German Professions, 1800–1950
Geoffrey Cocks Konrad H. Jarausch, Editors
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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German Professions, 1800–1950
Geoffrey Cocks Konrad H. Jarausch, Editors
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
German Professions, 1800-1950
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German Professions, 1800-1950 EDITED BY
Geoffrey Cocks Konrad H. Jarausch
NEW YORK
OXFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1990
Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan "Profession as Vocation: The German Civil Service" Copyright © 1990 by Jane Caplan All other material Copyright © 1990 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data German professions, 1800-1950 / edited by Geoffrey Cocks and Konrad H. Jarausch. p. cm. Includes some papers delivered at the 1985 German Studies Association meeting in Arlington, Va. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-505596-9 1. Professions—Social aspects—Germany—History—19th century. 2. Professions—Social aspects—Germany—History—20th century. I. Cocks, Geoffrey, 1948. II. Jarausch, Konrad Hugo. HT690.G3G46 1990 305.5'53'0943—dc20 89-34784 CIP
246897531 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Preface
This collection originated at the 1985 German Studies Association meeting in Arlington, Virginia. Animated discussions between panelists and audience revealed that the history of the German professions was beginning to arouse considerable interest among scholars who had undertaken to study a wide variety of academic callings from 1800 to the present. Although the idea of compiling this work came independently to the editors, collaboration was an obvious and happy option. Starting with the Arlington papers, we added essays by other American scholars and some continental colleagues so as to produce a representative survey of current work on the German professions. A natural division of labor developed, with Konrad Jarausch providing a conceptual and historical overview, while assuming responsibility for part I, and Geoffrey Cocks contributing an essay to and overseeing part II. At the outset, we would also like to note our gratitude for Charles McClelland's counsel, Geoff Eley's encouragement, and Jay Baird's hospitality. Albion, Mich. Chapel Hill, N.C June 1989
G. C. K. H. J.
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Contents
ix
Contributors
Introduction Konrad H. Jarausch and Geoffrey
3 Cocks
The German Professions in History and Theory
9
Konrad H. Jarausch I
The Nineteenth Century
Specialists Against Specialization: Hellenism as Professional Ideology in German Classical Studies
27
Anthony J. La Vopa
Public Office or Free Profession? German Attorneys in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
46
Hannes Siegrist
The Making of the Modern Medical Profession, 1800-1914: Prussian Doctors in the Nineteenth Century
66
Claudia Huerkamp
Volksschullehrerinnen: Bavarian Women Defining Themselves Through Their Profession
85
Joanne Schneider
Engineers in Wilhelmian Germany: Professionalization, Deprofessionalization, and the Development of Nonacademic Technical Education
104
Kees Gispen
Academic, Proletarian, . . . Professional? Shaping Professionalization for German Industrial Chemists, 1887-1920 Jeffrey A. Johnson
123
viii
Contents
A Struggle for Existence: The Professionalization of German Architects
143
Vincent Clark
II
The Twentieth Century
Profession as Vocation: The German Civil Service
163
Jane Caplan
The Past as Future: The German Officer Corps as Profession
183
Michael Geyer
The Professionalization of Applied Economics: German Counterparts to Business Administration
213
David F. Lindenfeld
Femininity as a Vocation: Gender and Class Conflict in the Professionalization of German Social Work
232
Young Sun Hong
Conflict Within the Legal Profession: Simultaneous Admission and the German Bar, 1903-1927
252
Kenneth F. Ledford
Women and the Professions in Germany, 1900-1945
270
Jill Stephenson
Psychology in Twentieth-Century Germany: Science and Profession
289
Mitchell G. Ash
The Professionalization of Psychotherapy in Germany, 1928-1949 Geoffrey
Index
308
Cocks
329
Contributors
Mitchell G. Ash is associate professor of history at the University of Iowa. Jane Caplan is professor of history at Bryn Mawr College. Vincent Clark is instructor in history at Johnson County Community College in Kansas City. Geoffrey Cocks is professor of history at Albion College. Michael Geyer is professor of history at the University of Chicago. Kees Gispen is associate professor of history at the University of Mississippi. Young Sun Hong is assistant professor of history at California State University, Fullerton. Claudia Huerkamp is a research assistant in history at Bielefeld University. Konrad H. Jarausch is Lurcy Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Jeffrey A. Johnson is assistant professor of history at Villanova University. Anthony J. La Vopa is associate professor of history at North Carolina State University. Kenneth F. Ledford is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. David F. Lindenfeld is associate professor of history at Louisiana State University. Joanne Schneider is associate professor of history at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. Hannes Siegrist is associate professor of history at Bielefeld University. Jill Stephenson is senior lecturer in history at the University of Edinburgh.
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German Professions, 1800-1950
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Introduction KONRAD H. JARAUSCH AND GEOFFREY COCKS
Two images, combined in Bismarck's reference to "blood and iron," dominate modern German history: the spiked helmet of the Prussian officer and the steel ingot of the Ruhr tycoon. Ever since the foundation of the Second Empire in 1871, Western observers have been fascinated and disquieted by the peculiar blend of militarism and industrialism in Central Europe. Yet the Kaiser's power rested not only on weapons or on goods "made in Germany" but on a different kind of accomplishment: the prestige of humanistic cultivation and science. Thousands of American students flocked to a more gentle, scholarly Germany, embodied in the stereotype of the absent-minded professor. The chief product of the prestigious Central European research universities were clergymen, lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, and all manner of academic graduates pursuing their work dutifully and competently. Not as arrogant as soldiers, as boisterous as entrepreneurs, or as famous as professors, these educated men quietly staffed government offices, manned the free professions, and provided technical business leadership. Since these professionals made an essential contribution to the rise and fall of German might, their history needs to be reclaimed as part of a fuller understanding of the problematic Central European past. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the development of the German professions in the hope of opening this new field to further study. Following a historical and theoretical overview, the book is divided into two thematic sections on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively. Focusing on the rise of the professions, the essays in part I carry their discussions up to or through the First World War. Concerned with the problems of mature professionalism, the chapters of part II, while reaching back to the turn of the century, deal with the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. In examining continuity, they transcend the conventional watershed of 1945 and stop around 1950, since they do not present a detailed analysis of the successor states. In order to explore the problems and limits of professionalization, this collection of essays goes beyond the classical professions and discusses struggling callings such as social work as well as vocations only touched by the 3
4
German Professions, 1800-1950
impulse toward professionalism, such as public office. However, selection was somewhat constrained by the availability of research, which, unfortunately, prevented the inclusion of an essay on the clergy. As part of a "third wave" of analysis, these essays represent a significant maturation of the historiography of the professions. The initial Whiggish approach was favored by the practitioners themselves and their uncritical admirers. For them the history of the professions was nothing less than a march of scientific and humanitarian progress, led by selfless, highly trained, and overwhelmingly male servants of humanity. This laudatory tone also informed much concurrent theorizing about modernization. Not surprisingly, subsequent studies sought to sweep away such self-serving accounts by exposing the baser motives of individual and collective professional behavior. Inspired by political economy and radical sociology, the focus of such critical work shifted from service ideals to material self-interest and occupational domination. Topics have ranged from analyses of market control and ethical transgressions to wholesale cultural jeremiads against bourgeois hegemony or expert "social control." While maintaining a sound skepticism, the most recent studies seek, above all, to provide carefully documented histories while avoiding gratuitous polemics. Current scholarship places the history of professions in specific political, cultural, and social contexts, thus laying the basis for comparative studies. The essays in this volume exemplify such balance, blending primary source material with secondary historical literature while relating their arguments to social theory. German professionalization began with the transformation of older academic occupations into modern professions during the initial two thirds of the nineteenth century. Konrad Jarausch's overview points out that the renewal of higher learning through neohumanism and the institution of rigorous state examinations professionalized traditional callings like the church, law, and medicine, the practitioners of which had been trained at the universities since the Middle Ages. As Anthony La Vopa's chapter demonstrates, the revival of classical studies both imparted a general cultivation (Bildung) to the educated middle class and instilled a novel research ethos (Wissenschqft), which endowed graduates with a new sense of self-respect. Devaluing practical training (Ausbildung), this generalized cultural mission served as a specific "professional ideology" for the emergent pursuit of classical philology, especially among teachers in the secondary schools. The rise of German professions was also stimulated by the enlightened absolutist state's desire to improve public administration by upgrading training, especially in the law. Hannes Siegrist analyzes the gradual liberation of attorneys from bureaucratic tutelage as spokesmen for the progressive, educated middle class (Bildungsburgertum) and the reformulation of their career as a free profession (freie Advokatur), which had been inspired by liberal professionalism during the founding of the Second Reich. Claudia Huerkamp shows that this extraordinary rejection of government security also informed the doctors' acceptance of a free market for academically trained physicians, which was based on their confidence in the superiority of scientifically grounded medicine. But the reformers' self-assurance waned with the
Introduction
5
overcrowding and sharper competition of the 1880s, leading to the emergence of powerful associations such as the medical Hartmannbund to defend collective interests externally. This neohumanist and liberal vision proved so attractive as to inspire other occupations to attempt professionalization during the last third of the nineteenth century. Caught between an exalted mission of public education and insufficient material rewards, school teachers at the primary level tried to emulate their colleagues at the secondary level. However, as Joanne Schneider shows, state parsimony and, in particular, the feminization of personnel precluded success. The emerging technical occupations fared somewhat better. The essay by Kees Gispen reveals that engineers achieved nominal equality with the Diplom title and the elevation of the technical colleges (Technische Hochschuleri), even if their attempts to fend off nonacademic technicians through closure failed and traditional academics continued to slight them. Jeffrey Johnson's essay discusses the chemists' response to the frustrations of overcrowding and industrial exploitation, pushing a sizable minority into union radicalism. Finally, Vincent Clark details the interminable difficulties of architects in separating themselves from artisan builders (Baumeister). While these technical callings succeeded in academizing their training, they failed, by and large, to establish a legally protected market monopoly as a result of the resistance of their employers in business and industry. This mixed result left them in a psychological and political state of suspension, unsure of their own identity and social role. In spite of increasing difficulties, the professionalization impetus continued to involve new occupations during the first third of the twentieth century. As Jane Caplan demonstrates, the prestigious bureaucracy developed a conception of Berufsbeamtentum, which rested on legal expertise, a sense of duty, a corporate consciousness, and collective organization, even if public officials retained a somewhat different ethos. According to Michael Geyer, the elite officer corps similarly attempted to use professionalism based on performance in order to gain autonomy from political control, although the consequences of this selfassertion were hardly benign. As a result of the entitlement system (Berechtigungswesen) of career access according to educational certificates, even many leaders of business, who had long been suspicious of formal education, succumbed to the allure of academic credentials. As David Lindenfeld shows, their desire for university standing led to the establishment of commercial colleges (Handelshochschuleri), the reorientation of a branch of economics to practical demands, and the emergence of a Diplom examination in business administration. Similarly, the transformation of charity from private and religious concern to public welfare involved the creation of a new social service profession, based on advanced schooling and association. Young Sun Hong's essay illustrates the limits of collective advancement due to welfare politics and the high proportion of women. Finally, even established professions such as law could be rent asunder by fundamental conflicts, as Kenneth Ledford shows in his investigation of the simultaneous admission struggle between lower and higher court attorneys.
6
German Professions, 1800-1950
Though the professionalization impulse made further headway during the Third Reich, many callings ultimately experienced the Second World War as a period of deprofessionalization. By giving free reign to misogynist impulses, Hitler's rule aggravated special problems of access and opportunity for female professionals. Even when labor force deficits made it necessary to reemploy women for the sake of the war effort, they could only return to their careers in separate and subordinate positions, as Jill Stephenson argues. In a culture that prized scholarship (Wissenschaft), new disciplines created by the dynamics of specialization continued their advance toward professional standing even during the National Socialist regime. However, as Mitchell Ash shows in discussing psychology, the price of academic institutionalization was the demonstration of practical utility in collaboration with inhuman Nazi goals. The spread and acceptance of psychotherapy similarly resulted from its military utility as well as its astute interest-group politics, which was protected by the notorious Goering name. Geoffrey Cocks's essay raises troubling questions about the meaning of professionalization by contrasting advances in academic recognition and organization with the immoral uses of expertise during Nazi rule. The thrust of deprofessionalization was even clearer in the instrumentalization of public officials, and even the generals lost autonomy before the experts regained a measure of respect after 1945. Whereas professional aspirations transcended all Central European regimes from the Second Empire to the Federal Republic, the structures and uses of professionalism changed profoundly from an initial elite reformism to later mass service during the last two centuries. The history of the German professions, therefore, adds anew perspective to the hoary discussion of the "German problem." The professionalization approach shifts the focus away from international debates revolving around Mitteleuropa, political analyses of Weimar's constitutional flaws, and intellectual examinations of the peculiarity of Central European culture. Instead of stressing the primacy of individual actors, researchers on the professions explore collective patterns of intermediary social groups located between the grand forces of Weberian social history and the everyday microhistory of Alltagsgeschichte. Though not quite as influential as the "mandarin" thesis would suggest, the graduates of institutions of higher learning occupied crucial positions of expertise just below the leadership of German society. As members of the Bildungsburgertum, Central European professionals actually exhibited a considerable degree of resemblance to the habits of mind and behavior of their West European colleagues, somewhat diminishing the impression of peculiarity (Sonderweg, separate path). Clearly, they did not act as a refeudalized Sancho Panza to the aristocratic Junker Quixote. Professionals pursued their own aspirations of competent service, autonomous practice, wealth, and status with remarkable tenacity despite all political changes, making only those concessions necessary to achieve their aims. The development of professions neither bears out H.-U. Wehler's thesis of German neofeudal or bureaucratic atavisms nor does it fully support Geoff Eley's contrary assertion of capitalist "bourgeois hegemony." By exploring a third alternative, historians of the rise of
Introduction
7
professionalism suggest a more contingent historical explanation for the collective experience of thousands of individual practitioners in facing the challenges from unification to partition. In contrast to abstract "isms," the emphasis on the profession offers a systematic approach to reconciling public recollection with personal memory by putting ordinary individuals back into their own history. The evolution of German professions also addresses, from a different vantage point, the inevitable question of the fateful origins, operations, and outcomes of the Third Reich. Tensions had already been building in the empire, but only the existential crisis of the Weimar Republic prodded the majority of practitioners to repudiate its liberal heritage in favor of illiberal solutions to their plight. Though similar problems were shared by other groups, conditions of overcrowding, unemployment, salary cuts, loss in status, disruption of practice, corruption of ethics, and organizational inertia particularly disappointed professional expectations. Authoritarian efforts to restore professionalism by abolishing "socialized medicine" and volklsch promises to purge Jews, leftists, and women fell on more receptive ears. The Nazis not only captured the professions from without but undermined them from within. For a time, rigorous measures to combat overcrowding, coupled with a returning prosperity and foreign political successes, bore out the hopes of practitioners. For some groups—notably physicians, engineers, or the military—the Nazi need for willing experts and organizational chaos ("polycracy") provided enormous opportunities, allowing psychologists and psychotherapists to claim a significant measure of professional capacity and status. Others all too soon experienced the return of earlier problems of achieving competence, meeting staffing needs, providing economic rewards, and the like. During the war, the creeping erosion of standards, the collapse of the labor market, a loss of buying power, a drop in social prestige, corruption of everyday practice, an ill-defined self-image, and the destruction of organizational autonomy became so pervasive as to produce an ever-accelerating deprofessionalization. Only Germany's shattering defeat eventually permitted the restoration of a somewhat chastened professionalism in the West, which was still marked by the successes and failures of the previous century and a half. On balance, the experience of the German professions during the past two centuries was hardly a success story. Rich in drama, the nineteenth-century development of German professionalization demonstrates the rise of a Central European version of professionalism, as was the case in neighboring countries to the west. Inspired by a liberal vision, these akademische Berufsstdnde succeeded in reforming law, health, education, and technology as impressively as any experts anywhere. When confronted with an unparalleled crisis in the twentieth century, the German professions, as a result of their greater dependence on the state and academic elitism, proved particularly vulnerable to rightwing extremism. In collaborating with Hitler's ruthless policies of conquest and extermination, Central European professionals not only lost many of their prerogatives but also betrayed their higher mission. Ultimately the drastic selfcorruption of expertise in the Third Reich suggests that moral ambiguity might
8
German Professions, 1800-1950
be inherent in modern professionalism in general. Even where they resist fascist appeals, practitioners are forever torn between their desire for material selfaggrandizement and an ethos of altruistic service. How experts resolve that fundamental dilemma between narrow selfishness and broader public interest will determine whether the professions are a scourge or a benefit to humanity.
The German Professions in History and Theory KONRAD H. JARAUSCH
During the last two centuries, paid work has become a central dimension of the human experience. While the hours of toil have decreased and leisure time has been more sharply differentiated, a person's occupation has turned from a series of intermittent jobs into a lifelong full-time pursuit. "Our work is always our mistress," a German high school teacher typically reflected in 1937. "In this regard every true man is a kind of bigamist who is not as faithful in marriage as his wife. . . . He has something that he loves beyond her and to which he dedicates more time, energy, and often more passion. . . ." Crucial for material well-being, the occupational role has come to exert a considerable formative influence upon its members. "A profession becomes a man's fate. In the course of time it shapes and penetrates his whole being." The educational philosopher Eduard Spranger mused on the German conception of a calling: "Not only do we have a profession, but a profession has us. That is why the profession determines a considerable part of our Weltanschauung; it is the perspective from which we view the world."1 Instead of identifying themselves through religion, political affiliation, or residence, an increasing number of people have begun to define themselves through their work. While manual laborers still talk about jobs, the academically trained have come to see themselves as following a "profession." Overly sanguine commentators have gone so far as to speak of "the rise of professional society."2 Called "professionalization" by social scientists, this transformation of the occupational system has all too long been ignored by historians. During the 1930s through the 1950s, functionalist sociologists endorsed the normative claims of professionals and established a powerful master code, linked to the Beyond the essays in this volume, these ruminations have been stimulated by the comparative discussions of the state and professions group organized by Arnold Heidenheimer, the Biirgertum project directed by Jurgen Kocka at the Zentrum fur interdisziplinare Forschung (ZiF), and the professionalization and conflict theories circle led by Rolf Torstendahl at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (SCASSS).
9
10
German Professions, 1800-1950
advancement of modernization. In the 1960s and 1970s, this typological approach triggered much critical debunking of profession as a prescriptive notion that castigated practitioner self-interest.3 In the last decade, the social science debate has moved from attacks on professional monopoly to a more balanced structural and cultural understanding of the institutionalization of expertise.4 Historians generally failed to challenge sociological generalizations about professionalization, because, until recently, the rise of the professions was the province of nostalgic amateur recollections or laudatory chronicles of progress in individual disciplines. In part this neglect resulted from Marxist preoccupations with social class, which tended to ignore the role of auxiliary strata such as the "intelligentsia." Such disinterest also stemmed from the lack of analytical fit of the profession category into either the grand abstractions of a neo-Weberian focus on power, economy, and culture or the petites vignettes of everyday life favored by the newest of the new social histories.5 Only when historians started to probe the consequences of education and shifted their attention to the intermediary social groups, did a sustained and critical interest in the evolution of the professions begin to emerge.6 Within this general pattern, the German discussion displays some important peculiarities. While focusing on practitioner autonomy and ethics, the classical social science theorists on the professions largely ignored the implications of the Central European experience, because empirical evidence was rarely available in English.7 When comparativists tried to apply professionalization terminology, it soon became evident that categories derived from an AngloAmerican model hardly fit the bureaucratic German pattern.8 Only recently have some sociologists come to realize that there might be a continental variant of professionalization with different dynamics from the British original.9 Under the dual impulse of stringent theoretical questions and exemplary practitioner accounts, serious historical analysis of the professions gradually commenced in the last two decades.10 However, the political catastrophes of the twentieth century fixated investigations inordinately upon 1933, rendering the exploration of Nazi complicity predominantly political and moral.11 Moreover, the search for the elusive Central European Bildungsburgertum (educated middle class) often submerged the professions in the larger educated stratum without delineating their specific problems.12 Such deficits pose a double challenge: Still insufficiently developed, the history of German professions should provide more empirical evidence on the evolution of academic occupations so as to destroy premature stereotypes. At the same time, professionalization research would do well to examine the Central European development more closely in order to broaden its somewhat ethnocentric theories.13 The application of a professionalization perspective to Central Europe has been complicated by the absence of the very term in the German language. Since the eighteenth-century notion of Professionist eventually disappeared, the word Professionalisierung had to be reimported by Anglo-American social scientists after the Second World War. The governing German concept was Beruf, a Protestant sense of calling that during the nineteenth century merged with the
The German Professions in History and Theory
11
late feudal idea of Stand, denoting social estate, to form the hybrid Berufsstand. During the empire this hierarchical collective term narrowed to mean vocation and, when modified by the adjective akademisch, designated an academically trained profession.14 Permeating journals and speeches, the notion of Berufsstandespolitik evolved as an important derivative to indicate the organized pursuit of collective interest by an occupation. In its focus on upgrading training, increasing pay, raising social status, defending jurisdiction, improving ethics, and so on, this concept had similar connotations as the American usage of "professionalization."15 A seemingly closer equivalent is the cluster or freie Berufe, designating the classical "free professions." But since it is not limited to university graduates and fails to include state officials or industrial white-collar employees, this term is too narrow for a comprehensive analysis.16 Though reflecting a different horizon of consciousness, the notion of akademische Berufsstande indicates the existence of functionally equivalent academic occupations in Central Europe. Although they complicate comparison, these linguistic differences encourage a self-conscious exploration of the tension between professionalization theory and German evidence, independently of the commonsense meaning of the English word.17 The definition of a profession in the German context requires recasting Anglo-American theoretical criteria to conform to Central European empirical structures. Although minimalism avoids the taxonomic morass of quibbling about traits, akademische Berufsstande were something more than "socially idealized occupations organized as closed associational communities." Viewing professions as "somewhat exclusive groups of individuals applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases" comes closer to academic self-understanding, but remains underspecified.18 More appropriate to a statecontrolled environment is Jurgen Kocka's suggestion that "profession means a largely non-manual, full-time occupation," requiring "specialized, systematic and scholarly training" and elaborate examinations, relying on "a monopoly of services as well as freedom from control by others," and providing economic rewards and higher social prestige based on "competence, professional ethics and the special importance of [its] work for society and common weal." Though covering much ground, this definition needs to be complemented by more stress on professional self-images and organizations so as to address the cultural and political dimensions.19 Reflecting the self-consciousness of German academic practitioners, this ideal type suggests important dimensions of inquiry that can transform the descriptive history of professions into a theoretical analysis of professionalization. While their importance varies according to the dynamics of a particular career, training, certifying, economic reward, social status, working practice, collective self-images, and group organization tend to recur as crucial areas of concern among Central European professionals.20 These analytical categories reveal a complex process of advancement and decline among German professions. Even less than in Britain, there is no single story of Central European professionalization, but rather a series of distinctive experiences, connected by the shared aspirations and mutual references of the university graduates involved. Although the prestige of the Prussian civil
12
German Professions, 1800-1950
service dominated all educated careers, the professions differed from the bureaucracy by insisting on academic training for admission, requiring subject specialization, competing with each other in a service market, striving for autonomy of practice and developing organizational independence, and so on. Structure and ideology varied dramatically among the traditional status professions such as law or medicine, the increasingly academic nineteenth-century occupations such as secondary school teaching or engineering, and the newly emerging twentieth-century pursuits such as business administration or psychology.21 Some occupations such as primary-school teaching or architecture had great difficulty in achieving recognition as full-fledged professions. Other pursuits such as public service or the military moved toward professionalism, without being ever fully subsumed under this ideal.22 Instead of being inevitable, in Central Europe the progress of professionalization was repeatedly imperiled by overcrowding (among chemists) or reversed entirely by adverse policies, initiating a deprofessionalization (among lawyers and secondaryschool teachers in the Third Reich).23 Transcending such distinctions, the evolution of the German professions differs from the Anglo-American model mainly in being state-sponsored, as "professionalization from above" in Hannes Siegrist's apt phrase. Although the bureaucratically created professions soon assumed a life of their own and began to resemble their western counterparts, their different genesis added a particular governmental flavor, which is found elsewhere on the continent as well.24 Within the professional arena, Central European actors developed a peculiar style and a particular set of relationships. In contrast to the claim that their academic callings were created from the outside, German practitioners did play an important role in the emergence of their own professions. The Berufskonstruktion thesis underestimates the experts' individual influence in and collective impact on ministries or industrial firms. It was not at all uncommon for former practitioners to become high-ranking bureaucrats or to mobilize the educated public on their behalf. In some particularly contested issues, such as the school quarrel between classicists and moderns, the government systematically consulted those concerned.25 As a result of the slower development of civil society, regional and national associations grew out of local sociability groups only in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, once founded, scholarly assemblies like Der Deutsche Juristentag became popular and were soon superseded by more practically minded interest groups such as Der Deutsche Anwaltverein in 1871. Gradually, the focus of activity and locus of power shifted from local chapters to statewide organizations, and eventually moved on to national bodies, depending on where the crucial legislative jurisdiction lay. As a result of the often-derided German propensity to join associations (Vereinsmeierei), membership figures continued to rise so that four fifths of lawyers or secondary school teachers were organized by the First World War.26 Although the state always loomed large in Central European society, professionals had an increasingly vital part to play in their own destiny. Clients featured less prominently in the emergence of the German professions, but they nevertheless remained indispensable. Obviously patronage was a
The German Professions in History and Theory
13
primary influence in the emergence of the early modern academic occupations, especially in law and medicine but also in teaching and to a lesser degree in the clergy. Unlike the princes, nobles, or patricians, university graduates were minor servitors; thus power rested with the patron and the success of a practitioner was measured by the wealth of the client.27 Professionalization was in part an attempt to escape this dependence by recourse to collegial standards and depersonalizing such relationships. Academization allowed a generalized notion of competence to replace the individualized effort to please a particular patron, and by the mid-nineteenth century practitioners began to gain dominance. As a result of veneration for cultivation and lingering tradition of obedience to authority, democratic attempts to return power to the lay public were less frequent and vocal in Central Europe than in the West. But left-wing political movements such as the Socialist party sponsored some efforts to break the legal monopoly in trade and business courts or to create parent associations in schools after the turn of the century. Generalized social attitudes toward issues such as health continued to affect professional practice not only in medicine. Another distinctive feature of the German pattern is the greater influence of organized mediators between practitioners and clients, such as public health insurance funds, government provision of educational or social services, or white-collar employment in large industrial firms. Beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, Central European practitioners more frequently worked for large impersonal organizations than for individual clients.28 The state's central role in German professional development has become a truism. Through their concern for their own strength and the welfare of their subjects, cameralist eighteenth-century governments initiated the rise of the modern professions in Central Europe by upgrading their university training and instituting a series of elaborate examinations as precondition for licensing. While it weakened during the liberal mid-nineteenth century, bureaucratic control extended to setting fee schedules (Gebiihrenordming for lawyers) and influencing social prestige through the bestowal of professional or honorary titles (such as Justizmt, judicial councillor). Legislative decisions determined practice in settling disputes in jurisdiction and officials supervised professional ethics until practitioners achieved a measure of self-government. Association law constrained organizational possibilities while the emergence of an intervention state in the late nineteenth century created an arena of interest-group struggles over the apportionment of welfare measures. As the regulator of the market for services, the state became the central focus of much professional lobbying, directed toward producing a policy favorable to practitioner hopes. Eventually, not only did governments use experts to achieve specific aims, but professionals also appealed to the bureaucrats in order to realize their aspirations, establishing a mutually dependent relationship.29 Many public employees like secondary school teachers tried to emancipate themselves from bureaucratic tutelage, while the minority of doctors or engineers in government service sought to emulate the majority of their colleagues in free practice or industrial employment. Somewhat contradictorily, professionals wanted to be
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German Professions, 1800-1950
free from state control while clamoring for government protection from their competitors. Not surprisingly, this extraordinary fixation on the state made professionals particularly vulnerable to the changing ideological priorities and policies of different regimes in the twentieth century.30 Equally important was higher education, since by definition the akademische Berufsstande were based on university training. Whereas nineteenthcentury medicine demonstrated the success of bureaucratic professionalization before the establishment of a firm scientific base, the twentieth-century decline of theology illustrated the limits of the self-creation of problems.31 In contrast to an apprenticeship in craft skills, formalized higher education imparted the general liberal education (Bildung) that is necessary for an elevated social position, a modicum of the abstract scholarly knowledge (Wissenschaft) that is essential for generalized problem solving, and some degree of trade training (Ausbildung) facilitating subsequent practical learning. The complex system of two tiers of state examinations, with the first testing scientific information and the second checking on its application to practice, elevated all German academic vocations above lesser pursuits. Repeatedly, professionalization struggles revolved around educational issues such as the equality of the Technische Hochschulen for engineers and architects or a separate examination for chemists or psychologists.32 Since the professorial and the bureaucracy dominated examination commissions, practitioners did not control the transmission of knowledge, creating continual tensions between the theoretical and practical direction of instruction. Recurrent overcrowding crises proved the examination system an imperfect regulator of labor supply, thereby fostering movements for additional admission controls (such as a numerus clausus).33 Exemplified by the superior status of learned specialists, the prestige of academic training was so great in Central Europe that even massive complaints were unable to break its linkage to the professions. But in spite of prevalent professorial rhetoric, the German professions developed beyond academe, with even scientific pursuits requiring successful application and more practical callings remaining firmly practitioner centered.34 As a result of its special context, the pattern of Central European professionalization was distinctive, even within the continental experience. While there were many free professionals and white-collar employees in business and industry, more graduates of higher education worked directly or indirectly for the state than elsewhere. But the conclusion that the German professions were essentially bureaucratic is misleading, since it suggests a mental dependency that did not always exist. Even within public service or the military, professionalization efforts were aimed precisely at liberating practitioners from control and gaining them an autonomous sphere of self-determination based on their expertise.35 Instead, the modern German pattern was a mixture of heavy profession, state, and education emphases and little client power. The institution that embodied this blend was the chamber (Kamiwr), a mandatory form of professional self-government with quasi-official authority. Prevalent in the classical free professions such as law, this Kammer had a compulsory member-
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ship and levied dues in order to serve as corporate representation toward government and watch over practitioner ethics with special honor courts. Such chambers were a compromise between untrammeled competition and tight government regulation, differing from voluntary associations that coexisted with them.36 Since public officials such as high school teachers and white-collar employees such as engineers also strove for their own Kammern, those with academic credentials searched for freedom from state and market pressures in order to recapture corporate security within organized capitalism. Such expert aspirations could be deviously misused by the establishment of the Reichskulturkammer for the sake of Nazi party control. This widespread tendency suggests reading the German pattern as a special continental type of "neocorporate" professionalization.37 The professions in Central Europe evolved in phases, shaped by the disruptions of industrialization, the struggle over participatory politics, and the ambiguities of modern science. Instead of a rigid sequence, a loose succession of distinctive stages—characterized by different problems—influenced the pattern of professional pursuits. In traditional society, the corporate model of artisan self-control predominated until the modernizing absolutist governments reformed the academic occupations through examinations and bureaucratic controls, initiating a statist phase.38 During the revolutionary midnineteenth century, scientifically confident practitioners rejected state supervision, deestablished their vocations, and introduced free competition in a remarkable set of laws for medicine (1869) and law (1878), ushering in an era of liberal professionalism.39 However, overcrowding problems, accelerating specialization, and sharpening competition at the turn of the century unleashed pressures for protection of experts, leading to a neocorporate compromise that might be taken to characterize the German experience in general.40 During the twentieth century, professional life was caught up in successive socioeconomic, academic, and political crises, triggering even more rapid changes. In the strife-torn Weimar Republic, professions turned into interest groups so as to cope with hyperinflation, depression, governmental instability, and the loss of scientific certainty.41 Instead of rescuing professionalism, the Nazis ruthlessly instrumentalized expert occupations for their own racial genocide and foreign conquest, thereby ultimately deprofessionalizing practitioners in spite of some short-range gains.42 Only later in the Federal Republic did experts succeed in regaining a kind of neoprofessionalism that restored their socioeconomic health, democratized their politics, and recovered their prior competence.43 Far from a Whiggish story of inevitable progress, this experience presents a cautionary tale of proud achievement coupled with abject failure. This uneven development was produced not only by external pressures but also by actions from within the professional arena. As a result of the small number of academic graduates (2.6 percent of the work force in 1933), cooperation among practitioners was essential for the achievement of common goals. During the past century, vocational associations evolved from amateurish notable groups to professional functionary organizations with elaborate offices, publication organs, national congresses, and the like. While interests
16
German Professions, 1800-1950
differed internally between specialists and generalists, urban and rural practitioners, established and entering experts, and the like, common external threats demanded repeated compromises. The leadership was forced to remain responsive to membership desires by the continual threat of schisms.44 Although it rarely took place in a completely "free field," competition was endemic even in Central Europe. Unable to eliminate economic rivalry among practitioners, associations sought to regulate market behavior by a special code of ethics, insisting on fairness (e.g., no attorney advertising) so as to keep professionals from ruining one another. With regard to the general society, organizations tried to establish legal monopolies over their field of practice in order to eliminate competitors altogether and increase the case load for themselves (e.g., allowing only lawyers as court room representatives).45 Therefore, conflict was as unavoidable as it was ubiquitous. When they involved basic life chances or fundamental beliefs, clashes between competing segments of a profession (such as established male and entering female practitioners during overcrowding) could not easily be reconciled. Often the success of one group required the suppression of another, such as the struggle between secondary and primary school teachers over academic training. At best, Ralf Dahrendorf's thesis of the "nostalgia for synthesis" illuminates only part of the mentality of the German professionals.46 In response to such challenges, professions in Central Europe adopted a series of special strategies. One favorite scheme was academization, first requiring high school graduation (Abitur) and eventually a complete higher education for entry into a career. In a bureaucratic society, advanced training— documented by a Diplom title—guaranteed higher rewards, superior prestige, and governmental acceptance for business economists or journalists. 47 Another tactic was legal closure to either nonqualified outsiders or unwelcome newcomers during periods of overcrowding. In an entitlement system, academic access restrictions worked reasonably well, but the restriction of entry to beginning professionals through a numerus clausm proved much more difficult, since credentialling was controlled by government and not by practitioners themselves.48 Yet another popular preoccupation was legislative and bureaucratic lobbying for fee increases, salary raises, and other measures stimulating demand for their services that might improve economic well-being. Associations frequently orchestrated press campaigns to polish their public image and raise the prestige of their calling.49 A further measure to safeguard the autonomy of practice against outside control was energetic self-discipline in cases of violations of honor codes. Much professional rhetoric also revolved around general social reform, suggesting the removal of abuses and improvement of health, law, education, welfare, and so forth, through their particular expertise.50 While some frustrated practitioners occasionally resorted to union tactics such as striking, most experts preferred "professional" association as a form of representation in order to achieve their ends.51 In contrast to the market monopolies of practitioners in the West, professionals in Central Europe favored bureaucratic and academic strategies to protect their interests. The interrelationships between professionalization and German society,
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culture, and politics were complex and ambivalent. In late eighteenth-century Central Europe, shared cultivation blended bureaucrats, free professionals, and some businessmen into a unique social formation, called the Bildungsbiirgertum. By the mid-nineteenth century, these Gymnasium and university graduates were recognized as "cultivated middle classes," although the actual term Bildungsburgertum only emerged as a retrospective critical category in the 1920s.52 Since they hailed from diverse backgrounds, the members of this social formation derived their unity from formal neohumanist training and informal student subculture, which established a distinctive style (classical citations), form of communication (literary journals), and manner of sociability (student corporations). While leading the ideological transition from liberalism to nationalism and beyond, the educated middle class did not find a clear political voice of its own and failed to develop any capacity for common action. Since occupational advancement seemed more promising, aspiring professionals organized instead on the basis of their specialized vocation in order to strengthen the material foundations of their careers. The slow erosion of the Bildungsburgertum began during the empire, accelerated during the crisisridden Weimar Republic, and culminated in the anti-intellectual and illiberal Third Reich, whereas the first decades of the Federal Republic offered a kind of deceptive afterglow.53 The rising professions replaced the diffuse cultivated milieu with tighter special-interest organization at the price of fragmenting the cohesion of educated middle class. Building on older middle-class values, professionalization was therefore an attempt to create for academic occupations a viable modern realm that would be distinct from the industrial or bureaucratic spheres. FrustratedBildungsburger saw professionalism as an attractive alternative to fuzzy intellectual idealism, the tainted profit motive, or the anonymous government bureaucracy.54 Although educated women presided over enlightened salons as early as the late eighteenth century, the German professions emerged as self-evidently male domains. Even after decades of school agitation, the 1908 admission of girls to Prussian universities did not mean free access to academic occupations, since traditionalist men in the status professions vehemently resisted feminist demands.55 Pursuits in which private female roles of nurturing and caring could be made public, such as secondary school teaching or medicine, offered some opportunities as early as the empire period, whereas restrictions on careers in law had to be eliminated by Reichstag decree in 1922. In the newer quasi professions such as primary school teaching or social work, women made quicker progress—at the cost of inhibiting their full professionalization because of misogynist prejudice. The increase in female training aggravated the overcrowding crises of the 1920s and triggered a sexist backlash that prompted neoconservative and Nazi restrictions against female professionals, especially if they were married.56 The manpower shortage of the Third Reich reversed policies without changing ideology, forcing women to resort to separation and subordination in order to return to practice. In the postwar era, the decimation of male cohorts created fresh career opportunities without, however, eliminating the hold of a neotraditional family ideology.57 Its meritocratic spirit made
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professionalization theoretically compatible with claims for women's emancipation, since both processes were initiated by the liberal middle class. But in practice these reform movements often clashed, since male practitioners feared for the success of their aspirations and had to be compelled through political pressure to accept female colleagues. While misogynist prejudices were commonplace elsewhere, emancipation in Central Europe came comparatively late and the Third Reich reversal was particularly virulent. Too often ignored by social scientists, the cultural imprint of German professionalization was paradoxical as well. As a result of educational dominance of neohumanism after 1800, practitioners shared an ethos of classical cultivation and scholarship, embodied in the complementary ideals of Bildung and Wissenschaft. The emerging secondary school teaching career of philologues embraced the guardianship of this vision as its central mission.58 In subsequent decades, the dynamism of specialization ruptured the unity of liberal education and created a series of distinctive discourses, dominated by experts in a particular Fachwissen (specialty), which fragmented philosophical inquiry into separate disciplines and careers.59 The emergence of discrete subcultural clusters for jurists, doctors, scientists, humanists, and so forth, no doubt led to startling research discoveries and enhanced practitioner competence, since many experts pursued their field with other-worldly asceticism. But specialization also created a sense of cultural malaise, prompting a chorus of laments about the erosion of Bildung and the soullessness of technology, which fostered public alienation. In spite of considerable pride in their scientific achievements, many experts seem to have developed a curious penchant for irrational inwardness in their general attitudes.60 Though radical intellectuals tried to forge a social and democratic modernism after 1900, the existential sociopolitical threats of the Weimar Republic fostered a widespread feeling of cultural crisis among professionals. Prompted by experimentalist provocations and tasteless mass consumption, this Kulturkrise (crisis of culture) rhetoric projected the concrete difficulties of practitioners onto a larger idealized screen as criticism of culture per se.61 Ironically, the liberal optimism of early professional reformers turned into an illiberal pessimism among beleaguered experts of the twentieth century. The political involvement of the professions in Central Europe was deep but problematic. While claiming to be objective men of science, German experts were heavily embroiled in the political process, since the advancement of their cause required countless decisions about power, wealth, and prestige. Inside a profession various subgroups (e.g., hierarchical, geographic, ideological) fought for articulation of demands, control over spokesmen and determination of agenda (e.g., the conflict over simultaneous admission of lower court attorneys to higher courts). Outside of an occupation, different callings struggled over jurisdiction (among psychologists and psychotherapists), pay (secondary versus primary school teachers), and status (the engineer's campaign for full acceptance as Akademiker, a university-bred man). Since their number was relatively small compared to the large mass of other workers, professionals were forced to build coalitions with kindred interests, lobby through informal
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contacts, and use their superior rhetorical skills to sway the public.62 The outlook of the akademische Berufsstande generally evolved with the other middling strata in their region, but each calling had a particular flavor, determined by its occupational perspective (e.g., lawyers were more libertarian, teachers more statist, engineers more technocratic). Not surprisingly, the political orientation of professionals depended on the responsiveness of a particular party, government, or system to their specific desires. Hence during the empire even liberal practitioners were confirmed monarchists, during the Weimar Republic experts remained reluctant about democracy, whereas in the Third Reich many initially welcomed the Nazis until jolted from their illusions by the loss of the war.63 German professionals preferred an apolitical brand of politics that prized specialized expertise over public struggle. The contribution of professionalization to German history during the last two centuries has been profoundly contradictory. The rise of the modern professions enhanced the problem-solving capacity of society in many important areas. In combating epidemics, increasing literacy, renewing urban slums, or coping with mental disturbances, Central Europe was recognized as a world leader around the turn of the century. At the same time, the dominance of experts decreased lay influence and made client choices dependent on the judgment of authorities over whom they had little or no control.64 The professionalization of academic research similarly increased the power of intellectual discovery and made German learning synonymous with rigorous scholarship, leading to the adoption of its methods in other countries. But simultaneously a fundamental cultural malaise arose among the educated middle class, who complained about a loss of meaning in sciences, which could no longer furnish a coherent world view.65 Moreover, the emergence of cadres of well-trained experts removed whole areas such as social work from political contention by making them amenable to "professional" treatment. However, the price was all too often collective extortion such as the astounding advance of dentists from a quasi-academic craft to the highest-earning occupation in the Federal Republic.66 In the general transformation from notable to interest-group politics, the professions played only a subordinate role, due to their limited numbers. But their unrestrained pursuit of self-interest to the detriment of the common good proved nefarious, since it made professionals particularly vulnerable to antiSemitic resentment and Nazi occupational appeals. Instead of consolidating liberty through reform, the professions, when faced with a severe existential crisis, become accomplices of reactionary tyranny.67 The implications of this German experience suggest a rethinking of professionalization theory. So as to include the akademische Berufsstande, the very definition of "profession" should be broadened and the process ought to be understood as multifarious and reversible. Among actors, emphasis needs to shift from practitioners and clients to the state and higher education as sources of power and legitimacy. As a result of the importance of chambers on the continent, a distinctive neocorporate type of professionalization might be added to the conceptual inventory. Instead of imposing a general evolutionary
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model with obligatory stages, phases of professional development should be seen as historically contingent and limited to a given national context. Professional strategies as distinct from political efforts or union tactics ought to be delineated according to the structure of the surrounding system, which made them more bureaucratic and academic in Central Europe than elsewhere. At the same time, the professions' location within the middle class should be more clearly defined in relationship to the entrepreneurs, public officials, and other members of the Bildungsburgertum. The problematic nexus between the rise of the professions and the movement for women's emancipation is just beginning to be explored and ought to be analyzed further. The culture blindness of traditional social science theorizing risks overlooking the impact of professionalization on intellectual life in general. Finally, the political implications of the emergence of the professions demand more study, moving from the narrower definition of the experts' interest-group efforts to the wider role of professionals in the larger polity.68 Such a reconceptualization would make professionalization theory not only empirically richer but also analytically more powerful. In a comparative perspective, the puzzling peculiarity of German professionalization was but a regional variant of the wider continental pattern. The ritualized debate about the Sonderweg has spawned a veritable cottage industry of self-absorbed reflections, with the pendulum of interpretation swinging inconclusively from uniqueness to commonality and back.69 A closer look at the actual evidence on the professions indicates structural similarities of continental development, culminating in an identical overcrowding crisis during the 1920s and 1930s.70 The same linkage between academic unemployment and illiberal politics is startlingly evident during the formation of fascism in Italy, during the rise of the indigenous Nazis in Austria, and during the emergence of a variety of racist movements in Hungary.71 While the "trahison des clercs" was widespread in Central Europe, the purge of Jewish colleagues, the persecution of left-wing practitioners, and the discrimination against female competitors were more thorough in Germany than elsewhere.72 Even in the West, where more practitioners resisted the temptation of right-wing politics, the underlying problem was similar. Though altruistic rhetoric proclaimed high-sounding goals of social service, professional practice was all too often centered on the crass advancement of material self-interest. Because its corruption was so blatant, the German example points more clearly to the perils of an egotistical professionalism, oblivious to ethical concerns. Capable of making enormous contributions to human welfare, the professions only deserve their privileges when they use their powers with social responsibility and political liberality.73 Notes 1. Havenstein to Schumann, Feb. 3, 1937, in N. Hammerstein, ed., Deutsche Bildung? Briefwechsel zweier Schulmanner, 1930-1944 (Frankfurt, 1988), p. 108f.; and Spranger, quoted in K. H. Jarausch, Preface, The Unfree Professions, 1900-1950 (New York, 1990).
