28, 55 family 59–60 Federal Republic of Germany 1 Federation of German Women’s Associations 61–2 feminism 54, 60–2, 80 First World War 2, 3, 7, 12, 24, 28, 58, 68–74, 78 food 72–3, 76 foreign policy 7, 14, 41–6, 68–70 France 1, 2, 11, 33, 35, 44 Franco-Prussian War 11, 33 Frankfurt parliament 10 Free Conservatives 13, 14, 16 Free Corps 76 French Revolution 10 Friedrich Wilhelm IV 10 Gastein Convention 11

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Hamburg 19, 23, 36, 57 Hindenberg, Field Marshall Paul von 71, 73 Hitler, Adolf 2 Hohenlohe-Schillingsf ürst, Fürst Chlodwig zu 14, 53, 68 Holy Roman Empire 9, 35 housing 23, 41 imperialism 41–3 Independent Social Democrats 58, 73, 75–6 industrial: revolution 1, 12, 17–18; workers 19, 73, 75 industrialists 16, 76 industry: coal 19, 23; iron and steel 19; textiles 20 Italy 12 Jews 4, 28, 31–2, 38, 66 Junkers 4, 18 Königgrätz, battle of 1 Krupp, Alfred 22, 64 Kulturkampf 29–31, 34, 36, 47 labour movement 54–8 land reform 18 landowners 16, 18, 62–4 law code 13, 22, 61 Left Liberals 47 liberalism 16, 47 liberals 3, 10, 31

literacy rates 20, 37 Ludendorff, General Erich 71, 73, 75 Lumpenproletariat 57–8

Protestantism 13, 23, 30 Prussia 5, 9, 12, 26; dominance of 10–11, 15; parliament 15

Marx, Karl 16, 56 mass politics 52, 63 Metternich 9 migration 19; of workers 23 military 18, 39–40, 64, 73 Mittelstand 21 monarchism 35 mortality rates, infant 23 Napoleon 9 Napoleon III 11 nation state formation 3 national identity 80 National Liberals 13, 14, 16, 30–1, 37, 47 National Socialism 2, 78 nationalism 7, 10–11, 12, 30, 35, 37, 64–6; Polish 32 navy 46, 53, 64, 68–9 Navy League 64, 69 Nazism 1, 2, 15 New Course 52 officer corps 3, 39–40 Pan-German League 64, 65, 69 Peasant Leagues 54, 62–4 peasantry 10, 13, 18–19, 62–4 Poland 15, 53 Poles 23, 30, 32 police 39 population 17, 19 Posen 17 pressure groups 16, 19, 42, 54–66 Progressive Liberals 13, 14 proletariat see working class protectionist policies 16, 31 protest 30, 57, 75–7 Protestant Church 35–6

railways 9, 15, 19 Reichsfeinde 28–35 Reichstag 13–14 Reinsurance Treaty 45, 47, 68 religion 12, 13, 55 revolution: 1848–9 3, 9, 10, 16, 37, 79; 1918–19 2, 7, 28, 58, 74–7; bourgeois 3 Rhine 15, 19 riots 57–8, 72 Ruhr 15, 19, 22 Russia 44 Russian Revolution (1917) 73 Sammlungspolitik 53, 65 Schleswig-Holstein 11, 33 Schlieffen Plan 44, 71 Second World War 1 secularization 36 Sedan: battle of 1, 11; Day 30 Social Democratic Party 14, 22, 33–4, 39, 49, 53, 55–8, 61, 73, 76 social imperialism 40–3 social reform 14, 40–1, 50, 52 socialism 28, 34, 56 Socialist Workers’ Party 33, 34 Society for German Colonization 42 Sonderweg 2–5, 21, 79 Spartacists 58, 73, 75–6 stab-in-the-back 75 strikes 50, 73–4, 76 suffrage 57, 77; female 56, 61; manhood 10, 13 tariffs 16, 20, 24, 45 Third Reich 2, 3, 5, 78, 79 Three Emperors’ League 44, 45 Tirpitz, Admiral von 69, 71 trade unions 22, 24, 33, 37, 56–7 trench warfare 71–2

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Triple Alliance 44

Wilhelm II 3, 6–7, 14, 40, 42, 49, 68–9; assessments of 7, 50; personal rule 50, 52; personality 7, 51–2 women 4, 22, 36, 38, 56, 58–62, 75, 80 women’s movement see feminism working class 4, 6, 13, 20–1, 23–4, 33–4, 36, 55–8, 72; women 59–60 working conditions 23–4

unification: 1871 1, 5, 10–13, 15, 17, 24; 1990 1, 81; wars of 43 universities 38 urbanization 1, 13, 19 Versailles, Treaty of 11, 44, 77 Vormärz 9 wages: agricultural 18; industrial 23–4, 73; women’s 59 Weimar Republic 2, 7, 77, 78 Wilhelm I 1, 33, 51

youth 4, 55–6 Zollverein 9, 11, 20

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