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2. H. Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society in England Since 1880 (London, 1989), echoing D. Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York, 1976), p. 374. SeeH.U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 1700-1815 (Munich, 1987), 1: 133ff. 3. For instance, M. S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley, Calif., 1977); and R. Dingwall and P. Lewis, eds., The Sociology of Professions (New York, 1983). 4. E. Freidson, Professional Powers (Chicago, 1986); and A. Abbott, The System of Professions (Chicago, 1988). 5. J. Kuczynski, DieIntelligenz (Cologne, 1987); and essays by H.-U. Wehler and N. Davis, forthcoming in Storia delta Storiographia. 6. K. H. Jarausch, ed., The Transformation of Higher Learning (Chicago, 1983); B. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (New York, 1976); and G. Geison, ed., Professions and Professional Ideologies in America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983). 7. H. Siegrist, "Biirgerliche Berufe: Die Professionen und das Biirgertum," in his Biirgerliche Berufe (Gottingen, 1988), p. llff., citing the pioneering texts by T. Parsons, H. Wilensky, and others. An exception was D. Rueschemeyer, Lawyers and Their Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1973). 8. H. Daheim, "Berufssoziologie," in R. Konig, ed., Handbuch der empirischen Sozialforschung (Stuttgart, 1967), 8: 1-100; H. A. Hesse, Berufe im Wandel (Stuttgart, 1968); and C. E. McClelland, "ZurProfessionalisierung der akademischen Berufe in Deutschland," in W. Conze and J. Kocka, eds., Bildungsbiirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1985), p. 233ff. 9. G. Geison, ed., Professions and the French State, 1700-1900 (Philadelphia, 1984); and Abbott, System of Professions, p. 19f. 10. Such as A. Weissler, Geschichte der Rechtsanwaltschaft (Leipzig, 1905) and F. Ostler, Die deutschen Rechtsanwdlte, 1871-1971 (Essen, 1971) for lawyers. 11. U. Geuter, Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologic im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt, 1984); and R. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors (New York, 1986). 12. W. Conze and J. Kocka, eds., Bildungsbiirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 1: BildungssystemundProfessionalisierungininternationalenVergleichen(Stuttgarl, 1985);U. Engelhardt, "Bildungsbiirgertum": Begriffs- und Dogmengeschichte eines Etiketts (Stuttgart, 1986); and most recently J. Kocka, ed., Das Bildungsbiirgertum in Gesellschaft und Politik (Stuttgart, 1989). 13. For examples, see C. Huerkamp, Der Aufstieg der Arzte im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1985); and M. H. Kater, Doctors Under Hitler (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). The subsequent discussion applies to the concepts of M. Burrage, K. H. Jarausch, and H. Siegrist, "An Actor-Oriented Framework for the History of the Professions: Prerequisites for a Theory," M. Burrage and B. Torstendahl, eds., Professions inTheory and History (London, 1990), to the German evidence. 14. W. Conze, "Beruf," in O. Brunner et al., eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart, 1972), 1: 490-506; A. J. Heidenheimer, "Professions, the State and the Police(y) Connection," (Ms., St. Louis, Mo., 1983); and E. Tatarin-Tarnheyden,Da'e Berufsstande, ihre Stellung im Staatsrecht und die deutsche Wirtschaftsverfassung (Berlin, 1922). 15. McClelland, "ZurProfessionalisierung," p. 233ff.; H.-E. Thenorth, "Professionen und Professionalisierung," in M. Heinemann, ed., Der Lehrer und seine Organisation (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 457ff. 16. S. Feuchtwanger, Die Freien Berufe—Staatsamt oder Sozialamt? (Konigsberg, 1929); V. Deneke, DiefreienBerufe (Stuttgart, 1956); and H. Kairat, "Professions" oder "freieBerufe"? (Berlin, 1969). 17. Jarausch, Unfree Professions, chap. 1, part 1.
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18. R. Collins, "Comments on 'A Framework for the History of the Professions'," (Ms. Riverside, Calif., 1987); and Abbott, System of Professions, p. 318. 19. Kocka in the introduction to Bildungsburgertum, p. 16ff.; and M. Burrage et al., "Framework for the History of the Professions." 20. H. Siegrist discusses in his contribution to this volume all seven categories while C. Huerkamp's essay addresses training, practice, licensing, and association. 21. In contrast to J. Caplan's contribution to this volume, see also the essays by H. Siegrist and C. Huerkamp, the chapters by A. La Vopaand K. Gispen as well as the pieces by D. Lindenfeld, Y. S. Hong, and M. Ash. 22. See the chapters by J. Schneider and V. Clark as well as the contributions by J. Caplan and M. Geyer in this volume. 23. See the essay by J. Johnson in this volume and K. Jarausch, "The Perils of Professionalism: German Lawyers, Teachers and Engineers in Nazi Germany," German Studies Review 9 (1986): 107ff. 24. Siegrist, "Burgerliche Berufe," and his essay in this book. 25. L. Burchardt, "Professionalisierung oder Berufskonstruktion?" Geschichte undGesellschaft6(\980): 326ff.; and J. Johnson's contribution in this volume. See also J. Albisetti, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton, N.J., 1983). 26. See C. E. McClelland's forthcoming book on the rise of the German professions and Jarausch, Unfree Professions, chap. 1, part 2. 27. See the essays by La Vopa, Siegrist, and Huerkamp in this volume as well as C. Huerkamp, "Arzte und Professionalisierung in Deutschland," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 6 (1980): 349ff. 28. See the contributions by J. Schneider, J. Caplan, and Y. S. Hong to this collection; R. Spree, Soziale Ungleichheit vor Krankheit und Tod (Gottingen, 1982), p. 138ff., and D. Light et al., "Social Medicine versus Professional Dominance: The German Experience," American Journal of Public Health 76 (1986): 78ff. 29. A. J. Heidenheimer, "Comparing Status Professions: The Evolution of StateProfession Relationships of Lawyers and Physicians in Britain, Germany and the U.S." (Ms., St. Louis, Mo., 1987). 30. Essays by J. Caplan and M. Geyer in this collection; and M. Burrage, "Revolution as a Starting Point for the Comparative Analysis of the Legal Profession," in R. Abel and P. Lewis, eds., Lawyers in Society (Berkeley, 1989), vol. 3. 31. Compare the Huerkamp essay in this volume with O. Janz's chapter on pastors in Burgerliche Berufe. Part of the reason for the officers' loss of autonomy was the lack of rigor of "military science." 32. See the chapters by C. Gispen and V. Clark, J. Johnson, and M. Ash in this collection. 33. M. Beatus, "Academic Proletariat: The Problem of Overcrowding in the Learned Professions and Universities During the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933," (Diss., Madison, Wise., 1975); D. K. Miiller, Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem (Gottingen, 1977), p. 274ff.; and P. Lundgreen's essay in Burgerliche Berufe. 34. See the essay by M. Ash in this volume, in contrast to F. Ringer, Die Gelehrten: Der Niedergang der deutschen Mandarine, 1890-1933 (Stuttgart, 1983). 35. For an overemphasis on state see McClelland, "Zur Professionalisierung," Bildungsburgertum, p. 233ff., and Heidenheimer, "Comparing Status Professions." Contrary evidence comes from the essays of J. Caplan and M. Geyer in this volume. 36. H. Siegrist, "Gebremste Professionalisierung: Das Beispiel der Schweizer Rechtsanwaltschaft im Vergleich zu Frankreich und Deutschland," in Bildungsburgertum, p. 30Iff.
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37. Jarausch, UnfreeProfessions, chap. 1, part 2. See A. Steinweis' dissertation on the Reich Chamber of Culture (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988). 38. See H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 1815-1848/49 (Munich, 1987), 2: 22Iff. 39. See especially the chapters of H. Siegrist andC. Huerkamp in this collection. 40. See the articles by C. Gispen, J. Johnson, and V. Clark in this book. 41. See the essays by D. Lindenfeld, Y. S. Hong, J. Caplan, andK. Ledford in this volume, and K. H. Jarausch, "The Crisis of the German Professions, 1918-1933," Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 379ff. 42. See the chapters by M. Ash and G. Cocks in this collection as well as Geuter, Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologic, p. 448ff., versus Kater, Doctors Under Hitler, and Jarausch, "Perils of Professionalism," p. 107ff. 43. K. H. Jarausch, "Die unfreien Professionen: Uberlegungen zu den Wandlungsprozessen im deutschen Bildungbiirgertum, 1900-1950," in J. Kocka, ed., Burgertum im 19. Jahrhundert: Deutschland im europdischen Vergleich (Munich, 1988), 2: 124ff. 44. See the essays of C. Gispen and J. Johnson in this volume. 45. M. Ramsey, "The Politics of Professional Monopoly in 19th Century Medicine, " in Professions and the French State, p. 225ff. See the chapters of H. Siegrist and K. Ledford in this collection. 46. Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York, 1967), p. 129ff. See also the contributions of J. Schneider and J. Stephenson to this book. 47. R. Torstendahl, "Essentialist, Strategic and Temporal Analysis of Professionalism," (Ms., Uppsala, 1987); andR. vomBruch, "Die Professionalisierung der akademisch-gebildeten Volkswirte in Deutschland zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts," in K.-E. Jeismann, ed., Bildung, Staat, Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1988), p. 36Iff. 48. H. Titze, "Die zyklische Uberproduktion von Akademikern im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10 (1984): 92-121; and A. Nath, Die Studienratskarriere im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt, 1988). Restricting professionalization to closure alone ignores other professional strategies. See R. Murphey, Social Closure (New York, 1988). 49. Jarausch, Unfree Professions, chaps. 2-4. 50. See the contributions of C. Huerkamp, H. Siegrist, Y. S. Hong, andG. Cocks in this collection. 51. See especially the essay by J. Johnson in this book. 52. Engelhardt, Bildungsburgertum, and J. Kocka, "Vorwort" to Das Bildungsbilrgertum in Gesellschaft undPolitik (Stuttgart, 1989). 53. Jarausch, "Die Krise des Bildungsburgertums im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts," in Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 180ff. 54. Siegrist, "Biirgerliche Berufe," p. 42f. 55. See J. Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women (Princeton, N.J., 1988), and K. Jarausch, Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, N. J., 1982), p. 109ff. 56. See C. Huerkamp's essay on women students in Biirgerliche Berufe. See also the contributions by J. Schneider and Y. S. Hong to this volume. 57. See the essay by J. Stephenson in this book, and the UNC dissertations in progress by I. Richards on female professionals in the Third Reich and L. Heinemann on postwar German women. 58. See A. La Vopa's essay in this collection and his Grace, Talent, Merit: Poor
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German Professions, 1800-1950
Students, Clerical Careers, and Professional Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, Eng., 1988). 59. See the essays by P. Lundgreen and others in K. H. Jarausch, ed., The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860-1930 (Chicago, 1983). 60. F. K. Ringer, "Bildung and Its Implications in the German Tradition, 18901930," and K. Jarausch, "Bildungsideale, Society and Politics," NIAS Lustrum, June 1986. See also H. Schulte, ed., The Tragedy of Inwardness? (Hamilton, Ont., 1989). 61. K. H. Jarausch, "Die Not der geistigen Arbeiter: Akademiker in der Berufskrise, 1918—1933," in W. Abelshauser, ed., Die Weimarer Republik als Wohlfahrtsstaat (Stuttgart, 1987), p. 280ff. 62. See the chapters by K. Ledford, C. Gispen, and V. Clark in this volume. 63. Jarausch, UnfreeProfessions, chap. 8. See the essays by J. Caplan, M. Geyer, and G. Cocks in this volume. 64. Compare the contributions to J. R. Dukes and J. Remak, eds., Another Germany: Reconsideration of the Imperial Era (Boulder, Colo., 1988) versus Spree, Soziale Ungleichheit. 65. K. H. Jarausch, "The Universities: An American View," in Another Germany, p. 181ff., versus F. K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins (Cambridge, Mass., 1967). 66. P. Huttenberger, "Interessenvertretung und Lobbyismus im Dritten Reich," in G. Hirschfeld, ed., The "Fuhrer State": Myth and Reality (Stuttgart, 1983), p. 429ff. See also the essay by Y. S. Hong in this volume. 67. T. Childers, "Social Language of Politics in Germany: The Sociology of Political Discourse in the Weimar Republic" (Ms., Philadelphia, 1989); Kater, Doctors Under Hitler; and K. H. Jarausch's essay on the professions' repudiation of liberalism in K. H. Jarausch and L. E. Jones, eds., In Search of a Liberal Germany (Leamington Spa, Eng., 1990). 68. D. Riischemeyer, "Professionalisierung: Theoretische Probleme fur die vergleichendeGeschichtsforschung," GeschichteundGesellschaft6(l980): 31 Iff., and Burrage, Jarausch, and Siegrist, "Framework for the History of the Professions." 69. G. G. Iggers, "Introduction" to his collection on The Social History of Politics (Leamington Spa, Eng., 1985); and for recent entries G. Eley, From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past (Boston, 1986) and T. Nipperdey, Nachdenken iiber die deutsche Geschichte (Munich, 1986). 70. W. Kotschnig, Unemployment in the Learned Professions (London, 1937), p. 105ff. 71. M. Barbagli, Education for Unemployment: Politics, Labor Markets and the School System—Italy, 1859-1973 (New York, 1982); H. Engelbrecht, "Zur Organisierung der osterreichischen Lehrerschaft an hoheren Schulen," in M. Heinemann, ed., Der Lehrer und seine Organisation (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 201ff.; and M. M. Kovacs, "Luttes professionnelles et antisemitisme," Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 56(1986): 31ff., as well as "The Ideology of Illiberalism in the Professions: Leftist and Rightist Radicalism among Hungarian Doctors, Lawyers and Engineers, 1918-1945" (Ms., Washington, D.C., 1988). 72. Kater, Doctors Under Hitler, and Jarausch, Unfree Professions, chaps. 5-7. 73. Jarausch, Unfree Professions, chap. 8. See also the essays by J. Caplan, M. Ash, and G. Cocks in this volume.
I THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
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Specialists Against Specialization: Hellenism as Professional Ideology in German Classical Studies ANTHONY J. LA VOPA
In the emergence of the academic professions that formed the core of the nineteenth-century GermanBildungsburgertum (educated middle class), the new discipline of classical studies (Altertumswissenschqft) had an obviously central significance. As the dominant group in the reformed Gymnasium, the practitioners of the discipline (the Philologenstand) commanded the narrow entry way to the university faculties. Their organization and production of scholarship offered the natural sciences as well as the humanities one of the earliest models for a research-based profession.1 The story of this ascendancy has several ironic twists, which are still in need of an integrated explanation. Inherent in the preference for classical studies was a repudiation of the discipline of pedagogy, although as late as the 1790s most reform-minded schoolmen had been committed to Padagogik as the disciplinary basis of their profession. The turn from pedagogy to history was also a selfconscious departure from the latinity of Protestant humanism. As this older classicism came to be dismissed for its narrow "pedantry" and empty formalism, and as the new dispensation sought to grasp the essential spirit of antiquity, the Greeks displaced the Romans at center stage. It was an emphatic Hellenism, not to say Graecomania, that initially inspired an intensely specialized research ethos and hence made the new discipline a precocious model for modern academic professionalism. Yet the same Hellenism was also the vehicle for a pronounced antimodernism, and at the heart of the antimodernism lay an indictment of specialization itself. From this distance there is a striking tension (if not a blatant contradiction) between the specialized nature of the research and the soaring vision it was supposed to sustain. 2 However, for the founders Hellenism functioned effectively as ideology—or, to put it another way, it generated a credible illusion— precisely because it seemed to transcend the tension. In its paradoxical logic, highly specialized research—the textual editions and philological monographs 27
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The Nineteenth Century
that embodied the new discipline's expertise and launched and sustained its practitioners' careers—would yield a holistic cure for the pathology that seemed to accompany modern specialization. The new discipline echoed the antipathy to Enlightenment pedagogy and its utilitarian reform agenda that Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schiller had begun to articulate in the 1790s.3 However, for our purposes it will be instructive to maintain a distinction between early neohumanism and its academic offshoot. Neohumanism was an eclectic and broad-reaching cultural reaction, drawing on Kantian and Idealist philosophy as well as on the revival of classical studies. The new conception of classical studies as a Wissenschqft (scholarly discipline) formed in such a manner as to diverge in some ways from the source and become shaped to the social and institutional locus of the profession it was designed to justify. The critical moment in that process was the first decade of the nineteenth century, and its principal agent was Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824).4 In 1787, when Wolf had set about founding the seminar in classical studies at Halle that would produce a new breed of schoolmen-scholars, he insisted on excluding pedagogy; indeed his lectures left students with no doubt about his contempt for that so-called discipline. In the early 1790s he became a friend and correspondent of Humboldt; each found inspiration in the other's formulations of a Hellenic ideal. Whereas the aristocrat regretted that he had discovered the classics too late in life to become "a professional philologist," his correspondent had become the prototypical modern professional.5 Wolf's Darstellung der Altertumswissenschqft, a lengthy essay first published in 1807, incorporated Humboldt's earlier meditations on classical antiquity into a professional ideology. Hellenism had become the crux of an effort to distill the essential ethos of a new discipline, to order it internally, and to provide it with defensible boundaries within an expanding, increasingly balkanized academic landscape.6 The emerging professional community for whom Wolf spoke was neither limited to his own students nor confined to north Germany. In 1808 Friedrich Ast, a young professor at the Bavarian university at Landshut, celebrated and mapped classical studies in much the same way in his GrundrissderPhilologie.7 In addition to contributing to the reorientation of the universities' philosophy faculties, the new Hellenism fueled a sense of mission among schoolmen. There is no more succinct statement of their militancy than the inaugural lecture that Friedrich Jacobs (1764-1847) delivered as a newly appointed professor at the Munich Lyceum in 1807.8 Wolf and his colleagues asserted a territorial imperative and a claim to public authority for a disciplinary community in the making. The substance—as transparently self-serving as it was—deserves to be taken seriously.9 The study of ideology at this level promises to enhance our contextual understanding of the emergence of modern German professionalism. Until recently, sociology offered models for professionalization that purported to be universally applicable but in fact were derived largely from the national experiences of England and the United States. Such models—particularly those linking the rise of the Anglo-American "free" professions with nineteenth-
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century industrialization—have proved ill-suited for continental Europe, where an overarching framework of public bureaucracy was obviously in place well before modern industrialization got under way. It was symptomatic of the German scene that classicists saw public employment as the only secure route to professional status, but at the same time had to come to terms with its threats to professional and personal integrity.10
I Like Anglo-Scottish nostalgia for ancient republican virtue, German neohumanism paired corruption with modern specialization. However, one need only peruse Humboldt's meditations on classical antiquity to realize that neohumanistic antimodernism initially had another set of social and institutional referents.11 Humboldt's ancient citizen (Burger) had used his or her freedom not to exercise the austere devotion to duty that ensured the survival of a republic, but to enjoy an "arbitrary choice of a self-contented life-style and activity."12 If civic activism was not the quintessentially human means to selffulfillment, then it was also not a bulwark against corruptive change. Only Imperial Rome—not the republics—had developed a "lasting political constitution," and that was precisely because it had enforced the constrictions of individuality that the Greeks had been "too noble, tender, free and human" to countenance. Nor had commercial specialization been at the root of corruption. It was the bureaucratic state of Imperial Rome that had anticipated modern pathology; its insistence on the one-sided functional competence of the dutiful Burger had been at the price of the spontaneous and multifaceted selfrealization of the human being (Mensch). In eighteenth-century Germany, educated observers were not faced with commercialization on the English scale or with any equivalent to English parliamentary corruption. In the absence of a national parliament and a metropolitan political and cultural arena like London, the territorial universities of the various German states played a central role in the creation of a public opinion and gave it a distinctly academic coloration. At the same time that university scholarship was self-consciously transcending the corporate boundaries of the old-regime Gekhrtenstand (learned profession) and addressing a larger educated public, it was beginning to pattern into a new, more intricate mosaic of Wissenschaften that had to validate new territorial claims, or reformulate old ones, by demonstrating internal coherence and fixing defensible boundaries. Hence, in the formation of a coherent public culture for a modern society and polity, university scholarship might be the constitutive element or a major obstacle. Inseparable from this academic specialization was the universities' historical assignment to train competent officials for the civil and judicial bureaucracies of the territorial states and the ecclesiastical hierarchies of the state churches. What confronted university graduates entering public employment— especially the sons of the Burger who constituted the great majority of them—
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The Nineteenth Century
was the moral duality of Amt (office). In one sense office, like property in republican ideology, was a foundation for independence, in that its public status and security ensured a measure of invulnerability to market forces and social pressures. However, office also threatened to corrupt its occupants, to alienate them from their essential humanity by confining them to a more or less narrow functional role within a more or less bureaucratic structure.13 The first generation of neohumanists took an especially grim view of modernity in this guise, and that was in part because they were reacting against the sober orthodoxy that their elders had taken to preaching.14 By the 1780s, the rationalist conception of pedagogy as a discipline and the accompanying agenda for educational reform were hardening into a rigid schematism, almost caricaturing the mix of utilitarian enthusiasm and social caution that characterized the German Enlightenment as a whole. To the measure that "philanthropists" like Joachim Heinrich Campe and Ernst Christian Trapp acknowledged that all future Burger should be introduced to the same "general human education," they became all the more insistent that the usefulness of the Burger had priority over the perfectability of the Mensch. Their alternative to oldregime corporatism was a functional hierarchy of quasi-corporate occupational groups, each exhibiting the life-style and the ethos appropriate to its expertise. If the educated Burger was to be spared open-ended expectations of selffulfillment, then he or she had to internalize collective imperatives, to suppress or redirect instinctual drives and emotional urges that might cause alienation from an assigned role.15 Public employment, educated young men were warned, differed from "mechanical" manual labor only by degree; for the government official, for the clergyman, and even for the university scholar the rational exercise of duty required acceptance of a certain delimiting routinism. 16 It was above all the reduction of rational self-discipline and indeed "virtue" (Tugend) to self-constriction within specialized work roles that made rationalist orthodoxy so intolerable to the early neohumanists. The modern bureaucratic state and the new society in the making seemed to be forming into a single dehumanizing machine, which a utilitarian work ethic promised to supply with self-motivated cogs. This rationalist future would culminate a process of specialization that seemed to have advanced inexorably since the Greeks, with the development of the modern state and the expansion of knowledge as its mutually reinforcing agents. The modern individual, Schiller lamented in his Letters on Aesthetic Education, "becomes merely a stamp of his official duties, his branch of knowledge."17 The bitter irony was that the educated man, far from soaring above this fate, embodied its pathology; as he acquired "the official spirit, enclosed in a uniform circle and, within it, narrowed still more by formulas," he became alienated from both himself and his fellow men. The same image of a bureaucratic machine, dehumanizing its agents as well as its "subjects," informed the essay on "the limits of state action" that Humboldt wrote several months after abandoning a career in the Prussian judicial bureaucracy.18 When the neohumanists condemned rationalist pedagogy as "mechanical," they meant that it was designed to legitimate this dehumanization. Pedagogy
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approached the individual personality as a mere variation on a standard force field, and its strategy was to manipulate that field by ordering its forces and counterforces into an internal hierarchy, as the requirements of functional roles dictated. Drawing on Kantian and Idealist conceptions of the unconditional freedom of the self-realizing subject, the neohumanists celebrated the "particularity" (Eigentumlichkeit) of each "personality" as a unique embodiment of a quintessentially human moral force. In the organic and emphatically aesthetic process that was Bildung (cultivation), sensual and affective energies achieved nobility of form as they nourished reason with the full richness of their substance.19 For Humboldt, Greece offered the purest historical testimony that a truly human culture, like a truly human personality, gave form to an innate integrative energy. The result was a holistic antipode to modern fragmentation—a unique fusion of the sensual and the cerebral, of natural simplicity and sophistication—that was to be confused neither with the crudity of popular culture in contemporary civilization nor with the overrefinement of polite society. In contrast to the modern tension between private pursuits and public participation, Greek religion, art, and politics (the symbolism of the priest, the creative expression of the artist, the rhetoric of the statesman) had fused into a single public culture that both thrived on and nourished self-cultivation.20 At times Humboldt seemed to venerate this culture less as an actual historical achievement, to be recovered through Wissenschaft, than as the projection of a present longing for personal wholeness. However, there was always a "dialectic" between subject and object; even as the subjects projected their longing, they strove to grasp the object and in the process had to emulate it, to develop an analogously multifaceted but integrated "character." Hence it was not simply that the Hellenic ideal promised to "heal" by example; the study itself—the very effort to recover a remote past—might be "more therapeutic," in that it involved the "strain(ing) (of) all powers symmetrically."21 In the first decade of the nineteenth century, schoolmen made both the diagnosis and the therapy central to their professional ideology. That was in part because the ideal of self-cultivation crystallizing within the new Hellenism offered them a kind of neoaristocratic surrogate for old-style liberality.22 But schoolmen also had to reconcile the neohumanistic indictment of specialization with constraints that Humboldt (and Schiller) were in a position to avoid. For all his distaste for aristocratic dilettantism, Humboldt instinctively assumed the true liberality of the cultivated man to be incompatible with a professional identity, and an inherited title and independent wealth dispensed him from the need to assume one. Wolf was preoccupied with transforming classical studies into an independent university discipline: one that would no longer be open territory for scholarly amateurs, that would have an apprenticeship entirely separate from theological studies, and that would constitute its own career track. His Halle seminar recruited its regular members largely among the commoners in the theology faculty, and above all among the sons of obscure pastors, artisans, and shopkeepers who owed their studies to patrons. If the new discipline was to vindicate their abandonment of the conventional career, then it
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The Nineteenth Century
had to structure a new route into the academic elite. By the turn of the century, it was obvious that the path would lie through original research, and that originality, as their mentors defined it, resulted from an "anatomical" focus on particular historical artifacts.23 At the same time, professional recognition for this emerging disciplinary community promised to implicate it still further in bureaucratic structures. The neohumanistic Gymnasium, unlike the new secondary school that the philanthropists had planned, would ensure a "general human education" by keeping its pupils insulated from the demands of occupational life; however, it would do so as the entryway to an academic system that was geared to replenishing the increasingly variegated ranks of the state bureaucracies, the churches, and its own institutions. At the close of the eighteenth century, most teaching "offices" in the Latin schools and Gymnasien were still being supported with school fees and other more or less makeshift local arrangements, often more private than public, and sometimes merging with charity. Reacting against this dependence on uncomprehending parents and local dignitaries, schoolmen had adumbrated the equation of professional status with state office that would become central to German "middle-class" identity in the nineteenth century. Aside from allowing secession from the clergy, a state-centralized educational system would ensure professional autonomy by creating and securing a genuinely "public" teaching office, which would be perched above local society and invulnerable to its pressures. In the transition from a rationalist to a neohumanistic reform idiom at the turn of the century, this expectation remained axiomatic. Professional expertise was now a mode of aesthetic cultivation, not an instrument of "enlightened" utility; however, the need to institutionalize the teacher's distanced superiority seemed no less urgent. 24 The new concept of Wissenschaft accommodated its practitioners to academic and bureaucratic realities even as it promised to negate or transcend them, and that was its ideological significance. It did so in part by domesticating the vaulting optimism that had occasionally entered Humboldt's Hellenism. In his essay on "the limits of state action," Humboldt had imagined a time when even peasants and artisans might become "artists," with their manual labor springing from their free choice as harmoniously integrated personalities, and thus "humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it."25 This was to envision the regeneration of society by way of an inner transformation of its members, and not by way of fundamental changes in its structure. The assumption was that conventional work roles, as fragmenting and hence dehumanizing as they now were, could be revitalized by a new breed of human beings. The irony is that the ideal of moral freedom through aesthetic wholeness— as antipathetic as it was to the utilitarian prescription for duty—justified this impulse to accommodation. Far from licensing selfishness or self-indulgence, neohumanism claimed to reconcile the natural freedom of the Mensch with the social responsibility of the Burger in an ideal of self-discipline without selfdenial, duty without coercion. Aesthetic harmony guaranteed character and thus ensured that cultivated people would find an occupational outlet for their
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creativity without having to internalize collective imperatives.26 If in this sense voluntary commitment to duty was a natural product of Bildung, then the inculcation of self-discipline was inherent to its pursuit. Here again the young Humboldt had articulated the paradoxical needs that Hellenism fulfilled. While he turned to classical scholarship as an alternative to narrow specialization (as a route to the universal through the particular), he was also fascinated by its demand for the kind of self-disciplined, sustained hard work that the aristocratic dilettante avoided—hence the dual appeal of the Greek achievement. At the same time that the pure humanity expressed in its myriad cultural forms made it of universal value, its self-containment, and indeed its very historical remoteness made it resistant to penetration. In the kind of therapeutic dialectic Humboldt envisioned, it was in the struggle to overcome this objective resistance that the subjects realized their potential. The Hellenism of schoolmen gave all this a new specificity. Like the leisured self-cultivation of the old-style aristocrat, the classicist's scholarship was practiced for its own sake, as something intrinsically noble, rather than extrinsically utilitarian. Yet this liberal pursuit could and indeed must be driven by a relentless work discipline, eminently suitable to the bureaucratic environment that schoolmen occupied and most of their pupils would enter. The professional ethic had been anticipated, in fact, in Wolf's creation of a coterie of seminar students at Halle, and in the criteria he brought to their evaluation. If his apprentices were assured that pursuit of scholarship for its own sake raised them to a higher order, of purity, they also were rewarded for "iron and impassioned industry." His own life had become "monotonous" and "workfilled," Wolf once confided to his mentor Christian Gottlob Heyne, because he had to compensate for the "disorderly and wild study" of his youth; his progeny were more disciplined versions of his earlier self.27 In Friedrich Jacobs' inaugural address of 1807, the same ethic is central to the modus operandi of the reformed Gymnasium and is well on the way to becoming the official rhetoric of bureaucratic regimentation. Jacobs extolled the quest for "the spirit of antiquity" as an ennobling alternative to utilitarian dictates, and insisted on its repudiation of the formalism and rote memorization of the old dispensation. However, for the fledgling Hellenist, expertise in philology and textual editing was as essential as an aesthetic awareness of form. "The lofty goal is not reached by the rose-strewn path of convenience," Jacobs warned his audience; "the more active the material, the more difficult and persevering the struggle demanded by the work of art of free human cultivation." Such "discipline," he would remind his fellow classicists several decades later, made the Gymnasium "a heaven of order, of legality, of industry and discipline" as well as a "school" of "truth" and "justice."28 II
In the hands of Wolf and a younger generation of schoolmen, the ideal of personal wholeness through self-disciplined scholarship offered aesthetic and
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The Nineteenth Century
ultimately moral insulation from bureaucratic routinism, even as it reconsecrated the kind of work discipline that bureaucratic employment demanded. This was to reconcile—in the realm of ideology—an aspiration to personal integrity with the conditions of accommodation. The need for such a reconciliation was not limited to schoolmen; it helps explain why the ideal of liberal education inspired by the new Hellenism became central to a "halfbureaucratic, half-professional" identity in broad circles of the nineteenthcentury Bildungsbiirgertum. However, the point is not to make German-style professionalism one more variant on an unpolitical German Biirgertum, at least not if "unpolitical" evokes the aesthete's "retreat to inwardness" or the stereotypical German official's automatic obedience. As a specific antidote to specialization, the new Hellenism was also the vehicle for another duality, which in one form or another, may have been inherent in the formulation of modern professional ideologies everywhere. Professional groups have sought to establish public credibility as "communities of the competent," generating the authoritative public vision that the culture and the polity would otherwise lack. This is to assert the privileged authority of expertise in a highly specialized division of labor, but at the same time to claim to transcend the limitations of specialization. Professional expertise is in a class by itself (so the standard logic goes), because it yields a broad, disinterested public vision, in contrast to the self-limiting outlooks that other kinds of specialization necessarily entail.29 In Germany this logic had already surfaced in the 1770s and 1780s, as Enlightenment rationalism had begun to pattern into the reform agendas of schoolmen and other occupational groups. The patterning was part of a larger, eminently political process in which the educated Biirgertum attempted to constitute itself as an "enlightened" public, and thereby to win recognition from both the larger society and the bureaucratic state as a kind of moral arbiter of public issues.30 The schoolmen's shift from pedagogy to Hellenism marks the new directions the process entered at the turn of the century, as the overarching presence of bureaucratic states became more problematic. In the 1780s, Amt exercised an irresistible appeal in the reform thought of schoolmen, and not simply because official security and prestige promised disentanglement from local dependencies. If the fledgling profession was to establish an authoritative public voice, despite its dubious social credentials, then its representatives had to contribute to the broader formation of an "enlightened" public opinion, and office offered the platform from which to do so. An external source of credibility was urgently needed, and in late eighteenthcentury Prussia it seemed a reasonable expectation that the bureaucratic state would provide it. The state would play the role of enlightened mentor, granting schoolmen a large measure of autonomy within its ranks at the same time that it protected them from outside threats. The jolt came in the late 1780s, when Johann Christoph Wollner, the new Prussian minister of ecclesiastical affairs, confronted schoolmen as well as pastors with the choice of bending the knee publicly to a state-enforced Lutheran orthodoxy or risking removal from office. Wollner's crackdown did
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not induce most reform-minded schoolmen to question their equation of professional independence with official status.31 Rather, its impact lay in advancing a growing awareness that, if the new profession was to achieve a measure of autonomy in relation to the state as well as society, it would have to generate within itself the unimpeachable moral norms that would make its public voice authoritative. It was this need for an internal source of credibility that made pedagogy seem increasingly inadequate as a disciplinary base, and that made classical studies a particularly appealing alternative. In 1780 Ernst Christian Trapp, Wolf's predecessor at Halle, had articulated the claims for pedagogy as a disciplinary basis in his Versuch einer Padagogik. Pedagogy was both an inductive science that continually refines its grasp of the universal "principles" governing human growth, and the "art" (Kunst) of applying those principles in matching the particular "vocation" of each pupil to the appropriate occupational outlet.32 In the 1780s Friedrich Gedike and several other young schoolmen gave this conception of Wissenschaft a thrust that was, in context, radical. Now the essence of the expertise lay in penetrating beneath the social surface, in commanding privileged insight into a natural economy of human resources and an innate entelechy. The vision it yielded was above all "public" in the sense that it hovered above narrow, selfish interests as a reproach to obsolete familial traditions and forms of privilege, and justified a meritocratic order in closer alignment with nature. This was to claim for Wissenschaft, by virtue of its distinct marriage of scientific detachment and artistic intuition, an unimpeachable normative authority in defining the appropriate priorities for a more rational order.33 In the 1790s, neohumanism contributed to and gained strength from a crisis of confidence in the cognitive assumptions behind this pedagogical mission. What made pedagogy such an easy target for the neohumanists was its reliance on the crude tenets of utilitarian rationalism and materialist psychology.34 Inseparable from the derivative status of the "discipline," that is, from its inability to generate a credible body of theory within itself, was its vulnerability to ideological appropriation from outside. To the neohumanists, in fact, the statist utilitarianism of rationalist pedagogy and the orthodox reaction of the Wollner era were two sides of one coin, that is, ideological variations on the same threat of political manipulation from above. It was in this context that Wolf's militant preference for classical studies came to reflect and heighten a larger awareness of the need for an alternative grounding for disciplinary credibility. Aside from being too dependent on other disciplines for its theory, Wolf warned in his lectures at Halle, pedagogy was too implicated in "political questions" that made life "sour" for the practitioner.35 In iheDarstellung, Wolf offered the hope that the empirical precision and the systematic coherence of the new discipline would to a degree meet the standards of the "exact sciences."36 However, what gave the discipline normative authority as a "moral" science, and indeed what made it unique in that regard, was the empathic, emulative interaction with an historical object that Humboldt had found so "therapeutic." In insisting that Greece was the only suitable historical object, Wolf—echoing Humboldt—had to reconcile a radical claim to unique-
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ness with an equally radical claim to universality. The "form" of a culture expressed a pure humanity and hence had universal value to the extent that it fashioned a rich variety of elements into an absolutely unique configuration. One implication, already obvious intii&Darstellung,was that Greek wholeness had to accommodate a seemingly limitless variety of elements, many pointing to its debt to other cultures, but nonetheless had to retain an unconditional autonomy, and hence an absolute purity, as it took shape and matured. 37 The purity of Greek culture also lay in the unique translucence of its forms, which were the artifacts and symbols that gave access to a quintessentially human spirit. It was precisely this quality, of course, that made possible the historical hermeneutic (the densely contextualized grasp of meaning) that had been lacking in the traditional latinity. However, for a self-consciously new discipline that prided itself on having repudiated the rote, narrow-minded pedantry of old style classical scholarship, translucence had ironic implications. At the same time that the traditional preoccupation with imitative mastery of classical eloquence and stylistic elegance was repudiated, the meticulous attention to grammatical constructions and to the internal properties of texts received a new lease on life. It was in the most technical activities (the ones most likely to produce small but solid contributions to original scholarship) that the Hellenist was most human. The unique translucence of classical Greek lay in fusing concrete sensuality with logical abstraction, and hence in embodying the integral unity that made the culture incomparable. Grammatik (the analysis of the technicalities of grammatical construction) became an integral part of the process through which the scholar, in his effort to make the Greek Geist accessible, cultivated himself. At the same timeKritik, or textual criticism, acquired a virtually sacred dignity. It was textual criticism that made the historical artifact as translucent as possible, by scraping off later accretions and reconstructing the original text. Since this effort required a detailed, multifaceted understanding of the text's linguistic and literary properties as well as the historical context in which it had materialized, it became the supremely concentrated instance of the process in which the scholar, in straining all his powers to grasp the culture, emulated its integral harmony.38 Hence the profile of the educated professional as a broad-minded, or "liberal," personality was intimately linked with an ideal of Wissenschaft that defined itself in and through its Hellenism. There was another, closely related sense in which the exclusiveness of Wolf's Hellenism—his insistence that Rome receive attention only insofar as it preserved the Greek legacy, and that the rest of the ancient world be excluded altogether—was dictated by the need for an internal source of professional credibility. If the discipline was to censure modernity without being vulnerable to "political" manipulation, then it needed a new kind of disciplinary self-containment. It would achieve that selfcontainment not by appropriating a particular method, but by defining itself— empirically and ultimately morally—in terms of its historical object. As an inventory of research methods, in fact, Wolf's Darstellung was remarkably
Hellenism in German Classical Studies
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interdisciplinary. The very need to grasp Greek culture as a multifaceted whole, he insisted, required that classical studies draw on the varied fund of scholarly expertise and techniques that it shared with other disciplines. However, the new discipline could be so eclectic in this sense precisely because its historical object—its Hellenism—provided it with fixed and defensible boundaries. If this use of Hellenism marked Wolf's effort to fashion an uncompromising alternative to pedagogy, then it was also a measure of his divergence from Humboldt. When Humboldt imagined a unitary antidote to modern academic specialization, it was on the assumption that Kantian philosophy and classical studies would combine to unify all branches of knowledge under a new anthropology. By 1807, his apotheosis of Greece had become metahistorical; the Greeks' inner Sehnsucht (longing) now seemed to be a "mystery" and explained ultimately as in some sense a spark of the divine.39 In Wolf's historicism, Humboldt's earlier phrasings entered the service of a territorial imperative. Of all the ancient peoples, Wolf observed, only the Greeks and Romans had bequeathed enough artifacts to allow thorough exploration of a national "character"; yet in their case, unlike that of modern peoples, the sum of artifacts was small enough to form a manageable research territory. Wolf moved quite naturally, and perhaps without quite realizing the leap, from this pragmatic argument to a normative Hellenism in which the Greeks, more than any other ancient people, were credited with achieving that "higher genuine intellectual culture" that stood in contrast to the merely "civil polish" of modern civilization.40 Although the discipline recovered what was of universal human value in a particular historical object, the object provided the fixed, defensible boundaries that made the discipline the preserve of specialists. The practice of textual criticism not only constituted a multifaceted entry into an integral culture, but in recovering the genuine artifacts of the culture, despite later accretions, it also determined what lay within the disciplinary borders and what lay outside them. Only the specialist in language (the scholar who had mastered the intricacies of Grammatik) could hope to penetrate those borders. At the same time that it gave specialists a map from the external forms to the inner substance of the Greek spirit, Grammatik confronted outsiders with an impenetrable barrier.41 The turn to history was pivotal in the displacement of pedagogy by Hellenism, but it was nor a turn away from "nature." Wolf and his disciples were drawing on a genetic and vitalistic tradition in natural science that had been shaping a new historical orientation in German thought since the mideighteenth century. From that angle, in fact, the new Hellenism marks one of the lines of continuity between the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century historicism.42 Its enthusiasts were convinced that their historical image of Greece exhibited the human dimensions of nature in purest form, and in a sense they were simply transferring to a particular culture the fascination with natural entelechy that pedagogy had brought to childhood. If the pedagogue penetrated beneath the social surface to an inner reality, the classicist claimed an analogous form of privileged insight; the new surfaces, made translucent by histori-
38
The Nineteenth Century
cal expertise, were the language, its texts, and the other surviving artifacts. Just as the development of language skills in childhood had been the pedagogue's model for natural maturation, so now the historical evolution of a language marked the natural "biography" of a "nation," the entelechy in which an essential spirit initially manifested itself and gradually matured. Wolf's Darstellung also left no doubt that, in the translation of normative standards into a public voice, classical studies would not assume the role to which the enthusiasts of pedagogy had aspired. The new Wissenschaft would not enter a partnership with the state in defining the priorities for a progressive society; it would stand at a distance, using invidious comparisons with the Greek achievement to censure a modernity of which the bureaucratic state, for all its welcomed protection, was an integral part. As the angle onto nature shifted, so did the use of nature as a reproach to the existing society, culture, and polity. In projecting a more rational future, one might argue, pedagogy underestimated the degree to which society, by virtue of its entrenched inequalities and the values that legitimated them, was and would remain a product of its history. In Wolf's alternative vision, for all the concern with organic evolution, the image of Greece was hardening into a sacred icon and corruption seemed inherent in the very process of historical change since antiquity. In the Darstellung, Wolf limited the discipline's therapeutic mission to providing unimpeachable standards in the face of the rage for novelty in contemporary art and the obsession with "popularity" in an increasingly commercialized literary culture.43 The "political" desiderata that had corrupted pedagogy were now beyond the pale, although their very extrusion from the discipline's public mission rested on an eminently political (and ideological) distinction. Ill
The Verein deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner, one of the earliest professional associations for academic scholars and teachers, was launched in 1838.44 The association was the creation of classicists, many of them Wolf's students; however, by then the discipline that Wolf had mapped (for all its success in establishing itself in the universities' revitalized philosophy faculties, and in entrenching itself at the strategic center of the new Gymnasium) was entering the state of crisis that would eventually dislodge it. As a way of escaping the corporate ghetto of traditional learning, Wolf's Hellenism was no less modern than utilitarian rationalism. However, it promised to exempt scholarship from political appropriation by a reform-minded but overbearing state apparatus, and therein lay its unique appeal to a new generation of schoolmen. The paradoxes of the new Hellenism were arguably a creative ideological response—the kind of illusion that welds a nascent group into a dynamic solidarity and promises to ground its claim to an independent and credible public voice. However, under the changing circumstances of the 1830s and 1840s, the layers of paradox threatened to become a rhetorical smokescreen for
Hellenism in German Classical Studies
39
the contradictions between self-image and reality. The assertion of paradox was becoming an anxious-—not to say panicky—incantation, mixing defensiveness with smug superiority in the face of the oncoming "barbarism." The crisis was in part self-generated and, in fact, was to some degree a byproduct of success. Inevitably the marriage of historical and philological research that had revitalized classical studies spread to the study of other historical cultures, both ancient and more recent. In 1841 Professor Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, speaking as president of the philological Verein, acknowledged these new fields as "colonies" that "wisely maintain communication with the mother country";45 however, the colonials were already beginning to tire of such patronizing gestures. Ironically Wolf himself had ended his Darstellung in 1807 with a warning against "the endless striving to accumulate detail as detail in the entire historical material of antiquity, and especially in the languages . . . without having an inkling of the spirit that molds all detail into a harmonious whole."46 His alarm proved well founded; increasingly the discipline's very precocity as a modern research community (its massive production of highly specialized monographs) seemed to belie its holistic vision. In 1850 August Boeckh, the preeminent classicist at Berlin, observed that "the celebrated principle of the division of labor" had become as essential to scholarly progress in philology as it was in natural science. However, he also acknowledged a conflict between the resulting Mikrologie, which was exhibited in a veritable "flood" of specialized monographs, and the humanist's aspiration to illuminate detail with "an idea of the whole within himself."47 The irony is that Boeckh's own career was symptomatic of the problem. As Wolf's most eminent student, Boeckh presided over the philological seminar and a seminar for aspiring schoolmen at Berlin. Under his guidance, Prussia's new university became one of the great production centers for textual editions and philological monographs. The grand synthesis (the work on the many-sided unity of the Hellenic world that had been on Boeckh's agenda since his youth) never materialized. In addition to inviting skepticism about its scholarly mission, the discipline also raised doubts about its privileged place in the new educational system. The professional philologists who staffed the Gymnasien were acting on their commitment to Bildung by drilling their pupils in vocabulary and the technicalities of grammar; indeed, despite their preference for Greece over Rome, Latin proved as suitable a medium as Greek. The drilling may have been effective in inculcating bureaucratic discipline; however, disgruntled educators and parents nonetheless wondered why boys destined for careers in the modern world of business, government, and the professions had to endure a lengthy rite of passage in rote antiquarianism, which was reminiscent of the pedantry of the old dispensation.48 Mounting skepticism on the part of the lay public did not provoke an internal confrontation with the realities of professional research, or with the discipline's function within a larger bureaucratic structure. Instead, creative illusion hardened into stubborn orthodoxy; whether the objection was to the extreme specialization that typified the discipline's published research, or to the new
40
The Nineteenth Century
regimen for Gymnasium pupils, it was answered with assertions of faith in the efficacy of the individual personality's empathic encounter with a language and its texts. The acknowledged danger lay not in internal decay or ossification, but in the direction of change in the surrounding society and polity. This was to sound the antimodernism inherent in the new Hellenism, but with a shift in focus that marked the discipline's progress from the outer edge to the strategic center of an academic and official elite.49 In its original formulation, Hellenism articulated schoolmen's deep-seated ambivalence toward the bureaucracy. The state offered a barrier against an ignorant, tradition-bound laity and a secure platform from which to censure modern corruption; however, as a specialized apparatus of power, always threatening to truncate the personality and to turn Wissenschaft into an ideological instrument, it was deeply implicated in the corruptive process. As the profession was integrated into the bureaucratic establishment, there was a marked tendency to celebrate theKulturstaat as fait accompli. It became another article of faith that the state, precisely because it was now suffused with humanistic Kultur, accepted the exemption of pure Wissenschaft from state tutelage as axiomatic. Usually left unsaid, of course, was that Wissenschaft could be exempted because, for all its principled opposition to utilitarian priorities, it was deeply engaged in the grooming of state personnel, and because it defined itself increasingly as an antidote to the kinds of change that threatened to produce social instability and political radicalism.50 This is not to locate the typical classicist at the reactionary end of an emerging spectrum of political ideologies. What is striking about the discipline's spokesmen in the decades surrounding the Revolution of 1848, in fact, is their commitment to a moderate liberal nationalism and their agility in harnessing Hellenism to its needs. Scholars and schoolmen who apotheosized a pagan culture (albeit one, they insisted, with deep affinities with the essence of Christianity), and whose discipline had only recently been emancipated from theology, had special reason to see a revival of repressive obscurantism in the new alliance of throne and altar that conservative Protestantism sought, and to make the strict separation of church and state a hallmark of the Kulturstaat. In response to critics calling for a thorough germanization of academic culture, they claimed a vital role for Hellenism in the development of a national selfconsciousness by appealing to a unique affinity between ancient Greeks and modern Germans. Similarly, the classical polis testified to the wisdom of middle-class constitutionalism, whether as the progenitor of its ideal of civic and intellectual freedom or as a warning of the inevitable dialectic between mobocracy and despotism. The state may have been in need of constitutional reform, but it was no longer the main target of Hellenists' attacks on the fragmenting impact of modern specialization. Similarly, the threat from the uninitiated was no longer embodied in tradition-bound local communities. As Germany entered the industrial age, corruption took the form of rampant commercialization and an accompanying preoccupation with the technological applications of natural science. It was utilitarianism and materialism in this guise that the seventy-five-
Hellenism in German Classical Studies
41
year-old Friedrich Jacobs condemned in 1840, in his keynote address before the third annual convocation of the philological association. The same rationalist pedagogy that he had earlier paired with the despotism of the state "machine" was now charged with opening the door to industrial materialism and an accompanying Neomanie, parading as "enlightenment." It was these "demonic creatures," "bastards of the Zeitgeist," that threatened to engulf pure Wissenschaft.51 In the Bildungslibemlismus (educational liberalism) that Jacobs and other classicists articulated in the 1840s, a vision of liberal and national progress stood in tension with a profound cultural alienation. The ideal of Bildung entailed rejection not only of the ascendancy of wealth as a new basis for status and power, but also of the very cultural ethos of a market society. To celebrate the pursuit of scholarship for its own sake was to deny legitimacy, more or less explicitly, to the kind of competitive achievement that such a society recognized. This censure of "the world" went in close association with classicists' self-image as a kind of ascetic priesthood, and the very paltriness of their incomes bore witness to their purity of motive in the face of the reigning corruption. At the same time, the commitment to liberal progress coexisted uncomfortably with disdain for an emerging political arena of interests and opinions. To the extent that academic freedom was equated with a "pure" Wissenschaft—hovering above mere "political" opinion or, more accurately, ideology—it seemed incompatible with the active exercise of civic freedom. In theory, the normative tradition embodied in Hellenism would resolve the tension between liberal optimism and cultural pessimism, by insulating true progress from corruptive change; however, in fact, it threatened to make the discipline solipsistic, to turn the aspiration to provide authoritative guidance into self-congratulatory hauteur. The liberal proclivities of Wolf's successors underscored the irony of the territorial imperative that had shaped his Hellenism. One of the first highly specialized modern professions was assuming the posture of a modern clerisy—a high priesthood of Kultur guarding a pure realm of spiritual values against myriad forms of modern corruption.52 In its insistence on purity and superior detachment, it ran the risk of becoming so contemptuous of, and so irrelevant to, a changing society, culture, and polity as to deprive itself of the credible public voice with which Hellenism had promised to endow it.
Notes 1. Karl-Ernst Jeismann, Das preussische Gymnasium in Stoat und Gesellschaft: Die Entstehung des Gymnasiums als Schule des Staates und der Gebildeten, 1787-1817 (Stuttgart, 1974). R. Steven Turner, "The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818-1848—Causes and Context," in Russell McCormmach, ed., Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1971): 137-82, is particularly enlightening on the importance of classical studies as a model for the internal structure of a "discipline-community"
42
The Nineteenth Century
and its relationship to the state. See also Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700-1914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1980), pp. 122-32, 151-89. 2. Anthony Graf ton, "Polyhistor into Philolog: Notes on the Transformation of German Classical Scholarship, 1780-1850," History of Universities 3 (1983): 159-92. 3. This lineage is particularly evident in Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer: Philanthropinismus-Humanismus, ed. Werner Hillebrecht (Weinheim, 1968). 4. Wilhem Korte, Leben und Studien Friedrich August Wolfs, des Philologen, 2 vols. (Essen, 1833), and J. F. J. Arnoldt,Fr. Aug. WolfinseinemVerhaltnissezumSchulwesenund zur Pddagogik (Brunswick, 1861-62). See also Manfred Fuhrmann, "Friedrich August Wolf," Deutsche VierteljahrsschriftfurLiteraturwissenschaftundGeistesgeschichte 33, no. 2 (1959): 187-236; A. Horstmann, "Die 'Klassische Philologie' zwischen Humanismus und Historismus: Friedrich August Wolf und die Begrundung der modernen Altertumswissenschaft,"Benditez«r Wissenschaftsgeschichte 1 (1978): 5170. For a judicious reassessment of Wolf's originality, see Anthony Grafton, "Prolegomena to Friedrich August Wolf," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981): 109-29; see also the Introduction to F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer (1795), trans, and ed. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and James E. G. Zetzel (Princeton, N.J., 1985). 5. Humboldt to Wolf, in Wilhelm von Humboldt, Briefe, ed. Wilhelm Rossler (Munich, 1952), pp. 74-75, 83-85; Wolf's "Entwurf einer Selbstbiographie," in Friedrich August Wolf: Bin Leben in Briefen, ed. Siegfried Reiter, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1935), 2: 337-40. On the founding of the seminar, see in the same work, 1: 52-57, 61-63. 6. Friedrich August Wolf, Darstellung der Alterthumswissenchaft, ed. S. F. W. Hoffmann (Leipzig, 1839); and idem, Encyclopddie der Philologie: Nach dessen Vorlesungen im Winterhalbjahre von 1798-99 (Leipzig, 1831). See also Lenore O'Boyle, "Klassische Bildung und soziale Struktur in Deutschland zwischen 1800 und 1848," HistorischeZeitschrift 27 (1968): 584-608. 7. Friedrich Ast, Grundriss der Philologie (Landshut, 1808). 8. Friedrich Jacobs, "Zweck einer gelehrten Schule," in Dokumente des Neuhumanismus I, 2nd ed., ed. R. Joerden (Weinheim, 1962), pp. 32-45, originally in Friedrich Jacobs, Vermischte Schriften, 9 vols. (Gotha, 1823-62), 1: 108ff. For biographical detail see "Nachrichten aus meinem Leben," in Jacobs, Schriften, 1 (1840): 1-298. 9. Too often professional ideology is explained tout court as a rationale for group self-interest, without attention to the intellectual substance that gives the rationale its cultural and its historical significance. See, for example, the analysis of Standesideologie in Detlef K. Miiller, Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem: Aspekte zum Strukturwandel des Schulwesens im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1977). 10. Lenore O'Boyle, "The Middle Class in Western Europe, 1815-1848," American Historical Review 71 (1966): 826-45, and R. Steven Turner, "The 'Bildungsbiirgertum' and the Learned Professions in Prussia, 1770-1830: The Origins of a Class," Histoiresociale—Social History 13, no. 25 (1980): 105-35. See also Dietrich Riischemeyer, "Professionalisierung: Theoretische Probleme fiir die vergleichende Geschichtsforschung," GeschichteundGesellschaft6, no. 3 (1980): 311-25; Charles E. McClelland, "Zur Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe in Deutschland," in Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka (Stuttgart, 1985), 1: 233-47. 11. See especially, Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, Eng., 1983).
Hellenism in German Classical Studies
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12. Wilhelm von Humboldt, "Geschichte des Verfalls und Unterganges der Griechischen Freistaaten," in W. von Humboldt, Werke, 2 vols., ed. Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel (Stuttgart, 1960-61), 2: 73-91. See also Humboldt, "Uber das Studium des Altertums, und des Griechischen insbesondere," in Humboldt, Werke, pp: 1-24; idem, "Latium und Hellas, oder Betrachtungen iiber das classische Altertum," in Humboldt, Werke, 2: 25-64; idem, "Uber den Charakter der Griechen, die idealische und historische Ansicht desselben," in Humboldt, Werke, 2: 65-72. 13. Hans Gerth, Biirgerliche Intelligenz um 1800: Zur Soziologie des deutschen Friihliberalismus, ed. Ulrich Herrmann (Gottingen, 1976); Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660-1815 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958). 14. Roy Pascal contrasted this antimodernism with the thought of the Scottish Enlightenment in his " 'Bildung' and the Division of Labor," in German Studies Presented to Walter Horace Bruford (London, 1962), pp. 14-28. 15. Herwig Blankertz, ed., Bildung und Brauchbarkeit: Texte von Joachim Heinrich Campe und Peter Villaume zur Theorie utilitdrer Erziehung (Brunswick, 1965). The "philanthropists" were continuing the educational reform movement that Johann Bernhard Basedow had launched with his famous experimental school, the Philanthropinum, in Dessau in 1774. 16. See, for example, Blankertz, Bildung und Brauchbarkeit, pp. 45-47, 53-57, 85106. 17. Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen, ed. Wolfhart Henckmann (Munich, 1967), pp. 89-96. 18. Ibid.,p. 93; Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, ed. J. W. Burrow (Cambridge, Eng., 1969), pp. 34-35. 19. Walter H. Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: "Bildung" from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (New York, 1975), pp. 1-18; Clemens Menze, Die Bildungsreform Wilhelm vonHumboldts (Hanover, 1975), pp. 18-58. 20. It was this image of integral wholeness that made Humboldt's conception of classical studies different from that of his mentor Christian Gottlob Heyne; see Clemens Menze, Wilhelm von Humboldt und Christian Gottlob Heyne (Ratingen, 1966). 21. Humboldt, "Uber das Studium des Altertums," especially pp. 7-8; idem, "Theorie der Bildung des Menschen"; both in Humboldt, Werke. 22. Wilhelm Rossler, Die Entstehung des modernen Erziehungswesens in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1961); Fritz K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), especially pp. 86-127; Ralph Fiedler, Die klassische deutsche Bildungsidee: Ihre soziologischen Wurzeln und pddagogischen Folgen (Weinheim, ca. 1972); Charles E. McClelland, "The Aristocracy and University Reform in Eighteenth-Century Germany," in Schooling and Society-.Studies in the History of Education, ed. Lawrence Stone (Baltimore, Md., 1976), pp. 146-73. 23. See especially, Wolf's complaints about amateurishness in a letter to Heyne, June 12, 1784, in Reiter, Wolf: Bin Leben in Briefen, 1: 27-28, and Wolf's reports on seminar members in the same work, pp. 70-73, 75-76. 24. See, for example, Friedrich Gedike, Gesammlete Schulschriften, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1789-95); Phillip Julius Lieberkuhn, KleineSchriften (Zullichau, 1791). The continuity in schoolmen's expectations about state-centralized reform is emphasized in Jeismann, Das preussische Gymnasium. 25. Humboldt, Limits, p. 27.
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The Nineteenth Century
26. See especially Humboldt, "Theorie der Bildung des Menschen"; idem, Limits, pp. 16-21. 27. Arnoldt, Wolf, pp. 88-89 and 265ff. (Suppl. 14); Reiter, Wolf: Bin Leben in Briefen, 1:9,57, 70-76. 28. Jacobs, "Zweck einer gelehrten Schule," pp. 35, 40-45; Jacobs' address before the Verein deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner (1840), in Jacobs, Schriften, 8: 8-34, and especially 30-33. 29. On "communities of the competent" and their claim to cultural authority, see especially Thomas L. Haskell, "Professionalism versus Capitalism: R. H. Tawney, Emile Durkheim, and C. S. Pierce on the Disinterestedness of Professional Communities" in The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory ed. T. L. Haskell (Bloomington, Ind., 1984), pp. 180-225. 30. Friedrich Gedike's Berlin "letters," published anonymously in theBerlinische Monatsschrift, 2 (1783): 542-48; ibid., 3 (1784): 463-69. See also Hans Erich Bodeker, "Prozesse und Strukturen politischer Bewusstseinsbildung der deutschen Aufklarung," in Aufkldrung alsPolitisierung—Politisierungals Aufkldrung ed. Hans Erich Bodeker and Ulrich Herrmann (Hamburg, 1987), pp. 10-31. 31. See especially Jeismann, Das preussische Gymnasium, pp. 132-48. On the Wollner era see Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton, N.J., 1966), pp. 142-53. 32. Ernst Christian Trapp, Versuch einer Pddagogik, ed. Ulrich Herrmann (1780: Paderborn, 1977). 33. See, for example, Gedike, Schulschriften; Lieberkuhn, Schriften. See also Miiller, Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem, p. 98ff.; Hans Georg Herrlitz, Studium als Standesprivileg: Die Entstehung des Maturitatsproblems im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1973), pp. 98-108. 34. See, for example, Trapp, Versuch, especially pp. 34-43. 35. Wilhelm Korte, ed., Friedrich August Wolf tiber Erziehung, Schule, Universitdt ("Consilia Scholastica") (Quedlinburg, 1835), pp. 6-7, 18. See also Fuhrmann, "Wolf," pp. 202-4. 36. Wolf, Darstellung, pp. 24-25; idem, Encyclopddie, p. 13. 37. See, in addition to the Darstellung, Ast, Grundriss, pp. 6-13. 38. Wolf, Darstellung, pp. 57-58. See also Jacobs, "Zweck einer gelehrten Schule," pp. 41-42. 39. Humboldt, "Geschichte des Verfalls," especially pp. 119-22. 40. Wolf, Darstellung, especially pp. 12-16. See also Wolf, Encyclopddie, pp. 8—9, 24-31; Ast, Grundriss, pp. 23-24. 41. Wolf, Darstellung, pp. 22-25, 50-75. 42. Hans Erich Bodeker, George G. Iggers, Jonathan B. Knudsen, and Peter H. Reill, eds., Aufkldrung und Geschichte: Studien zur deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1986). 43. Wolf, Darstellung, pp. 18-19, 58-62, 72-73. 44. R. Hinton Thomas, Liberalism, Nationalism and the German Intellectuals, (18221847): An Analysis of the Academic and Scientific Conferences of the Period (Cambridge, Eng., 1951), pp. 69-80; and Verein deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner, Verhandlungen des Vereins deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner: Erster Lustrum (1838-1842). (Nuremberg, n.d.). 45. See the Protokoll of the fourth Versammlung, p. 42, in Verhandlungen. 46. Wolf, Darstellung, pp. 74-75. 47. August Boeckh, "Rede zur Eroffnung der eilften Versammlung Deutscher
Hellenism in German Classical Studies
45
Philologen, Schulmanner und Orientalisten, gehalten zu Berlin am 30. September 1850," in Roeckh,Gesammeltekleine Schriften, 1 vols. (Leipzig, 1858-74), 2: 190-91. Boeckh departed from Wolf in refusing to define Philologie exclusively in terms of classical antiquity, and in emphasizing the underlying unity of all Wissenschaften. See hisEncyklopddie undMethodologiederphilologischen Wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1877), especially pp. 4-34. 48. The new routinism is well described in Menze, Bildungsreform, pp. 384-404. 49. See especially Welcker's address, Protokoll of the fourth Versammlung (1841), pp. 42-52; Rector Moser's address, Protofa?//of the fifth Versammlung (1842), pp. 8-14; the addresses in Boeckh, Schriften, vol. 2. 50. Ulrich K. Preuss, "Bildung und Burokratie: Sozialhistorische Bedingungen in der ersten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts," Der Staat 14 (1975): 371-96. 51. Jacobs, Schriften, 8: 8—11. For an example of Jacobs's liberalism, see his "Republicanismus der Zeit," in Jacobs, Schriften, 1: 405-24. 52. On the concept of a modern "clerisy," see especially Ben Knights, The Idea of the Clerisy in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Eng., 1978), especially pp. 178-213. See also the analysis of "mandarin" ideology in Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins.
Public Office or Free Profession? German Attorneys in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries HANNES SIEGRIST
The Lawyer Code of 1878 marks a caesura in the history of German attorneys between a period of a "professionalization from above" by the state and the modern era of the so-called open bar. Before the Rechtsanwedtsordnung (Lawyer Code, RAO), individual German states treated those who represented clients in court and provided legal assistance and advice as a kind of public office. After 1878, the bar exhibited more clearly the characteristics of an autonomous profession. The Lawyer Code of 1878, which was enacted as part of an overall process of legal unification several years after the founding of the German Reich, maintained essential criteria of former definitions of the profession such as university training and state examinations. However, it abolished limits on the numbers of members, introduced greater freedom of practice, diminished control by the state, and strengthened self-government and autonomous selfdiscipline, which the lawyer chambers or bar associations (Anwaltskammern) were shortly to obtain. The code was a compromise among professionalizing tendencies, liberal concepts of deregulation, and traditional notions maintained by the adherents of a strong state.' The central issue in this essay is the history of professionalization of the bar. The degree of control exercised by attorneys in areas that were especially important to their occupational and social status is the key criterion for assessing the extent to which they achieved professionalization in fact. Particularly important areas include the following: 1. Expert knowledge and the organization of its production and reproduction. 2. The socialization and institutional channels of admission to the profession. Translated from the German by James Polk and edited by Konrad H. Jarausch. 46
Public Office or Free Profession?
47
3. The relationship between attorney and client. 4. Market regulation, the division of labor, and the question of economic opportunity. 5. The status and position of attorneys in a system of power and prestige. 6. The role of lawyers as mediators between the state and society.2 Whereas most of the Anglo-Saxon theories of professions tend to ignore the role of the state, it is impossible to understand the history of the German legal profession without taking into account the influence of a strong state on the bar. Although this impact was weakening in the late nineteenth century, more conventional mentalities and structural traditions survived so that government served as a positive or negative point of reference. Why did the German bar gain more control over the crucial dimension of its work in the long run? This essay proposes the thesis that on the one hand the "state" somewhat changed its attitude toward society and professional functions, while on the other hand, the Lawyer Code of 1878 accepted retrospectively common practices and informal actions that had spontaneously developed in the profession, in markets, and society. The complex history of the German legal occupation cannot be regarded as a unilinear process toward professionalization. There are good reasons to apply the Anglo-Saxon model of the professions. However, the German process of developing a professional bar has peculiarities that do not easily fit the prevalent model of professionalization. The differences are mainly caused by political structures and institutional traditions. Hence this analysis cannot treat the profession, its institutions, norms, and organizations narrowly as classic bar histories do, but it has to merge them into the general development of state and society.3 I
The consolidation of the centralized bureaucratic state in the late eighteenth century completely changed the form of the legal profession. The bar was decisively shaped by policies advocating the systematization of administration, law, judicial organization, and educational affairs. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, bureaucratization encountered a historically younger, quickly expanding challenge that advocated a self-regulating society based on the principle of free enterprise, the social contract, and citizen participation within a constitutional and parliamentary order.4 These conflicting processes created entirely new roles, groups, and classes within the power structure, the system of social and cultural inequality, and the division of labor. Forms of relations and communication were also subjected to change, and new patterns of conflict, cooperation, and conduct appeared. Attorneys became involved in disputes over power and influence. They found themselves immersed in negotiations over the control of scarce resources, and fundamental social values such as safeguarding civil rights and protecting the property, honor, and integrity of the individual.
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The Nineteenth Century
These contentious social changes posed the problem of the exact definition of the attorney's profession and function. In the early 1780s, the Prussian state declared that attorneys with the title of "assistant counsel" were employed as civil servants. The revised bar regulation of 1793 repealed the extreme experiments of 1781, which had been unique among modern states.5 In keeping with the general court regulations, the Prussian attorney was defined as "commissar of justice" and remained the model of a tightly state-controlled bar. Lawyers were state officials inasmuch as the educational prerequisites and admission requirements of attorneys were as regimented as the requirements of higher civil servants. Attorneys were regarded as "real servants of the state" and by virtue of their status as "official subordinates of the courts." Nevertheless, they received no salary and were not entitled to any kind of pension, but rather were required to support themselves independently by virtue of an office that was exalted as a privilege. This regulation was a distinctively continental variant of the bar within a bureaucratic authoritarian state, with similar forms to be found in the Habsburg Empire or in Bavaria. Smaller German states were slow to adapt to this pattern.6 The chief interest of the state in controlling the bar concerned the role of attorneys in legal proceedings before the courts. Many states found it difficult to reconcile the conception of attorneys as "assistants to the courts" with their functions as representatives of private parties. Lawyers were repeatedly urged to consider themselves primarily as servants of justice and to decline the representation of clients with "improper" interests. Since the late eighteenth century, German states had attempted to curtail the participation of attorneys in inquiry and trial proceedings by extending the functions and the discretion of judges. The bureaucracy did not attempt, however, to eliminate attorneys altogether but rather insisted that they should not interfere too much with the administration of justice. While officials complained of the excessive power of lawyers in legal proceedings, attorneys deplored their vulnerability before an omnipotent judge. In 1827, a Bavarian reform commission consisting of some attorneys appointed by the government, criticized the lack of independence of attorneys, whose legal expertise was necessary for ensuring the "free and honest appreciation of the law." If unfettered defense, in text and utterance, was in fact the "first and most hallowed guarantee of civil freedom," then it should be left "exclusively to the insight and conscience of the attorney . . . to decide upon the type of defense ensured by law, if he is to preserve his client's trust." Every curtailment of legal procedure would subject defendants to the arbitrary decree of officials and consequently place might above right. 7 By 1830, some German attorneys demanded a supervisory role in questions of legal knowledge and jurisprudence, claiming that they would employ it toward clients according to altruistic principles. In voicing their demands for an oral and public process of litigation, German attorneys were essentially striving for three things: the recognition of their academic learning and greater social prestige, a better position in relation to their professional rivals such as judges and government lawyers, and greater
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public appreciation of their selfless dedication to the service of justice. The last aspect was particularly important since state officials had publicly denounced attorneys as self-seeking meddlers who were responsible for the bad condition of the judicial system. In their struggle for higher professional status, attorneys were in need of the support of the general public. Their strategy of demanding public (oral) instead of secret (written) legal proceedings was partly professional, since legal knowledge selflessly employed was allegedly exempt from arbitrariness of state decree. At the same time, it was part of a general strategy of the bourgeois middle class that was struggling for emancipation from the guardianship of the state. When litigation actually became public and transparent through the introduction of oral proceedings, government bureaucrats believed even more that the attorneys played a cardinal role for the general welfare. "Attorneys appear everywhere," in 1853 the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior stated to the Ministry of Justice, "as experts in legal matters who, by virtue of their knowledge of laws and regulations, serve particular defendants in word and deed under the authority of the state." Therefore, attorneys could propagate "correct, but also false opinions and notions." Lawyers were capable of motivating "respect for the law and the institutions of the state," but "also of inciting mistrust and dissatisfaction." It was in their power to "strengthen or undermine the foundations of civil order."8 This polemic overstatement reflects the fear of losing control over the attorneys and the application of legal knowledge. The state reluctantly granted the attorneys a limited margin for the free interpretation of legal terms, but remained nevertheless ready to intervene in cases of "wrong views." Lawyers were not masters of legal knowledge and jurisprudence. Through its policy of increasingly engaging attorneys in intermediate and higher courts, the state managed at least to keep laymen at a safe distance. Laymen fit ever less into the framework of dogmatic, systematized jurisprudence and jurisdiction. Thus attorneys owed their patron relation to clients to this tendency of the enlightened bureaucratic state. This very point illustrates how ambivalent the relation between the bar and bureaucracy actually was. Some German states had already begun to require the engagement of attorneys during the ancien regime, and wherever this was not the case the state eventually institutionalized compulsory representation by an attorney (in Prussia comparatively late in 1846). In formal legal terms, lawyers thereby became the patrons of their clients. Though attorneys profited from the rationalization of law and gained formal supremacy over a client, they still suffered from the demands of legal bureaucrats, judges, and law professors for a dominant role in defining and interpreting jurisprudence. This fact has been decisive in the professionalization of German lawyers, more so than in England, France, or the United States. German attorneys were rarely employed as university professors; in many areas, holding a chair in law was incompatible with bar membership. In the first half of the century, only some attorneys residing in liberal states such as Baden or Wurttemberg gained recognition as legal journalists or commentators. The
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The Nineteenth Century
active participation of attorneys in the process of forming civil law was looked upon by representatives of state authority as unlawful: In 1844, Prince Metternich polemicized in a letter that attorneys were much too dominated by concrete legal cases and by the interests of their clients. In contrast, judges and scholars versed in jurisprudence were committed to the general principles of law and understood the common good of society.9 Extending down to the level of district judges, doubts emerged as to whether the motives of attorneys really were altruistic, calling their very professional status into question, in spite of their scholarly background, examination record, and superiority over clients. A certain ambiguity seems therefore to be inherent in the concept of professionalization. The state-initiated professionalization toward the professional group as an object endowed an occupation with the outward trappings of a profession. However, lawyers only marginally fulfilled the requirement of having control of and access to legal knowledge. By systematizing the study of law, the state succeeded in eliminating the attorneys' earlier influence on the socialization of the subsequent generation of lawyers. In eighteenth-century Prussia and later in the Rhineland, young lawyers received their practical training in part under the auspices of practicing attorneys. Thereafter, the state continually expanded its new model ofReferendariat while the older form of law apprenticeship vanished altogether and attorneys were eliminated from the legal examinations. The bureaucracy finally extended its supervision over the entire curriculum by repressing even the strong influence exerted by university professors and turning testing into civil service examinations. It is typical for German professionalization that attorneys were banished from a position of scholarly supervision and that the entire process of acquiring legal knowledge fell entirely under bureaucratic control.10 Rudolf Gneist argued that integrated legal education meant "something more than mere training," because it "ennobled the mind and character through the rich means of humanistic scholarship." The ethical self-discipline instilled by such "liberal education" was vastly superior to the "jungle relations" of open competition in the United States.11 It was the prerogative of the state, the minister of justice, the prince, or the king to appoint attorneys. For that reason, members of the Bavarian bar were entitled "royal attorneys." Upon admission, candidates were tested not only in erudition and prior examinations, but also in ethical integrity and political reliability. Such preventive measures were complemented by an oath of office and the subsequent supervision of attorneys by the courts. God, the king, duty, wisdom, and conscience—in that order—were the authorities to which the attorney swore to adhere. By conferring titles and offices, the state was the source of social and economic capital, governing an attorney's access to property and income. Occasionally lawyers pressed for more control over their livelihood and social prestige because they knew that their prosperity and success were, in spite of all state guarantees, actually dependent on their social position in the local community. They sometimes complained that through the appointment system the state hindered attorneys in using personal, familial, or local prestige simply
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because an attorney was often put into a position in an area where he was unknown or where he was not respected as a member of the middle classes by reasons of background. The state governed the economic return by officially limiting the number of attorneys and by subsequently controlling their income. Setting fees was designed to thwart any attempts to engage in questionable transactions for selfish financial interests. Indemnity due to court costs was a fixed tariff. In disputes about the costs of an attorney's work, the judges decided the level of the fee. Hence attorneys sometimes lamented that they were handicapped in comparison with other occupations, but in fact lawyer income varied according to locality, experience, and prestige. Rural attorneys frequently earned less than their urban counterparts and the income of younger attorneys was less than that of established colleagues. Compared to judicial salaries, which were often substantially lower, attorneys' earnings seemed adequate. Thus it was not, as a rule, economic distress that prompted their discontent. A more important reason for the latent frustration among attorneys was the judicial control of disciplinary proceedings. Since judges were superior in the official hierarchy, these two groups of lawyers were often caught in a strained rivalry. As a result of the institutionalized nature of the careers of civil servants, there was virtually no exchange between the two sectors of the legal labor market, which might have created solidarity between the two legal professions in the larger German states. The broadly based system of legal education was followed up by narrowly defined offices and careers. Only in smaller states did some of the older patterns persist: In the principalities of Lippe-Detmold and Waldeck, part of the civil service had been previously composed of attorneys, which was also the case in the Hanseatic cities where attorneys enjoyed high social esteem. In this instance, bar membership was also considered a prerequisite for obtaining an office as a civil servant or judge.12 Ultimately, political constraints hindered attorneys' attempts to increase their social prestige. As early as 1808, the Prussian reformer Baron vom Stein demanded that political representation should be granted solely on the basis of property. Each social rank was instructed to represent itself in order to keep "assemblies free of attorneys, pamphleteers and criers" who were supposedly not only ignorant of real concerns but also willing to sacrifice them for reasons of "conceit and addiction to novelty."13 Through a property census or other suffrage restrictions, the larger German states hindered political participation in semiparliamentary organs and in boards of local self-administration. Prussian attorneys were exempt from certain taxes, but consequently also excluded from some political rights.14 The situation was again different in the Hanseatic towns, where erudite attorneys, traditionally members of the most prominent families, wielded considerable political influence. In the corporate states of Saxony, Wurttemberg, the Electorate of Hesse, and in Baden, a small group of attorneys began as early as 1830 to attract public attention, and in small principalities they even participated in the estate assemblies as city representatives or property owners. Until about 1870, the history of the German bar was marked in every respect
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The Nineteenth Century
by rigorous state control. Though attorneys functioned as patrons to clients, the bureaucracy embodied a type of superpatron controlling not only lawyers and their clients, but also supervising the reproduction, distribution, and use of legal expertise. In addition, the state forced attorneys into subordinate positions outside the sphere of their professional life. For this reason, liberal concepts and antiestablishment ideologies received more support from attorneys than from any other academic profession. Particularly in South Germany, lawyers became the political allies of democrats, national movements, and entrepreneurs advocating a liberalized society. II
Ever since the introduction of the numerus clausus, which limited the number of privileged attorneys, demands had been raised for its abolition, though seldom publicly. Such requests appeared regularly in the applications of younger lawyers seeking an appointment. Individual citizens and communities that felt underprivileged appealed to the courts and the judicial administration to provide for additional attorneys. These demands were strongly supported by free trade currents in the second half of the nineteenth century. The enforced restrictions limiting the number of attorneys appeared to be incompatible with the principle of liberty in commerce, already adopted in many other areas. Guild protection of attorneys seemed unjustified when simultaneously industrialists and merchants were making history in vigorous pursuit of prosperity.1S Liberal principles called the entire structure of the bar into question. Initially attorneys were hesitant to adopt new national policies. Dominated by nonattorneys, the Conference of German Lawyers first demanded an "open bar" in 1863. At the beginning, attorneys delayed their response, but in 1876 the Conference of German Attorneys explicitly demanded a corporate constitution, the complete homogenization of the bar, and a free and open national market for legally trained persons with the necessary credentials. The controversy culminated during negotiations on the new Lawyer Code (RAO), especially in the organizations, journals, and assemblies of attorneys. For several years, the regulation of the bar occupied the Federal Judiciary Commission and the government until the Reichstag passed the RAO in 1878.16 The RAO established a uniform lawyer code for all of Germany, thereby pacifying widespread nationalist sentiments. It also united all the legal functions such as representation in court, legal assistance, and counsel into the single profession of the attorney. The most important topic of debate concerned the opening of the bar, and all other questions seemed trivial in comparison. The regional and socially heterogeneous bar had fluctuated between freeing access and fixing limits on the number of its members. A free-market policy was finally adopted because it was considered preferable to state control. The Lawyer Code, which became law in 1879, liberalized the market for those with equal qualifications and ended the limits of the number of attorneys, which had
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been often criticized by younger attorneys. As a result of their exclusion from admission, fully trained lawyers in Prussia and Bavaria had often been forced to wait as long as seven years before obtaining an official appointment. Government efforts to restrict free-market principles by favoring areas lacking a sufficient number of attorneys actually failed. Even the Prussian minister of justice no longer considered the question of whether or not to relinquish control of the market an issue. An exact limit on the number of attorneys was extremely difficult to establish because of fluctuating needs, and lawyers themselves frequently performed widely varied tasks other than those immediately related to court procedures.17 While traditionalists insisted that the professional dignity was best upheld by the state and by limits on the number of practitioners, their opponents argued that an open bar limited the arbitrariness of the administration of justice. However, the law accomplished less than liberal politicians and attorneys had hoped, because the policy of "localization" remained intact. Without special permission, legal practice was allowed only within the jurisdiction of one specific court. Localization was upheld by the states in the interest of guaranteeing the functioning of the judicial system. In view of existing compulsory representation by attorneys, their continued presence at court was believed to be essential for a quick and efficient litigation. For attorneys the question of localization was a problem of internal stratification, because new status divisions based on level of jurisdiction emerged between the majority of superior-court (Landgericht) and a growing minority of inferior-court (Amtsgericht) practitioners.18 The result was a chronic struggle for "simultaneous admission" (Simultanzulassung) according to court type. Bar associations were allowed only to express their expert opinion, since the Prussian minister of justice successfully rejected the demand for attorney self-control over admission. However, the regularized procedure established by this debate finally excluded excessive arbitrariness on the part of individual judicial administrations. Discussions over the RAO were less concerned with expert knowledge and education. Essentially the bar was in full agreement with the views of Gneist, who belonged to the professorial vanguard of the open bar. Though many attorneys regarded the question of control over the system of education as a potential problem, they had little success with their demands for increased participation in practical legal training. The Attorneys' Conference of 1876 had suggested a two-year period of practical instruction for candidates under the supervision of a host attorney after the end of law school. Of the three and later four years of practical training finally adopted, only six months were actually spent with an attorney, with the rest devoted to various services at court. The institutional position of attorneys in relation to legal training and knowledge remained somewhat precarious. The journal of the Society of German Attorneys (Deutscher Anwaltverein, DAV), the Juristische Wochenschrift (published since 1872), pursued the professionalizing strategy of assigning a priority to legal knowledge by publishing legal decisions and commentaries on
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The Nineteenth Century
court proceedings. By the beginning of the First World War, individual attorneys had succeeded in becoming highly esteemed specialists in certain spheres such as commercial law. But the actual control over legal knowledge remained in the hands of professors and judges, as judicial servants of the state. The results of the long and intense debate that crystallized in the RAO remained somewhat ambiguous from the perspective of a theory of professionalization. The Lawyer Code preserved the established service monopoly of attorneys at intermediate and higher courts and subjected them to disciplinary controls by the bar association (Anwaltskammer). However, lawyers lost their state privileges, since the majority of established attorneys chose a free market, implying the withdrawal of the state from its role as supervisor. Now the attorney was no longer a holder of public office and the bar was less an appointed position than a free profession. A combination of state, market, and corporate control succeeded the older established system. With few reservations, attorneys took a generally positive view of the RAO until the 1890s, when skeptical views began to gain strength. It appears doubtful whether this combination of state intervention and free market was a strategy for financial gain, as some professionalization theories would expect. Whereas income questions played a secondary role in professional politics in the 1870s, they grew more significant in the 1890s when many younger attorneys joined the bar, thereby increasing the total number of lowerincome members. The free market magnified the existing social and economic heterogeneity of a professional group, which was equal only with respect to education, title, and (in principle, but not in reality) functional roles in court. Especially younger attorneys demanded before and after the First World War the reinstatement of limits on the number of practitioners; this was prevented by the older generation of liberals who still dominated the professional organizations. The question of status superiority of experts over clients played only a marginal role in RAO negotiations, since neither the state nor the attorneys questioned the legal dominance. Debates concerning the patronage relationship between attorney and client heated up during discussions about the admission of attorneys to commercial courts and industrial councils introduced in 1890 and 1904, respectively. Lawyers strongly objected to their exclusion from practicing in these new forums and to the policy of allowing laymen to represent themselves. This exclusion from specific areas of jurisdiction caused both attorneys and judges to lose some influence and service markets.19 Ill
The transition to relatively open competition for legal services in 1878 partly resulted from the ascendancy of liberalism in the early Kaiserreich, but it also stemmed from the changes in the service market and in the needs of people. The traditional scope of attorneys' activities had began to grow when deregulation
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followed, making the state less able to pay for the control by granting certain advantages. An increasing portion of legal work took place outside the courts and therefore beyond state supervision. Which were the most important changes in the service market? The emergence of a modern civil society created new spheres of activity and an enlarged market for legal services. Therefore, during the nineteenth century, the law profession became an attractive occupation. First, the demand for attorneys was guaranteed by the requirement of court representation by an attorney. In Prussia (excluding the Rhineland), Hanover, and Saxony, lawyers had preserved the right to function as notaries and attorneys at the same time, thereby being subject to greater state control. The increase in the demand for legal services was partly due to the efforts of attorneys to convince a growing number of solvent middle-class clients that expert legal advice was indispensable in dealing with complicated laws and ordinances. New needs also brought qualitative and quantitative changes in the demand for attorneys. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the process subsumed under the concept of "defeudalization" was responsible for the surge in demand for attorneys to draw up inventories and contracts and help settle civil suits in court. Many possibilities for earning a good income opened in this enormous field. Losses through simplification of legal procedures at court were compensated by the increases in out-of-court advisory tasks as a result of expanding trade and commerce. Finally attorneys more frequently accepted mandates as legal assistants or counsel in administrative affairs due to the expansion of public administrative bodies on the community and district levels. During the later part of the nineteenth century, industrial progress prompted another surge in the demand for attorneys. A minority of advocates entered new, economically oriented areas of profession. They became free business lawyers or members of boards of directors of railway and steamboat lines, savings institutions, banks, and insurance companies. At the close of the century, attorneys also became involved in medium-sized and large joint-stock companies, in the regulation of mergers, and in the liquidation of bankruptcies. Attorneys constituted a group ready to assume economic leadership when there was a shortage of well-trained managerial and entrepreneurial personnel. The changes in the service market of attorneys were not free of risks and insecurities. In a bureaucratizing society, some of the activities that had earlier been performed by attorneys were now integrated into the jobs of civil servants. For instance, attorneys in smaller states lost virtually all opportunity of holding subsidiary offices as patrimonial or substitute judges because positions in the legal administration were occupied by full-time officials. Sometimes attorneys suffered from a decline in the demand for legal services that was aggravated by general economic crisis. On balance, the new tasks inside and roles outside the courts strengthened the self-confidence of the legal practitioners, making them less dependent on the state. In Germany, the expansion of the commercial market and general freedom of contract were chiefly responsible for the development of private
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The Nineteenth Century
legal experts.20 This was one more reason why attorneys favored an open market. Bureaucratization, which initially provided an incentive for the development of the legal profession, later lost some of its weight. Despite state emphasis on the legal generalist for all court matters, German lawyers also experienced a certain trend toward specialization. In some compulsory markets, such as for alms attorneys, virtually nothing could be earned. But there were also conditional markets in the sense that sometimes Catholics preferred to have a counsel of their own faith, entrepreneurs often liked to deal with someone who belonged to their own circles, and so on. Moreover, areas of practice were somewhat delineated according to age: In cities with numerous attorneys, younger lawyers were more frequently occupied in criminal court proceedings and as poor-law defenders—positions avoided by their older colleagues because they did not offer a sufficient income. More experienced attorneys concentrated on civil court proceedings and were eager to obtain positions as business lawyers, administrators, or trustees. Even though the trend toward specialization was inhibited by the government, it was noticeable in large urban areas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, a considerable number of attorneys remained generalists. Until the end of the nineteenth century, even the development of partnerships, which was potentially conducive to specialization, was continuously thwarted by the state and by adherents of an individualistic professional ethic. By the turn of the century, firms with three to four members plus some secretaries existed only in a few urban areas. IV
By officially limiting the numbers of attorneys, German states had pursued political, moral, social, and economic goals. These curbs were intended to dampen the litigiousness of citizens. They were also designed to guarantee attorneys some kind of financial security and to keep them from venturing onto illegal paths of material gain. States with official limits reduced the number of practitioners during the first decades of the nineteenth century; the ratio of attorneys to inhabitants stagnated or even actually decreased. Bavaria reduced the number of 401 licensed attorneys in 1820 to 359 in 1840, although the general population increased, dropping the per capita ratio to about 1:12,000. In Prussia (excluding the Rhineland), the proportion was similar.21 Until the 1870s, the ratio deteriorated, raising doubts whether citizens enjoyed adequate access to legal counsel and representation. The ratio of "inhabitants to licensed attorneys" can sometimes be misleading . If one considers that a considerable minority of licensed attorneys were, for reasons of sickness, old age, or because of other activities not even practicing, then the proportion appears too great. This group of inactive attorneys accounted on occasion for as much as one third of the total number. 22 However, the ratio appears in an overly negative light if two groups of actual legal representatives are excluded. The so-called shady lawyers or consultants (e.g., court
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clerks, clergymen, former civil servants, innkeepers, and restaurant proprietors with some legal knowledge) provided legal advice in many lower court cases. Moreover, a number of young lawyers who were waiting to be admitted to the bar served in the offices of licensed attorneys as law clerks (Referendare). If one were to add one or two of these clerks to every licensed attorney, then the ratio improves considerably. The proportion of one actual legal counsel for every 6,000 inhabitants seems a valid guess for a large part of the nineteenth century. The government always claimed that an appropriate number of attorneys was adequately distributed. In fact, the rural population was considerably neglected with little access to legal counsel, because attorneys tended to concentrate in urban areas. Courts were situated in cities where commerce, trade, and industry were concentrated. Lawyers were therefore a thoroughly urban group whose proportion in towns often reached a ratio of one to every 1,000 to 2,000 inhabitants. Citizens were quick to complain when the state failed to adjust to the legal needs of rapidly growing urban centers by providing for an adequate number of licensed attorneys. Prussia and Bavaria reflect the general trend. Where there were no official limits on the numbers of attorneys, the supply of legal services was considerably better and their geographic distribution was more equitable. While in the Kingdom of Hanover the ratio was 1:2,000 in 1840, the Hamburg figure was 1:1,500.23 The introduction of the open bar in 1878 dramatically reduced the ratio of licensed attorneys to potential clients throughout the entire German Reich. The proportion was cut in half from 1:11,000 in 1880 to 1:5,600 in 19II. 24 Attorneys used these figures to prove that their situation had worsened and to gather support for their professional demands. Based on the just-mentioned "real" estimate, one must conclude that the actual development was not so unfavorable. It is true that trade unions and associations provided their members with legal advice in simple cases. Furthermore, there really was a massive influx of applicants from the universities into the bar, which led to a rapid increase in the number of licensed attorneys.25 But the wider and diversified market for legal services neutralized its effects. The real problem was that the number of young attorneys, who had not yet built up their individual practice, was growing. Moreover, these beginners were hindered by the concentration of lucrative transactions in the hands of the more experienced, older attorneys. According to a widely accepted thesis, the majority of German lawyers is generally considered staatslastig (dependent on the state).26 This thesis refers to the state control over legal studies and institutions, and occasionally also to the authoritarian conduct of many lawyers. But it also implies that compared with other countries, a considerable number of German lawyers were employed by the state. Even if one considers only the figures of judges (excluding public prosecutors and those in practical training), the ratio of judges to attorneys was 3:1 in mid-nineteenth-century Prussia. As late as 1895, 8,500 judges were more numerous than 7,500 attorneys in the entire German Reich. However, fifteen years later, the proportion was reversed with 10,000 judges to 10,500 attorneys. By the year 1921, there were 12,000 attorneys compared to 10,000
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judges.27 When the majority of law school graduates began to enter the bar as attorneys, the bar was incapable (often not really willing) of regulating this influx. The increase in the number of attorneys meant, on the one hand, that the influence of attorneys in the legal community increased, thereby strengthening their collective self-consciousness. On the other hand, it became increasingly important for the state to control the structure and contents of legal study in order to assure the uniformity of the legal standards. V
Part of traditional state supervision was also the prescription of moral and behavioral guidelines for attorneys. These directives dictated that attorneys engage in lawful and altruistic legal services to clients in the name of justice and the common good. Since many aspects of this ethical code had been part of a long tradition, attorneys were actually continuing standards already established by the state. However, during the nineteenth century lawyers increasingly emphasized the notion of independence not only from the client but also from the state. This concept was derived from the highly refined deontology (science of duties) originally propounded by French attorneys.28 Liberalism brought to the fore the question of who was to control the enforcement of the ethical rules. Until the last third of the nineteenth century, the courts supervised correct attorney behavior during and outside of professional activities. Such judicial control became increasingly onerous to attorneys who began to demand more disciplinary self-government or professional jurisdiction. This goal was finally achieved with the creation of a bar association (Anwaltskammer) within the RAO. The concept of the "lawyer chamber" was copied from the French avocats, but it had three German origins as well. First, bar associations and disciplinary councils were introduced during the Napoleonic empire in the Rhineland. Though weakened after 1815, they had the right to impose at least moral sanctions (reprimands) on members of the profession. They functioned as a model for the Prussian Honor Courts of 1847, in which selected attorneys served together with state representatives as disciplinary sentinels. Second, individual regional bar associations with voluntary membership safeguarded the interests of professional fellowship and maintained an informal, voluntary form of control over honor and dignity of their members since the 1830s. For a long time, attorneys were nevertheless hesitant to promote compulsory associations out of fear that the state might monopolize them for its own interests.29 The real prototype of the bar associations in all of Germany were, thirdly, the bar associations founded around 1860 in Hanover and Baden, which enjoyed more autonomy. Attorneys at the provincial courts were forced to join the bar associations introduced in 1879. Chamber members elected a board of directors, which managed various transactions and mediated in instances of conflict. It also functioned as a court protecting the "honor and dignity of the profession" and
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enforcing penalties ranging from a simple reprimand to complete disqualification. A judicial official presided during investigations, and all appeals went to an honor court (Ehrengerichtshof, EGH) consisting of four judges and three attorneys from the Reichsgericht. In subsequent decades, lawyers sought more autonomy, but demands for a complete state withdrawal were unsuccessful. Attorneys did not pursue this goal more vigorously, because EGH representatives were frequently leading members of the DAV who enjoyed the trust and confidence of fellow members until after 1900. A large number of bar members also did not desire a pure system of professional self-discipline. Finally, the state also did not allow its influence to be eliminated completely. On the contrary, it tried to obtain the loyalty of the association's board of directors by bestowing upon its president medals and titles such as "privy councillor of justice." The composition of the bar association reinforced the independence of attorneys. However, judgments handed down by the Honor Court of Appeal revealed a conservative trend and new habits in practice were accepted with great reluctance. The EGH even tried to standardize notions about behavior by establishing its own concepts of a worthy and respectable professional lifestyle.30 It is doubtful whether attorneys actually followed these conservative middle-class precepts. The judgments of regional chapters show that chambers consisting only of attorneys were quite reserved in imposing disciplinary measures on behavior outside of immediate professional concerns. They gradually came to accept that a heterogeneous professional group of different economic, social, religious, and cultural background could not be expected to comply with a rigid uniformity. Nevertheless, some states such as Prussia at least offered a reward with which they hoped to entice attorneys into practicing good behavior. Lawyers were awarded the title ofJustizrat (judicial councillor) if they had displayed impeccable professional ethics over a considerable length of time. The few older attorneys who did not receive this honor because of deviant political or social behavior complained that their credibility had been diminished and their business practice suffered. German attorneys developed a professional ideology that was not easily reconciled with new trends inside and outside of their professional practice. The ambivalent attitude toward economic gain is an example of such conflicting value orientations. Publicly proclaimed ethics regarded attorneys as selfless high priests of law, justice, and the common good; furthermore, the same code encouraged them to ignore and despise the potential of profit-oriented entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, many economically successful attorneys were highly esteemed members of the profession. In the decades preceding the First World War, the EGH was forced to devise a compromise solution. Business activity did not endanger the "dignity and honor" (Wiirde undEhre) of the legal profession as long as it did not lead to personal dependence, or in other words, as long as the activity in question was morally sound. This principle applied to positions ranging from the board of directors to managers, but not to employees. Such criteria generally reflected the social distinctions of the middle class to which
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attorneys belonged by virtue of occupation, education, and status. Hence many lawyer values were not just typical of a profession but of the Biirgertum (bourgeoisie) as a whole. VI
During the decades preceding the First World War, attorneys also gained greater social esteem outside of their immediate occupational sphere. This improvement of status partly resulted from the legal and institutional upgrading of the profession and partly stemmed from political and social changes. Around the turn of the century, limits on holding office were dropped. German attorneys now participated more often in local self-government. Particularly on a local level, lawyers had the time to be elected to various bodies when the established elite lost its dominant position and before a new type of social democratic functionary and politician emerged. Attorneys were most often members of liberal bourgeois parties. The added prestige that was acquired by political office, and membership in parties, societies, and associations helped in gaining new clients, which was particularly important since other forms of advertising or soliciting were strictly prohibited. In regional parliaments, and especially in the Reichstag, lawyers were not well represented in comparison with their professional colleagues in other European countries.31 They rarely became ministers until after the First World War, because that office required a previous career in public administration. Nevertheless, the major German parties repeatedly had prominent leaders who came from the ranks of the bar. But these lawyers were less representative of attorneys. They were, instead, "lawyerpoliticians" who represented political parties, regions, or social groups. Nineteenth-century social changes seem to have supported a more liberal attitude toward the service market. They help to explain why attorneys practiced with conscious aloofness from the state. This hypothesis is substantiated by data relating to the social background and marital relations of attorneys. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, fewer attorneys came from civil servant families. Their social backgrounds broadened and the percentage of sons of merchants or industrialists increased significantly. The change in the social background of the bar was in part due to the emancipation that had given Jews equal civil rights without guaranteeing them equal social opportunity. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Jews had been allowed to study law, but their chances of ever obtaining a civil service post remained poor. The deflection of Jews into the bar transformed its social composition by substantially increasing the number of merchants' sons among attorneys. This trend toward an increased integration of members of the middle class from nonbureaucratic backgrounds can also be observed in marriage patterns. The number of attorneys who married into families of landowners, merchants, and industrialists seems to be greater than the number of attorneys originating from such backgrounds. This marital strategy implied an increase in both economic as well as social capital and, in some ways, was more successful for
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individual social success than the collective efforts of professional associations that have been so heavily researched. The overall effect of these changes confirmed the general trust in a market economy or at least reinforced a professionalism that stressed a certain independence from the state. Nevertheless mounting pressure on the markets led in fact to renewed calls for restrictions and closure policies. But such efforts did not come to dominate the professional associations until the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, calls for closing the markets were also quite common in the German manufacturing and industrial sectors. Gains in functional, social, and political importance legitimated the position and status of the attorneys. Nevertheless their prestige remained vulnerable and attorneys often enjoyed less esteem in the bureaucratic, liberal society than did legally trained state officials and judges. The state somewhat reduced its hold on the attorneys. Even though lawyers were generally admired, bureaucrats and journalists repeatedly reproached them for being selfish. Attorneys sought to counter this image by emphasizing their ideology of professionalism. VII
Before they gained the right to organize for common purposes, attorneys were socially fragmented or belonged to nonprofessional associations. The first bar societies were founded in the 1830s and 1840s on a local and regional level. Beginning in the year 1844, an elite group of liberal attorneys repeatedly sought to unify the class (Stand) of advocates and to develop a nationwide law. The national Deutsche Anwalt-Zeitung, which appeared from 1844 to 1848, fully supported these efforts; but individual states remained vigorously opposed. In 1848 a German Bar Society was established, but it disappeared again as the Revolution of 1848 failed. During the 1860s, members of the revolutionary generation renewed attempts to establish professional attorneys' organizations. The largest of the associations, namely, the Bavarian and Prussian bar societies founded in 1861, merged ten years later to become the Society of German Attorneys (Deutscher Anwaltverein). Its statutes encouraged genuine professional cooperation among attorneys in order to represent the professional interests of the members. The DAV was highly organized and by 1900 had branches in more than forty German cities and towns. The board of directors was dominated by affluent attorneys who supported liberal ideas as well as moderate professionalism. In their "liberal professionalism," they combined ideas of professional autonomy and of relatively free competition with the meritocratic notion that certain services should be reserved to experts.32 In some areas, the voluntary DAV gained considerable influence over elections to the boards and disciplinary councils of the compulsory chambers. The attorney society captured the official representation of the profession and was to a certain extent able to instrumentalize it for its own needs.33 During the first few years, DAV conferences were primarily concerned with legal develop-
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ment, but after 1890 social and economic issues gained increasing attention. In 1907, they even threatened to split the association because less affluent attorneys expected the DAV to show more concern for their economic needs. But the association was in a weak bargaining position vis-a-vis the state, because the latter formally determined the fees. Hence the bar society reacted to the attorneys' demands by organizing improved methods of self-help. It installed new services including a unified liability insurance, a social aid fund, a literature agency, and public legal counseling offices, and provided for further education. Liberal self-help complemented liberal professionalism. This practice was continued under the crisis circumstances of the First World War. But liberal exhortations could not prevent the emergence of a new type of professionalism, the primary motivation of which was income oriented. It emphasized closure strategies and sought permanent assistance from the state, thereby directly challenging the traditional liberal vision that had been shaped during the nineteenth century. The conflict between these contrasting types of professionalism greatly influenced the era of the Weimar Republic. The Nazis finally ended their competition by instituting authoritarian solutions to economic problems and suppressing the independence of the legal profession. National socialist policies restored the dominance of the state more brutally than ever before. VIII The professionalization of German attorneys during the nineteenth century had several origins. First, it was modeled after the traditional civil lawyers. Second, it resulted from the ambivalent relationship between attorneys and an authoritarian bureaucracy. Third, it was based on lawyer practice in professional, social, and political roles. Finally, it was guided by other Western models such as the barristers in England or the avocats in France. Domestic experiences, coupled with the awareness of foreign structures, help explain the dual professional and political strategies adopted by German attorneys in order to elevate their occupation and social status. In praising French, English, and North American barristers in the 1840s, Friedrich List argued that their exemplary prestige was typical of constitutional governments. These liberal civil societies allowed attorneys not only to offer private counsel to citizens, but also to enjoy public trust and to stand for election to offices in courts, government, and parliament. As a result, lawyers occupied leading roles in the middle class and in the political elite of those countries.34 In many respects, his vision became a reality later in the nineteenth century. But the strong bureaucratic state limited these changes and created an occupational cleavage between three clearly distinct groups of state officials, law professors, and attorneys, which were often merged elsewhere. It was not easy to alter the image that the civil service jurists were the leaders of the legal profession. Before the revolutionary year of 1848, many German lawyers considered professionalization as just one of many strategies toward winning more inde-
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pendence from the state and improving their status in the middle class. The leading alternatives under consideration involved changes in the existing political, economic, and judicial system, making of secondary interest measures that were just targeted for altering the profession or its regulations. The general liberalization of German society allowed strategies to shift toward "professionalism," thereby acknowledging professions as the most fundamental aspect of social status. This newly emerging professionalism did, however, maintain its political orientation and contain individual and collective strategies that were typical of the middle class. The professionalization of the German bar was generally determined by three influences. First, there was no strong tradition of a guildlike professional corporation as in England or Italy to influence the mentality of the later lawyers.35 Second, the political weakness of the German middle class forced attorneys to neutralize the influence of the state through the creation of strong and relatively autonomous professional associations. Third, starting in 1750 the state professionalized the German bar from above by training attorneys in the same manner as officials and their situation resembled in some respects the position of government-employed jurists. Professionalization from above is a problematic term because the normal use of the concept implies that the initiative comes from an occupational group below. In this context, the phrase refers to the eminent role of the state in the formation of the continental professions. One can of course doubt whether the professional model is appropriate for German lawyers and argue that during the early nineteenth century the attorney was largely an incomplete state official. But the bureaucratic model is misleading because it blurs the actual practice and status of the attorney, and it understates the early traces of a professional identity that later became more clearly defined. Although the rise of the German bar was initiated by the state, attorneys themselves later developed a genuine professionalization resembling the English or American practice. However, German professionalism remained ambivalent exactly because of the structural and mental legacy of the earlier phase. The constraints of the first half of the nineteenth century even influenced the professional policies that rejected them. This circumstance explains why German attorneys did not strictly follow a strategy of market closure in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The evidence of the German bar remains ambivalent regarding the theory of a particular German Sonderweg (separate path). It has already been pointed out that the older system of the state-controlled bar was merely a variation of a widespread continental pattern. The introduction of an open bar in 1878 adopted another trend that had already been established for more that ten years in Austria and for even longer in France. The Italian Lawyer Code of 1874 also went in the same direction. Though Germany followed a continental trend with respect to legal and institutional regulations of the bar, in terms of general prestige German attorneys had an inferior status in comparison with Italian or French barristers. In the late nineteenth century, German attorneys significantly improved their social and political standing, but, in a society dominated
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by civil servants, aristocrats, and entrepreneurs, their position remained uncertain. During the course of the nineteenth century, they were never quite able to achieve the importance of their counterparts in Italy, France, Switzerland, or the United States. The wide regional variations in Central Europe make statements about "the German attorneys" somewhat problematic. But once such an abstraction is made, the German development appears in some respects as one variation of a general European pattern, while it other ways it remains peculiar. Notes 1. This essay resulted from my work on the history of the European legal profession, especially attorneys and barristers, called "Advokaten und Burger." I would like to thank the Freie Universitat Berlin, the DFG, the Zip at the Universitat Bielefeld, and the European University Institute in Florence for their generous support. 2. This roster is based on T. Parsons, "Professions," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 12 (1968): 536-47; T. Johnson, Professions and Power (London, 1972); R. Dingwall and P. Lewis, eds., The Sociology of the Professions(Lotidon, 1983); M. S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley, Calif., 1977); W. Conze and J. Kocka, eds., Bildungsbiirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1985), part 1; and M. Burrage, K. H. Jarausch, andH. Siegrist, "An Actor-Oriented Framework for the History of the Professions: Prerequisites for a Theory," in M. Burrage and R. Torstendahl, eds., Professions in Theory and History (London, 1990). 3. A. Weissler, Geschichte der Rechtsanwaltschaft (Leipzig, 1905); F. Ostler, Die deutschen Rechtsanwdlte, 1871-1971 (Essen, 1971); and H. Huffmann, Geschichte der rheinischen Rechtsanwaltschaft (Cologne, 1969). See also D. Ruschemeyer, Lawyers and Their Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1973). 4. D. Grimm, Recht und Staat der biirgerlichen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1987);H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte (Munich, 1987), 2: 174-240; J. Kocka, ed., Burger und Biirgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1987); and H. Siegrist, ed., Biirgerliche Berufe: Beitrage zur Sozialgeschichte der freien Berufe und Akademiker im internationalen Vergleich (Gottingen, 1988). 5. R. Gneist, Freie Advokatur, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1911). Though Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 2: 227, regards them as bureaucrats even after 1793, they actually were not full-fledged state officials. 6. H. Siegrist, "Advokaten und Burger." Whenever there are no specific references, consult the forthcoming larger study. 7. Meinel, Die Rechte der Advokaten (1827). Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Munchen (hereafter abbreviated as Bay HStA), Ministry of Justice 12792. 8. Bay HStA, Ministry of Interior 39075. Ministry of Interior to Ministry of Justice, "Die Ernennung der Anwalte betreffend," Sept. 4, 1853. 9. Bay HStA, Ministry of Interior 39080, Prince Metternich to Count von Senfft, Aug. 7, 1844. 10. G. Dilcher, "Die preussischen Juristen und die Staatspriifungen," in K. Kroeschell, ed., Festschriftfur Hans Thieme (Sigmaringen, 1986), pp. 295-305; and O. Kollmann, "Zur Entwicklung des Ausbildungs- und Priifungswesens fur Richteramt, Verwaltungsdienst, Rechtsanwaltschaft und Notarial in Bayern," in Festschrift fur Wilhelm Laforet (Munich, 1952), pp. 445-72.
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11. Gneist, Freie Advokatur, p. 58. 12. Siegrist, "Advokaten und Burger," and R. J. Evans, Death in Hamburg (Oxford, 1987), pp. 18-22. 13. H. K. F. vom Stein, Briefs und amtliche Schriften, ed. W. Hubatsch (Stuttgart, 1957-1965), 2.2: 922f. 14. Gneist, Freie Advokatur, p. 16. 15. Badisches Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, Ministry of Justice 234/7779, "Rekurs der Rechtsanwalte Bracht und Engelhorn an das Staatsministerium," Sept. 3, 1861. 16. M. Siegel, e&.,DieGesammtenMaterialienzuderRechtsanwaltsordnungvonl.Juli 1878 (Leipzig, 1883). 17. Ibid. 18. Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, p. 20. 19. H. Rottleuthner, "Die gebrochene Biirgerlichkeit einer Scheinprofession: Zur Situation der deutschen Richterschaft zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts," in H. Siegrist, Biirgerliche Berufe. 20. Riischemeyer, Lawyers, p. 3. 21. Regierungs-Blattfur das Konigreich Bayern, 1820, 1840; Gneist, Freie Advokatur, pp. 17-25. 22. Badisches Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, Ministry of Justice 234/7779, "Gesuch der Rechtsanwalte Bracht und Engelhorn um Verleihung der Obergerichtsanwaltschaft," Mannheim, Oct. 23, 1860. 23. Niedersachsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover, Hann 26a, 6378 I, "Rechtsanwalte nach Orten im Konigreich Hannover, 1840-1851." 24. Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, p. 60; A. Kneer, Der Rechtsanwalt: Werden und Wesen des deutschen Sachwaltertums (Monchengladbach, 1927), p. 39. 25. T. Kollbeck, Juristenschwemmen (Frankfurt, 1978); D. K. Mttller et al., "Modellentwicklung zur Analyse von Krisenphasen im Verhaltnis von Schulsystem und staatlichem Beschaftigungssystem," in U. Herrmann, ed., Historische Padagogik (Weinheim, 1977), pp. 39-77. 26. E. Blankenburg and U. Schultz, "The Legal Profession in Germany" (Ms., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, forthcoming). 27. Gneist, Freie Advokatur, pp. 19-24; Kneer, Rechtsanwalt, p. 39. 28. See, for example, K. Steinacker, Die Aufgabe des Advokatenstandes in den constitutionellenStaaten(T$taunschweig, 1841); H. Siegrist, "Professionalization with the Brakes on," Comparative Social Research 9 (1986): 267-98. 29. See the discussions in the Deutsche Anwalt-Zeitung, 1844-1848. 30. M. Rumpf, Anwalt undAnwaltstand (Leipzig, 1926). 31. Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, pp. 59-102. 32. For the concept of "liberal professionalism" seeK. H. Jarausch, "The Crisis of German Professions, 1918-33," Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 370-98. 33. Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, pp. 59-103. 34. F. List, "Advocat," in C. von Rotteck and C. Welcker, eds., Staatslexikon oder Encyklopddie der Staatswissenschaften, 2nded. (Altona, 1846), 1: 363-77. 35. H. Siegrist, "Die Rechtsanwalte und das Biirgertum: Deutschland, die Schweiz und Italien im 19. Jahrhundert," in J. Kocka, ed., Biirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1988); M. Burrage, "Unternehmer, Beamte und freie Berufe: Schliisselgruppen der biirgerlichen Mittelschichten in England, Frankreich und der Vereinigten Staaten," in Siegrist Biirgerliche Berufe.
The Making of the Modern Medical Profession, 1800-1914:
Prussian Doctors in the Nineteenth Century CLAUDIA HUERKAMP
From a highly abstract perspective, the process of professionalization in countries that industrialized during the nineteenth century followed a relatively similar course with comparable results: medical professionals established themselves as experts with extensive professional autonomy based on specialized scientific training, which had been acquired at either a university or a similar academic institution.' Other characteristics included a marked authoritarian posture toward laymen, an expanding monopoly in the health services field, influential professional organizations, and finally high social prestige and a privileged position vis-a-vis other occupational groups.2 Although the results of professionalization seem similar, closer inspection reveals significant differences, particularly regarding the course and the forces involved in the individual cases. In the Prussian example, these distinctions stem chiefly from the role played by the state, which differed fundamentally from that in England and the United States. Corresponding to the early formation of state-controlled administration, medical training occurred in institutions controlled and financed by the government even before the modernization of the traditional medical profession. By the same token, examinations were conducted by state-appointed boards. In this way, bureaucratic bodies also controlled admission to the profession and doctors themselves had at best only indirect influence. Finally, state regulation of physicians in private practice throughout Prussia, particularly in the first two thirds of the nineteenth century, was far more extensive than in the United States or England. For this reason, German doctors were more closely tied to the state than their English or American colleagues. Professional organizations played a correspondingly smaller role in Germany. They never succeeded in controlling either the content Translated by Ingrid Rehm-Richards and edited by K. H. Jarausch.
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The Making of tke Modern Medical Profession, 1800-1914
67
of medical training or professional admission, as was characteristic of English and especially American professional groups. The peculiarities of the Prussian path to the modern, professionalized status of medical doctors will be examined in four areas: first, the development of medical training, second, the professional practice of private physicians, third, the expansion in demand for medical care—especially the role of insurance companies in this process—and fourth, the changing function of professional medical associations. The Development of Medical Training During the late eighteenth century, university medical school training rarely conveyed practical expertise. Rather, it served to "predestine" its graduates for a specific kind of life-style and stamp them as members of the "educated classes." Training was predominantly theoretical with scanty attention to practical bedside matters. Doctors were not interested in establishing causal links between the course of an illness and the application of particular medicines, but rather were concerned with recognizing its "essence," with classifying it according to external symptoms into families, genera, and species— establishing order, as it were, in the kingdom of diseases.3 Matters were even worse in therapy than in introductory coursework and diagnostic training. The lack of reliable laboratory results, the impossibility of giving accurate doses of largely herbal medicines, the absence of clinical experiments, and the undeveloped scientific status of auxiliary fields like chemistry meant that therapeutic success in internal medicine was largely uncertain and a matter of chance.4 Curing "internal" diseases by prescribing the proper medicines fell only into the purview of physicians who had studied at the university, the so-called educated doctors. By contrast, surgery in the broadest sense was the domain of "wound doctors" (Wundarzte) and surgeons who had normally been apprenticed with a barber or received instruction as a medic in the army. "Academic physicians" shunned manual activities such as letting blood, dressing wounds, draining abscesses, setting sprained and broken limbs, as well as operations for hernias, kidney stones, and amputations. Acquiring these skills did not belong in the university medical curriculum, although it would have been possible to make a positive therapeutic contribution in this field. As a rule, surgery was treated only theoretically in eighteenth-century universities. Hence it was not unusual even for professors of surgery, who lectured on the subject every semester, never to have carried out a single operation on a living patient.5 Hesitant efforts to change university training of physicians began to appear in the 1780s when an increasing number of universities replaced the traditional consultation for the poor with outpatient clinics. The Prussian bureaucracy heavily promoted the trend toward a more serious consideration of the practical elements of treatment by issuing a series of decrees regulating examinations in this field. In 1798, Prussian regulations required candidates to treat two patients in the Charite Hospital in Berlin for the period of one month, thereby establish-
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ing for the first time a practical component in the examination. Simultaneously, a permanent state examination commission was established and requirements were increased. These late absolutist measures fit in perfectly with other eighteenth-century policies designed to reorient universities along more utilitarian lines. The role played by the bureaucracy in reforming the medical curriculum was even more apparent during the examination reforms of 1825. These measures greatly shifted training emphasis from general cultivation in speculative theories to practical expertise by removing the separation of medicine and surgery and requiring medical students to acquire practical skills in surgery. After 1825, every would-be doctor could choose whether to be tested in medicine and surgery and enter the practice as a surgeon, or to be certified in medicine alone and be admitted as a medicuspurus. By the 1830s the overwhelming majority of medical students chose certification as medical surgeons, because the number of physicians in cities had increased sharply and young doctors thought they could better compete by offering all branches of medical services. The 1825 regulations not only enhanced the status of surgeons, but also raised certification requirements in general. If the former test had been more of a formality than a barrier to the medical profession, then the situation changed drastically in 1825 when the new regulations mandated a final examination in five parts and described for the first time in great detail the requirements under each part. 6 The "scientific transformation" of the study of medicine, which promoted a "professional" self-consciousness among physicians, nevertheless proceeded quite slowly until the middle of the century. The rapid expansion of medical knowledge, which clearly established the superiority of scientific training over lay knowledge, only became pronounced in the second half of the century. Indications for this scientific progress include first the expansion of clinical facilities and second the increase in medical fields and university chairs. For example, in 1820 the medical school of the University of Heidelberg had only 20 beds for internal medicine and surgery, which grew to 182 beds by 1865 and increased to 314 by 1878. The developments in other medical faculties were comparable.7 In 1820, there were only seventy Ordinarien (professors) for medicine at German-speaking universities. By the year 1850, their number had increased fivefold, on the average, and in the subsequent three decades it doubled again. In 1880, every medical school could boast nine separate medical fields, each represented by an Ordinarius.& As a result of the rapid changes in medical science during the second half of the century, repeated reforms of medical studies became necessary. They generally involved practical aspects as well as further specialization. Practical components came to be more carefully integrated into medical training, including an obligatory internship of one or two semesters at a series of clinics, the expansion of anatomical and specimen preservation exercises, the introduction of practical surgical courses, and finally the establishment of a residency period at a hospital between final examinations and certification. At the same time, an increasing number of special fields were added to the required canon of courses and the scientific component of medical studies became far more differentiated.
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This affected above all the clinical fields, while new emphasis was placed in the preclinical semesters on individual natural sciences. The expansion of natural scientific knowledge pertinent to medicine, particularly in chemistry, as well as the rapid development of pathological anatomy and physiology led to the replacement of the tentamen philosophicum by the tentamen physician in 1861. Logic and psychology were dropped completely, and botany, zoology, and mineralogy were sharply reduced. In their place, requirements in chemistry, anatomy, and physiology were increased. Resulting from the expansion of the natural sciences, the elimination of subjects without relevance to medicine entailed a departure from the requirement that university medical studies convey not only professional expertise but also a philosophically grounded general body of knowledge. The problems of curricular change took a somewhat different form in the clinical fields. Specialization directly concerned the interests of the classical Ordinarien and directors of the three largest traditional clinics, namely, internal medicine, surgery, and obstetrics. Whenever new specialities such as pediatrics, psychiatry, and hygiene (which had been represented in the 1870s by lower-ranked teachers, Extraordinarien, and Privatdozenten) were elevated into examination fields, the influence of the traditional clinics was reduced, and the position of their directors was weakened. Therefore, the faculty was not necessarily in favor of the modernization of the curriculum. During the discussions in the 1870s on revising examination regulations, most faculties confined themselves to demanding an increase in the length of studies (ten semesters were most frequently suggested) rather than asking for the introduction of specific, newly emerging fields. After a long debate, the examination regulations of 1883 established a minimum of nine semesters and introduced only hygiene as a new examination subject. 9 In the regulations of 1901, issued less than twenty years later, new special fields could not be avoided any longer. In the intense discussions of these regulations among state bodies, medical faculties, examining boards, and professional physicians' organizations, a consensus regarding fundamental questions of reorganization began to form. In general, the demand for extending the minimum length of study, for removing the fields of anatomy and physiology (which were to be tested during the tentamen physicum in order to give students time for their internships and examinations), and for requiring attendance at certain special clinics met with broad agreement. The 1883 regulations required attendance only at the medical, surgical, and obstetrical clinics for two semesters, and at the ophthalmology clinic for one semester, whereas the 1901 rules mandated one-semester attendance also at the medical outpatient clinic, pediatric or outpatient pediatric clinic, psychiatric clinic, otolaryngology clinic or outpatient clinic, and dermatology clinic.10 The examination reform of 1901 had a much stronger impact on the curriculum than the 1883 revision, which had established required fields of knowledge without specifying the manner of its acquisition. In 1901, the examination requirements themselves were stiffened with regard to allowing candidates to repeat certain portions of the examination; the duration of study
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was lengthened to ten semesters, and an unpaid year of residency at a hospital between the examination and certification was introduced. All of these measures were designed to reflect the scientific developments undergone by medicine. Undoubtedly, the practical and technical training of doctors improved substantially at this time, especially because of the year of residency. But the de facto extension of medical studies by eighteen months entailed a considerable increase in their costs, which were already higher than those of any other academic major. During a time when the numbers of physicians had risen sharply and when professional organizations were lamenting the "overcrowding" of their profession, this cost increase for medical training was— physicians' protests to the contrary—a welcome instrument to deter those who viewed medicine not so much as a profession as simply a quick way to earn a living.11 The Professional Practice of Private Physicians The content of medical studies and the professional competence that physicians achieved during their training were of enormous significance for their professional practice. In light of the rudimentary state of their professional knowledge and its dubious superiority vis-a-vis that of laymen, doctors during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could hardly insist on an expert status as the basis for their position. Numerous complaints from physicians regarding patients' failures to comply with their instructions, the interference of family members in the recommended therapy, and the continued use of obscure home remedies give a clear picture of the situation.12 If individual physicians, nevertheless, enjoyed high status, then they owed this not to their medical expertise but rather to their social origins, to their connections, and to their general education, which elevated them into the ranks of the "educated classes." Relations with their clients were characterized by a structural asymmetry that favored the patient. Initially, doctors were dependent for both their method of treatment and their income on their patients, who as a rule belonged to the propertied upper class. The transformation of this patronlike relationship stemmed on the one hand from medical progress and on the other hand from the expansion of the demand for medical services, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century. Even though the success rate for treating diseases in fields besides surgery and pain relief lagged for a long time behind the increase in medical information, 13 the expansion of knowledge put certified physicians in a far better position than their untrained lay competitors in diagnosing and, increasingly, in treating patients more successfully with surgery and pain relief. Of course, the impact of medical progress on the physician-patient relationship took highly different forms depending on the social origins of the patient. The resulting increasingly "scientific" features of the medical profession must have greatly enhanced the authority of the physician among the educated hour-
The Making of the Modem Medical Profession, 1800-1914
11
geoisie—a tendency that was strengthened by faith in the rise of the natural sciences in general. The expansion of the "market for health services" allowed physicians to loosen their ties to a socially exclusive upper-class clientele. It became increasingly an exception for doctors to find themselves in a socially inferior status in relation to their wealthy and influential clients. Moreover, the expansion of the patient market reduced physicians' economic dependence on individual clients; therefore, the more patients doctors had in their practices, the easier it was for them to deal with individual patients' discontent and loss of confidence. At the same time, the custom of physicians making house calls began to wane in favor of patients visiting the physician's office.14 If patients went to physicians, rather than vice versa—if doctors could practice in their own environment—then they could enjoy far more authority than if they found themselves in patients' homes under scrutiny by friends and relatives. That an increasing number of physicians joined professional organizations contributed ultimately to the reduction of doctors' dependence on laymen. The number of physicians' associations rose particularly in the 1860s, and starting with the 1870s associations began to codify professional behavior for their members in so-called ethics regulations, which were frequently enforced by honor courts. One of the most important rules of collegial conduct was to refrain in the presence of laymen from criticizing the medical procedures followed by a colleague.15 Thus physicians gradually succeeded in reducing the envy and quarrels that had dominated their public image in the eighteenth century. If in earlier years wealthy patients, after summoning several doctors to their bedside, had been able to play off one physician against another and perpetuate a condition that hindered the development of professional autonomy, now collegial supervision gradually replaced the kind of checks brought by the consumers of their services, the patients. As a result of these related changes, a new physician-patient relationship emerged in which the physician, rather than the patient, had the upper hand. The doctor now decided on the kind and length of treatment and determined which medicines would be taken for how long, whether bed rest was necessary, or whether the patient should be admitted to a hospital. Parallel to the development of a clearly defined hierarchy of authority was an increasing tendency on the part of physicians to abandon those diffuse duties that were essentially pastoral, and to concentrate on treating an illness in the narrower sense. In 1900 one general practitioner demanded that "the physician as physician should be nothing other than a physician, that is, an expert called in to heal the sick and injured. Within this field he is supreme; outside of it he has nothing to do. He should limit himself to the business of healing and not try to play broker, lawyer or pastor."16 This concentration of medical care in one area was particularly marked among specialists whose numbers increased sharply starting in the 1880s. By 1909, of all doctors in the Reich, 22.8 percent were specialized. The largest single group were ophthalmologists, followed by otolaryngologists, gynecolo-
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gists, dermatologists, and surgeons. Because the increase in specialists presupposes a correspondingly large and differentiated demand for their services, specialists became a typical phenomenon in large cities. In 1909, in cities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, 40.4 percent of the doctors were specialists, while in small towns and in communities with less than twenty thousand inhabitants, only 2.4 percent of the doctors had specialized. Within their limited areas, specialists could keep abreast of new developments more easily than general practitioners and pass on the benefits of the latest research to their patients. Thus the presence of specialists meant in many cases an improvement in the medical care available.17 Of course, these developments were also criticized. The immediate concern of critics was the lack of regulated training for specialists. Specialists were also criticized for their onesidedness: they saw only the organ being treated and therefore lost sight of the total patient.18 The reduction of the patient from total human being to a mere "case" for treatment was increased by the specialists' concentration predominantly on patients who came to their private practices on the basis of scheduled appointments. In the large cities, specialists had a rapid patient turnover and knew as little about their clients' private lives as the patients knew about their doctors' personal affairs. As a rule, physician and patient only came together in their roles as physician and patient and not in other situations as customer, fellow club member, neighbor, or friend. More than their generalist colleagues, specialists tended to view their activity from the standpoint of medicine as an exact natural science, supported by experimental data. Urban conditions fostered the rise of medical professionalism, as characterized by Talcott Parsons for all modern professions: universalist orientation, functional specificity, and emotional neutrality. 19 The success of Parsons' model of professionali/ation depended, however, on the specific kind of medical practice and on the class and gender of the patient. Both doctors in the countryside and house doctors (a position according to which a physician cared for an entire family for one annual lump sum) continued to exercise pastoral duties; thus they gave advice and comfort to their patients, conversed with them regularly, and took part in their joys and sorrows. Especially for the housewife, the doctor was a "scientific confidant" and counselor in all questions concerning the household, hygiene, health, and raising children.20 In such general, hygienic, and prophylactic counseling, class boundaries were at work, because the advice given was clearly sent to bourgeois addresses. The question of whether sea air or the mountains were better for the summer was as uninteresting for a worker as the issue of whether children should receive music lessons, since as a rule both were equally irrelevant. Though hardly touched by such recommendations, workers began to play an increasingly important role as patients in the everyday life of physicians in the second half of the nineteenth century. Generally, they received medical treatment as members of a health insurance scheme. Extending medical care to the lower classes brought profound changes to the physicians' sphere of activities.
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With this new group of patients, the doctor-patient relationship from the outset was more anonymous, and rigorously limited to the doctor's therapeutic duties. At most, only a handful of idealistic, socially committed physicians did more than simply "treat" their insurance patients and worked at preventive health care by visiting their patients regularly at home and dispensing information to them. At the same time, the responsibilities of doctors within the health insurance framework also grew. They no longer just cared for the sick; they also had an absolute monopoly in determining who was well and who was ill, and could therefore make decisions affecting the economic prospects of their patients. Clients had to be certified sick by these doctors before the insurance would pay out benefits. The position of doctors in relation to insured workers at this initial stage was not so much founded on a recognition of their professional capacity as secured by their power over the workers, because the insurance regulations granted the company physician a central position. Sick workers were required to obey immediately all their doctor's instructions—a regulation that was enforced in part by draconian penalties.21 The Expansion in the Demand for Medical Care At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the medical market was extremely limited. The family played the major role in health care and convalescence, for which women were traditionally responsible. They enjoyed a special authority in questions regarding the body because of their familiarity with biological functions gained through pregnancy and childbirth. The low demand for medical services meant that individual doctors usually had only a few patients. As a consequence, they charged high fees for their services, which in turn meant that only the propertied upper classes could afford the attention of a physician. The urban lower classes, most petit bourgeois, and the majority of the rural population summoned a physician only in the most urgent emergency. Otherwise they went to a Wundarzt (a nonlicensed healer) or were treated by relatives. Besides these economic restrictions, cultural characteristics also played a role, such as differing conceptions of illness, traditionally determined cures, and a deeply rooted distrust of academic medicine and its representatives—the licensed physicians. Apart from these social considerations, pronounced differences between city and country played an important role. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were virtually no university-trained physicians in the countryside. This situation changed gradually as an increasing number of doctors acquired broader qualifications in medicine, surgery, and midwifery, and became Medico-Chirurgen (medical surgeons), while the increasingly stiff competition in the cities forced some physicians out into smaller towns or the countryside. However, licensed medicine spread very slowly to rural areas, and a crass division in the concentration of physicians between the city and country remained constant for the entire nineteenth century. In 1898, about 61.8 percent
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The Nineteenth Century
of the German population lived in towns with fewer than five thousand inhabitants, but only 31.6 percent of all physicians resided in such rural communities.22 The inadequacy of medical care provided by licensed physicians is also apparent in the mortality statistics: During 1820, only 471, or 38 percent of 1,226, recorded deaths in Bonn and surroundings had received the care of a physician. Numbers in the country were even lower. From 1820 to 1824 in the rural districts outside Cologne, there was no physician in attendance in 80 percent of the recorded deaths.23 Throughout the nineteenth century, the entire population showed a marked trend toward increasing reliance on physicians, which was a development that Michel Foucault called "medicalization."24 In Germany this process was decisively promoted by state action, especially by the expansion of health care for the poor, the construction of hospitals, the introduction of smallpox vaccination, and health insurance requirements for workers. The reorganization of welfare programs in the majority of German cities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries strengthened the position of paupers' doctors and quantitatively increased their activities.25 At the same time, an increasing number of cities established public health facilities, which at this time were frequented primarily by day laborers, domestic servants, and the poor. Both developments brought an ever-widening circle into contact with the official medical establishment and its representatives: the university-trained, statecertified physicians. Vaccination against smallpox increased the medicalization of the populace even more. Although vaccinations did not become obligatory in the Reich until 1874, most South German states had already enacted laws, and even in Prussia, where vaccinations had not been required, public authorities had strongly promoted them so that the overwhelming majority of parents already had their children vaccinated before then. In this regard, parents had entrusted the lives and health of their children to the competence of a certified physician.26 Whereas smallpox vaccination involved only a one-time contact with the doctor, the situation with health insurance was quite different. The expansion of health insurance since midcentury meant that a considerable and constantly growing portion of the population became accustomed to a rational approach to illness. Earlier, disease had interrupted the everyday life of the worker with the force of a natural catastrophe. Now, with precise rules of behavior during illness, its threatening character diminished. Over the long term, the extraordinarily high "disease threshold" of the lower classes dropped, with the result that insured workers increasingly relied on physicians in all cases of illness and thus accepted them as professional experts. For physicians, the extension of health insurance meant at first a welcomed spread of their care to hitherto-remote classes and thus an increase in their income. Most health insurance plans for artisans and factory workers devised after midcentury required a doctor, in exchange for an annual fee, to care for their sick members. Even if the income it brought was not particularly high, such employment was generally quite popular among doctors, especially young
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physicians whose earnings from private practice were irregular and usually low. Since these "fixed" positions as insurance doctors were so attractive, local insurance companies could frequently choose from among many applicants and, consequently, keep the salary low. One further disadvantage of working as an insurance doctor was that the company board of directors kept a close watch on the physician's activities and, in order to keep the number of certified sick members as low as possible, often interfered in purely therapeutic matters. These two difficulties did not become general problems for all physicians until the health insurance legislation of 1883, when the number of insured and of employed physicians drastically increased. The new law insured all workers in mining, industry, and crafts who earned annually less than two thousand marks.27 Initially, this meant about 10 percent of the population, twice the proportion covered before 1883. The number of insured workers increased rapidly because of expanding industrialization and various amendments to the original health insurance legislation.28 By 1895, about 7.1 million workers, or 14.3 percent of the population, were insured (an increase largely due to health insurance for miners), and by 1905 this figure had risen to 10.9 million, or 18.1 percent. The new insurance regulations for the Reich (or Reichsversicherungsgesetz), which went into effect on 1 January 1914 and set the minimum annual wage level at twenty-five hundred marks, once more increased drastically the percentage of insured workers to 23 percent of the population. By including miners, railroad workers, postal workers, and other civil servants, as well as their family members, all together about 50 percent of the population was covered by insurance and received medical care free of charge. The rapid expansion of coverage meant that the treatment of insured patients, which had originally been more or less supplemental to physicians' actual private practice, turned into the primary source of income for an increasing number of doctors. Starting in 1883, the whole question of "insurance doctors" became the major problem discussed among physicians, as evidenced by dozens of lectures held in local associations, countless articles in their journals, and its appearance on the agenda of practically every medical convention.29 At the outset, the most pressing issue was the appropriate compensation for physicians' services, but in the 1890s the debate increasingly shifted to the demand for a so-called free choice of doctors. In 1890, an article in the official journal of the German medical association first suggested that insurance companies no longer employ their own doctors and all physicians practicing in one place be allowed to treat insurance patients. In other words, members of insurance companies should choose freely among the local doctors and no longer be restricted to an insurance physician dictated to them. This demand for a free choice of doctors, which was supported by the medical association convention of 1891, represented a significant change in perspective. For the first time, not only the physicians who earned their living as company doctors were affected but also a group of physicians who were not tied to insurance companies, and who wanted to enjoy the benefits of insurance legislation through the free choice of doctors. Physicians were distributed highly unevenly
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The Nineteenth Century
among the insured and uninsured sectors of the population because of the insurance company custom of hiring individual doctors to treat ill members. Given the especially high number of physicians admitted into practice every year during the early 1890s, the concentration of insurance treatment in the hands of relatively few company doctors created an explosive situation. Therefore, the concept of the free choice of doctors quickly became popular. Not surprisingly, the health insurance companies increasingly opposed this demand.30 This position is understandable because the free choice of doctors did not simply mean a more equitable distribution of patients among physicians but also the loss of company autonomy in hiring and controlling their own physicians. The establishment of a free choice of doctors entailed a large-scale shift of power from the insurance companies to the doctors. Not all physicians favored the free choice of doctors. Physicians employed by insurance companies frequently opposed this demand because they feared their income would drop if all doctors obtained the right to treat insurance patients. Medical associations employed different means to reduce the opposition within their own ranks and to present a united front in the struggle for free choice. Enacted shortly after the turn of the century, the increase in physicians' fees, which accompanied the introduction of the free choice of doctors, brought a significant rise in income for all physicians and helped change the minds of insurance doctors. Local medical associations often guaranteed comparable incomes to physicians who had hitherto received a flat fee from insurance companies, should the free choice of doctors be introduced. Finally, many insurance company doctors who were dissatisfied with their positions or resented unjustified terminations or arbitrary pay cuts supported the free choice of doctors as a means of ending their dependence on the whims of insurance companies. Yet there was not enough solidarity among physicians to force insurance companies to accept the demand for free choice of doctors. Beginning in the mid-1890s, in a number of large cities, local physicians' interest groups (either as special sections or committees of medical associations or as independent organizations for the introduction of the free choice of doctors) began to push for universal admission to insurance company practice. These groups enjoyed only limited success, since they had no means to pressure insurance companies into accepting the free choice of doctors when vacancies occurred or contracts with employed physicians expired. Even when all doctors in one locale were prepared to sign a contract under the condition that the free choice of doctors be introduced, it was quite easy for an insurance company to fill empty positions by hiring outside physicians. Above all, the glut on the medical labor market contributed to this unfavorable situation.31 A consistently large number of students during the 1880s (enrollment doubled by the end of the decade, reaching about eighty-five hundred) was followed by a steep rise in the number of licensed physicians. Whereas in 1887 there was one physician for 2,961 inhabitants, eleven years later there was one physician for 2,114 inhabitants. The number of doctors rose from 15,824 to 24,725, an increase of 56 percent, while the population grew by only 14 percent. Although the demand for medical
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care itself also increased, this expansion initially created an imbalance between supply and demand. Countless indications suggest intensified competition, because for every position as an insurance company doctor, there was always a throng of applicants. Underselling was commonplace, and bribes were frequently offered to members of the local board of directors. Physicians accused of such misconduct defended themselves in honor courts by pleading that they were placed in an untenable position because their very livelihood depended on being hired. 32 These circumstances show clearly why local medical groups were at such a tactical disadvantage in confronting the insurance companies. A wellcoordinated, nationwide organization was a precondition for any effective implementation of doctors' demands, whether for an increase in fees or for the establishment of the free choice of doctors. In 1900, the Leipzig physician Hermann Hartmann founded such an association representing the economic interests of physicians in the Leipziger Verband, later referred to as the Hartmannbund.
Professional Medical Associations During the first half of the nineteenth century, German medical associations differed fundamentally from organizations in England and the United States. In Germany, physicians were closely tied to medical regulations that precisely defined their rights and duties; even training was controlled by the state. There were no German counterparts to professional medical associations, like the Royal Colleges in London, which oversaw training, licensing, and conduct. Until the 1860s, there were purely private organizations of physicians devoted initially to social and scientific purposes. However, during the 1840s, as local groups grew in size, they became increasingly politicized. As part of the socalled medical reform movement,33 they opposed the hierarchical division of physicians into "educated doctors" and "wound doctors" and objected vehemently to state regulations and controls. These regulations were apparent in a number of ways. Doctors had the same legal liability as government officials, and under certain conditions medical officials could revoke a physician's license. Doctors were forced to take a professional oath, and were legally required to offer medical assistance (the socalled Kurierzwang). In some localities, physicians who were not civil servants were obliged to submit quarterly reports to medical authorities. The government promulgated a mandatory fee schedule that doctors were required to follow. Starting in the 1840s, this close relationship to government policies led first to the development of a liberal orientation among physicians who later campaigned for emancipation from bureaucratic controls. These goals were achieved in large measure with the inclusion of physicians in the 1869 trade ordinances issued by the North German Confederation. According to these measures, anyone could practice the "trade" of treating and healing the sick
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The Nineteenth Century
with or without license. Only the title of "doctor" was protected. At the same time, the professional oath, the Kurierzwang, the quarterly reports, and the disciplinary supervision by the government were abolished. Only a few years later the mood among doctors completely turned around. The trade ordinances, which had once been celebrated as the "bulwark of professional medical independence," came under sharp criticism, because they allegedly encouraged an increase in quackery and lowered the status of physicians in the public perception. In 1882, the German physicians' congress demanded for the first time the complete removal of physicians from the trade ordinances and the creation of specific regulations (Arzteordnung) to supervise medical practice.34 With these measures, physicians hoped to attain a legally protected, privileged status, without falling under state tutelage and supervision. Although this demand was not completely realized until the Nazi Reichsdrzteordmmg in 1934, the creation of medical chambers as legal corporate bodies and the creation of state honor courts were important steps in this direction. Medical chambers composed of elected physicians were first established in Baden in 1864 and in Saxony in 1865. Recognized specifically as professional representatives by the government, they were charged with providing advice for health and medical legislation. Similar bodies were established in Bavaria in 1871, in Wurttemberg in 1875, and in Hesse in 1877. In May 1887, a royal decree was issued for Prussia that provided for the creation of medical chambers in every province to which all physicians in that area automatically belonged. These chambers were charged with discussing all questions and issues concerning either the medical profession or public health. Following bitter struggles and protracted negotiations between physicians and bureaucrats, the "honor court law" of 1899 granted these chambers additional disciplinary powers over doctors. From then on, honor courts established at the headquarters of each chamber and an appeals court set up in Berlin were empowered to supervise professional behavior. These measures helped physicians to regain a substantial portion of their legal status lost in the trade ordinances of 1869. As people in the free trades, physicians had been exempted from any specific professional curbs and, like all citizens, they were subject only to criminal prosecution. By reinstituting welldefined professional duties for physicians, the "honor court law" marked a return to, but in no way a reestablishment of, the legal situation preceding 1869. Whereas at that time government officials could discipline individual doctors and even revoke their licenses, now elected professional representatives held jurisdiction over their colleagues. The introduction of honor courts with collegial enforcement of a professional code of ethics thus marked a critical step in the professionalization of physicians. In practical terms, the honor courts investigated uncollegial conduct such as underselling in job applications for insurance company doctors, false advertising, public disparagement of another colleague's abilities, and so forth. These measures improved the tactical position of physicians in their struggle with insurance companies. Starting in the 1860s, the creation of many local medical associations represented an enormous gain in overall professional organization but failed to
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resolve the question of insurance company doctors. In 1873, the German Physicians' Association was founded to serve as a central organization, clearing house, and lobby for doctors' professional demands. Membership grew from 6,165 one year after its founding to 16,693 in 1900, representing about 65 percent of all non-civil service physicians. Since this organization mostly confined itself to largely unsuccessful resolutions and petitions addressed to legislators and the public regarding, for instance, the free choice of doctors, an effective pressure group capable of implementing physicians' demands was still urgently needed. Nevertheless, the Leipziger Verband, founded in September 1900, had to struggle initially against considerable resistance from within the ranks of physicians themselves. Not until 1903, when an amendment to the Reichsversicherungsgesetz failed to take doctors' demands into account, did the physicians' association shift to the position of the Leipziger Verband, which advocated strikes and other work stoppages to strengthen the position of physicians in relation to insurance companies. During the annual congress in 1903, the Leipziger Verband was incorporated as the "economic department" of the physicians' association. Therefore, its membership, which had previously stagnated at about two thousand, rose sharply. By September 1903 there were 9,662 members, and at year's end 12,657; expressed differently, 44.7 percent of all non-civil service physicians had joined. In the following years, the membership grew continuously, until around 1910, when some three quarters of all physicians were organized.33 By using boycotts, lockouts, strikes, and other measures, the Leipziger Verband succeeded in shifting the balance of power between physicians and insurance companies in their favor. In 1903 and 1904, there were numerous widespread strikes (in Gera, Leipzig, and Cologne), during which insurance doctors as a body refused to work when their demands were not met in contract renewal negotiations. Because insurance companies were legally obligated to guarantee medical care for their members, they had to try to bring in doctors from the outside. This was difficult after a majority of physicians had joined the Leipziger Verband, which required them to refuse such positions on their honor and punished offenders with heavy fines. Other physicians, who had not signed such a pledge, were deterred from accepting such positions out of fear that they would be regarded as "strike breakers who had stabbed their colleagues in the back." When an insurance company failed to find the required number of physicians within the legally specified time, government supervisors were forced to intervene. This was the case during the physicians strike in Leipzig in 1904. Authorities delivered an ultimatum to the local company, which was the largest in the Reich, employing 233 physicians under contract. The insurance company had to verify the employment of at least 98 physicians, including 12 specialists by April 25. When it was unable to do this, the state authorities reopened negotiations with the former company doctors and signed a contract with them in which free choice was guaranteed and fees were substantially increased. After five weeks, the strike ended with a complete victory for the physicians. This development in turn attracted new members, increasing further the effectiveness of the Verband. After the first large-scale strikes, the
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The Nineteenth Century
threat of a strike usually sufficed to force local insurance companies into making concessions. While doctors succeeded in improving their position in relation to the insurance companies, they had to accept the tarnishing of their public image. In particular, the tactic of refusing to treat insurance patients and their dependents even privately during the strikes received little understanding. While some doctors opposed the escalation of the struggle of the Leipziger Verband, the combined efforts of local medical organizations, medical chambers, honor courts, and the Leipziger Verband itself were so successful, and the bias against failure to conform was so strong, that physicians averse to the unionlike tactics gradually capitulated. The greater the triumph of the Verband, the more internal opposition melted away. The reasons for this success lay not only in the increased economic benefits, from which almost all doctors in one way or another profited, but also in the clever tactic of the Verband of claiming that the entire corporate body of physicians was threatened. This fueled the latent anxieties of doctors about their social status and created an emotional solidarity among them. The publicity of the Verband emphasized that physicians needed to stand together "as loyal comrades in arms" against their many antagonists in government, business, insurance companies, and the public. When new Reich insurance legislation in 1911 failed to guarantee doctors' free choice, an extraordinary physicians' congress on October 26, 1913 resolved with "deafening applause" to launch a general strike on January 1, 1914. At the last minute, on December 23, 1913, a compromise was negotiated under the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior. This so-called Berlin agreement— which was signed by the physicians' association, the Leipziger Verband, and the three central insurance company organizations—worked out a new balance of power between doctors and insurance companies. Although contracts were still concluded between the insurance companies and individual doctors, their conditions were determined by a committee whose members included representatives from both sides. This compromise for all intents and purposes introduced collective bargaining for physicians. The insurance companies' autonomy in hiring was in effect abolished, because company doctors collectively participated as part of a precisely outlined admission procedure.36 Conclusion This study has departed from the basic characteristics of medical professionalization and the changing status of physicians in all nineteenth-century industrialized nations. These features include the expansion of the medical care market, the scientific transformation and standardization of training, and the achievement of as much autonomy as possible. At the same time, peculiarities in the process of medical professionalization in Prussia have become apparent. Medical training underwent a comprehensive revision during the nineteenth century. Specialized fields were developed, refined, and standardized as a result
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of the rapid expansion of knowledge. In Prussia, medical studies were comprehensively regulated by the government, while in the United States privately financed medical schools, which were independent of the government, predominated until the end of the nineteenth century. In England, medical apprenticeship with training in hospitals that were organized by physicians themselves played a much greater role. An additional Prussian peculiarity was that the bureaucracy was a major force behind the modernization of medical training, at least during the early nineteenth century. The development of physicians in private practice also shows a mixture of general professional developments with particular German patterns. The gradual emancipation of doctors from dependence on wealthy clients was no more typically German than the trend toward medical specialization, and the increasing anonymity of the doctor-patient relationship. But the expansion of the demand for medical care had several special German traits. While "medicalization" occurred everywhere with state support, nowhere did government measures to promote medicalization encroach on existing health care structures on as massive a scale as in Germany. This intervention was particularly clear in the area of health insurance, which ushered a constantly rising percentage of the population into doctors' offices. Although the reasons for the development of health insurance, its concrete forms, and rate of expansion differ greatly among countries, there were astounding similarities in the struggles between insurance companies and physicians. Everywhere doctors viewed health insurance as a threat to their autonomy in treating patients. Concerns regarding the preservation of private practice, which appeared to be the crux of doctors' freedom, blinded many to the advantages accruing for them from the health insurance system. This is particularly clear in retrospect. In the long term, physicians owed their job and income stability to the establishment and expansion of health insurance. In the area of medical organization and the legal position of doctors, German developments appear more unique. Professional associations developed very slowly and hesitantly because Prussian doctors were so strongly tied to particular government medical ordinances. Besides various scientific and social preoccupations, the struggle over state control of the profession was a primary concern of doctors. The removal of the prohibition of quackery in the trade ordinances of 1869 at the urging of physicians can only be explained by the simultaneous desire of doctors to free themselves from bureaucratic control, especially the Kurierzwang. Until their change of mind in the late 1870s, German doctors had exactly the opposite attitude of their English and American colleagues, who for generations demanded such a prohibition because they had no legal protection against nonlicensed healers. In spite of superficial resemblances, the reactions of doctors in the different countries to the establishment of health insurance systems were quite dissimilar as well. Probably for this reason, in Germany more so than anywhere else, legal health insurance led to a rigorous campaign for material and professional goals. Moreover, the struggles with insurance companies drove German physicians into isolation from other
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allies. Thereby doctors' status anxieties were promoted, which turned out to be one of the most important influences in the extraordinarily rapid political and ideological integration of physicians into the Nazi state after 1933.
Notes 1. This essay presents, in condensed form, the results of my book, DerAufstieg der Ante im 19. Jahrhundert. Vom gelehrten Stand zum professlonellen Experten: Das Beispiel Preussens (Gottingen, 1985). I have deleted references to specific chapters and have kept the notes brief. 2. The following are essential: M. S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley, Calif., 1977); E. Freidson, The Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge (New York, 1970); T. Johnson, Professions and Power (London, 1972); R. Dingwall and P. Lewis, eds., The Sociology of the Professions: Lawyers, Doctors and Others (London, 1983); W. Conze and J. Kocka, "Einleitung," inBildungssystem und Professionalisierung in internationalen Vergleichen, ed. W. Conze and J. Kocka (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 9-26. See D. Rilschemeyer, "Professionalisierung: Theoretische Probleme fur die vergleichende Geschichtsforschung," in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 6 (1980): 311-25; G. L. Geison, "Introduction," in Professions and Professional Ideologies in America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983), pp. 2-11. 3. M. Foucault, Die Geburt der Klinik: Eine Archdologie des drztlichenBlicks (Frankfurt, 1976). 4. Recent research is almost unanimous on the therapeutic inefficiency of medical treatment until well into the nineteenth century. See T. McKeown, "A Sociological Approach to the History of Medicine," in Medical History and Medical Care: A Symposium of Perspectives, ed. T. McKeown and G. McLachlan (London, 1971), p. 6ff.; T. McKeown, Die Bedeutung der Medizin: Traum, Trugbild oder Nemesis? (Frankfurt, 1982), p. 83ff.; M. Ramsey, "Medical Power and Popular Medicine: Illegal Healers in 19th-century France," Journal of Social History 10 (1976-77): 560-87; F. B. Smith, The People's Health, 1830-1910 (London, 1979); R. Spree, Soziale Ungleichheit vor Krankheit und Tod: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Gesundheitsbereichs im Kaiserreich (Gottingen, 1981). 5. W. Ebstein, "liber die Entwicklung des klinischen Unterrichts an der Gottinger Hochschule und iiber die heutigen Aufgaben der medizinischen Klinik," Klinisches Jahrbuch 1 (1889): 72, 90. 6. H.-G. Wenig, Medizinische Ausbildung im 19. Jahrhundert (Diss., Univ. of Bonn, 1969); C. Huerkamp, "Arzte und Professionalisierung in Deutschland: Uberlegungen zum Wandel des Arztberufs im 19. Jahrhundert," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 6 (1980): 349-83, here 352-61; L. von Ronne and H. Simon, Das Medicinal-Wesen des preussischen Staates (Breslau, 1844), 1: 299-301, 349-87; J. N. Rust, Die Medicinalverfassung Preussens, wie sie war und wie sie ist (Berlin, 1838). 7. R. Riese, Die Hochschule auf dem Weg zum wissenschaftlichen Grossbetrieb: Die Universitat Heidelberg und das badische Hochschulwesen, 1860-1914 (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 240f. 8. Calculated according to figures in F. R. Pfetsch, "Die Institutionalisierung medizinischer Fachgebiete im deutschen Wissenschaftssystem," in Innovation und
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Widerstande in der Wissenschaft: Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschen Medizin, ed. F. R. Pfetsch and A. ZIoczower (Dusseldorf, 1973), p. 37. 9. Proposals for changes are found in "Zusammenstellung und Beleuchtung der seitens der deutschen Bundesbehorden und der von denselben ressortierenden 19 medizinischen Fakultaten gemachten Abanderungsvorschlage zu den preussischen Entwiirfen, die Prufung der Arzte und das Tentamen physicum betreffend, zugestellt dem Reichskanzleramt unter dem Datum des 19.5. 1877," Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R 86 Reichsgesundheitsamt, no. 1495, vol. 1; G. Liebau, DasMedizinalpriifungswesen im Deutschen Reiche (Leipzig, 1890). 10. Examination regulations for 1901 are reprinted in Arztliches Vereinsblatt fur Deutschland, 1901, nos. 455 and 456. 11. Regarding the "overcrowding crisis" of the 1880s and 1890s, see H. Titze, "LfberfullungskriseninakademischenKarrieren,"Zefec/in/f/MrPadagog;127(1981): 187-224. 12. See S. Breinersdorf, Uber die falsche Beurteilung des Arztes vom Nichtarzte (Breslau, 1806); W. G. Ploucquet, Der Arzt, oder fiber die Ausbildung, die Studien, Pflichten, Sitten und die Klugheit des Arztes (Tubingen, 1797); J. Stieglitz, Uber das Zusammenseyn der Arzte am Krankenbett, und tiber ihre Verhdltnisse unter sich uberhaupt (Hanover, 1798). 13. E. H. Ackerknecht, Kurze Geschichte der Medizin (Stuttgart, 1959); idem, Therapie von den Primitiven bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1970); P. Diepgen, Geschichte der Medizin: Die historische Entwicklung der Heilkunde und des antlichen Lebens (Berlin, 1951-55), vol. 2, parts 1 arid 2. 14. I. Vieler, "Die deutsche Arztpraxis im 19. Jahrhundert" (Diss., Univ. of Mainz, 1958). 15. In 1890, 105 of the physicians' associations that belonged to the Union of Physicians' Associations (Arztevereinsbund) had a written code of ethics, 61 possessed an honor court, and only 53 had neither. See E. Graf, Das arztliche Vereinswesen in Deutschland und der deutsche Arztebund (Leipzig, 1890), p. 55. For the 1876 Karlsruhe regulations, see C. Marx, "Die Entwicklung des arztlichen Standes seit den ersten Dezennien des 19. Jahrhunderts" (Berlin, 1907), enclosure 5, pp. 147-53. 16. F. Scholz, VonArzten undPatienten, Plaudereien (Munich, 1900), p. 117. 17. H. H. Eulner, "Das Spezialistentum in der arztlichen Praxis," in W. Altert and W. Ruegg, eds., Der Arzt und der Kranke in der Gesellschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1967), pp. 17-34. The figures are taken from the official 1909 census of medical personnel: "Die Verbreitung des Heilpersonals im Deutschen Reiche am 1. 5. 1909," Medizinalstatistische Mitteilungen aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsamt (Berlin, 1912), vol. 15. 18. Bellinger, Wandlungen der Medizin und des Arztestandes seit SO Jahren (Munich, 1909), p. 32f.; A. Reibmayr, DerPraktiker (Leipzig, 1893), p. 20; H. Quincke, "Uber arztliche Spezialitaten und Spezialarzte," Miinchener Mediziner Wochenschrift 53 (1906): 1213-17, 160-64; A. Moll, Arztliche Ethik (Stuttgart, 1902), p. 145ff. 19. T. Parsons, "Social Structure and Dynamic Process: The Case of Modern Medical Practice," in Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, 111., 1951). 20. C. Basse, Aus dem arztlichen Leben, Ratgeber fur angehende und junge Arzte (Leipzig, 1899). 21. For an illustration of this phenomenon, one can look at the company insurance setup for workers in the Krupp Corporation: W. Vossiek,HundertJahreKrupp'sche Betriebskrankenkasse, 1836-1936 (Berlin, 1937), p. 26. 22. Statistics calculated according to data in "Die Verbreitung des Heilpersonals
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am 1. 4. 1898," Medizinal-statistische Mitteilungen aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsamt (Berlin, 1901), 6: 50-76. 23. O. Esser, Derpraktische Arzt im Rheinland, 1750-1850 (Bonn, 1963), p. 49. 24. M. Foucault, "Lapolitique dela santeauXVIIIe siecle," in hisLes machines a guerir: Aux origines de I'hopital moderne (Paris, 1976), pp. 11—21. 25. U. Fre.vsrt,KrankheitalspolitischesProblem, 1770-1880.-Soziale Unterschichten in Preussen zwischen medizinischer Polizei und staatlicher Sozialversicherung (Gottingen, 1984), p. 84ff. 26. C. Huerkamp, "The History of Smallpox Vaccination in Germany: A First Step in the Medicalization of the General Public," Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 617-35. 27. F. Tennstedt, Sozialgeschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland: Vom 18. Jahrhundert biszumErsten Weltkrieg (Gottingen, 1981), p. 135ff.; G. A. Ritter, Sozialversicherung in Deutschland und England: Entstehung undGrundziige im Vergleich (Munich, 1983), pp. 1849; D. Zollner, "Landesbericht Deutschland," in P. Kohler and H. Zacher, eds. Ein Jahrhundert Sozialversicherung in der BundesrepublikDeutschland, Frankreich, Grossbritannien, Osterreich und der Schweiz (Berlin, 1981), pp. 57-96. See also F. Kleeis, Die Geschichte der sozialen Versicherung in Deutschland (Berlin, 1928; reprinted, Berlin, 1981). 28. A. Dierks, "Entstehung und Entwicklung der deutschen Krankenversicherung bis zum Jahre 1909" (Diss., Univ. of Giessen, 1912). 29. A. Gabriel, Die kassenarztliche Frage (Leipzig, 1912). 30. For a typical example, see the statement by the chairman of the local health insurance organization: J. Frassdorf, "Arzte und Krankenkassen," Die neueZeit 22, no. 1 (1903-4): 438-45, 512-15. 31. Report of Dr. Busch to the Eighteenth Physicians' Congress, 1890 and ensuing discussion, published inArztliches Vereinsblatt (1890), pp. 359-82. See "Die Stellung der Arzte bei den Krankenkassen, Denkschrift des Arzteverbandes, den Mitgliedern des deutschen Reichstags ilberreicht am 13. 1. 1903," suppl. to Arztliches Vereinsblatt, no. 490 (1903), p. 3ff.; and Entscheidungen des preussischen Ehrengerichtshofs fur Arzte (Berlin, 1908), 1: 117-37. 32. C. Huerkamp and R. Spree, "Arbeitsmarktstrategien der deutschen Arzteschaft im spaten 19. und friihen 20. Jahrhundert: Zur Entwicklung des Marktes fiir professionelle arztlicheDienstleistungen," inHistorischeArbeitsmarktforschung, ed. T. Pierenkemper and R. Tilly (Gottingen, 1982), pp. 77-116. 33. E. H. Ackerknecht, "Beitrage zur Geschichte der Medizinalreform von 1848," Sudhoffs Archivfiir GeschichtederMedizin 25 (1932): 113-84; K. Finkenrath, Die Medizinalreform: Die Geschichte der ersten arztlichen Standesbewegung (Leipzig, 1929). 34. A Gabriel, Die staatlichen Organisationen des deutschen Arztestandes (Berlin, 1920). 35. The most comprehensive study of the policies and tactics of the Leipziger Verband remains T. Plaut, Der Gewerkschaftskampf der deutschen Arzte (1913). See also the Festschrift published to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hartmannbund: H. Schadewaldt, ed., 75 Jahre Hartmannbund: Ein Kapitel deutscher Sozialpolitik (Bonn, 1975). 36. R. Neuhaus, Arbeitskdmpfe, Arztestreiks, Sozialreformer: Sozialpolitische Konfliktregelung, 1900-1914 (Berlin, 1986), pp. 341-56.
Volksschullehrerinnen: Bavarian Women Defining Themselves Through Their Profession JOANNE SCHNEIDER The only proper profession for a woman is at all times that of wife and mother. She should bear children and educate them (within the confines of the house). For her family she should give freely of herself from the heart of her feeling and loving soul. She should nurture and cultivate decorum, morality, fear of God and joy of life. Heinrich von Treitschke 1
If Treitschke's views on careers for women had held true, then there would be no need to discuss the emerging professionalization of Volksschullehrerinnen (female elementary school teachers) in Germany or anyplace else.2 Fortunately, this was not the case; women have entered teaching and other professions in ever greater numbers during the past one hundred years.3 The pioneers in the effort to attain wider career opportunities for women faced great opposition. Those in the teaching field were no exception. Treitschke certainly reflected traditional nineteenth-century European opinion when he condemned those women who sought to work outside the home. However, social and economic changes experienced at that time, in part because of industrialization and urbanization, contributed to the creation of a new phenomenon: the "surplus woman problem." Hardest hit were the unmarried daughters of the middle class, who heretofore had been absorbed into work patterns around the house in the various forms of cottage and craft production that had dominated for centuries. When the locus of work went outside the home, these women did not have much to keep them busy. Working-class women, as a matter of course, took to employment in the newly created factory system, but middle-class morality forbade such activity by its daughters. Nonetheless, financial difficulties forced many unmarried women from better families to seek employment away from home. Finding their choices limited, 85
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some of these women challenged traditional beliefs about woman's proper sphere. If a woman could not marry, then she should have access to an education that would prepare her for a career that commanded respect.4 Advocates of respectable employment opportunities for women were not content to see them languish in low-status jobs. By the 1890s, frank discussions, especially among radical feminists, called for women's access to university education and professional careers. Such demands challenged the male monopoly over higher education and the professions. Although referring to the United States, this observation holds true for Europe as well: Although many ideas about men's and women's proper roles predated the rise of the modern professions, they quickly became central to the formulation of professional ideology. Not only did professionals, like other middle-class men, believe that women should stay at home, they also defined professional behavior in terms that supported and even required a division of labor by sex. Successful professionals were objective, competitive, individualistic, and predictable; they were also scornful of nurturant, expressive and familial styles of personal interaction. 5
Professions and proper professional behavior as defined by men made no allowance for women or feminine character traits. Those women who challenged this outlook had to confront the issue of being female but also aspiring to professional status. Were the two compatible? Germany's professional elite opposed any inroads by women into its ranks. In all the professions, strict standards applied, especially the required university training. Teaching was a profession that German women expected would naturally be available to them, because of its close association (especially at the primary level) with the basic responsibilities of childrearing. Such aspirations were challenged for two reasons. First, a hierarchy existed among the teachers in all German schools. Whereas instructors of the university and Gymnasium were considered professionals, those who taught at nonacademic secondary schools and primary schools were regarded as low-level bureaucrats. Second, the male teachers in the lower grades opposed the influx of women into their ranks because they were anxious about defending their status and aspirations within the profession. Mandatory school attendance laws promulgated by the German states forced the issue. By the 1880s, there were not enoughLehrer (male teachers) to fill the positions at the primary schools. With the increased number of women attending teacher-training institutes, filling teaching positions, and aspiring to administrative duties, the need for women teachers' organizations became apparent. The appearance of Lehrerinnenvereine (female teachers' associations) in the 1880s heralded the activist campaign on behalf of women teachers and their battle for recognition as professionals. Many of the Verein leaders believed that the most logical and least disruptive way for women to succeed in their goals was to follow a separate path and create a system of educational facilities for girls and women in which women would teach and administer, independent of any male supervision. 6 Yet critics of this plan feared that a separate system of
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women's schools would remain inferior to the men's institutions. The Lehrerinnenvereine struggled into the twentieth century for wider educational opportunities for women and access to the hallowed halls of higher education, the credentials from which would give women proof of their professional status. Despite the legal equality the Weimar constitution granted women, the female teachers' struggle for recognition and acceptance was by no means over. Within the framework of this overview, this discussion will now focus on the experience of Bavaria's Lehrerinnen and their organizations. The history of education in Germany traditionally has been and is written from the Prussian perspective. Nevertheless, Prussia under the Second Empire usually initiated educational reform legislation that other German states more often than not subsequently accepted. Therefore, studies of educational experiences and policy outside Prussia are needed for understanding other Germans and their concerns.7 This essay therefore discusses Bavarian Volksschullehrerinnen and their path toward professionalization. It recounts some of the unique experiences of Lehrerinnen in Bavaria, which in some ways granted the issue of professional status for women teachers greater credence than its north German neighbors. Bavaria and other Catholic regions of Germany acknowledged that women should teach in \\\& Madchenschulen (girls' schools). When these schools were not much more than elementary schools, this presented no problem. However, as Madchenschulen expanded to include middle-school (seventh and eighth grades in the American system) curriculum, the debate ensued as to whether men or women should teach the older girls. In Protestant areas, the Lehrer dominated the upper grades in the Madchenschulen, but in Bavaria greater numbers of women remained at these schools at all grade levels. By the early twentieth century, of the German states, Bavaria was only second to Alsace-Lorraine in the percentage of women teaching in its schools.8 The history of Lehrerinnen in Bavaria is long and venerable. Since the Middle Ages, as was true in other German lands, Ordensschwestern (teaching nuns) in Bavaria ran convent schools for young girls. Not all these students were bound for convent life. Many girls enrolled in a convent's "outer school" to learn the rudiments of reading and writing, with the Psalms as their text. Throughout the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, nuns dominated the ranks of women teachers. Lay females did teach in Bavaria, most notably in the Winkelschulen (corner schools), which appeared in towns and cities after the Peace of Westphalia. These were tiny private schools, often with fewer than five students. Government officials concerned with educational policy disliked the Winkelschulen, because there were too many of them and not enough inspectors to evaluate the quality of the teaching, or the credentials of the teachers.9 The accession of Max Joseph to the throne of Bavaria in 1799 brought widespread changes to the Electorate, which had been orchestrated by the Elector's chief advisor, Maximilian von Montgelas. Educated in France, Montgelas saw Bavaria as a backwater ripe for reform along rationalist lines. True to such principles, Montgelas was a convinced anticlericalist who disliked the
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omnipresence of the Catholic church in public affairs—especially education; therefore he instituted a secularization policy that called for the disbanding of Bavarian convents, monasteries, and their schools. Not trusting churchadministered schools, he and his educational policy advisor, jurist Friedrich von Zentner, were determined to establish a state-controlled education system. On December 23, 1802, Montgelas issued a decree that required school attendance by boys and girls aged six to twelve.10 The repercussions of the secularization order and the school attendance law directly affected laical women who aspired to teach. The tradition of single-sex education in Bavaria was long-standing, and even Montgelas did not go so far as to mandate the establishment of coeducational schools. As convent schools closed and nuns moved away to areas more friendly to them, a crisis arose in women's education. The state now required that girls attend school; yet there were few women available who qualified to teach at Madchenschulen and no institutions where laical women could obtain teacher training. Because the newly rationalized state was concerned with proper credentials, something had to be done to provide for adequately trained women to teach at the girls' schools. Before 1803, Bavaria had no state-sponsored institution to train male or female teacher candidates. Those laical applicants who aspired to teach could study at a convent or monastery, or privately. A 1771 law stated that all laical applicants wishing to teach had to present themselves to the local council of clergy for examination. Many Winkelschulen teachers evaded this law, which perhaps explains part of the official disdain for such schools.11 In 1803, a Lehrerbildungsanstalt (teacher-training institute for men) was opened in Munich. Initially a small number of women were allowed to study there. But their numbers could not fill the decimated ranks of the Madchenschule teachers. During the height of the secularization transition from 1803 to 1809, a young woman who wished to teach had only to complete satisfactorily the Volksschule and a Feiertagsschule (a school for children beyond mandatory school age that met on Sundays and other holidays; Munich's tuition-free Feiertagsschule for girls was a prototype for Germany).12 In response to the desperate need for qualified female teachers, theLehrerinnenbildungsansta.lt (teacher-training institute for women) opened in 1814. The school accepted women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. To enroll in the two-year course, candidates presented baptismal certificates and vaccination records, attesting to their legitimacy and good health. The young women also included with their applications a letter of introduction by a local official from their neighborhood or town, attesting to their overall moral character. They also submitted a sample of their needlework. About twelve to fifteen girls enrolled each year, and the government gave scholarships to five needy girls in each class. The institute functioned with the support of government funds from 1814 to 1820 and 1822 to 1826, but was disbanded in 1826 because of the supposed surplus of Lehrerinnen.13 This change was brought about by the new king, Ludwig I, who had encouraged Ordensschwestern to return to Bavaria in 1825 and resume teaching. Also, because Ludwig was a devout Catholic and an opponent of his father's
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secularization policies, it is logical to assume that he was not terribly concerned with a teacher-training institution for laical female teachers. Nonetheless, Bavaria was avant-garde with respect to Lehrerinnenbildung, because Munich's Feiertagsschule was uniquely state-supported until well after midcentury. 14 Bavaria did not have another state-funded Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt until 1872. However, the government did not ignore the existence of would-be Lehrerinnen, because a ministerial decree from 1836 systematized a training program for teaching candidates into a series of three examinations. To enter the program, a girl had to be fifteen years old and have a good school record. Upon successful completion of the second examination, which had to be taken by age twenty, the woman qualified as a Lehrgehilfin (teaching aide). After three years' work as an aide, she could take the qualifying examination to become a teacher. Lay candidates could "apprentice" themselves to skilled teachers, or could attend classes in various schools in Munich as a form of preparation. With either approach, a great deal of commitment was required of these young women. Under the leadership of Minister of Culture Karl Abel (1837-47), the convents received government support and encouragement for their teacher-training programs at the expense of programs that were not sponsored by the church. 15 In 1848, Munich School Commissioner Lehner described the state of Lehrerinnenbildung in Bavaria: I am making my request to the local school commission not to suspend the course (teacher training for young women) but rather to expand it. Under its auspices, talented young women eager to learn find spiritual satisfaction and the opportunity for further education. Daughters of better families, who have taken the course, have the opportunity to earn their living in an acceptable manner and support their families, if necessary. They can escape from being mere baby-sitters or tutors to being people, strengthened in the basic principles, who can teach or oversee instruction. 16
No one listened to Lehner's pleas, and on the wider political stage of the Frankfurt Assembly, the question of training female teachers was not even raised.17 None of the German governments were pleased by the disruptive events of 1848—49 and expressed their displeasure through legislation designed to prohibit liberal tendencies among the people. In 1854, Prussia passed a law strictly defining the acceptable materials and curriculum that teacher candidates of the Volksschule should have; in 1857 Bavaria enacted a similar law. Teacher training was intended to prepare candidates for jobs at rural schools rather than urban schools. Stress was placed on the candidate's good "moral qualities" rather than on general knowledge.18 This regulation suggested the orientation of the Lehrer rather than Lehrerinnen, but female examination candidates must have had to undergo the same scrutiny in the government's screening for possible troublemakers. The next legislative pronouncement about Lehrerinnen occurred in an 1866 law, which established requirements for candidates enrolled at the newly established Lehrerbildungsanstalt. The law listed regulations that applied to
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prospective male and female teachers. The women were expected to follow the course of study through either private lessons or attendance at teacher-training courses, many of which were affiliated with private hohere Tochterschulen (schools with classes for girls beyond the Volksschule level).19 By the year 1872, three Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalten received financial support from the Bavarian government. Two were newly founded public schools in Munich and Straubing, whereas the third, the private Ludwigsseminar in Memmingen, was awarded public funding. The establishment of the schools, especially the one in Munich, was greeted with much enthusiasm. Helene Sumper, a leader in Bavaria's teachers' associations, recounted how those women who had studied privately for the teachers' examination would surely envy those candidates who could attend the Lehrerinnenseminar. The latter's lives had been made so easy.20 Public support for Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalten was only the first step in bringing Bavarian women greater educational and career opportunities. Legislation enacted in the 1880s made teacher-training programs and examination schedules for men and women almost identical. The only requirement the Lehrerinnen escaped were the periodic Konferenzen (refresher courses). Eventually these became mandatory for Lehrerinnen as well, and by 1889 there were four to six such courses offered annually in Munich.21 Between 1880 and 1904, male and female teaching candidates took virtually the same qualifying examination. For women it included the fields of religion (Catholic or Evangelical), German language and literary history, general geography, history of Bavaria and Germany from 1618 to 1870, French, English, music (vocal and instrumental), and drawing. A Volksschule candidate did not have to take the foreign language examinations. However, since instruction in the Lehrerinnenseminare did not differentiate between programs for elementary and middle-school teachers, most students took all courses of instruction.22 It was possible for a female candidate who wished to teach at a Madchenschule not to pass the foreign language examination, and still qualify to teach at a Volksschule. Much agitation on behalf of wider educational opportunities for women occurred during the 1890s and the early years of the twentieth century. Across Germany, small Gymnasien for girls opened, where students prepared for the Abitur, which allowed for admission to a university. Universities in Heidelberg and Freiburg opened their doors to women in 1901, whereas the Bavarian universities (Munich, Erlangen, and Wurzburg) followed suit two years later. Other German states allowed women to enroll as full-fledged students at their universities during the course of the next five years.23 Naturally, Lehrerinnen were pleased with the university reforms that now allowed women to matriculate. But their enthusiasm was tempered by the restrictions placed on female students, depending on what preparatory school they had attended. There were four education tracks whereby a woman could gain admission to a university: by study at a Gymnasium, a Realgymnasium, an Oberrealschule, or a Lehrerinnenseminar (if she also had had two years' teaching experience). The majority of the female university students came from the ranks of those educated at the Lehrerinnenseminare. Unfortunately, such
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students had no classical language skills and were therefore restricted in terms of the academic departments in which they could enroll.24 A more immediate problem for Lehrerinnen in Bavaria was the preservation of the credibility of their Lehrerinnenseminar. In 1904, the final examinations for the teacher-training courses for men and women were changed. The women's examination requirements were reduced by a third in contrast to those demanded of the men. The government also supported the introduction of Haushaltungskunst (home economics) to the Lehrerinnenseminar. This attempt to dilute the curriculum at the school was demoralizing to the countless female teachers seeking professional recognition. Even though women were enrolling as full-time students at its universities, the Bavarian government appeared to reintroduce the notion of female academic inferiority.25 By the latter decades of the nineteenth century, women committed to a lifelong career as teachers sought means and methods by which to enhance their status. Many went so far as to describe their "calling" as a profession (Beruf) and campaigned on behalf of access to higher education and appropriate recognition from the male teachers. The means by which teachers in Bavaria, and throughout Germany, were able to articulate grievances and express aspirations was through teachers' associations.26 Male and female instructors organized in local, regional, and national groups. Initially formed as social clubs and mutual-aid societies, Lehrer(innen)vereine moved on to speak out on issues of public policy such as school reform, teachers' salaries, and the like. The older men's Vereine assumed a defensive posture with respect to the inroads women were making into teaching.27 Although the first Bavarian Lehrerinnenverein was founded in Nuremberg in 1886, the two associations of Lehrerinnen that merit closest attention are the Munchener Lehrerinnenverein (MLiV) and Bayerischer Lehrerinnenverein (BLiV), founded in 1887 and 1898, respectively, by Munich native and teacheractivist Helene Sumper.28 The MLiV organized in the spring of 1887 with seventy members. It met every other week, alternating pedagogical and recreational programs. Sumper described the goals of the Verein: 1. counsel and help improve the interests of the group 2. support professional activity 3. provide opportunities for impromptu speechmaking and regular discussions 4. care for general education 5. promote collegiality 6. provide constant support and friendly exchange of ideas 7. stimulate personal accomplishments in music, handiwork, and drawing.z' One of the important goals of the MLiV was the placement of more Lehrerinnen in the upper grades of the hohere Madchenschulen and in the lower grades of the Knabenschulen (boys' schools). This sentiment paralleled that expressed by Helene Lange and other leaders of German women's education. First, these
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women believed it was only proper and natural that women teach girls at all levels in the Madchenschulen, not just the lower grades. Second, more women should be encouraged to aspire to become directors of such schools. Third, the reformers felt that the presence of more Lehrerinnen in the Knabenschulen would have a civilizing influence on young boys.30 In 1890, Helene Sumper reported that the MLiV with its ninety-three members had done much to improve communications and morale among the Bavarian Lehrerinnen. She implored the members not to become complacent and rest on their laurels. A premier project of the MLiV was the establishment of a Fortbildungsschule (similar to an American vocational school). A common complaint raised by their social superiors was that women from the lower classes were bad housekeepers and poor mothers. Initially the Fortbildungsschule was envisioned as a means to address this problem, by providing courses for older girls in home economics, while reviewing the basics from the Volksschule. Later, Fortbildungsschulen offered vocational courses in manufacturing or retail pursuits. The MLiV was not only directly involved in the founding of a Fortbildungsschule in 1896, but its members also authored a textbook approved for use in the school by the Bavarian government.31 By its twelfth year, the MLiV had almost three hundred members. However, some of these women were from areas outside of metropolitan Munich. The problems that faced Lehrerinnen in the rural areas were numerous and quite different from those of their urban sisters. Therefore, it was decided that a Bavarian association was needed, and as a solution Helene Sumper founded the BLiV. She also passed the directorship of the MLiV to Louise Sigl. The new Verein was warmly received by the Allgemeiner deutscher Lehrerinnen Verein (ADLiV). Its leaders felt that they had to expend so much energy on problems confronting teachers throughout Germany that regional associations were necessary to deal with local issues and establish a spirit of collegiality among all Lehrerinnen through their connection with the ADLiV. Marie LoeperHousselle, a founder of the ADLiV and editor of the journal Die Lehrerin, greeted the BLiV as the group that would unite all of Bavaria's Lehrerinnen regardless of background. She was troubled by events of February 1898, when the Verein katholischer Lehrerinnen in Bayern was created. Loeper-Housselle did not want to see the Verein movement among women teachers splinter according to confessional lines or for any other reason.32 The BLiV wasted no time in compiling a list of actions it wished to see taken by the Bavarian government concerning educational reforms. In a petition addressed to the Ministry of the Interior, Department of School and Church Affairs, the BLiV called for improvements in the various levels of Madchenschulen and the creation of additional teacher-training seminars. The Verein wanted to see more women hired throughout Bavaria's school systems. Furthermore, the BLiV suggested a pay scale for the three ranks of Lehrerinnen, and in towns where the cost of living was higher, the local community should supplement the basic salary. The request did not call for equal pay with the Lehrer; rather, the salary for Lehrerinnen was to be 80 percent of that paid to the men.33
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In early August 1900, the BLiV held its first convention. Helene Sumper made the opening remarks in which she praised the Verein for its courage in taking public stands. She admitted that there were those who did not wish to see women speaking in public. But teachers were in a public profession and therefore had to be active and acknowledged by the political powers of the time. In turning to specific reforms, she addressed the problem of teaching in rural areas. Lehrerinnen in rural areas had to inculcate a love and respect for the countryside in their young students, so that they would not flee to urban centers at the first opportunity. She admonished her listeners that teachers should practice tolerance in religious matters and not try to proselytize among students34; this latter statement was not well received by the Catholic laical teachers nor Ordensschwestern. A theme that dominated Lehrerinnenvereine at the turn of the century was the Eheverbot (celibacy rule) for female teachers. All German states had laws that forbade married women from teaching, with Bavaria's Eheverbot dating from 1821.35 Some feminists argued that these rules denied the right of employment to a large segment of the female population. Yet, the majority of the leaders of the Lehrerinnenvereine supported celibacy laws. Both Marie Loeper-Housselle and Helene Sumper endorsed the Eheverbot. Why did these women and others who worked so hard to give women better educational and job opportunities support the celibacy laws? There were a wide variety of reasons. In Catholic Bavaria where the model female teacher was the Ordensschwester, there could be no rational discussion of a married woman teaching. The selflessness of the teaching nuns was regarded as a wonderful example to those laical women who taught. BLiV and MLiV reports listed the kind of social work functions that teachers were expected to perform. They were to observe students' behavior constantly, especially those young people from poor families. Lehrerinnen were expected to visit the homes of such students. It was assumed that Volksschule teachers would volunteer some time to teach at the Fortbildungsschulen. The Mutterabende (mothers' evenings) sponsored by the MLiV were another form of social work within the community. These "evenings" took place once a month and were supposed to unite teacher and mother through the common concern over the welfare of the children. Programs from a couple of the Mutterabende included a lecture on the educational value of fairy tales; this was followed by a presentation of pictures painted by Moritz von Schwind that illustrated these tales. Another program illuminated the marvels of the Kochkiste (cooking chamber), a wooden box in which pots of partially cooked food were placed for several hours, which functioned as a kind of pressure cooker or crock pot. This presentation was followed by a discussion on the nutritional value of eating warm meals.36 The time demands placed on Lehrerinnen because of social work were incredibly high. The proponents of the celibacy rule pointed to this fact and proclaimed that no married woman with the responsibilities of husband and family could adequately fill the role of a Volksschullehrerin. Marie LoeperHousselle warned that if a married woman tried to teach and run her household, eventually her husband would be neglected, causing marital problems. She
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wanted the positions and incomes of single teachers protected. Any married woman who continued to work was accused of succumbing to materialism. Finally, Loeper-Housselle and other proponents of the Eheverbot wished to see Lehrerinnen protected from accusations of being unprofessional, since it was assumed that the divided loyalties of a married woman would cause a substandard performance at her job. 37 Supporters of the demands of women to better educational and job opportunities had a right to be defensive. Hostility against these women's aspirations for careers that would offer them respect and financial independence manifested itself throughout society. The most consistent opponents of the women teachers were the Volksschullehrer, who reduced the issue to a simple gender struggle: women should not challenge men in their chosen profession. The Lehrer suffered from a two-sided identity problem. Men teaching at the Volksschulen were always considered "poor relations" to the academically trained men who taught at the boys' secondary schools. Thus Volksschullehrer continually aspired to be considered professionals and to be accepted into the prestigious educational fraternity.38 The desire of the Volksschullehrer for upward mobility collided with the demand that women be allowed greater access to teach at the elementary schools. The self-concept of the Lehrer as a professional was ostensibly threatened if women could do the same job. The Lehrer resented these women because they generally came from a higher social class. There was a general consensus that the women from the hoherer Stand (higher class) could never effectively relate to the children of the Volk (people).39 The Volksschullehrer also resented the women because they sought teaching jobs in the towns and cities. Such positions were prizes for those Lehrer who had labored long in rural schools. A teacher in such schools was poorly paid, had substandard housing, and usually had to perform menial tasks for the local parish priest. Promotion to an urban post gave the Lehrer greater status and a higher salary. But the chance for upward mobility was being undermined when urban school commissions, in the name of economy, would hire women. Communities that really sought to economize on teachers' salaries hired Ordensschwestern, whose pay was much lower than even that of lay female teachers.40 The persistent hostility of the Lehrer toward the Lehrerinnen was unmistakable in the rhetoric at the teachers' convention (Lehrertag) in Munich in early June 1906. The keynote speaker, Oberlehrer (senior teacher) Laube from Chemnitz, stated that the question of women teaching school was related to the wider issue of the greater good of the German people. Since women dominated education at home, men should teach in the schools. Reiterating the arguments about women being psychologically and physically incapable of being effective teachers, Laube accused them of being obedient creatures who were unable or unwilling to challenge traditional methods. He also repeated the accusation that because of their social origin, Lehrerinnen were incapable of effectively teaching the children of the Volk.41 The Lehrerinnen present at Laube's speech were incensed. They tried to rebut his arguments, but were only given ten minutes in which to speak. In
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response, the leaders of the ADLi V called for a protest meeting to be held on the seventh of June. At that session, men and women offered their opinions. Dr. Georg Kerschensteiner, a Munich school official, declared that during his eleven years' tenure he had observed numerous skilled women teachers. He supported the argument that women should be directors of the Madchenschulen. As the historical reason for male hostility to the Lehrerinnen, Oberlehrer Roll of Munich explained that in the 1880s, when there was a growing need for teachers, women were hired for the coveted urban jobs. Even though this preferment was no longer the case, the men were still alienated. Furthermore, because the Lehrerinnenvereine kept advocating female control of the Madchenschulen and more women teaching in the middle and upper classes of these schools, the Lehrer feared that the next demand would be female control of the Knabenschulen. Roll implored both male and female teachers to overcome their mutual hostilities and to cooperate for the benefit of their students.42 The indefatigable Helene Surnper spoke out as well: "In Bavaria, male and female teachers have to pass the same number of state examinations; the demands put forward in these examinations are basically the same, prefaced on theoretical knowledge and practical teaching experience. The results of these examinations are published each year and show that the accomplishments of the women cannot be considered inferior to those of the men."43 Although the participants at the Lehrertag did not adopt Laube's conclusions outright, the essence of what he said struck a positive note with many of the men attending the meeting. The Lehrerinnen, therefore, had to rededicate themselves to overcoming male opposition. An interesting suggestion, which was made during the protest session, called for men to involve themselves more in parenting at home. The shared duties of fathers and mothers caring for their children was to continue into the schools through the efforts of both male and female teachers.44 In the years before the outbreak of the First World War, members of the MLiV and the BLiV continued to speak out on behalf of greater opportunities for women. The MLiV demanded equal pay for Lehrerinnen who had equivalent educational and teaching experience as the Lehrer. The associations admonished the government to keep pay increases in line with inflation. The BLiV in 1910 began another campaign for improved teacher-training facilities. The plan called for a six-year Lehrerinnen seminar, in which at the end of the fifth year students would take their academic examinations. A year later, they would have to pass pedagogical examinations. The hope was that a six-year seminar would give its students a sounder background in general education. The BLiV acknowledged that Lehrerinnenbildung would fall completely under state auspices, and it was hoped that a facility to train female teachers would be established in each district (Kreis). The BLiV was also very interested in the salaries and job opportunities for female teachers. One means of creating more jobs at the level of the Volksschule was to make eight years' schooling mandatory for all children. Bavaria passed such a law before the school year of 1913-14.45 The First World War accelerated the movement toward equality and recogni-
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tion of the professional contributions women made to education. During the war, observers already commented on how the shortage of Lehrer would be filled by dedicated Lehrerinnen. Women, even married women, entered those positions left vacant when the men were drafted. The Weimar constitution granted women legal equality. Article 128 specifically stated that female civil servants could not be discriminated against because of marital status—thus the Eheverbot was rescinded.46 Legal equality did nothing to address the economic crises and unemployment problems Germans faced at the end of the war. Male and female teachers in Bavaria turned to the government with requests for financial aid, retraining opportunities, or reorganization of the school system in order to provide for more jobs. A 1919 law on the hiring of new teachers stipulated that those positions with the best living quarters (teaching posts and the housing provided were divided into three categories) were reserved for men. Those jobs with apartments at the second or third level were available to men and women. Naturally, the Lehrerinnen complained that the stipulation was unconstitutional. Another school law from 1922 established the right of women to direct Madchenschulen. Attempts by those seeking such jobs were met by outright opposition by the Lehrer and skepticism from those people in the general public who doubted the capabilities of women for such a task. Because of the extreme economic crisis that the Weimar Republic faced in 1923, it ordered the state governments to reduce expenditures. The Bavarian government in the spirit of this request announced in mid-July 1923 that all married women teachers would be dismissed as of 1 September. Those women who were forced out sued the government for their jobs, but a Bavarian Supreme Court decision in 1919 made their suit ineligible because the government could act against the civil rights of some in cases of extreme emergency.47 The experiences of Bavaria's female teachers during the latter years of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich disappear into the broader context of Germany. The Weimar government did rescind the law protecting the right of married female civil servants to job security in 1932. Under the Nazis this legislation was more thoroughly enforced. All teachers' associations were absorbed into the Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (NSLB). This organization hoped to cultivate a militaristic discipline among the teachers. They were to be tested for political loyalty and then trained on how to inculcate their students with the correct ideas. Schools became indoctrination centers, not places to learn. Those women who rose to leadership in the NSLB adhered to the notion of a separate educational system for girls and young women.48 Lehrerinnen continued to teach at the Volksschulen during the Nazi era, but their claims for recognition of service or improved salaries were received unsympathetically. Legal equality and equal opportunity for women were incorporated into the constitutions of both Germanics after the Second World War. The battles that women fought on behalf of professional acceptance reach beyond the chronological confines of this study. Suffice it to say that women in the Federal Republic, teachers in particular, are still confronting the eternal dilemma of the
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life-style of the professional versus the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood.49 Contemporary historians have pointed out that German feminists of the late nineteenth century, many of whom were teachers, tended to be less confrontational than their British or American counterparts. Furthermore, because the pseudoscientific notions of female biological inferiority gained greater hold in the community at large, German feminists had to seek their own methods of justifying women's search for wider understanding and respect.50 One way was by stressing women's separate sphere, their nurturing qualities, and the sanctified image of motherhood. The revered picture of mother and child never departed from the rhetoric of German feminist leaders. But they had to confront the demographic problem that not all German women would find husbands. If they could not marry and bear children, then what more natural avenue to express motherly instincts than through teaching? There was also the very real economic problem that many single women needed to find adequate ways to support themselves. These women hoped to create an environment exclusively for women, in which the unmarried could experience happy and productive lives. From a contemporary perspective, this appears to be a very unliberated attitude. But it is imperative to recognize the limits placed on public action by German women at the turn of the century. Defining women's separate sphere gave feminists an arena in which to operate that ostensibly would not challenge the patriarchal political structure in Germany. Nevertheless, the calls by Lehrerinnen and their associations for access to university education and equal job opportunities threatened the male establishment. Women teachers, especially at the Volksschule level, who remained unorganized and were willing to work for little pay and no responsibility were acceptable. But woe to those who promoted the idea that women regarded teaching as more than just a job or career, but wished to see female educators accepted as professionals. Such actions threatened the social and economic status of one group of German men. The logical progression seemed to be an increasing challenge to the traditional male authority. What is ironic is that these women were often exceedingly conciliatory and nonconfrontational, ultimately to the extent of some becoming skeptical about the efficacy of legal equality granted women by the Weimar constitution. Of course that equality was more apparent than real, especially when considering the treatment of married working women or the failed attempts by Lehrerinnen to obtain posts as school principals. The experiences of the Volksschullehrerinnen in the past 175 years represent a movement toward professionalization. Certainly these women viewed their work as a profession. This was apparent when they spoke of teaching in the same vein as medicine. The Lehrerinnen shared the common goal of service to their constituency, whether this was in the classrooms, or through social work after school. Through the auspices of the Lehrerinnenvereine, the women worked on behalf of better pay and more rigorous training at either the Seminare or the universities. Teachers' salaries do not compare with those of doctors and
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The Nineteenth Century
lawyers, but certainly the necessity for advanced education places teachers in the professional ranks. What haunted these women and their aspirations was the socially accepted and preferable female image, that of woman as wife and mother. German women would never attack this image. For those women who could not fulfill their Godgiven responsibility to be wives and mothers, a separate niche had to be carved out. Therefore, there was continued support beginning in the late nineteenth century for the creation of separate educational facilities for girls and women to be administered by "career women." However, neither financial resources nor wider interest in the development of such institutions could be found. Creating a "separate sphere" was not going to happen. This left the aspiring professional women to deal with an environment that was hostile to their personal goals. Because they were women in a society dominated by an entrenched male power structure and given their own ambivalence as to whether their behavior was proper to females, these women fought a slow, arduous battle for recognition and acceptance as capable professionals. Recognition as professionals is especially problematic for elementary school teachers, and this is not an issue specific to Germany. There has always been a hierarchy in teaching, with those in the upper echelons, especially at the university level, looking down on teachers in primary and secondary schools. The feminization of the teaching staffs of elementary education which did not occur in Germany until after the Second World War, provokes the age-old question of whether a field dominated by women can be considered a profession. There are no easy answers. For the present, as was the case for Volksschullehrerinnen in the past, the women involved in teaching at the elementary level must continue to assert themselves in the name of their profession for the recognition of wider society. Historians must accept as their task the further study of the issue of women and the professions, not only for Germany but the other industrialized nations as well.
Notes 1. The Treitschke quotation is cited in Karin Ehrich and Friederike Vauth, "Kampf umeinebessere Lehrerinnenausbildung," inLehrerinnen:ZurGeschichteeines Frauenberufes, ed. Use Brehmer (Munich, 1980), pp. 89-90. 2. The Germans referred to primary schools as Elementarschulen and Volksschulen, with the latter more common after 1850. The Volksschule, the people's school, was public and its goal was to bring the basics of literacy and arithmetic to ordinary Germans. Wealthier families sent their children to private or parochial schools, so that often the Volksschulen only served the children of lower-class families. 3. Historians and sociologists have debated vigorously the correct definition of profession and, secondarily, which careers should be considered professions. Teaching is a profession, whether its practitioners are called professionals, semiprofessionals, or bureaucratic professionals. Another source of confusion is the issue of whether women in any career can be considered professionals. For a discussion of
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what characteristics define a professional, consult Konrad Jarausch, "The German Professions in History and Theory," in this volume; T. Leggatt, "Teaching as a Profession," inProfessionsandProfessionalization, ed. J. A. Johnson (Cambridge, Eng., 1970), pp. 157, 160; Heinz-Elmar Thenorth, "Professionen und Professionalisierung: Bin Bezugsrahmen zur historischen Analyse des 'Lehrers und seiner Organisationen,'" in Der Lehrer und seine Organisation, ed. Mannfred Heinemann (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 469; Douglas R. Skopp, "The Elementary School Teachers in 'Revolt': Reform Proposals for Germany's Volksschulen in 1848 and 1849," History of Education Quarterly 22 (Fall 1982): 341-61. 4. M. Poehlmann, "Die Vorbildung der Frau zu hoheren Berufen," Die Lehrerin 20(1903-4): 637, 641. 5. Penina Migdal Glazer and Miriam Slater, Unequal Colleagues: The Entrance of Women into the Professions, 1890-1940 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987), pp. 13-14. 6. Glazer and Slater outline four different coping responses that professional women used to deal with discrimination. They are superperformance, subordination, innovation, and separation. The latter is the mechanism many German women used in their demand to establish a separate women's educational system with women as teachers and administrators of the schools. Ibid., p. 14. 7. For a recent essay addressing this imbalance, see Catherine Stodolosky, "Missionary of the Feminine Mystique: The Female Teacher in Bavaria and Prussia, 1880-1920" (doctoral diss., SUNY, 1987). 8. "Die prozentuale Verteilung von Lehrern und Lehrerinnen in Deutschland," Die Lehrerin 22 (1905—6): 192. The statistics quoted here are from Deutsche Schulzeitung (Sept. 14, 1905). 9. Johann Baptiste Goetz, "Aus der Geschichte des bayerischen Volksschulwesens," Die Christliche Schule 2 (1911): 143; Joanne Schneider, "An Historical Examination of Women's Education in Bavaria: Madchenschulen and Contemporary Attitudes About Them, 1799-1848" (doctoral diss., Brown University, 1977), pp. 18-28; Helene Lange, Entwicklung und Stand des hoheren Mddchenschulwesens in Deutschland (Berlin, 1893), p. 6; Helmut Beilner, Die Emanzipation der bayerischen Lehrerin— aufgezeigt an der Arbeit des bayerischen Lehrerinnenvereins (1898-1933) (Munich, 1971), pp. 26-29 and 35. 10. Eberhard Weis, Montgelas 1759—1799: Zwischen Revolution und Reform (Munich, 1971); Franz Dobmann, Georg FriedrichFreiherr vonZentner als bayerischerStaatsmann in denJahren 1799-1821 (Kallmuetz, Oberpfalz, 1963), p. 54; Nicholaus Hackl, Beitrdge zu einer Schulgeschichte des Kreises Regen (Regensburg, 1949), pp. 5-6. 11. Joseph Heigenmooser, "Geschichtliche Nachrichten fiber weltliche Lehrerinnen in Bayern," in Jahresbericht der Koniglichen Kreis-Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt fur Oberbayern in Munchen pro 1887-1888 (Munich, 1888), p. 63. 12. Ibid. See also Beilner, Die Emanzipation, pp. 35-36. 13. Report of the local school commission under the orders of the Minister of the Interior von Zentner, regarding the Praparandinnenschule, July 19, 1813, Stadtarchiv Munchen (hereafter StAM), Schulamt 134 Lehrerbildung, Unterrichtskurse fiir Praparandinnen, Priifungsergebnisse, 1813-1833, vol. 1, no. 1327; official announcement regarding the opening of the school is found in Koniglich-Bayerisches Intelligenz Blatt fiir den Isarkreis, 1815 (Munich, 1815), p. 715. According to the list of students at the end of the first semester 1818, the candidates ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-four and their fathers' occupations were primarily that of skilled artisans and lower-level civil servants: list of students at the end of the first semester 1818 at the Praparandinnenanstalt, 1818, StAM, Schulamt 134 Lehrerbildung,
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Unterrichtskurse fur Praparandinnen, Priifungsergebnisse, 1813-1833, vol. 1, no number. See also Heigenmooser, "Geschichtliche Nachrichten," p. 66. 14. Beilner, Die Emancipation, p. 38. 15. Ministry of the Interior to the local school commission concerning requirements for students wishing to become Praparandinnen, May 28, 1836, StAM, Schulamt 151 Lehrerbildung, Richtlinien und Berichte iiber die Ausbildung der weltlichen Lehrerinnen, Verzeichnis der Kandidatinnen mit Beurteilung, 18361868, no. 11647; Joseph Heigenmooser, "Madchenschulen und weltliche Lehrerinnen in Munchen: Bin Beitrag zur Munchener Schulgeschichte," in Jahresbericht der Koniglichen Kreis-Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt fur Oberbayern in Munchen pro 1888-1889 (Munich, 1889), pp. 75-76; Helene Sumper, "Entwicklung des bayerischen zumal Munchener Volksschulwesens," DieLehrerin 6 (1889-90): 610. 16. Report of School Commissioner Lehner about the instruction of Lehrerinnen candidates, May 22, 1848, StAM, Schulamt 151 Lehrerbildung, Richtlinien und Berichte iiber die Ausbildung der weltlichen Lehrerinnen, Verzeichnis der Kandidatinnen mit Beurteilung, 1836-1868, no number. 17. Hildegard Bogerts, Bildung und berufliches Selbstverstandnis lehrenderFrauen in derZeit 1885 bis 1920 (Frankfurt, 1977) p. 36. 18. Rainer Boelling, Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Lehrer: Bin Uberblick von 1800 bis zurGegenwart (Gottingen, 1983), pp. 57, 59. 19. Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 40. 20. Ibid.; Sumper, "Entwicklung," p. 611. 21. Sumper, "Entwicklung," p. 613; Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 85. 22. That women teacher-training candidates for either elementary or secondary schools partook of virtually the same curriculum contrasted with the experience of male candidates. Volksschulen and Knabenschulen (middle-school) teachers attended a teachers' seminar, but those aspiring to teach at the Oberrealschulen and the Gymnasien were university-trained. There was a greater status and income differential between the Lehrer than between the Lehrerinnen. Rosalie Buettner, DieLehrerinnen:Forderungen, LeistungenundAussichtenindiesemBeruf(Leip7Ag, 1900?), pp. 15-17. 23. Poehlmann, "Die Vorbildung," p. 618. Many reformers of women's education were interested in reorganizing all levels of education for girls and women. They wanted programs equivalent to those in the schools for boys and men. For further discussion see James C. Albisetti, "Could Separate Be Equal? Helene Lange and Women's Education in Germany," History of Education Quarterly 22 (Fall 1982); Judith Herrmann, Die deutsche Frau in akademischen Berufen (Leipzig, 1915), p. 30. 24. Herrmann, Die deutsche Frau, pp. 32-33. Helene Lange's specific criticisms are found in Albisetti, "Could Separate Be Equal," pp. 312-313. 25. Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 89. 26. Teachers, men and women, always named their organizations Vereine (associations), because they were reluctant to be associated with Gewerkschaften (unions). In the early years of the Weimar Republic, the Bayerischer Volksschullehrer Verein (B VLV) and the Bayerischer Lehrerinnen Verein (BLiV) initially refused connection with the civil servants' union. This behavior reemphasizes the teachers' mentality because they considered themselves professionals, even though they were civil servants. Beilner, Die Emanzipation, pp. 82-83. 27. The original Bavarian Lehrerverein was established in 1832, but as a result of the 1848 upheavals, the German governments banned such organizations. Prussia and Bavaria lifted these restrictions in the early 1860s. The reconstituted Bavarian
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Volksschullehrer Verein was founded in 1861. Boelling, Sozialgeschichte, pp. 80-84; Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 42. 28. Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 46. For a biographical sketch of Helene Sumper, see also Beilner, Die Emanzipation, pp. 55-57. 29. "Vereinsangelegenheiten Munchen," DieLehrerin 3 (1886-87): 380-81. 30. "Vereinsangelegenheiten Munchen," Die Lehrerin 3 (1886-87): 539-40, Helene Sumper, "Stellung des Lehrerinnen-Vereins Munchen zur Lehrerinnenfrage," Die Lehrerin 22 (1905-06): 1094. The Lehrerinnenvereine took on a variety of causes, but one that was uppermost in the minds of the leaders of associations was female control of the Madchenschulen. These women wanted to see Lehrerinnen not only as faculty in the schools, but also as administrators. Much attention has focused on Helene Lange's famous GelbeBroschure: see Monika Simmel, Erziehung mm Weibe: Mddchenbildung im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1980), p. 134; and Albisetti, "Could Separate Be Equal" pp. 302ff. Marie Loeper-Housselle avidly supported the cause. See also her articles: Marie Loeper-Housselle, "Antwort Sr. Excellenz des Herrn Ministers von Gossler auf die Petition von Berliner Frauen, betreffend die hohere Madchenschule und ihre Bestimmung," Die Lehrerin 6 (188990): 97-100, 101-4; "Die erzieherliche Wirksamkeit der Lehrerinnen im allgemeinen und der Volksschullehrerinnen im besonderen," Die Lehrerin 5 (1888-89): 644-45; "Die Verwendung von Lehrerinnen an Volks- und Fortbildungsschulen fur Madchen," Die Lehrerin 6 (1889-90): 583; "Die Erziehung derFraudurch die Frau," Die Lehrerin 1 (1890-91): 231. Emmy Beckmann took up the cause, especially that of female school directors: Emmy Beckmann, "Die gegenwartige Lage des Lehrerinnenberufs," Die Lehrerin 34 (October 15, 1919): 105, 108. 31. Helene Sumper, "Jahresberichtdes Lehrerinnenvereins Munchen, erstattetin der Generalversammlung von 19. Januar 1890," Die Lehrerin 6 (1889-90): 439-42. For a discussion of the Fortbildungsschule and the Vereins' support thereof, see Helene Sumper, "Jahresbericht des Lehrerinnenvereins Munchen, erstattet in der Vollversammlung am 18. Januar 1893," Die Lehrerin 9 (1892-93): 401-4, and "Jahresbericht des Lehrerinnenvereins Munchen," Die Lehrerin 12 (1895-96): 46365. "Die weiblichen Fortbildungsschulen in Bayern," DieLehrerin 27, suppl. B no. 23 (Feb. 4, 1911): 91-92, and 27, suppl. B no. 24 (March 4, 1911): 97-98, describes changes in mandatory school attendance laws and the Fortbildungsschulen for young women in Bavaria. On Dec. 22, 1919, the Bavarian government made attendance at the Fortbildungsschulen mandatory (Beilner, Die Emanzipation p. 246). 32. Louise Sigl, "Jahresbericht des Lehrerinnenvereins Munchen," Die Lehrerin 15 (1898-99): 731-34; Marie Loeper-Housselle, "Berichtiiberdieam 10. September 1898 zu Munchen abgehaltene Versammlung zur Griindung eines bayerischen Lehrerinnenvereins," Die Lehrerin 15 (1898-99): 52-54, 58. 33. At the turn of the century, the BLiV requested annual salaries for female teachers: 1,200 marks for Lehrerinnen, 900 marks for Verweserinnen, and 850 marks for Hilfslehrerinnen. The request further stated that the ratio of 4:5 must be kept with respect to the salaries of the Lehrer. Also, consideration must be given with respect to the local cost of living, with supplemental pay as needed. "Bayern: Eingaben des bayerischen Lehrerinnenvereins an das Konigliche Bayerische Staatsministerium des Innern fur Kirch- und Schulangelegenheiten, betreffend," Die Lehrerin 16 (18991900): 436-38. Four years later, a MLiV report incorporated the following annual salary requests: 1,800 marks for Lehrerinnen, 1,500 marks for Verweserinnen, and 1,200 marks for Hilfslehrerinnen. A schedule of increases for years of service was also included (Louise
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Sigl, "Jahresbericht des Lehrerinnenvereins Miinchen," Die Lehrerin 21 (1904—5): 888-95). The ratio of 4:5 (women to men) for salaries must have been accepted practice, but I have only been able to verify this with some statistics from a Prussian Ministerialerlass from 1885, in which the salaries for Lehrerinnen were to be 75 to 80% that of the Lehrer. Ehrich and Vauth, "Kampf," p. 103. 34. "Bayerischer Lehrerinnen-Verein 1. Hauptversammlung zu Miinchen vom 1. bis 4. August 1900," Die Lehrerin 17 (1900-1): 50, 56. 35. Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 243. In 1912, Bavaria enacted an Ausfiihrungsgesetz zur Reichs-Versicherungsordnung (Art. 56), which removed restrictions against married Beamtinnen. They can no longer be dismissed because they marry, nor do they lose their pension rights. Teachers were not included in this legislation. For further information, see Henry Theodor Matthias Meyer, Day Zolibat derLehrerin, Tag-Flugschriften, no. 18 (Jena, 1917), p. 19. 36. "Zweite Hauptversammlung des Bayerischen Lehrerinnen-Vereins in Nurnberg vom 18. bis zum 20. Mai 1902," Die Lehrerin 18 (1901-2): 745-47; "Munchen: Mutterabend," Die Lehrerin 21 (1904-5): 347; "Mutterabende, " Die Lehrerin 20 (1903-4): 459. 37. Marie Loeper-Housselle, "Die verheiratete Lehrerin," Die Lehrerin 21 (1904-5): 669, 671, 673-75. 38. Skopp, "Elementary School Teachers" pp. 344, 348. 39. Rainer Boelling, using statistics from Brandenburg and Baden for 18801920, describes the social origins of male and female teaching candidates. His findings confirm that on the whole the young women came from families with higher social status than that of the men. Rainer Boelling, Volksschullehrer und Politik: Der deutschen Lehrerverein, 1918-1933 (Gottingen, 1978), p. 22. For further discussion on class differences, see also Use Cablings and Elle Moering, Die Volksschullehrerin: Sozialgeschichte und Gegenwartslage (Heidelberg, 1961), pp. 45-46, 48; Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 44; Rosemarie Nave-Herz, "Sozialgeschichtlicher Abriss des Grund- und Hauptschullehrerinnenberufs," in Lehrerinnen: Zur Geschichte eines Frauenberufs, pp. 69-70. 40. The salaries for Lehrerinnen in Munich were 75 percent those of Lehrer. The range for women was 2,160-4,050 marks, for men 2,820-5,520 marks, depending on years of service. In Nuremberg, Lehrerinnen received 72 percent of the salary of their male colleagues. The range for women was 1,920-3,690 marks, for men 2,640-5,220 marks. "Zusammenstellung der neugeregelten Gehaltsbeziige in den zwei grossten Stadten Bayerns: Munchen und Nurnberg," Die Lehrerin 27, suppl. B no. 9 (July 23, 1910): 35. Other discussions of salary differences can be found in Ernst Cloer, "Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der Solidarisierung der preussischen Volksschullehrerschaft im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik," in Der Lehrer und seine Organisation, ed. Manfred Heinemann (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 71; Karl Knabe, Deutsches Unterrichtswesen der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1910), p. 18; Marie Calm, Die Stellung der deutschen Lehrerinnen (Berlin, 1870), P. 12; I. L. Kandel, The Training of Elementary School Teachers in Germany (New York, 1910), pp. 117-18; Beilner, Die Emanzipation, pp. 43, 111-12. 41. L. Spiessl, "Die deutsche Lehrerversammlung in Munchen und die Lehrerinnen," Die Lehrerin 22 (1905-6): 1060; Beilner, Die Emanzipation, pp. 75-6. 42. Spiessl, "Die deutsche Lehrerversammlung," pp. 1077, 1085-87. 43. Sumper's speech was quoted in Spiessl, "Die deutsche Lehrerversamm-
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lung," p. 1080. A synopsis of the Lehrertag is also found in Beilner, Die Emanzipation, pp. 75-76. 44. Spiessl, "Die deutsche Lehrerversammlung," pp. 1060-61. 45. "Vereinsangelegenheiten: Lehrerinnenverein Miinchen," Die Lehrerin 25 (1908-9): 227; "Bayerischer Lehrerinnenverein: Thesen zur Lehrerbiklung," Die Lehrerin 21, suppl. B no. 11 (Aug. 20, 1910): 43-44; Helene Sumper, "Bayerischer Lehrerinnenverein: Tatigkeitsbericht," Die Lehrerin 30, suppl. B no. 11 (Sept. 20, 1913): 49; Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 246. 46. With the advent of state supervision and licensing of women teachers, which occurred during the mid-nineteenth century, Lehrerinnen became civil servants, but always fell under special rules. Liese Thurmann-Hermann, "Die Wirkungen des Krieges auf die hoheren Frauenberufe," Die Lehrerin 32 (Sept. 25, 1915): 205; NaveHerz, "Sozialgeschichtlicher Abriss," p. 74; Boelling, Sozialgeschichte, p. 101. 47. Franziska Ohnesorge, "Die Berufsnot der Frauen," Die Lehrerin 35 (March 15, 1919): 193-94, Beilner, Die Emanzipation, pp. 114, 148, 173, 175-76n. The complete text of the pronouncement of the Bavarian Supreme Court cited in a footnote in Beilner, reads: "Das Gesamtministerium wacht uber die Sicherheit des Staates. Es hat bei drohender Gefahr die Massnahmen zu ergreifen, welche die Ruhe und Ordnung im Innern sichern oder gegeniiber der Gefahr eines Angriffs von aussen unmittelbar erforderlich sind. Zu diesem Zwecke kann es vorubergehend die verfassungsmassigen Grundrechte ganz oder teilweise ausser Kraft setzen. Verfassungsurkunde des Freistaats Bayern vom 14. 8. 1919, Paragraf 64, Gesetz-und Verordnungsblatt, p. 546" (Beilner, Die Emanzipation, p. 176). For a discussion of the elimination of legal limitations against women during the Weimar era, see Gahlings and Moering, Die Volksschullehrerin pp. 94-100, 107. Jill Mclntyre, "Women and the Professions in Germany, 1930—1940," in German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler, eds. Anthony Nichols and Erich Matthias (London, 1971), p. 186. 48. Nave-Herz, "Sozialgeschichtlicher Abriss," p. 75; Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987), pp. 207-9. 49. This sweeping article on women educators in Germany includes a negative observation about the recognition (or lack thereof) accorded women teachers in the Federal Republic today. See Use Brehmer, "Women as Educators in GermanSpeaking Europe: The Middle Ages to Today," in Women Educators: Employees of Schools in Western Countries, ed. Patricia A. Schmuck (Albany, N.Y., 1987): 118-19. 50. Claudia Koonz, "Feminism in the Fatherland: Women's Rights, Gender and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany." Paper delivered at Seventh Berkshire Conference, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass., June 20, 1987.
Engineers in Wilhelmian Germany: Professionalization, Deprofessionalization, and the Development of Nonacademic Technical Education KEES GISPEN
I American engineers, in the words of Robert Perrucci and Joel Gerstl,are a "profession without community." This apt phrase applies to German engineers as well. Like their American counterparts, German engineers have always lacked the corporate solidarity one typically associates with the professions. In both the United States and Germany, moreover, changes and diversity in engineering education have been major influences in preventing the emergence of a professional community. In the American context this is perhaps not as surprising as in Germany, because the transition from a "practical art viewpoint to a science stressing research and development" is of rather recent vintage in the United States.1 It was not until the late nineteenth century that on-the-job training and what Monte Calvert has called "shop culture" began to be replaced by a "school culture" of varying degrees of sophistication. In many ways this transition is still not complete today, and the educational diversity of American engineers remains extraordinarily great.2 In contrast, Germany has had a system of science-based engineering education in government-funded technical institutes that dates back to the 1820s and 1830s and that had become fairly well standardized by the 1880s. In other words, the kind of academic "school culture" that is still a relative novelty in the United States was already an integral part of German engineering education in the early part of the nineteenth century. On the face of it, one would therefore expect the kind of educational diversity that still haunts American engineering to have been overcome in Germany a long time ago. In fact, such homogenization did not occur in the German engineering profession, which if anything was characterized by educational fissures and 104
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other cleavages that ran far deeper than those in the United States. Unlike engineers in other Western societies, German engineers became caught up in developments that left them bitterly divided, fragmented into several camps that confronted each other or the outside world with a mixture of active hostility and passive resentment. The opposing forces tended to neutralize each other, so that the outcome was superficially identical with that in the United States, which was specifically a manifest lack of professional power and solidarity for the occupation as a whole. Nothing demonstrated this condition more clearly than the history of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI; Association of German Engineers), Germany's largest, oldest, most prestigious, and comprehensive engineering association. In order to survive the conflicting pressures that buffeted it during the two and a half decades preceding the First World War, the VDI was forced to retreat to a posture of strict neutrality—and hence increasing marginality—in all the socioprofessional issues that most concerned engineers. One crucial exception was the engineering society's deep and fateful involvement in technical education. 3 The precarious equilibrium achieved by the VDI was deceptive, however, because it masked the growing power of the profession's managementdominated leadership as well as the debilitating impotence of the rank-and file members. What actually was taking place in the decades preceding the First World War was a process of simultaneous professionalization and deprofessionalization among German engineers. Professional power, solidarity, and cohesion became concentrated in the hands of a small elite of managerial and entrepreneurial engineers, who had in the 1870s already wrested control from the profession's academic and professorial leadership. At the same time that these technically trained industrialists succeeded in wrapping themselves in the mantle of professional authority, ordinary salaried engineers experienced a very different fate. They fell victim to increased educational and functional diversity, internecine feuding, career crowding, downward mobility, and stagnating or declining earnings—in short, a process they themselves described as "proletarianization."4 One crucial link in the chain of events that brought about this state of affairs was the introduction in the late nineteenth century of a new type of applied, nonacademic engineering education. Consciously modeled on the practical skills and shop training of American (and British) engineers, the new schools were designed to stimulate industrial progress by supplementing the existing system of higher technical institutes (technische Hochschulen). Ironically, this development took place at exactly the same time that the United States, emulating the German higher technical institutes, was beginning to make the transition to university-based engineering education. From a strictly economic point of view, Germany's nonacademic engineering schools were an unqualified success, as attested by the glowing comments of the American Wickenden Commission that investigated engineering education in the United States and Europe during the 1920s. "In the author's judgment," wrote William Wickenden, "nothing in the entire educational system of Central Europe has more value as an example to America than these admirable schools
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with their clear perception of practical aims, their direct methods, their efficient use of time and equipment, and their integration of teaching with industrial experience."5 From a perspective that also takes account of noneconomic characteristics, the new engineering schools were far more problematic. Their economic benefits were purchased at the cost of major social changes and disturbing realignments within the engineering profession. On the one hand, disagreements about the organization and purpose of nonacademic engineering education between 1897 and 1910 gave the profession's managerial leadership a chance to augment its power in relation to the state. In a protracted struggle with the Prussian government over such details as curriculum and admission standards, this small managerial elite usurped a significant amount of state power. Operating through the VDI, it was able to substitute exclusive government dominion over technical education with a system of corporatist codetermination, in which its own, privatized authority over public affairs figured prominently.6 On the other hand, the growth of nonacademic engineering schools wreaked havoc with the lives and careers of an entire generation of engineers, namely, those who came on the job market in the last decade or fifteen years preceding the First World War. The new institutions produced a type of inexpensive and "uncultivated" engineer who readily competed with academically trained (and, since 1899, certified) engineers, thereby destroying the tenuous educational cohesion and academic credibility that the latter had been at such pains to establish. Compounding this problem was a dramatic oversupply of technically trained personnel, which resulted from the unfortunate timing of the establishment of the nonacademic engineering schools. After long delays and a slow start, their gradually increasing popularity coincided not just with massive growth in the enrollments as the technische Hochschulen, but also with a flourishing, semilegitimate system of proprietary technical schools trying to make money. II
The need for nonacademic engineering schools in Prussia first arose in the late 1870s, when the existing system of technical education as conceived by Peter Beuth and his successors had evolved into something that no longer resembled its origins. Berlin's Industrial Academy became the technische Hochschule with new, formidable admission standards (Abitur or Primareife), while the majority of the old provincial trade schools became general, nine-year secondary schools with Latin (Oberrealschuleri). Not only had the flexibility and openness that formerly characterized Prussia's system of technical education disappeared, but so also had most of the opportunities to pursue direct training for the broad range of engineering tasks in industry. The Prussian government was slow to fill the void left by the reorganization of 1879. This was the case even though the government's own experts and organizations like the VDI pressed for action. It was not until 1890 that a beginning was made with reintroducing applied, nonacademic engineering
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education. Moreover, it was not until about 1900 that the schools that were established began to make their impact felt. The initial passivity was a consequence of several influences, centering on a mixture of unfavorable financing arrangements with the municipalities, a lack of understanding on the part of the top decision makers for the need of graduated engineering education, and disagreement among the experts about the format and organization of the prospective school.7 The first two obstacles disappeared with the passage of time. After Bismarck left the scene in 1890, the Prussian government—especially Finance Minister Johannes von Miquel and Trade Minister Hans von Berlepsch— became much more energetic with regard to supporting nonacademic engineering education. By 1912, the funding for such institutions (twenty-three Machine-Building Schools and Higher Machine-Building Schools) had increased by a factor of more than forty since 1885, from approximately 33,000 to 1.5 million marks.8 In contrast, the organizational question turned out to be more difficult to solve. The government initially opted for a relatively modest kind of school, which it called Foreman School (Werkmeister Schule)—a misnomer that was later changed to Lower Machine-Building School (LMBS)—as opposed to the plan of the VDI for a more ambitious institution, the future Higher Machine-Building School (HMBS). The differences had to do with the curriculum and, more importantly, with the amount of practical training and formal schooling required for admission, namely, four years of experience and a primary education (Volksschule) for the lower school, and two years of experience and the one-year volunteer exemption (theEinjahriges) or six years, starting at age nine or ten, at a general secondary school, for the higher one. In principle, therefore, the two schools targeted different audiences, even though both had a two-year program. The Foreman School was aimed at young men from the working class, and in school debates in the early 1880s it had been the preferred choice of heavy industry. The higher school, which would primarily attract the sons of the petite bourgeoisie, appealed more to smaller businesses, traditional sectors of the economy, and industries such as machinery and machine tools. For a variety of reasons it proved difficult to maintain this distinction in practice. The government's choice in favor of the lower school was based on a mixture of social and economic reasoning as well as practical considerations. Initially, the agency charged with nonacademic technical education lacked the jurisdiction necessary for developing the more advanced school. In terms of economic needs, the relevant government officials thought it would be possible to combine the tasks of supplying lower-grade technical personnel to heavy industry with the demands of smaller businesses, the engineering industries, and the more traditional sectors of the economy. They believed they would be able to satisfy both groups with just one institution if they created an allpurpose school with low admission standards but with a relatively advanced curriculum. Socially, the government gave priority to the Foreman Schools because it anticipated that they would reduce the growth of class tensions and promote social stability among the lower classes. As Trade Minister Reinhold
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von Sydow put it in 1910 in a twenty-five-year retrospective on nonacademic technical education, the schools in question had "opened the door for working people trying to raise themselves . . . [and] made possible their upward mobility." In so doing, the engineering schools had "contributed to the reduction of class tensions." Also, from the social vantage point, a school with low admission standards but a curriculum that trained for positions higher up the scale was desirable.9 In 1896, when the Prussian government had managed to open some six Foreman Schools in different cities and was planning to continue along this path, it ran into opposition from the VDI. In the early 1890s, the engineering society had developed its own, different plan for nonacademic technical schools, which it had begun to implement on an experimental basis in Cologne. With support from the city and contributing a subsidy of its own, the VDI in 1890-91 reorganized Cologne's municipal trade school into something approximating the HMBS. The major difference was that the VDI's school did not require the one-year volunteer certificate for admission, making up the deficit in formal education with two semesters of preparatory courses. The "Cologne model," as it became known, was inspired by the anticipation of the VDI leadership of a shortage of shop floor managers and inexpensive but highly specialized design engineers to do the routine drafting as well as detail design of machine parts, structural elements, and the like, under the supervision of a responsible senior engineer; furthermore, this concern was not unreasonable considering the drastic upgrading and shrinkage of Prussia's technical-education system undertaken in the 1870s. As the engineering society's report on nonacademic technical education had noted in 1889, "prudent frugality commands industry to limit itself with respect to the majority of its [technical] personnel to a more narrowly circumscribed, specialized occupational training [than that provided by the technische Hochschulen]."10 At the same time that it sought something simpler than an academically educated engineer, however, the VDI was also concerned that the government's Foreman Schools were not good enough. It feared that they would produce a graduate suitable only for the lowest office work and incapable of the more challenging engineering tasks for which the demand was greatest. Graduates of the government's schools, as one of the engineering society's spokesmen contended, would become "an office proletariat of technicians—and these folks very easily join the Social Democrats."11 Originally the VDI had reached the conclusion that the kind of nonacademic engineer it sought would need the one-year volunteer certificate (or Obersekundareife) as evidence of an ability to perform the functions, and occupy a middling status between lower-grade technicians and academically trained engineers. However, the VDI later decided that this admission requirement unnecessarily restricted the recruiting pool and also introduced categories from a preindustrial social hierarchy into an arena that had no room for them. The major reason for the switch had to do with concern about the international competitiveness of German technology, which had been fueled by a mixture of nationalism and business interests. In the words of Theodor Peters, the business
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manager of the VDI, "I am today [1898] of the opinion that in light of the exceptional difficulty of our industry's mission to emerge victorious in international competition, technical ability should be the primary consideration, and not a symbol of general education and of social status extraneous to technical education,"12 The effect of the VDI's lowering admission standards for its engineering school and the government's upgrading the curriculum of its schools was that the differences between the two institutions and their student body became negligible indeed. This did not stop the engineering society's leadership from becoming embroiled in a bitter confrontation with the government over their respective designs. The conflict soon escalated into a larger power struggle over the control of nonacademic engineering training and the right to set technicaleducation policy in general. The battle was first joined when the government announced plans to assume control of the Cologne school as part of its ongoing expansion of the Foreman Schools. The VDI responded by calling into question the adequacy of these institutions. It was able to obtain a delay by requesting time to study the problem. In an 1897 white paper, the engineering society condemned the government's schools as ill-conceived and as seducing potentially good shop floor technicians and foremen to become bad office personnel—an accusation that proved to be largely unfounded. The VDI also sought to influence the Landtag to stop funding the government's program. In 1898, it was for the first time invited to participate in a conference with government officials. This apparent step toward a consultative role for the VDI turned out to be a sham. The conference was a rigged affair, and the government, ignoring further protests from the engineering society, proceeded with its plans to establish additional Foreman Schools. In spite of this initial setback, the VDI managed to emerge victorious in the end. In 1899, it succeeded in arousing the suspicions of Finance Minister Miquel that the Ministry of Trade might be mismanaging nonacademic engineering education. It also produced a considerable amount of unfavorable publicity concerning the Foreman Schools. The consequent worries of the Bureau of Industrial Education (BIE) about budget cuts and about the damaging effects of public controversy on enrollments brought about a policy of compromise with the VDI. Negotiations between the engineering society and the Ministry of Trade were reopened later in 1899, and the former's criticisms of the Foreman Schools received a second hearing. When the VDI was unable to prove any of its allegations, the government's representatives began to realize that what was at stake was not simply a substantive disagreement but rather a power struggle posing as policy differences. The government, thought Alfons Gotte, who was then a junior analyst in the BIE, should tell the leaders of the VDI to stop interfering in the government's business, and put an end to the "crooked machinations of certain movers and shakers of the [engineering] society."13 Gotte clearly recognized that what was at stake was the principle of state sovereignty. "If the wishes of the gentlemen of the engineering society are fulfilled," he wrote, "the government would have to transfer the right to
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supervise the schools to the VDI and could limit itself to providing the necessary funds."14 Gotte's insights were to no avail. The Foreman Schools had become embroiled in controversy, and the longer this lasted the more endangered they became, risking their funding and having to compete on increasingly unfavorable terms with state schools elsewhere and with the proliferating proprietary schools. Thus, in 1901 Privy Councillor Fritz Donhoff, a senior official with the BIE, expressed great alarm at the prospect of the "old conflict between the engineering society and the government coming to life again—a conflict that would have very unpleasant consequences for the schools."15 To end the impasse, the government quietly decided to adopt some of the recommendations of the VDI. In 1901, it issued new regulations for nonacademic engineering education that clearly reflected the engineering society's imprint. The plans to establish additional Foreman Schools, now known as LMBS, were discontinued. Henceforth the government concentrated its efforts on the HMBS, although it rejected the flexible admission policy of the VDI for this institution. The government approved a special, difficult admissions examination for highly talented students who lacked the one-year volunteer exemption, but otherwise it firmly insisted on this inherited criterion of middling socioeducational status. 16 The 1901 reorganization was neither a success nor did it resolve the conflict between the engineering society and the government. The leadership of the VDI had failed to achieve its objectives of codetermination and professional power, because the government, in spite of the 1901 compromise, refused to institutionalize consultation, let alone recognize the engineering society as its equal partner in technical-education policy. The absence of collaboration was reflected in the reforms themselves, which combined the worst features of the VDFs program and that of the government. On the one hand, they reduced the LMBS, which had begun to prove itself in spite of all the criticisms of the VDI. On the other hand, the new HMBS failed to draw enough students, because of their strict discipline, rigorous program, and admission standards that were high in relation to the career goals they advertised. As a consequence, and in spite of the expenditure of a great deal of effort and money, Prussia's nonacademic engineering schools remained in limbo after 1901. The government officials in charge, who blamed their problems on the leadership of the engineering society, soon realized that additional reorganizations were needed if the system was to survive. As early as 1904, the Ministry of Trade began to formulate plans for making the MBS system more attractive to students. The students, who were seduced by a mixture of deceptive advertising and the promise of a freewheeling student life, went in massive numbers to the non-Prussian proprietary institutes. The crux of the government's plan was to lower admission standards and to raise the stated career objectives of its schools. In emulation of the proprietary schools, the stiff admission standards of the HMBS were to be deemphasized, while a fifth semester was to be added at the final year of the curriculum, in order to make possible the kind of specialization and ready skills that translated into
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engineering jobs. As the proposed new prospectus of the HMBS stated, its goal was to train "managers (Letter) of larger workshops" and "independent design engineers" (selbstandige Konstrukteure).11 To a large extent, the government had adopted the admission standards of the VDFs "Cologne model." Even so, the engineering society objected to certain aspects of the changes, in particular to the fifth semester and to the revival of the LMBS. But the government was determined to get its way, and this time without interference from the engineering society. At a pro forma, one-day conference in July 1907, Trade Minister Clemens von Delbriick duly noted the strenuous protests by Theodor Peters of the VDI and Borsig Director Max Krause, and completely ignored them. In November 1907, relaxed new admission standards, the first of a series of projected new regulations, were announced. 18 Ill
The Prussian government's carefully laid plans would almost certainly have succeeded, had it not been for the devastating oversupply of engineers and career crowding produced by all the different kinds and growing numbers of technical schools at this time. Even as the BIE was trying to save its schools by lowering admission standards to the barest minimum, the engineering profession was inundated by a flood of new and educationally highly diverse engineering graduates. They came from Prussian schools such as the LMBS and the HMBS as well as the Building Trade Schools, from non-Prussian proprietary engineering schools, which were sometimes very large (e.g., the Technikum Mittweida near Chemnitz), from state-run, nonacademic engineering schools in other parts of Germany, and from the technische Hochschulen. Especially the latter had experienced abrupt enrollment increases since the early 1890s, in part because the dramatic progress of industrialization opened up whole areas of previously nonexistent employment, in part also because nonacademic engineering education had developed so late and so slowly. To satisfy the need, the technische Hochschulen, which in 1899 had finally been granted the rank of universities and the right to bestow official academic degrees, had admitted large numbers of nonmatriculated students as auditors and "guests."19 The shortage of technical personnel anticipated in the 1880s and the excitement about industrialization during the 1890s had produced a boom in technical and engineering education that turned into a bust in the decade preceding 1914. The tremendous supply was absorbed only because large numbers of engineers and other technicians found positions for which they were overqualified, and in which they were underpaid and otherwise treated in accordance with the unmerciful logic of supply and demand. Many worked for years as menial copyists and draftsmen, being paid less than what (skilled) blue-collar workers earned.20 For the industrial employers, who in any case paid far less attention to educational distinctions than did the state or professions in which educational homogeneity determined functional or class boundaries, it was a buyers'
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market. They hired, fired, and promoted strictly on the basis of knowledge and proven ability. Academic certification, diplomas, and all the other, fine educational gradations that ordinarily mattered so much in Germany counted for almost nothing. The effect was to produce a crisis of unparalleled magnitude in the junior ranks of the engineering profession. The engineers who found themselves in this debilitating situation essentially responded in one of two ways. One was to draw the logical conclusion from their actual condition and use their shared class position as the only meaningful platform for ameliorative action. Their common fate as salaried technical employees was the basis for solidarity, which was reinforced by indiscriminate employer treatment and a legal status that handicapped all engineers—regardless of their educational background—in comparison to administrative and/or commercial employees. This choice meant ignoring the educational differences that divided academically certified, "cultivated" professionals from nonacademic engineers. It led to unionization and to an adversarial relationship with industrial management, as exemplified by the rapid growth of an aggressive engineering union, the Bund der technischindustriellen Beamten (BtiB; League of Technical and Industrial Officials). The only criterion for membership in the BtiB was the status of salaried technical employment in private industry above the rank of foreman. A willingness to strike and initiate boycotts as well as an ambitious program for legislative reforms and effective publicity were the chief weapons in the armory of the BtiB. Though a radical step for middle-class and nonproletarian Germans, especially for those who had graduated from the academic and professional technische Hochschulen, the BtiB model became increasingly popular. Formed in 1904, the engineering union on the eve of the First World War numbered roughly twenty-four thousand members, or about 16 percent of Germany's approximately one hundred fifty thousand salaried engineers. About 20 percent of the membership of the BtiB were certified Diplom-Ingenieure from the technische Hochschulen. This group played a disproportionately important role in the union's leadership. The remaining 80 percent were either graduates of nonacademic engineering schools, or self-taught engineers, or men who had attended—but not officially graduated from—a technische Hochschule, or a combination of all three.21 The other choice engineers made was to emphasize shared professional education and academic status as their principle of solidarity. This approach, as illustrated by the Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure (VDDI; Association of German Certified Engineers), purposely overlooked class and functional differences. It hoped to overcome the crisis by an attitude of anticipatory socialization and by trying to monopolize the better positions in industry for certified Diplom-Ingenieure at the expense of preempted opportunities for nonacademic engineers. Only Diplom-Ingenieure, the VDDI claimed, were true engineers of managerial quality. As such they should avoid confrontation with the industrialists, regardless of how unprofessionally they were treated early in their careers. Conditions were bound to improve as they climbed up the ranks.
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The high-sounding language of the VDDI was partly intended to mask its resentment of powerful industrialists who allowed the engineers' proletarianization to continue for the sake of profits. The other major purpose was differentiation from nonacademic engineers. With rhetoric that was a curious mixture of hatred, social arrogance, and idealistic pronouncements about the unpolitical, conciliatory leadership potential of academically certified engineers who were above the classes, the VDDI emphasized the gulf that divided "cultivated" professionals from nonacademic engineers. It portrayed the latter as inferior and "uncultivated" mechanics, rapacious social climbers, and would-be engineers, who ruined the reputation of the profession and the lives of its most valuable members. It sought to exclude nonacademic engineers from the VDI, and, when this failed, threw its energies into an ill-fated effort to create new career avenues for its own kind in the civil service and in municipal administrations. The outcome of this effort was more resentment of the preexisting elites that effectively maintained the status quo and excluded the engineers. Founded in 1909, the VDDI was never as popular as the BtiB. Contemptuously known as the "title association," it only had about thirty-five hundred members in 1914. This was about 13 percent of the total number of DiplomIngenieure graduated since 1899 (estimated at twenty-five to thirty thousand), substantially fewer than the contingent of academically trained engineers of the BtiB. 22 Needless to say, the BtiB and the VDDI were bitter enemies. They fought each other every step of the way, while trying to seduce each other's academically certified members with appealing propaganda. Neither organization could vanquish the other, because the organizational principles of both showed a deficit precisely in the area in which its opponent had strength. The kind of professional cohesion they sought could succeed only if shared education (status) and occupational function (class) coincided. This was the case with neither the BtiB nor the VDDI. The former suffered from ignoring so vital a social distinction in the German context as that between individuals with Abitur and academic certification on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those who had no more than the one-year volunteer exemption or Volksschule education, practical training, perhaps self-study, and two or three years of training at a nonacademic engineering school. In contrast, the VDDI was harmed by its insistence on overlooking the crucial class and functional differences that divided technische Hochschule graduates into civil servants, salaried employees, educators, self-employed consultants, managers, entrepreneurs, and so forth—all of them with vastly different duties, social roles, economic interests, and their own group-formative powers. The animosity between the BtiB and the VDDI, and in general the cleavage between certified engineers and nonacademic ones, worked to the advantage of a third group of engineers: the technically trained managers and industrialists at the top of the profession. Understandably, these men looked with apprehension on the developments sketched above, which were in large part a direct consequence of their own educational policies. The overabundant supply and the
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profession's internal divisions, however, enabled the employers to play off one side against the other and so defeat both. In the process, they also managed to emerge victorious in their old struggle with the Prussian government over the control of technical education. On the one hand, the engineering industrialists were able to fight the BtiB in open confrontation without having to worry much about the engineering union receiving assistance from the professionalizing segment of academically certified engineers, or from other parts of the salaried-employee movement that were legally somewhat less disadvantaged than engineers. To ensure that they stayed apart, it sufficed to make frequent allegations concerning the social democratic and unpatriotic tendencies of the BtiB, to refer to its members as inferior individuals, losers, mere mechanics with proletarianizing and democratic, equalizing tendencies—in other words, the antithesis of professionalism. The VDDI and a majority of the other salaried-employee organizations were all too willing to be convinced of the accuracy of such accusations, which they themselves helped spread with great energy. From this favorable position, the industrialists fought with all the means at their disposal the engineering union's demands for a minimum salary, for salaried—employee councils, job security, legal equality with the administrative and/or commercial employees, a unified code for salaried employees, elimination of competition clauses, and for the salaried engineer's ownership rights to his inventions. They opposed the BtiB in the political and legislative arena with vigorous lobbying and with quasischolarly expositions in the press and in professional journals and meetings. In the industrial sphere, they battled the engineering union with direct action, such as dismissals of organized engineers, strike breaking, union busting, and a variety of other brutal counterattacks, all of which essentially succeeded before 1914.23 On the other hand, the engineering employers and chief managerial engineers resolutely assisted the nonacademic engineers against the efforts of professionalizing Diplom-Ingenieure to convert the open, capitalist, industrial bureaucracy into something resembling the closed, education-dependent civil service hierarchy. It was in connection with the successful defense against this challenge to their most basic managerial and entrepreneurial powers that the engineering industrialists gained control of nonacademic engineering education. They were able to do so because the professionalizing division of the Diplom-Ingenieure sought to discredit not merely the nonacademic engineers themselves, but also and primarily the nonacademic engineering schools that produced them. As Professor Alois Riedler, the most eloquent spokesman for the professionalizers' interests, put it in early 1908, "the new Higher MachineBuilding Schools . . . and the most recent reorganization of these schools [were] the largest squandering of public funds ever perpetrated."24 Their products Riedler characterized as "cheap auxiliaries" and "people with no culture at all."25 The result of this attack on the MBS system, and on a VDI leadership that encouraged nonacademic engineering education, was an immediate drawing together of the two former adversaries, the VDI leadership and the BIE, in common defense of schools in which both had a great stake.
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For the industrialists, the schools in question were crucial not only on economic grounds but also because they served to disarm the technocratic and potentially anticapitalist aspirations of the professionalizers. As Borsig's Krause put it, "only industry itself can decide which positions should be filled with engineers from the technische Hochschule and which ones with nonacademic engineers."26 The idea of prescribing to the industrialists which positions they could fill with nonacademic engineers was based on an "unwarranted overestimation of knowledge over know-how and an underestimation of the individual competence of the nonacademic engineer."27 For the Prussian government, the prospect that its nonacademic engineering schools, which served not just economic ends but also those of social mobility and social stability, might be closed down or dismantled was infinitely more threatening than the possibility of having to administer a successful system in codetermination with the VDI. Moreover, the BIE reckoned that in the crisis there was perhaps an opportunity of gaining control of the non-Prussian proprietary engineering schools that were its nemesis. These institutions, the nonexistent admission standards and high-sounding "engineer" diplomas of which did far more damage to the profession's standing than the rigorous Prussian schools, were the most formidable competitors of the MBS. By itself the Prussian government could not touch them. If it collaborated with the VDI, which had nationwide influence in matters of technical education and powerful publicity apparatus that reached beyond the Prussian borders, then there was a real chance of forcing the proprietary schools onto the defensive.28 The new constellation first emerged during stormy public debates that took place in the Berlin chapter of the VDI in late 1907 and early 1908. The professionalizers' charge was led by Riedler, who was an enormously influential engineering educator at the technische Hochschule in Berlin.29 He accused the Prussian government and the leadership of the VDI of having done irreparable harm to the profession with their promotion of the MBS system. For the sake of low labor costs and the "production of cheap auxiliary forces for industry," Riedler charged, vast sums had been invested in a worthless network of nonacademic engineering schools. Though they "trained only office technicians and draftsmen," the MBS were poorly attended, which showed they were "not urgently needed." Regardless, the government tried to make the schools viable by lowering admission standards. It had done so because nonacademic engineers were the darlings of the industrialists, who preferred them over the academically trained, but less pliable "cultured" engineers. Thus the government had a policy that "amounted to total elimination of general cultivation" and resulted in "mass production of the least educated all the way down to those of the lowest quality." Such people could later "call themselves 'engineer'—in our land of prescribed preparatory education and strict segregation of professions (Standestrennung)!" The chief culprit in all of this was the VDI itself, according to Riedler. The leadership's "democratic" rhetoric of an open profession was "entirely foolish" and, if not expressly designed to destroy the social reputation of engineers, evidence of a fateful "lingering in CloudCuckoo-Land."30
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On the receiving end of this criticism were VDI business manager Peters, Borsig's Krause, and the Prussian government's Gotte, who acted as defenders of the nonacademic engineers and their schools. Against Riedler's furious attacks they held out together on all fronts. In what proved to be a prophetic insight, Peters accused Riedler of taking a stance that was at once grossly reactionary and quasi-revolutionary Social Democratic.31 It was precisely his peculiar combination of hostility toward the industrialists, resentment of the established authorities, and fear of egalitarianism with dreams of glory and professional emancipation that would appeal to the Diplom-Ingenieure who followed in Riedler's wake. Caught in a debilitating career squeeze, threatened simultaneously from above by the power of capitalist management and the state, and from below by nonacademic interlopers, the engineers who would subsequently form the VDDI easily embraced the mixture of reaction and their own brand of Utopian socialism that Jeffrey Herf has described as "reactionary modernism."32 In the aftermath of the Riedler affair, the government and the leadership of the VDI continued their newly found partnership. The highly charged debates had made clear not only how tense the situation had become, but also that the question of nonacademic engineering education was inextricably bound up with larger problems. It touched on the numbers and the types of engineers produced by the technische Hochschulen, on managerial authority, on social mobility and stability, on economic efficiency, on the Prussian state's ability to conduct educational policies in a larger, federal setting, on the contours of the engineering profession, and on the existing power structure of the VDI. Some sort of nationwide, central coordination between the various types of technical education was desperately needed. When the VDI requested suspension of the 1907 MBS reforms in December of 1907 and asked for renewed consultation, the government granted its wish on condition that the engineering society bring representatives from other technical-industrial associations into the picture as well. When the engineering society acceded to this demand, a path had been cleared for the formation of an organization that became known as the Deutscher Ausschuss fur Technisches Schulwesen (DATSCH; German Committee on Technical Education).33 As an improvisation dictated by the immediate need of solving the MBS controversy, the DATSCH from 1908 until its demise in 1939 quickly developed into Germany's top planning and coordinating agency for all aspects of technical education.34 At its center was the VDI, which especially in the initial years of operation provided the necessary funding, staff support, and leadership. At the same time the DATSCH transcended the VDI. Its membership consisted of Germany's leading engineering and technical associations like the VDEH (Verein Deutscher Eisenhuttenleute; metallurgical engineers) and the VDE (Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker; electrical engineers), and included the increasingly powerful business association of the engineering industry, the VDMA (Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten). In time, several associations of educators also joined, as did socioeconomic interest groups of engineers like the BtiB and the VDDI. The DATSCH also maintained the closest
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contacts with government. Officials of the Prussian BIE such as Gotte and Donhoff, for example, actively participated in its work, the results of which were then adopted as government decrees and regulations. Other German states soon followed the Prussian government's lead. Despite the appearance of equal participation by all member organizations, there is no question that the managers of Germany's large engineering firms and senior business-oriented engineers dominated DATSCH. This was reflected in both the nature of its recommendations and its self-styled mandate, which was "to determine the needs and requirements of industrial and business practice."35 Still, the DATSCH tried to tackle the crisis in engineering education from a comprehensive view, and by adopting a consensual style it gave at least nominal representation to those whose fate was being decided. As a private body with de facto public powers, the DATSCH was one of the first manifestations before 1914 of that "twilight of sovereignty" that Charles Maier views as a hallmark of post-First World War "corporatism."36 One of the first acts of DATSCH was to try to settle the problem of statefunded nonacademic engineering education in such a way that the uncontrollable tensions in the profession might be reduced. It changed some of the most objectionable features of the MBS reform identified by Professor Riedler and his followers insofar as it raised admission standards a bit and somewhat lowered the schools' sights. But the DATSCH emphatically refused to extend educational differentiation between nonacademic engineers and academically trained engineers to the workplace. In the words of a 1911 DATSCH study, "it must be recognized that many of the technicians who graduate from the Technical Middle School [i.e., LMBS, HMBS, and non-Prussian schools of the same type] later advance to the position of engineer."37 The DATSCH also launched an offensive against the proprietary schools, which were gradually brought under control—though not until well after the First World War.38 The steps taken by the DATSCH sufficed to secure the survival, even the growth, of the MBS. Not surprisingly, they failed to appease the professionalizers or to stem the flood of new engineers. Even as the profession's elite assumed quasi-governmental authority, the crisis in its junior ranks continued unabated. While the BtiB responded with growing militancy and direct action, the academically certified professionalizers mounted a strenuous effort to change the statutes of the VDI and expel nonacademic engineers. Their effort failed, because of the leadership's unwillingness to concede that "the gentlemen who have come out of [nonacademic engineering] schools . . . no longer belong in the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure." The directorate's "fundamental standpoint" was to "leave free where [one's] education may have come from," and that "as a matter of course we look upon these gentlemen as being part of us," so long as they did the kind of work that qualified as engineering. In impotent frustration, the hard-core professionalizers broke away to establish the VDDI.39 IV
In the end, neither the VDDI nor the BtiB could realize the promise with which they started out. The engineers of both organizations, which battled each other
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furiously and had radically different social visions, became increasingly alienated from the dominant institutions of German society and, as all their sociopolitical and legislative initiatives failed, were increasingly thrown back onto themselves. Both organizations—one vehemently and the other more hesitantly—rejected an opening to the Social Democratic Left, which constituted the ready-made and most obvious avenue of social protest. From above, they were squeezed equally between the industrialists and the old order. It was this context that enabled the engineers' disillusionment and search for alternative solutions to flourish. Preceding the year 1914, the political direction this search would take was not yet clearly defined. The BtiB remained generally in the orbit of left-wing liberalism and democratic politics, even though it was becoming increasingly more evident that this did not solve the engineers' problems. With its messianic expectations and radical-right tendencies, the VDDI more clearly foreshadowed the future, but, nonetheless, its predominant posture remained dignified—academic professionalism above the parties—as expectations of breaking into the establishment remained alive. This tone was markedly different from the excessive nationalism and volkisch sentiments the VDDI embraced after the war.40 Finally, what does all this suggest about the "peculiarities of German history?" 41 Clearly, the experience of German engineers was on one level a function of processes that have little to do with preindustrial and precapitalist traditions. The demoralizing effects of failing correspondence between demographic pulses, the development and output of educational systems, and the assimilating capacity of the labor market are too well known to the current generation of historians to allow any illusions on this score. Nor is a violent confrontation between engineering trade unions and capitalist management, or, for that matter, the aggressive pursuit of professionalism, something that is particularly unique. Finally, the massive fragmentation of engineers and their failure to develop a wider professional community were not, as noted at the outset, conditions limited to Germany. On the contrary, they were in the first place a function of industrial capitalism itself. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to conclude from such observations that the history of German engineers was nothing more than one aspect of a "crisis of a capitalist state" or a product of the irregularities of economic growth.42 Obviously, the hierarchical thinking of professionalizing DiplomIngenieure, their orientation to civil service career models—dependent on precisely defined, state-sanctioned educational credentials and monopolies— and their hatred and fear of "uncultivated" interlopers were inspired in the first instance by their own, particularly German-Prussian context. In addition, the Social Democratic labor movement's preemption of the option to express protest by decidedly moving to the left, and the deep cleavage between proletarian and bourgeois life-styles, were nowhere more strongly pronounced than in Germany. Similarly, the motivations behind establishing nonacademic engineering education as a wholly separate entity were to some extent inspired by the military division between the noncommissioned officer (NCO) and the commis-
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sioned officer (or, if that put the nonacademic engineer too far down the scale, on the more flattering distinction between subaltern officers and general staff officers that was commonly made at the time). The application of this militaristic imagery to the civilian sector was rather specifically German also. Primarily, however, the nonacademic engineering schools were established because the German technische Hochschulen, which were the envy of all other industrial societies, had been so aggressive and successful in their professionalization drive. By the 1880s, they had already become too expensive, too academic, and numerically too restrictive to fill the demand for a majority of ordinary engineering functions. This development was a direct consequence of their imitation of the German universities, which was in turn rooted in the engineering educators' envy ofBildung (cultivation), the engineers' lack of access to the higher civil service, and their lack of recognized professional standing; moreover, all of this was a direct result of the segregation of technical training from socially more legitimate types of education and of the survival and reinforcement of a preindustrial, precapitalist social hierarchy since the early nineteenth century.43 Again, this is not to say that such powerful, preindustrial residues by themselves should be blamed for the engineers' frustration and radicalization-—or for the nation's ills at large. The "old order" by itself, which had earlier managed to absorb the educated arid affluent bourgeoisie and undergone various other major changes, had been on the brink of accepting academically trained engineers as full professionals beginning in the 1880s. Their drive for recognition and social emancipation would undoubtedly have succeeded (as it generally did in neighboring countries like the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland), if it had not been for the dilution and new waves of diversification that were only then developing. In turn, this suggests that it was not necessarily the absence of parliamentary institutions or liberal democratic values that was at the root of the engineers' problems, but Germany's historically unique, particular blend of tradition and modernity. It was this combination—and combination alone—of inherited institutions and capitalist development that whipsawed the German engineers. It was against the combination—the industrialist establishment and the preindustrial "cultured" elites—that they eventually turned their anger.
Notes 1. Robert Perrucci and Joel E. Gerstl, Profession Without Community: Engineers in American Society (New York, 1969), p. 178. 2. Perrucci and Gerstl, Profession Without Community, pp. 57-64, 175-79; Monte A. Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830-1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore, Md., 1967), pp. 49-104. 3. On the neutrality of the VD1, see Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs: Zum politischen Verhalten der technischen Intelligent in Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1970); more recently, consult Technik, Ingenieure undGesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins
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Deutscher Ingenieure, 1856-1981, ed. Karl Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig (Diisseldorf, 1981), especially the essays by Manegold, Borchardt, and Konig (pp. 133288). 4. See, for example, Dr.-Ing. Hermann Bock, "Die vermeintliche Zurucksetzung des Ingenieurstandes," Zeitschrift des Verbandes Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure (VDDI) 4 (1913): 17-19; see also Dipl.-Ing. Dressel, "ZurLageder Diplom-Ingenieure in der Privatindustrie," Zeitschrift des VDDI 3 (1912): 351-53. 5. Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, Report of the Investigation of Engineering Education, 1923-1929, vol. I , A Comparative Study of Engineering Education in the United States and Europe, by William E. Wickenden (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1930), p. 996. 6. For recent discussions of corporatism, see Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton, N. J., l975);Neokorporatismus, ed. Ulrich von Alemann (Frankfurt, 1981); Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation, ed. Philippe Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch (London, 1979); See also Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfange, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Gottingen, 1974). The literature on the professions is voluminous but only occasionally rewarding. For a good introduction, see Magali Sarfatti-Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, Calif., 1977); Graeme Salaman, Community and Occupation: An Exploration of Work/Leisure Relationships (Cambridge, Eng., 1974). For the notion of privatization of sovereignty and of competition between the state and professional societies, see William J. Goode, "Community within a Community: The Professions," American Sociological Review 22 (1957): 194-200; and A. L. Mok,Beroepeninakte:bijdragetoteen beroepensociologie (Meppel, The Netherlands, 1973), pp. 22-23. 7. See, for example, Denkschrift ilber die Entwicklung der Fortbildungsschulen und der gewerblichen Fachschulen in Preussen, 1891-1895 (Berlin, 1896); Verhandlungen der stdndigen Kommission fur das technische Unterrichtswesen zu Berlin am 13. und 14. Januar 1896 (Berlin, 1897), inZentrales Staatsarchiv, Historische Abteilung II, Merseburg, Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe, Rep. 120. E. IV. 1. no 5, vol. 2; Prussia, Landtag, Haus der Abgeordneten, Stenographische Berichte der Verhandlungen (1883), p. 1074. 8. Expenditures detailed in Prussia, Landesgewerbeamt, Verwaltungsberichte, (Berlin, 1905-14), especially the 1909 report "Ruckblick auf die Entwicklung des gewerblichen Schulwesens in Preussen von 1884-1909," pp. 1-48 and tables following p. 48. 9. The preceding and next paragraphs are a summary of the author's recent research. The citations are from Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Historische Abteilung II, Merseburg, Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe, Rep. 120. E. IV. 1, no. 5, vol. 4, p. 16; and ibid., Geheimes Zivil-Kabinett 2.2.1, no. 29970, pp. 217-34. 10. Bericht der Schulkommission des Vereines deutscher Ingenieure iiber die Einrichtung Technischer Mittelschulen (Berlin, 1889), p. 30 11. Verhandlungen fiber die Organisation derpreussichen Maschinenbauschulen zu Berlin am6. und7. Mai 1898 (Berlin, 1899), in Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Historische Abteilung II, Merseburg, Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1. no. 5, vol. 2, p. 62. 12. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 221, emphasis in original. 13. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 437. 14. Ibid., p. 423. 15. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 207. 16. Ibid., pp. 300-19.
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17. Ibid., vol. 5, pp. 139-83. 18. Ibid., vol. 8, pp. 273-79, 328-29. 19. In the period preceding the First World War, regular enrollments at the technische Hochschulen peaked in 1902-3 at 12,687, having jumped by almost 400 percent from their previous low of 2,549 at the bottom of the trough in 1884-85. The number of proprietary engineering schools jumped from 7 before 1890 to 38 by 1910, an increase of more than 600 percent. Combined enrollment of proprietary and government nonacademic engineering schools in 1910 was almost 11,000, which was an increase of almost 700 percent over the approximately 1,400 students at such schools in the late 1880s. It is difficult to infer oversupply from these figures alone, but when contrasted to the value of industrial production in the same period, which increased less than 200 percent between 1884-85 and 1909-10, they give at least an inkling of the discrepancy. Industrial production figures are from Gerd Hohorst, Jurgen Kocka, and Gerhard A. Ritter, SozialgeschichtlichesArbeitsbuch: Materialien zur StatistikdesKaiserreichs, 1870-1914 (Munich, 1975), pp. 78, 88-91. Enrollment figures for the technische Hochschulen are taken from Frank R. Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissemchaftspolitik inDeutschland (Berlin, 1974), pp. 174, 186; for other engineering schools, Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Historische Abteilung II, Merseburg, Ministerium fur Handel undGewerbe, Rep. 120, E. IV, no. 2, vol. 1, pp. 83-92; no. 5, vol. 3, p. 17; ibid., Rep. 120. E. IV. 1. no. 2, vol. 2, pp. 70, 155; vol. 3, p. 182; vol. 4, pp. 272-92; vol. 5, pp. 5-6, 33, 59-61, 65, 153, 166; Martin Dosmar, Technische Mittelschulen (Berlin, 1910). 20. For the income figures of engineers see, for example, Reinhold Jaeckel, Statistik iiber die Lage der technischen Privatbeamten in Gross-Berlin (Jena, 1908), pp. 4397. 21. On the BtiB, see Deutsche Industriebeamten-Zeitung (hereafter abbreviated as DIBZ) (1904-14); for the number of Diplom-Ingenieure, DIBZ 7 (1911): 177. The number of salaried engineers is an estimate based on the 1907 census, which counted 124,577 "technical industrial salaried employees" as opposed to 231,624 foremen and 264,829 administrative employees in industry; see Steinitzer, "Die Gliederung der Angestellten," DIBZ 9 (1913): 497-98. 22. On the VDDI, see Mitteilungen (and from 1910 to 1914, Zeitschrift) des VerbandesDeutscherDiplom-Ingenieure. Membership figures from VDDI, Verzeichnis der Forderer und Mitglieder (Berlin, 1913); see also anonymous, Surgite: Worte von den Standesinteressen der deulschen akademischen Techniker (Dresden, 1909). 23. On industrial relations involving the BtiB, see especiallyD/SZvols. 4 , 5 , and 7 (1908, 1909, and 1911), which give detailed descriptions of separate conflicts with the Verband Bayerischer Metallindustrieller, with the mining firm Griesches Erben in Upper Silesia, and with the Verband Berliner Metallindustrieller and the Gute Hoffnungshiitte in Oberhausen. 24. Zeitschrift des VDI 52 (1908): 719. 25. Ibid., pp. 705-6, 718. 26. MBS, ibid., p. 716. 27. Ibid., p. 713. 28. Ibid., pp. 708, 714. 29. On Riedler, who had played a major role in the decision of William II to authorize the technische Hochschulen to start granting academic degrees in 1899, see Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitat, Technische Hochschule, und Industrie (Berlin, 1970), pp. 249-305. 30. Zeitschrift des VDI 52 (1908): 703-6.
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31. Ibid., p. 716. 32. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the ThirdReich (Cambridge, England, 1984), but especially pp. 152-88. 33. ZeitschriftdesVDI52 (1908): 559-60, 820;Zeitschriftdes VDI53 (1909): 148384; DAJSCH,AbhandlungenundBerichte (Leipzig, 1910), 1: 1-5. 34. Gustav Griiner, Die Entwicklung der hoheren technischenFachschulen im deutschen Sprachgebiet (Brunswick, 1967), p. 59. 35. DATSCH,AbhandlungenandBerichte, 1: 10. 36. See the literature cited in note 6, above. 37. DATSCH,AbhandlungenundBerichte (Leipzig, 1911), 2: 128. 38. Griiner, Entwicklung, pp. 103-9. 39. Zeitschrift des VDI 53 (1909): 1287-88. 40. On the postwar tendencies of the VDDI, see, for example, E. H. Schulz, Der Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure im heutigen Stoat (Essen, 1921), and VDDI, Dem Ziele entgegen . . . (Berlin, 1934); see also Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf, 1974), pp. 11-102. 41. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, England, 1984). 42. Geoff Eley, "What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or a Crisis of a Capitalist State," Politics and Society 12 (1983): 53-82. 43. See the author's New Profession, Old Order: Engineers and German Society, 18151914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1989).
Academic, Proletarian, . . . Professional? Shaping Professionalization for German Industrial Chemists, 1887-1920 JEFFREY A. JOHNSON The situation of the employed chemists had not improved in the course of time. . . . The leading positions in the factories and laboratories were mostly occupied by young people, making the advance of the new generation correspondingly difficult, and it was all but impossible to enter the ranks of the city and state administrators. . . . The profession of chemist was not yet recognized.'
This was how the official historian of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker (VDC; Association of German Chemists), writing in 1912, described the situation a quarter century earlier at the founding of his organization, then called the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur angewandte Chemie (DGaC; German Society for Applied Chemistry). The 1912 jubilee history maintained that the VDC had dealt with these issues through vigorous "activity in the interest of the chemical profession."2 Today one might call its policy "professionalization," despite this term's problematic nature.3 The policy of the VDC had successfully attracted a rapidly growing membership from an emerging "new middle class" of corporate technical employees, to whom it offered the professional goals of social status as well as scientific and technological expertise through imposing higher educational standards. By 1912, it was the largest organization of chemists in the world, having recently surpassed its older, academic-oriented rival, the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (DCG; German Chemical Society), which had scarcely grown since the VDC was founded. 4 Yet opposition from status-conscious university professors and bureaucrats had brought the VDC only partial success in the introduction of an official licensing examination as a central element of its program of professional recognition. The leaders of the VDC had then confronted the threat of a growing 123
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"chemical proletariat" made up of younger German industrial chemists with relatively poor economic prospects, who might be induced to join a new and increasingly class-conscious movement of technical employees and officials led by the Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten (BtiB; League of Technical and Industrial Officials), founded in 1904.6 The competing program of political and institutional reforms of the BtiB was aimed at bringing technical employees, including chemists, into a unionist movement that was an anathema to the leaders of the VDC. Having been partly rebuffed in their educational program, the leadership of the VDC adapted part of the socioeconomic program of the BtiB to their own purposes, thus modifying the pattern of professionalization in chemistry. This compromise in turn paved the way for the emergence of a separate "professional union" for industrial chemists in the revolutionary era immediately after the First World War. The following essay is intended to investigate professional activity in chemistry preceding the First World War and to analyze the actors and interactions that shaped it, then briefly to compare the German experience to that in other Western nations. These results may illuminate the problem of defining professionalization in general.
"Academization" in Industrial Chemistry: Origins and Policy of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker During the late nineteenth century, industrial chemistry was becoming "academized"—to borrow a term that has been used to describe how the status of German engineers changed along with changes in technological education during the same period.7 This process led to the creation of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker and shaped its professional goals until the turn of the century. Until the 1880s, the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft led the way to "academization" in industrial chemistry by fostering good relations between academic and industrial chemists and by providing the imperial German government with advice on the first imperial patent law in 1876-77. Nevertheless, the leadership and interests of the DCG remained primarily academic and scientific. Its statutes prevented it from pursuing policies that might be considered to have "professional" goals in a mainly economic or social sense. Although the natural outgrowth of the work of the DCG on the patent bill might have been the creation in it of a division of industrial chemistry, the academic leadership insisted on a separate organization. The Verein zur Wahrung der Interessen der chemischen Industrie Deutschlands (VWIcID; Association for the Protection of the Interests of the Chemical Industry of Germany), founded in 1877, became an economic-interest group dominated by the principal firms and entrepreneurs. Its major concerns lay in areas such as international trade policy; hence it was hardly a professional organization either.8 Academization entered a new phase, particularly in the coal tar dye industry during the late 1870s and early 1880s. The new patent law and the falling prices
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of many older dyes due to changes in taste or overproduction threatened some firms with disaster, offering advantages to others that could for the first time foster systematic innovation within their own establishments. While the academic chemists who had previously provided many of the new ideas for dye chemicals gradually moved into theoretical and experimental areas in which there was less direct relevance, the dye industry began to create its own research and development "laboratories" that were staffed and directed by academically trained chemists. These included a few former midranking university lecturers who had been attracted by a secure salary in industry at a time of poor science enrollments (which meant low fees) and uncertain advancement in the philosophical faculties. The new laboratories also served as pools of academically trained replacements for older, empirically or vocationally trained foremen who had previously supervised their firms' production processes.9 This was part of a larger trend that produced a separate category of "dependent technical employees" for the first time in the 1895 German occupational census. The results showed that about 3,600 employees in the new group did not yet outnumber about 3,740 "independent" directors and owners in the chemical industry. Nevertheless, at three of the largest firms, the total number of chemists had approximately quadrupled to about 250 from 1880 to 1895, as the new, "academic" approach to management and innovation was being established. By 1895, three quarters of the approximately 3,000 people who could be identified as "chemists" by the German census officials were employees, and at least 9 companies—all dye manufacturers—employed more than 20 chemists each. Most of them were apparently involved in the supervision of various phases of production, and almost a fifth were engaged in laboratory research.10 The process of industrial academization led the VWIcID to take up the problem of higher technological education in 1886. Standards for doctoral work at a few universities had fallen and training at others was too specialized, so that a university doctorate in chemistry was no guarantee of adequate preparation for a career in industry. The colleges of technology had mostly instituted a Diplom examination that covered the areas of industrial concern, but the colleges' chemistry students tended to bypass the examination, which conferred no title or social status, going on to a university to earn a doctoral title quickly. In response the colleges, often led by their chemistry departments, sought academic parity with the universities to include the right to award doctorates. The VDC pursued a different tack, however, by formally requesting the improvement of facilities for technological education at the universities, as well as a uniform German state licensing examination for all chemists, whether they had studied at the universities or at the colleges of technology.11 While the VWIcID was considering the problem of technological education from the employers' perspective, a new organization was examining it from the perspective of both the employees and teachers. The Deutsche Gesellschaft fur angewandte Chemie was founded in 1887 when a small ten-year-old association of analytical chemists decided to reorganize into a group with broader goals and membership, including industrial employees and employers as well as professors at the colleges and universities. They assumed control of the journal
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edited by Ferdinand Fischer, associate professor of technical chemistry at Gottingen, renaming it theZeitschriftfiirangewandte Chemie. Because the DGaC placed a high priority on education and on fostering technological expertise, by 1890 it had formally requested an official licensing examination as well.12 The original organization was small but grew rapidly, from 237 members in 1888 to 3,692 twenty years later, when it first outnumbered the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft. By 1896, when it was again reorganized, the new statutes limited individual membership to "chemists and other academically trained persons," but also permitted "agencies, firms, and associations with similar goals" to become corporate members.13 After this change, the main power rested with the employers and senior employees of the big corporations, who were usually able to dominate the district chapters, even though a growing majority of members were lower-ranking, dependent employees.14 One of the most active and influential members of the VDC, exemplifying the corporate presence, was Carl Duisberg, a young man of modest origins but vast energy and ambitions who in 1887 had just become director of research at Bayer and by the turn of the century was a director of the firm.15 He also rose in the DGaC, first becoming a leader of the Rhenish District Chapter in 1896, then deputy chairman of the entire organization in 1897 and again in 1902-6, finally chairman from 1907 to 1912. Duisberg particularly wanted the organization to incorporate all chemists, suggesting in 1896 that the DGaC be renamed from an association for "applied chemistry" to one for "German chemists."16 Hence arose the name "Verein Deutscher Chemiker." The principal exception to corporate control was the Frankfurt District Chapter, which was located in one of the biggest centers of the German chemical industry. No single corporation appeared able to dominate the chapter, which tended instead to elect academic chemists to its leadership. From its founding in 1893, the chapter took the lead in pressing Ferdinand Fischer and the other leaders of the DGaC to promote more of the "professional interests of the chemists" by including issues like working conditions and patent law, which Fischer preferred to leave to the VWIcID.17 To Duisberg, the calls from Frankfurt meant that chemists needed to raise their "professional consciousness" and obtain "a social status similar to that of the representatives of other academically educated occupational groups like government officials, physicians, pharmacists, attorneys, engineers, etc."18 This status would come through educational and social reform. He joined Fischer in mobilizing the growing strength of the VDC behind the proposals for a state examination and more technical chemistry courses in the universities, whereby Duisberg intended not only to promote the professional goal of raising academic standards for chemists, but also to shape their training "according to the interests of industry."19 The corporate director who most actively supported these proposals in the VWIcID was Henry T. Bottinger, Duisberg's superior at Bayer and a deputy in the Prussian legislature. Hence Duisberg's attitude was hardly surprising. To many prominent university chemists, however, a state examination would devalue the doctorate, leading to the loss of research assistants and the revenue
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they then enjoyed from dissertation fees. In 1897, these academic opponents compromised with others who were sympathetic to the idea of an official examination and formed the Verband der Laboratoriumsvorstande an Deutschen Hochschulen (VLDH; Association of Laboratory Directors at German Universities and Colleges), which was to administer its own, unofficial Verbands-Examen (association examination) as an expressly intermediate qualifying test for all potential degree candidates, including those at the colleges of technology. Although this examination went far toward ensuring that chemistry students would receive a uniform, basic knowledge of their discipline before beginning specialized research, it did not require a knowledge of technical chemistry as foreseen in the proposal of the VDC. Nevertheless, that proposal was now virtually a moot issue, its fate sealed in 1899 when the Prussian colleges of technology—soon followed by those in other states—won the right to award doctoral degrees and to confer the title Diplom-Ingenieur (certified engineer) for passing the Diplom examination. Although in this case the bureaucracy had overridden the university professors' resistance, the insistence of the VLDH on academic autonomy conversely provided a good excuse for the bureaucrats to override the more far-reaching demands of the industrial chemists. Establishing an official examination in technological chemistry would not only have necessitated making expensive additions to the teaching staffs and facilities at the universities, but it also implied a degree of official "recognition" that the bureaucrats were evidently reluctant to concede to a group that was still not as clearly "academic" as the established professions.20 Duisberg and other leaders of the VDC now turned more attention to raising standards for the secondary education of chemistry students, the only major group in the universities (outside agriculture and dentistry) who could obtain a doctorate without a secondary school Abitur (diploma). Professional recognition might not follow without higher standards. The state examination would have required an Abitur from any kind of nine-class secondary school, classical or modern; it would thus have been less restrictive than the requirements for studying most other university disciplines until after the Prussian education reforms of 1902, but it was still more restrictive than the Verbands-Examen, which required no Abitur at all. 21 The situation in chemistry seemed to be worsening. Although a survey of the mid-1890s reported that more than two thirds of all industrial chemists had their Abitur, by the turn of the century barely half of the candidates for the Verbands-Examen had it. The industrial boom of the late 1890s was apparently having a democratizing effect on the flow of students into industrial chemistry.22 Thus in 1900 the statutes of the VDC were revised again to stress that only "academically trained chemists" could be members.23 In 1902, the year Duisberg became vice-chairman, the VDC began to warn students without an Abitur against trying to get jobs in industry. In 1907, when he became chairman, the warning was repeated, with the justification that students without secondary school certificates were now disqualified from obtaining doctoral degrees at most universities, 24 for the Prussian Ministry of Education had finally decided to prohibit students without diplomas from obtaining doctorates. Evidently to satisfy the professors in the VLDH who
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feared too great a drop in enrollments and fees, exceptions could still be made for certified pharmacists studying chemistry who wrote "outstanding dissertations," but the majority of nonmatriculated students were excluded. The combined effect of these measures was that by 1911-12 more than four fifths of the VLDH candidates had their Abitur.25 In order to maintain the VDC as a central organization for all chemists regardless of specialization, a new revision of the statutes in 1907 introduced "specialty groups," which had the same rights to representation on the council of the VDC as the district chapters.26 The new groups, which were often led by academic chemists or the representatives of the principal firms in particular branches of industry, thus served to reawaken somewhat the original concern of the VDC with technological expertise and with academization in the sense originally pursued by the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft. Under Duisberg's leadership, the VDC's program of professionalization through academization by promoting educational status as well as expertise had seemingly reached a culminating point by 1907. Yet, a new aspect of the professionalizing strategy had already begun to emerge. In the summer of 1905, Emil Fischer, one of the academic chemists who had contributed most to industry, had urged Duisberg to consider the problem of the deteriorating social status of chemists; too many people were saying that it "no longer pays to become a chemist."27 In the following year, the question of patent law and the rights of employee inventors had been raised at the convention of the VDC, and Duisberg had reported anxiously to the VWIcID on growing economic worries among younger chemists, recommending that the manufacturers take steps "to head off efforts at legislation."28 Duisberg then helped to initiate and became first chairman of an Ausschuss zur Wahrung der gemeinsamen Interessen des Chemikerstandes (AWgIC; Committee for the Protection of the Common Interests of the Chemical Profession), in which the Verein Deutscher Chemiker cooperated with other chemistry organizations—even including the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft—in an effort to raise chemists' "professional consciousness" and improve relations with the state and imperial bureaucracies. Concerns of politics as well as status lay behind the goal of the AWgIC (and Duisberg) "sharply to distinguish between academically educated chemists, vocationally trained chemotechnicians, and empirically schooled Chemikanten and laboratory helpers."29 The first action of the new AWgIC was not to promote educational qualifications, however, but to survey salaries among industrial chemists and academic assistants. By this time, the assistants at the Prussian universities had collectively requested increases in their salaries,30 and the Bund der technischindustriellen Beamten had already begun to attract members among the industrial chemists by criticizing their economic conditions and demanding reforms,31 so that opposition to the new technicians' organization was already a motivating influence in the campaign to define the chemistry profession. Hence academic qualifications were now being used to draw lines against the technicians, but they would also have to be supplemented by additional measures.
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Proletarianization and Quasi- "Feudalization" in Science-Based Industries: Origins of the Bund der techiiisch-industriellen Beamten Academization was not the only process affecting the technical employees in the science-based industries of imperial Germany, nor was status professionalization the only response. "The workers, or more precisely the industrial employees, are generally divided into two groups: those who work with their hands, and those who work with their minds. But this distinction is false." Thus began the manifesto of a group of unemployed engineers in Berlin, calling for the creation of a "League of Industrial Officials." It went on to outline a socioeconomic program based on the principle that economic relationships, not social or academic criteria, should henceforth shape the loyalties of technical employees: "The conflict of interests between employers and employees is great enough to keep industrial brain workers economically divided from their employers, despite the similar social standing of the two groups, and to put all employees on one level, regardless of social distinctions. . . . Industrial brain work becomes cheaper and cheaper, despite its being more and more demanding. . . . The average earnings of the better workmen have reached and often surpassed those of the technologists."32 This argument implied that industrial employees were becoming "proletarianized," in that working conditions and opportunities for advancement in the increasingly large, bureaucratic, and monopolistic firms of the science-based industries corresponded ever less to the elevated "academic" expectations of young chemists and engineers, whose lack of organization made their economic position even weaker than the actual "proletarians," the wage earners. As technical employees felt this contradiction between academic expectation and reality, and observed the concurrent success of the workers' union movement, many became sympathetic to a strategy that would adapt the "proletarian" methods of the workers to the problems of the employees, leaving concerns with academization to groups like the Verein Deutscher Chemiker. The organization that emerged from this manifesto, the Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten, pursued this kind of strategy. How attractive would it be to the employed industrial chemist? Imperial occupational census returns of 1907 showed that although the total number of people calling themselves chemists had nearly doubled since 1895, from about 3,000 to about 5,800, the number in independent positions increased only from about 770 to 820. Most of the new chemists were apparently employed in the chemical industry, taking positions in its fastest-growing occupational category of technical employees, where more that 8,200 members now greatly outnumbered the nearly 4,800 owners and directors.33 A small number of companies hired the majority of industrial chemists. By 1912, there were only 20 "big firms," each with more than 20 chemists, and their share of industrial chemists had risen from about one third to about 53 percent of approximately 3,000 chemists in the chemical industry (narrowly defined). On the other hand, only 20 chemists were directors of such firms. The 3 "giant" coal tar dye firms (Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst), with about 870
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chemists in 1912, alone employed perhaps one tenth of all the chemists in the country, but more than one quarter of the group narrowly defined by the surveys of the VDC; only a small number could ever emulate the rise of Carl Duisberg. According to the surveys of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker, the "big firms" by 1912 dominated the recruitment of newly graduated chemists, taking two thirds of the new doctorates and four fifths of the best-qualified group of former assistants from the academic laboratories; the rest of the industry followed an older pattern, filling nearly two thirds of its vacancies with people recruited from other firms.34 It should be added that the vast majority of these chemists were men.35 Of course the big corporations continued to hire vocationally trained people, now called "chemotechnicians," to carry out the many tasks required to operate large-scale production. As yet in the early part of the century, there were relatively few chemotechnicians in the big firms, only about a tenth as many as their chemists by 1912;36 although in some very big firms the proportion was undoubtedly much higher, the technicians were still in the minority. Bayer, for example, had 60 engineers and 90 technicians in 1909, but 240 chemists.37 Technical chemists and technicians would often work in close association, making the two groups, for all their supposed social and educational differences, seem much the same in their economic function. After the turn of the century, even industrial research was far from what an academic chemist might have expected. Since the process of inventing numerous new dyes went according to established theoretical principles and laboratory guidelines, Carl Duisberg claimed without too much exaggeration that it required "no trace" of creative thought in either chemist or technician. The status of industrial research under such conditions remained so low that some chemists were even willing to leave Bayer for the comparative poverty of academic life.38 Changes in the industry magnified discontent. The BASF in 1897 and Hoechst in 1904 began manufacturing synthetic indigo, which gave the giant firms a long-sought, mass-market dye, the production of which from coal tar chemicals could be monopolized. Indigo produced by these two firms accounted for one quarter of German dye exports (in tons) by 1910. Their rivals' fears of the costs of further competitive research on a scientific and technological problem of this magnitude helped to spark the merger movement of 1903-4, which consolidated the five biggest German dye firms into two rival coalitions led by the BASF and Hoechst.39 Given this situation, it was widely believed that the industry would limit further research, while monopolizing patents and chemists simply to entrench its world dominance. One critic, writing for the BtiB in 1907, accused the industry of using "chemists like the parts of a machine" and leaving "amass of intellects lying fallow," without the freedom to create "really useful things."40 Even a representative for the dye manufacturers themselves admitted at about the same time that "the staffs that once were active in expanding the borders of the field are now used for internal consolidation and for the improvement of what is already known." 41 The BtiB focused its criticism on the employment contract, which was the
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legal tool that the big firms used to limit the earnings and mobility of their chemists. It was an extraordinarily sensitive issue. The uniform patent law and contractual provisions known as Karenz, or the "competition clause," had made it possible to shift the balance of control from individual employees to the corporations and virtually put an end to the old practice of clever employees using their expertise in chemistry or their knowledge of trade secrets to play one company off against another.42 In most companies, employees had to renounce all patent rights to discoveries made within the firm. In return, the employee might be granted a small percentage of the profits from a discovery that the firm considered to be worth rewarding and did not claim as its own collective creation. As the scale of production grew larger, and the profits mounted, the percentages shrank (in Bayer, to 3 percent) and the corporations showed a decreasing inclination to grant any recognition at all to their employee inventors.43 Moreover, since patent royalties were tied to an employee's hiring contract, the employee would lose them if the employment was terminated. The employers justified the patent situation on the economic principle of the protection of technical innovation by patent monopolies, and on the legal principle of the employees' professional freedom to enter into individual contracts. Yet in practice the contracts may have limited innovation, and they hardly promoted freedom for the employees either. To critics in the BtiB, they represented not simply proletarianization but also "intellectual serfdom."44 The so-called competition clause or Karenz provision in employees' contracts became a second target for such criticisms. The competition clause allowed an employer legally to prevent his former technical employees from assuming positions with competing firms within specified geographic, time, and product bounds. Although imperial law limited the maximum time period to three years for commercial employees, there was no legal maximum for technical employees. Cases could be found in the chemical industry in which restriction on employment extended to as long as ten or perhaps even twenty years. Nor was there any geographic limit; thus, it was common to bar employment not just in all of Germany, but far beyond its borders. The biggest corporations had affiliates and competed with each other throughout the world, controlling some 90 percent of world dye production by 1914. Hence they reserved the right to restrict their employees' movements anywhere in the world. The only legal restraint on the operation of the competition clause was the statement in the law that restrictions could not "unjustly impede the advancement" of the employee,45 but there was no judicial agreement on what this meant. Moreover, the law did not require that the employee be compensated while on restriction, and the penalties for violation did not need to be in proportion to the employee's income. Some three quarters of those on restriction came from the big firms, of which the largest, like Bayer, could afford to compensate their chemists with annual payments equal to their last year's salary, excluding royalties; other big firms that were smaller, however, like the Weiler-ter Meer or K. Oehler dyeworks, apparently paid nothing or only a fraction of their chemists' last year's salary (a compensation "so little," as
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Duisberg noted, "that a chemist cannot live on it") but with each violation penalized by many times that salary, which could amount to thirty thousand marks.46 Under these circumstances, who would risk leaving a secure position, however unsatisfactory its prospects? The advancing monopolization and cartelization of the major firms in the technologically advanced industries also raised the threat of the so-called secret competition clause, whereby all the participating firms agreed not to hire an employee without the consent of the previous employer. This truly was "modern serfdom."47 Completing the picture of quasi-proletarian and quasi-feudal restrictions on industrial chemists is the level of their salaries and the manner in which they obtained additional compensation. The available data—collected in the course of disputes between BtiB and VDC, and thus likely to be biased—show little difference between the salaries of younger chemists and technicians. The median salary of technicians in their middle to late twenties—most without completed higher educations—was eighteen-hundred marks, which was at the low end of the starting salaries for chemists who would be finishing their doctorates at about the same age. Significant disparities arose primarily among the older employees; a few chemists seem to have had better long-term prospects.48 Even so, a contemporary factory official sympathetic to the employers' point of view about 1906 considered the salary of five thousand marks for an industrial chemist with five years' experience to be quite unusual, although in 1907 Duisberg publicly admitted that chemists' salaries were in fact "relatively low."49 Moreover, to compensate for relatively low salaries, industrial chemists obtained significant portions of their income from fringe benefits that were tied to service in a particular company.50 This was particularly true after the recession years of 1907 and 1908, as the ensuing boom raised profits to 12.3 percent of their share capital for German industry generally by 1913, but in the dye firms to 37 percent, so that they could afford an unprecedented, disproportionately high level of "social support funds." Such funds provided fringe benefits, apparently including company housing, insurance, and pension plans as well as medical and other allowances (probably including restriction payments). By the end of 1913, the amounts invested by the dye firms for these purposes rose to 46.1 million marks, nearly a third of their total share capital and more than ten times the national average. To the reporter for the Verein Deutscher Chemiker, "the size of the amounts set aside . . . provides striking evidence for the social understanding of the leaders of these firms."51 They certainly can be regarded as "enlightened entrepreneurs" from this perspective, yet there was also justice in those critics who pointed out the quasi-feudal nature of these arrangements; as with patents and the competition clause, such benefits were designed to entrench the dominant position of the leading firms by ensuring that their technical employees would remain with the company. The leaders of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker were thus building professional and academic status consciousness on an economically weak foundation. Although the average industrial chemist might have an academic education and status as well as middle-class social origins similar to those of the corporate
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directors, the actual economic position and prospects of the chemist looked increasingly "proletarian," because the larger the firm, the less the chemist's chances of ever achieving real independence. What could resolve this dilemma? BtiB Versus VDC: Competing Models of Social Action for Industrial Chemists The chemical industry was thus vulnerable to criticism from the Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten. To prevent the industrial chemists from allying with this group, the Verein Deutscher Chemiker had to work out a socioeconomic program that could respond to the issues that the BtiB had raised. The scope and meaning of the professionalization of the VDC changed in the process. The differing attitudes and strategies of the two groups on some key issues are compared below; they constitute two competing models of collective action for technical employees in a modern, industrialized society. The BtiB advocated greater collective mobility through far-reaching socioeconomic reforms—demanding, for example, the complete abolition of the competition clause and the transfer of the basic rights to patentable inventions from the firm to the inventor, who could sell the invention back to the firm for a minimum share of one third to one half the total profits deriving from the patent52—and ultimately through collective bargaining, as opposed to the emphasis of the VDC on securing the academic status of its members and holding open considerable rewards for those few fortunate individuals who could advance up the existing corporate capitalist hierarchy. To the visionary program of the BtiB of establishing a "constitutional factory system" and participation in management by representatives of employees and workers,53 the VDC opposed a conventional view of corporate ownership and the unchallengeable authority of management. In comparison to the BtiB, the VDC was therefore conservative. Nevertheless the external challenge of the BtiB added force to the demands of groups like the Frankfurt chapter within the VDC and forced the latter's leaders into the role of moderate social reformers. When the BtiB helped to organize and lead a "Social Committee of Associations of Technical Employees," which was a coalition of technicians' groups promoting their sociopolitical reform agenda in the Reichstag, Duisberg and his colleagues in the VDC responded with an agency for legal advice (not representation) to individual chemists on issues like contracts, patent rights, and the competition clause. Then they reluctantly established a chemists' "social committee"—composed of employers and screened employees—which Duisberg later realized could serve as a "lightning rod" for the directors of the VDC by taking up and moderating requests for reforms emanating from dissatisfied members.54 The social committee developed legislative petitions for employees' insurance, patent reform, and the regulation of Karenz. In 1911, the Reichstag passed an insurance act that generally satisfied the leaders of the VDC,55 while bills in the other two areas were still pending at the outbreak of war in 1914.
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The social committee of the VDC also prepared a standard hiring contract to be voluntarily introduced by the leading firms in the chemical industry. It incorporated provisions to which the VWIcID had already agreed as a basis for preempting more far-reaching legislation or collective bargaining. The contract established that Karenz must be paid (minimum levels were not set), and that the maximum standard fine for breach of contract was set at three times the employee's last salary.56 Otherwise, however, as the BtiB correctly noted, it hardly advanced the employees' interests except where required by law. But was the BtiB right to add that by accepting such terms, the chemists exhibited a "very limited social understanding"?57 Demanding more on an issue like the competition clause would have placed the VDC in opposition to the employers' groups, whereas Duisberg had insisted on a strategy of cooperation.58 The BtiB, of course, envisioned a very different strategy. To promote their opposing visions, the VDC and BtiB waged a lively propaganda war of half-truths and exaggerations. In trying to "bring about a revolution in the heads of our technicians," as one leader put it,59 the BtiB exaggerated the exploitation of employees by employers. From the beginning it employed socialist-style rhetoric, speaking, for example, of the "technical proletariat, . . . a reserve army of industrial officials" that had been created by the economic system.60 Yet the BtiB was politically neutral, expelling one avowed Social Democrat from its directorate in 1909 for openly advocating alliance with that party.61 Nevertheless, the leaders of the VDC joined other opponents among the manufacturers in labeling the BtiB "socialist" and its members inferior. In Duisberg's first speech as chairman in 1907, he scorned the "trade union" methods of the BtiB and called instead for the professional unity of all "chemists with a higher education . . . against all outsiders. There is no need to let economic reasons separate us into two enemy camps, employers and employees. . . . As educated men we abhor an approach which works with the meanest and lowest of all drives, envy and class hatred, whereby salvation is sought in struggle."62 To forestall potential rebellions by junior-ranking chemists on the floor of the annual convention of the VDC, Duisberg's revision of the statutes in 1907 solidified the control of the directorate of the VDC over the agenda. Even the "neutral" specialty groups established at this time helped to dilute the already weak voices of protest on the administrative council of the VDC, a majority of the older chapter representatives.63 The first two years of the existence of the BtiB were also the slowest years of the growth of the VDC during the entire 1900-14 period; it added fewer than two hundred new members, which was a rate of only 5 percent for the years of 1904 to 1906. However, in 1907, while an unprecedented number of members left the VDC, more than twice as many new members also joined; despite the recession, it grew by more than four hundred members overall in the years of 1906 to 1908, for a two-year growth rate of about 12 percent, which it maintained until 1914.64 Duisberg's social measures may well account for the turnaround. The further growth and diversification of the chemical industry
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before 1914 put to rest many of the fears of stagnation that had existed in 1906-7. Nevertheless, even with an expanded socioeconomic program, the leaders of the VDC continued to view the securing of social and educational status as their fundamental goal during this period. Ultimately, "professional consciousness" had to rest on a sense of unique status, which remained the principal justification for refusing to associate with the technicians and for pursuing a different set of policies from those of groups like the BtiB. 65 The decision of the VDC to emphasize educational status, by eliminating the poorer students who could not afford to complete a secondary education, evidently helped to widen the social gap between chemists and technicians. One contemporary observer saw the academic status consciousness of many technical employees with upper-middle-class origins as a way to deny that their career was actually "a step down on the social ladder,"66 which could also be true of many chemists. About 90 percent of Prussian university chemistry students' fathers were financially independent, which was an unusually high proportion even for those times, while an almost equally high proportion of chemists ended up in dependent positions, that is, "a step down." Thus, an organization like the Verein Deutscher Chemiker had a sociopsychological advantage over one like the BtiB, even if the latter's economic program promised more concrete advantages. Moreover, because those promises could not be immediately fulfilled in the context of resistance by the government and the employers, the rate of growth of the BtiB began to slow and in the last year of peace even fell below that of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker.67 The accent of the VDC on status in professionalization meanwhile appeared in another professional organization, the Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure (Association of German Certified Engineers), organized in 1909. It, too, pursued a "professional policy" based on educational status and moderate socioeconomic reform in direct opposition to the radical "class policy" of the Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten.68 Concluding Observations: Professionalization Among Industrial Chemists in Germany and Elsewhere What light does the foregoing shed on the process of professionalization in industrial chemistry, particularly in Imperial Germany? Sociologists have frequently attempted to create a universal definition of "professional" and of the process that creates it. A historian might better proceed by determining what historical actors meant by such terms, and what their actual strategies were in a given context like imperial Germany. The following is the working definition given by a leader of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker in 1910: "One can only speak of a profession when all members are equal to one another in education and social position. The income level and economic position, whether dependent or independent, make no difference in this respect."69 Was
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chemistry a profession by this definition? Not yet, according to the same source, nor would it be until it met the criterion of uniform educational status—in both secondary and higher education—purportedly set by the established professions such as law and medicine. This belief legitimized the educational measures proposed by the VDC. As noted, the strategy of the VDC required but failed to obtain full cooperation from the state bureaucracies and the professors. It may seem paradoxical that those who created the Verband der Laboratoriumsvorstande an Deutschen Hochschulen operated in the name of professional autonomy to rebuff proposals that were supposed to raise the status of their profession; clearly, however, the professors acted more out of their interests as directors of academic laboratories than as "chemists," a term that was conspicuously absent from the name of the VLDH. An analogous conflict of interests can be seen in the motivations of the businessmen in the VDC, who like Duisberg had loyalties divided between firms on the one hand, and their professional colleagues on the other. Therefore, the educational proposals of the VDC served dual purposes, which its leaders tried to unify by identifying the interests of a firm with the interests of a chemist, and by admitting firms to membership in the professional organization. That, however, produced difficulties; for how could a firm by itself be a "professional" according to the educational and status criteria that the VDC upheld, particularly in that no more than one fifth of directors identified in the census data in 1895 or 1907 called themselves "chemists"? Therefore, most employers could not be considered members of the chemical profession by educational and social criteria. These difficulties have led some German analysts to speak of two parallel and interacting processes, "professionalization" andBerufskonstruktion (construction of an occupation), whereby the former applies only to strategies pursued by insiders, while the latter involves influences exerted by outsiders.70 Such an analysis seems particularly apt for the VDC, especially given the dual roles played in it by men like Duisberg. With the BtiB emerged a clear alternative strategy that, despite omitting the promotion of education and expertise in traditional professionalization, nevertheless did promise to advance the collective socioeconomic interests of the technical employees in areas in which they had serious problems, and it avoided the conflicts of interest that were characteristic of the VDC. The challenge of the BtiB led the leaders of the VDC to expand their strategy of professionalization by including such socioeconomic reform measures as could obtain cooperation from the employers. One characteristic difference between this expanded strategy and those followed in other professional contexts was the absence in the VDC of any effort to prepare a code of ethics for industrial chemists. For individual chemists, matters like fees (i.e., salaries), altruism (i.e., the giving up of patent rights or the working of overtime), or discretion in client relationships (assuming an employer to be a client) were regulated by their contracts of employment, not by any code. Yet the standard hiring contract of the VDC introduced in 1912 performed some of the functions of a uniform, professional code of ethics, although the wide discretion it gave to employers (except for provisions already
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in the law) could not wholly satisfy employees who sought professional autonomy. The Verein Deutscher Chemiker before 1914 thus exemplifies the leading organization of a science-based industrial profession in the making, its professionalization strategy shaped by the cross-directed pressures of academic status consciousness in the highly stratified society of imperial Germany on the one side, and the politicoeconomic changes and conflicts that were sweeping German industry on the other. The German case was unique for the industrial chemistry of its time. No other country had as effectively integrated academic science and industrial innovation, particularly in organic chemistry. Indeed, with the possible exception of the United States, no other country had as many chemists; but the average German chemist was much better educated than the average American counterpart. Compared to their colleagues abroad, the German industrial chemists on the eve of the First World War therefore had the strongest claim to be considered an academic profession, yet for that very reason suffered perhaps the most from the contrasts between this ideal status and their actual occupational situation. The greater uniformity and high quality of scientific education in the German system, particularly after the reforms at the turn of the century, and the general identification of specific educational attainments with a specific social status, had considerably simplified the problem of defining who was to be considered a "professional." Having proved their practical worth to industry from an early stage, academically trained German chemists could relatively easily equate academic status with occupational qualifications, drawing lines of academic status between insiders who could be admitted to a professional organization like the VDC and outsiders who could not. The Germans thus did not have to develop the complex, hierarchical system of grades of membership that the British and Americans established in their professional organizations.71 Instead of creating an artificial hierarchy, the leading German chemists simply adapted themselves to the stratification that already existed in their society.
Epilogue: A Professional Union in Industrial Chemistry, 1920 The democratic tendencies temporarily encouraged after the war in the chemical profession, as elsewhere in German society, brought a reaction against the leadership of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker. In 1919, a Bund angestellter Chemiker und Ingenieure (BaCI; League of Employed Chemists and Engineers) was organized as an alternative to both the VDC and the older BtiB, which about the same time merged with another technicians' group and allied itself to the proletarian free trade unions.72 Without denying the VDC ideal regarding academic status, the new chemists' BaCI adopted a trade unionist approach excluding professors and employers, who accepted it as the economic voice of the employees. The VDC continued to act as the professional organization for all chemists, but the new group took up its prewar socioeconomic agenda. In
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1920, the BaCI compiled a national standard contract for the chemical industry that regulated patent fees, working hours, and other issues, including guidelines for salaries in the first five years. This contract appears to have been generally accepted throughout the industry, and its provisions were even integrated into the national socialist labor law of 1937.73 The new BaCI thus exemplified both the "academic" tendencies represented by the VDC and the "proletarian" tendencies represented by the old BtiB, producing what neither could have become before the war: a "professional union" for industrial chemists. This development was paralleled in at least one other Western nation, Great Britain, which also had a strong labor movement and in which the chemical industry was greatly stimulated by the war.74 Although the economic problems they faced worsened in many respects during the next decade, the professional unions did seem to have solved the old problem of finding the appropriate professional organization for industrial chemists. Of course, that solution was incomplete. Under national socialism, German industrial chemists were to experience yet another strategy, the party-controlled professional organization, with effects that have yet to be fully investigated.
Notes 1. B. Rassow, Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Chemiker in den erstenfiinfundzwanzig Jahren seines Bestehens (Leipzig, 1912), p. 4; literally, "estate of chemist" (Stand der Chemiker). Except as noted later, Stand will refer to "profession" in contexts like this and in compound words like Chemikerstand, Berufsstand, and the like, indicating an occupational group. Caution is needed, because Stand could mean different things to different groups; see Michael Burrage, Konrad Jarausch, and Hannes Siegrist, "An Actor-Oriented Framework for the History of the Professions: Prerequisites for a Theory" in M. Burrage et al., eds., Professions in Theory and History (London, 1990). 2. Rassow, Geschichte, pp. 72-92. 3. See Eliot Freidson, "The Theory of Professions: State of the Art," in The Sociology of the Professions .-Lawyers, Doctors and Others, ed. Robert Dingwall and Philip Lewis (New York, 1983), pp. 19-37, especially 36; Burrage et al., "Framework," pp. 4-6; Charles E. McClelland, "Toward an Historical Theory of Professionalization" (Unpubl. Ms., 1983); for the German chemists see Lothar Burchardt, "Professionalisierung oder Berufskonstruktion? Das Beispiel des Chemikers im wilhelminischenDeutschland," inProfessionalisierunginhistorischerPerspektive, ed. HansUlrich Wehler, no. 3 of Geschichte und Gesellschaft 6 (1980): 326-48. 4. On the DCG see B. Lepsius, Festschrift zur Feier des SOjahrigen Bestehens der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft und des 100. Geburtstages ihres Begriinders August Wilhelm vonHofinann (Berlin, 1918), and Walter Ruske, 100 Jahre Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (Weinheim, 1967). On the VDC see Ruske, but especially Rassow's Geschichte and minutes and surveys in the Zeitschriftfiir angewandte Chemie of the VDC (hereafter abbreviated asZtsch. angew. Ch.). 5. Rassow, Geschichte, p. 76. 6. The best available sources: Bund der technischen Angestellten und Beamten, 25 Jahre Technikergewerkschaft—10 Jahre Butab (Berlin [?], 1929), pp. 24-51; see also
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Wilhelm Mertens, "ZurBewegung dertechnischen Privatbeamten," ArchivfiirSozialwissenschaft undSozialpolitik 25 (1907): 649-713; Emil Lederer, Die Privatangestellten in dermodernenWirtschaftsentwicklung (Tubingen, 1912), especially pp. 181-223; annual reports and minutes in the BtiB Schriften; and its Deutsche Industriebeamten-Zeitung (hereafter abbreviated asDt. Indb.-Ztg.). Angestellter andBeamter will be "employee" and "official," respectively; both connote salaried, white-collar workers rather than Arbeiter, who are blue-collar wage earners. 7. See Karl-Heinz Manegold, "Technology Academised: Education and Training of the Engineer in the Nineteenth Century," in The Dynamics of Science and Technology, vol. 2, The Sociology of the Sciences ed. W. Krohn, Edwin Layton, and Peter Weingart (Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1978), pp. 137-58; JargenKocka, Die Angestellten in der deutschen Geschichte, 1850-1980: Vom Privatbeamten zum angestellten Arbeitnehmer (Gottingen, 1981), pp. 94-98. 8. "Fiinfundzwanzig Jahre unseres Vereinslebens," Die chemische Industrie (henceforth abbreviated as Chem. Ind.) 25 (1902): 405-17, here 406; Verein zur Wahrung der Interessen der chemischen Industrie Deutschlands (C. Ungewitter), Ausgewahlte Kapitelaus derchemisch-industriellenWirtschaftspolitik (Berlin, 1927), p. 5; Ruske, 100 Jahre, pp. 26, 43-44, 109, 124, 131; Lepsius, Festschrift, p. 179. 9. Georg Meyer-Thurow, "The Industrialization of Invention: A Case Study from the German Chemical Industry," Isis 73 (1982): 363-81; August Bernthsen, Fiinfzig Jahre Tatigkeit in chemischer Wissenschaft und Industrie: Einige Lebenserinnerungen (Heidelberg: Privately printed, 1925), pp. 35-39. 10. Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, N.S. (hereafter abbreviated as Statist. Dt. R.) 103 (1897): 366; ibid., 203 (1910): 255; ibid., 221 (Zusammenfassende Ubersichtenfur die Gewerbliche Betriebszdhlung von 1907): 130-31; Beer, The Emergence of the German Dye Industry, ed. B. I. Cohen (Salem, N.H., 1981), pp. 83-84, 134; Meyer-Thurow, "Industrialization," pp. 368, 371; Ludwig F. Haber, The Chemical Industry in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1958), p. 133; Ferdinand Fischer, Das Studium der technischen Chemie (Brunswick, 1957), p. 45. 11. Lothar Burchardt, "Wissenschaft und Wirtschaftswachstum: Industrielle Einflussnahmen auf die Wissenschaftspolitik im Wilhelminischen Deutschland," in Soziale Bewegung undpolitische Verfassung: Beitrdge zur Geschichte der modernen Welt, ed. Ulrich Engelhardt (Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 776-77; Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie: Bin Beitrag (Berlin, 1970), pp. 249-305; Chem. Ind. 17 (1894): 263; ibid., 29 (1896): 401-2. 12. "Zur Geschichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur angewandte Chemie," Ztsch. angew.Ch. 6 (1893): 555. 13. New statutes of the newly renamed Verein Deutscher Chemiker: Ztsch. angew. Ch. 9 (1896): 391-94; membership: ibid. (1914): essay section, 586. 14. A complete list of members is unavailable, but it seems that the proportion of dependent employees rose during 1896-1909 from about two thirds to nearly 90 percent: Ztsch. angew. Ch. 9 (1896): 113; ibid., 22 (1909): 2541. 15. Carl Duisberg, Meine Lebenserinnerungen (Leipzig, 1933), virtually ignores the VDC, but see Hans-Joachim Flechtner, Carl Duisberg: Vom Chemiker zum Wirtschaftsfuhrer (Diisseldorf, 1959; 2nd ed., 1961 [annotations in following paper come from the first edition]), based on papers in the Bayer corporate archives but unfortunately not annotated. 16. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 9 (1896): 155-56. 17. O. Wentzki, "Bezirksverein Frankfurt von 1893-1911," in Rassow, Geschichte, pp. 218-26, here 219.
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18. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 9 (1896): 155-56. 19. Carl Duisberg, "Uber die Ausbildung der technischen Chemiker und das zu erstrebende Staatsexamen fur dieselben," ibid., pp. 97-111, here 107-8. 20. Jeffrey A. Johnson, "Academic Self-Regulation and the Chemical Profession in Imperial Germany," Minerva 23 (1985): 241-71, here 250-57, 262-63. 21. Ibid., p. 266. 22. Duisberg, "Ausbildung," p. l06;Ztsch. angew. Ch. 22 (1909): 1846; Hartmut Titze, "Enrollment Expansion and Academic Overcrowding in Germany," in The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860-1930: Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch (Stuttgart, 1983), pp. 57-88, here 65. 23. Old and new statutes, Ztsch. angew. Ch. 20 (1907): 392-99, here 393. 24. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 15 (1902): 990-93; ibid., 20 (1907): 1477; Rassow,Geschichte, p. 76. 25. Johnson, "Academic Self-Regulation," pp. 266-67. 26. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 20 (1907): 399, 1457-58. 27. Fischer to Duisberg, July 31, 1905, Emil Fischer Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 28. Chem. Ind. 29 (1906): 536-37. 29. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 20 (1907): 513-14, 1512-13. "Chemikant" apparently means semiskilled laboratory and production workers. 30. Burchardt, "Professionalisierung," p. 338. 31. Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 2 (1906): 56-57. 32. Bund der technischen Angestellten und Beamten, 25 Jahre, pp. 24-25. 33. Statist. Dt. R. 203 (1910): 255; ibid., 221: 130-31. 34. Annual surveys began in 1907 but did not subdivide by big and small firms until l910:Ztsch. angew. Ch. 26 (1913): 757, gives 1910-12results;Ztsch. angew. Ch. 27 (1914): essay section 598, gives 1911-13 results, and so on; chemists in giant firms: Beer,Emergence, pp. 83-84, 134; Meyer-Thurow, "Industrialization," pp. 368, 371; Haber, Chemical Industry, p. 133. 35. A few women were trained as chemists before 1909, the year of their first official matriculation at Prussian universities, but they tended to find poorly paid positions like sugar refining (compare Dr. S., "Die Lage der deutschen Zuckertechniket,"Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 2 [1906]: 317, 340-42, here 340). For their first mention in a VDC survey: Ztsch. angew. Ch. 26 (1913): 757. 36. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 25 (1912): 1816-17. 37. Carl Duisberg, "Die Angestelltenerfindung in der chemischen Industrie," Ztsch. angew. Ch. 22 (1909): 1665-70, here 1667. 38. Ibid.; Meyer-Thurow, "Industrialization," pp. 375-80. 39. Flechtner, CarlDuisberg, pp. 192-93; on the export of indigo, seeZtsch. angew. Ch. 25(1912): 257,2116. 40. R. Leimbach, "Deutsche Chemiker und Deutsche Industrie, II," Dt. Indb.Ztg. 3 (1907): 225-29, here 226-27. 41. Chem. Ind. 29 (1906): 530-31. 42. On the patent issue and competition clause in general: Weinberg, "Die rechtliche Stellung der technischen Angestellten,"Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 1 (1904-5): 192-94; Mertens, "Bewegung," pp. 672-96; "Etablissementserfindung," Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 9 (1913): 389-92, 399-401, 411-13; in the chemical industry: Dr. H., "Zur Lage der technischen Chemiker," Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 3 (1907): 120-21; Leimbach, "Deutsche Chemiker," pp. 227-29; Max Buchner, "Die Konkurrenzklausel und die chemische
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Technik," Ztsch. angew. Ch. 21 (1908): 1297-1304, and reports by E. Haagn and F. Raschig of the social committee of the VDC inZtsch. angew. Ch. 22 (1909): 1797804; Duisberg, "Angestelltenerfindung," pp. 1665-70, and related articles inZtsch. angew. Ch. 22 (1909); "Entwurf des neuen Patentgesetzes," Ztsch. angew. Ch. 37 (1914): essay section, 137-43, and subsequent related articles. 43. Meyer-Thurow, "Industrialization," p. 378. 44. Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 1 (1904-5): 161-62; Ztsch. angew. Ch. 22 (1909): 2566; Chem. Ind. 29 (1906): 536. 45. Cited in Mertens, "Bewegung," p. 672. 46. Carl Duisberg to Emil Fischer, August 19, 1905, Fischer Papers, with enclosed copy of an extract from a chemist's contract with the Oehler company, paragraph 2, specifying penalty. Numbers going into Karenz from Verein Deutscher Chemiker surveys, 1910-12. 47. Mertens, "Bewegung," p. 680n. 48. Der Techniker im Tarifvertrag (Berlin, 1924), pp. 1-3 (in Bund der technischen Angestellten und Beamten, ScAn/ten, no. 23);Ztsch. angew. Ch. 21 (1908): 1943;Cfe>m. Ind. 31 (1908): 399. 49. L. Max Wohlgemuth, Der Fabrikchemiker: Seine Ausbildung und Stellung (Halle, 1906), cited in "DerFabrikchemiker," Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 2 (1906): 300-3, here 302;Ztsch. angew. Ch. 20(1907): 1469. 50. Comments in Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten (henceforth abbreviated as BtiB), Bericht tiberden 8. ordentlichen Bundestag . . . 1912, in BtiB, Schriften, no. 25 (Berlin, 1912), pp. 22, 25. 51. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 27 (1914): economics section, 746. 52. Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 1 (1904-5): 161-62. 53. Mertens, "Bewegung," pp. 697-98. 54. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 25(1912): 1786; ibid., 20 (1907): 1522-27, 1439; ibid., 21 (1908): 1891. 55. Mertens, "Bewegung," pp. 698-705; Ztsch. angew. Ch. 24 (1911): 1710-14; ibid., 25(1912): 1824. 56. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 25 (1912): 2817-21; C. Duisberg, "Der gewerbliche Arbeitsvertrag der kaufmannischen und der technischen Angestellten," Chem. Ind. 30 (1907): 484; Ztsch. angew. Ch. 20 (1907): 1464-65 and 1471. 57. Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 9 (1913): 51-52. 58. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 20 (1907): 1468, 1522. 59. BtiB, Bericht iiber den 5. ordentlichen Bundestag . . . 1910, in BtiB, Schriften, no. 18 (Berlin, 1910), p. 30. 60. Dt. Indb.-Ztg. 1 (1904-5): 2. 61. BtiB, Bericht fiber den 3. ordentlichen Bundestag der technisch-industriellen Beamten ... 1909, in BtiB, Schriften, no. 14 (Berlin, 1909): 179, only one of the conflicts that cost the BtiB talented leaders. 62. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 20 (1907): 1497-98. 63. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 22 (1909): 2542; ibid., 20 (1907): 395-96. 64. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 27 (1914): essay section, 586. 65. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 23 (1910): 658-59. 66. Mertens, "Bewegung," pp. 656-57. 67. See Bund der technischen Angestellten und Beamten, 25 Jahre, p. 50. 68. See the Gispen chapter in this volume. 69. Ztsch. angew. Ch. 23 (1910): 658. 70. H. A. Hesse, Berufe imWandel (Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 85-89, 131, 173, cited by
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Burchardt, "Professionalisierung," pp. 326n., 348n; Statist. Dt. R. 103 (1897): 366; ibid., 203 (1910): 255; ibid., 221: 130-31. 71. Colin A. Russell with Noel G. Coley and Gerrylynn K. Roberts, Chemists by Profession: The Origins and Rise of the Royal Institute of Chemistry (Milton Keynes, England, 1977), pp. 158-85 and Figures 6-7; Edwin T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Baltimore, Md., 1986), pp. 79-108; Arnold Thackray et al., Chemistry in America, 1876-1976: Historical Indicators (Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1985), pp. 22-54. 72. Bund der technischen Angestellten und Beamten, 25 Jahre, p. 5Iff. 73. Heiner Ramstetter, "Der deutsche Chemiker im Krieg und Frieden (191445)," in E. Schmauderer, Der Chemiker im Wandel der Zeiten (Weinheim, 1973), pp. 311-23, here 319-20; "Bund angestellter Akademiker technisch-naturwissenschaftlicher Berufe E. V.," Ztsch. angew. Ch. 45 (1932): 337. 74. Russell, Chemists, pp. 193-94, 212-17; Roy and Kay MacLeod, "The Contradictions of Professionalism: Scientists, Trade Unionism and the First World War," Social Studies of Science 9 (1979): 1-32.
A Struggle for Existence: The Proiessionalization of German Architects VINCENT CLARK
In the forty or fifty years since scholars began studying the professions, they have employed two basic approaches. One academic approach considered professions in an ethical perspective; thus, for these scholars, professions were distinguished from other occupations by higher ethical considerations, which they believed motivated professional practice.1 The other approach, which has been dominant perhaps since the late 1960s, has emphasized professionalization as a means of achieving domination over a particular area of work and its economic rewards.2 The study of German private architects, however, suggests a third view. It reveals the profession as the stepchild of capitalist industrialism. In this case, the professional occupation, as the product of industrialization, came into a world filled with uncertainties and dangers. The situation of the private architect is difficult and survival techniques were only gradually discovered. Eventually, private architects turned to state licensing and full professionalization, but they did so slowly and indecisively. Furthermore, in doing so, private architects sought not to fortify an already strong position, but to defend themselves against perceived enemies, many of which seemed of superior strength. The terms "profession" and "professionalization" have been the subject of intense debate and frequent disagreement. However, despite these disagreements almost all definitions have identified the profession as an intellectual service occupation having a body of specialized knowledge and skill, long and difficult training, a prestigious social position, and some legal mechanism to enforce its monopoly over the provision of its service and use of its title. This generally accepted description will serve here as a working definition, with particular emphasis on its monopoly. Professionalization will likewise mean the process by which occupations acquire these characteristics. Since during the nineteenth century, architects, like several similar occupations, were in the process of adding the missing qualifications to those they had already acquired, 143
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we will focus particular attention here on the process.3 Because this process (especially the eventual acquisition of architectural licensing, or chambers [Kammern]) was exceptionally long and contentious, the term "full professionalization" will be used to emphasize the securing of this monopoly. The history of architectural occupations in Germany during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is characterized by several key developments, many of which it shared with those of other academic occupations. In brief, architecture assumed its modern occupational structure as a result of industrialization. Like other occupations, it then engaged in campaigns to raise the standards and prestige of its training institutions, organize associations, achieve equality with other occupations, and control the number of students trained for its ranks. Eventually, for reasons of self-protection, private architects began their own movement toward licensing and the exclusion of those they deemed unqualified, often portraying themselves in a desperate situation—in their own Darwinian terms, "a struggle for existence." During the first half of the nineteenth century, architectural occupations underwent a fundamental reorganization. In the eighteenth century, members of at least three occupations, or subdivisions within occupations, had performed architectural tasks as a part of their work. The first were the private Baumeister, artisans trained as carpenters or masons, who both designed and constructed buildings, primarily for private clients.4 Second were the court architects, who included most of the famous baroque and neoclassical masters like Balthasar Neumann in Wiirzburg and Andreas Schliitter in Berlin. Court architects were generally involved not only in architecture but in military and other kinds of engineering as well.5 A third type of preindustrial building designer consisted of state building officials, the Baubeamten, who emerged during the bureaucratization of building and other state activities in the eighteenth century.6 In the course of the nineteenth century, this structure of architectural occupations changed. By the third quarter of the century, the continuing bureaucratization of state building activities transformed court architects from the princes' personal servants to bureaucratic officeholders. This bureaucratization also affected ordinary building officials. The building departments were responsible for the provision of city planning, street construction, and water and sewer systems. They also designed, supervised, and maintained the interurban transportation infrastructure of highways, railroads, canals, river navigation projects, and port facilities. As a result of industrialization and urbanization, these departments rapidly expanded,7 putting new demands on building officials' training, increasing their numbers, and leading to a new occupational self-consciousness. The decline of the private Baumeister who was replaced by modern contractors on one side and private architects on the other, also took place during the nineteenth century. Contractors emerged with industrialization, some as Baumeister, who by enlarging their operations transformed themselves from artisan masters into capitalist employers; this tendency accelerated in subsequent decades. Modern private architects also appeared in this period as practitioners
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who restricted their work to client consultation, building design, and construction supervision,8 differing from Baumeister and contractors in their avoidance of involvement in construction. Their emergence was also a result of industrialization, which began in many regions in the 1830s. In Berlin, for example, the architectural community identified Eduard Knoblauch, who began practice during this decade, as the first of this type.9 As industrialization accelerated, the number of private architects also increased. (My prosopography of leading German architects shows this clearly.) Among architects who began practice before 1840, for example, only 15 percent were in private practice. In the next twenty years, during which there was slow acceleration of industrialization, the proportion of private to state-employed architects slowly increased. Of the total number of architects who began work during this period, private architects totaled 20 percent. Then during the industrial boom of the 1860s and early 1870s, the proportion of private architects soared. Of the architects who began careers between 1860 and 1880, the number in private practice reached 42 percent.10 The development of a private market for architecture was crucial for this change. This resulted from industrialization and urbanization, which expanded the demand for private buildings of all types, including factories, warehouses, department stores, apartment buildings, and private houses. It also enlarged and enriched the middle classes, who wanted buildings and could afford to have them architecturally designed.11 The preindustrial court architect, state architect, and private Baumeister yielded to the modern state architect, modern private architect, and contractor during the first half of the nineteenth century. l2 A second occupational development was the rise of technical education. During the nineteenth century a new institution, the higher technical school, assumed the dominant role in architectural education and resembled the university in both rigor and prestige. Its dominance contrasted with the situation in preindustrial Germany, where no unified system of architectural training had existed above the apprenticeship level. During that century, a variety of institutions had offered varying amounts of architectural instruction. These had included military schools, knights' academies, art academies, and the first Prussian Realschuk (modern school).13 In 1799, Prussia took the first step toward the system that finally emerged when it founded the Berlin Academy of Building (Berliner Bau-Akademie). The second step was the development of the German poly technical school, which was the prototype for all German higher-level technical schools. Early polytechnical schools were established in Prague, Vienna, and Karlsruhe. Founded in 1825, the Karlsruhe school consisted of departments of mathematics, engineering, and architecture, and, in the early days, preparatory and commercial departments. After 1832 the school had the right of self-government, which it exercised through large and small councils and a director, chosen for a oneyear term by senior faculty members and subject to confirmation by the minister of the interior.14 The polytechnical school, therefore, combined instruction in
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all the then-existing technical disciplines with a large measure of selfgovernment. Outside Prussia, most German states established such schools— for example, Wurttemberg in 1831 and Hanover in 1847, when it converted its advanced commercial school (hohere Gewerbeschule) into a polytechnical school. In 1849, Prussia reorganized the Berlin Building Academy and brought it closer to this model. It gave salaries and tenure to instructors who had been previously paid by the hour, and it created new faculty councils, which discussed curriculum and instructional methods. The final step toward modern technical education came with the formation of institutes of technology (technische Hochschulen, or THs) in the 1860s and 1870s. In such an institute, departments were organized as self-governing faculties, and the entire institution enjoyed self-government exercised through a faculty senate and director, which were elected by the professors. Most of the institutes also required students to have a school-leaving certificate from a Gymnasium (the university-preparatory school) or equivalent as a prerequisite for admission. The goal, according to Hans Grashof, director of the Karlsruhe Polytechnical School and leading proponent of the institutes, was the creation of "true institutes of technology, of no less rank and character than the universities . . ."15 The government of Baden gave Grashof's school a charter with these provisions in 1865,16 and other states followed suit, with schools at Munich in 1868, Stuttgart in 1876, and Darmstadt and Braunschweig in 1877.17 In 1870 Prussia created a TH in Aachen, while upgrading the Hanover polytechnical school, acquired in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. In 1876, its parliament approved a ministerial plan to unite the Berlin Building and Commercial Academies into a single institute of technology, and an 1879 ministerial decree made the changes official, with a new charter following in 1882. The Berlin school was typical of these institutes. It consisted of the five departments of architecture, structural engineering, machine engineering (including naval architecture), chemistry and metallurgy, and general studies (mostly mathematics and natural sciences). Each department was selfgoverning with a departmental "college" and chairman. The institute as a whole was also self-governing under a rector chosen by the departments, and a senate composed of the rector, prorector, department chairmen, and additional department representatives.18 Most departments offered their own separate career-oriented curricula. Since 1876, for example, architecture and engineering had provided separate four-year courses of study.19 The institutes of technology maintained this basic structure until their reorganization as technical universities in the second half of the twentieth century. Although both architects and engineers were involved in these developments, engineering was important from the very beginning and sometimes seemed to overshadow architecture. The founders of the Berlin Building Academy, for example, aimed to combine instruction in architecture, engineering, and other technical disciplines to provide, according to its charter, "the theoretical and practical education of proficient surveyors [and] land and water building officials."20 This was hardly objectionable because, until much later in
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the century, Prussian district building officials (Land-Baumeister) had both engineering and architectural responsibilities. In doing so, however, its founders sought—and achieved—a substantial increase in engineering instruction, as the Prussian building official Genelli urged in a 1799 memorandum supporting the school's establishment: "In the [art] academy, architecture itself can be accepted only as a fine art, and this [principle] excludes, therefore, every branch of this wide-ranging discipline from its circle which does not have this character. Machine and mill construction, water control, fortification construction, and naval architecture remain consequently excluded."21 Once the building academy was in operation, engineering remained important. 22 In 1823, the school was divided into an engineering department, which was placed under the Board of Trade, and a department of architecture, which remained under the Academy of Art. The engineering department prospered, while the department of architecture suffered from low enrollment and was later closed.23 Architecture was soon revived and reunited with engineering, but in the Academy of Building the engineering emphasis remained. This eventually provoked a reaction. In 1847 August Stuler, a prominent Prussian architect and instructor in the building academy, argued that "the Building School does not sufficiently train the artistic capacities and subordinates [them] to scientific and theoretical abilities. The emphasis is explained, to be sure, primarily by the requirement placed upon the school to train building officials for the building administration. But it is not sufficient for the education of architects."24 Other instructors offered reform proposals, and in 1848 the students themselves complained that the curriculum prevented personal and artistic development. The Architects' Association of Berlin also recommended a thorough reformation of the curriculum and of the state examinations for which it provided the primary preparation.25 These complaints led to far-reaching reforms. Among them was a curriculum reorganization that allowed prospective state building officials to specialize in either architecture (Land- und Schonbau) or civil engineering (Wege- und Wasserbau). Previous regulations had required a course covering both.26 This answered many of the architects' complaints and it represented a significant responsiveness to architects' desires that had previously been less evident. The primary inspiration for polytechnical schools was the French Ecole polytechnique, which emphasized mathematics and technology. Although it was a preparatory rather than a higher-level school like the German polytechnical schools, it was more closely related to the elite engineering academy, the Ecole des Fonts et Chaussees, for which it prepared students, than the Ecole des BeauxArts, which taught architecture.27 In fact, most early polytechnical school supporters were interested primarily in engineering. In 1818, for example, the Archivfilr die Baukunst und ihre Hulfswissenschaften (archives for architecture and its auxiliary sciences), which supported the new schools, contended that they should exclude architecture as a fine art. Those students interested in architecture as art, it was argued, should go to art academies and conclude their educations with the traditional Italian study tour.28 As for architects, many were unenthusiastic about these schools and their
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engineering emphasis. In 1819, when the Prussian Ministry of Culture proposed converting the Dusseldorf Academy of Art into a poly technical school, Karl Friedrich Schinkel opposed the plan, arguing that technology should not be mixed with art.29 In Karlsruhe, Friedrich Weinbrenner, who was Schinkel's counterpart and Baden's master of the neoclassical style, opposed attempts to attract architecture students to engineering and mathematics lectures, contending that "the architect, in his work, needs no great mathematical calculations based upon integral and differential calculus, since he already has so much to learn that he cannot make this science his chief study."30 Throughout the century, architectural dissatisfaction with technical schools occasionally surfaced, but these schools remained the dominant architectural training grounds from the 1830s to the present, and almost all architects received their training there. Two influences contributed to this situation. First, and most important, these schools trained future officials for the state building services, which were the largest employers of architectural personnel. Second, within the technical schools, as we have seen, architecture and other disciplines were eventually organized into self-governing departments with their own curricula. This, understandably, defused most opposition. Another development in the history of modern architectural occupations was the formation of associations, a feature that was common to other nineteenthcentury German academic occupations as well.31 The first association was the Architects' Society of Berlin (Architektenverein zu Berlin), founded in 1824.32 Subsequently, more that twenty years elapsed before regional organizations emerged. The first were the traveling conventions, or Wanderversammlungen, initially held in Leipzig in 1842 and subsequently convened every year or two in a different city. With no permanent organization (the architects of the host city handled all arrangements), the traveling conventions reflected the tenuousness of extraregional connections during the Vormdrz period.33 Permanent provincial associations emerged in the 1850s and 1860s. The first was the Architects' and Engineers' Society for the Kingdom of Hanover, which was founded in 1851 and was followed by similar organizations in other states. With national unification in 1871, an association that was empirewide emerged.34 This was the Union of German Architects' and Engineers' Societies (Verband deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine, or VDAIV),35 a federation of regional societies, which remained the architects' primary national organization for the next thirty years.36 Like other academic occupations,37 architects tried to limit the number of students admitted to training. These numbers fluctuated from one extreme to another, and architects became particularly concerned in periods of apparent student oversupply. During the Grunderzeit, a period of entrepreneurial fever during the late 1860s and early 1870s, students flooded in. While the student onrush affected all disciplines in both universities and technical schools, economic trends made it boil over in architecture and engineering. During these years, both private and government construction boomed. A major influence
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was railroad building, which included the laying of an extensive track network as well as the construction of numerous passenger, freight, administrative, maintenance, and other types of buildings. Enrollment figures reflected these trends. For example, at the beginning of the boom, in the winter semester 1866-67, the Karlsruhe Polytechnical School had 87 students in architecture. Ten years later, in the 1876-77 winter semester, the number had risen to 121. The increase was even more dramatic in Berlin, where numbers more than doubled in this ten-year period.38 Unfortunately, just as this oversupply reached its peak, a shortage of jobs developed. In the late 1870s, the building boom turned into depression, severely reducing private construction and causing even prominent firms to fail. Many private architects now sought state positions. They were often disappointed. The railroad network was practically complete. The newly expanded state bureaucracy was filled, mostly with recently hired young employees. The German Journal of Building viewed the situation as extremely bleak. "No one . . . can doubt . . . that [of the] many young architects and engineers who wish to dedicate themselves to careers as Prussian building officials, the greater share will have to contend with severe disappointment, perhaps even with need and poverty . . ,"39 In the succeeding two decades, the flood of students declined to a trickle, as those preparing for careers realized the prospects. By the 1886-87 winter semester, the number of architecture students at Karlsruhe had declined to 24.40 The pendulum, however, continued to swing. With the resurgence of building in the last half of the 1880s and first half of the 1890s, jobs became more plentiful again. By the first decade of the twentieth century, however, the pendulum had swung back, and positions were scarce once again.41 Throughout these cycles, however, architects and their associations were able to do little more than lament. Their efforts to control student numbers were as ineffectual as those of most other academic occupations.42 Architects also struggled for equality with other occupations, especially law.43 They saw two areas of inequality: in social position and within the bureaucracies, where they often clashed with the lawyers. Feelings of social inferiority were widespread and led to frequent complaints in the leading technical journals about the "relatively retarded position which the occupational class of architects and engineers (Techniker) occupies in Germany in comparison with France and England . . ."44 At times this sense of inferiority seemed to preoccupy occupational organizations and periodicals;45 an original goal, for example, of the Union of German Architects' and Engineers' Societies, which represented the mainstream of architecture and engineering, was the advancement of the occupation's social interests.46 The other area of dissatisfaction was with the building services. Throughout the nineteenth century, most states viewed law as the only proper training for administration, which meant that legally trained officials held influential jobs in all government departments, including building, and were involved in almost all major decisions. In most departments, moreover, they were exclusively eligible to head ministries, even those administering building affairs. Those
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without legal training like architects and engineers were ineligible. The resulting friction became notorious by the 1870s.47 Building officials complained that lawyers attempted to control their work,48 and eventually demanded control over the entire building service. This situation led to a demand for the autonomous control of work, which scholars have frequently identified as an objective of professionalization.49 Furthermore, by the end of the nineteenth century, building officials also demanded eligibility for all positions in the entire state administration, whether related to building or not.50 Another struggle involved education, in which, until the twentieth century, technical schools enjoyed less prestige than universities.51 To remedy this situation, technical-school interests sought for their schools the same requirements for admission that existed at the universities: the completion of a humanistic studies program at the Gymnasium. In 1855, Prussian regulations fulfilled these desires, though later allowing graduates of both Gymnasien and first-class modern schools (Realschulen 1. Ordnung) admission to both universities and higher technical schools.52 Other proposals for increasing social status included more literary and philosophical study in secondary school and internships without compensation for state building officials, like those served by legal officials as Referendare (junior lawyers).53 These proposals, however, received more discussion than support. In the long run, the equality that architects and engineers did achieve resulted mostly from the states' elevation of the status of the institutes of technology at the end of the century. In 1891, the Prussian government conferred a golden chain as a symbol of office on the rector of the Berlin Institute of Technology—a privilege that was later extended to rectors of the other Prussian institutes in Hanover and Aachen.54 In 1892, Prussian regulations made institute of technology faculty members equal to those at universities.55 In 1899, the rectors received the title of "magnificence," the same appellation as their university counterparts.56 Furthermore, in 1899 the Prussian state gave its institutes the right of conferring doctoral degrees, a step that was quickly followed by the other states.57 These measures provided technical education an official near equality with that of the universities. The final trend was the growing belief by private architects that their interests diverged from those of other architects, which led to their eventual decision to seek licensing. It is noteworthy that the rise of private architects coincided with the abolition of government restrictions on design and building occupations. By the 1860s, when the private practice of architecture was a well-established type of work, legal limitations—apart from building codes—had been mostly abolished. With the repeal of the guild laws, anyone, regardless of training or lack of it, could legally work as an architect. German private architects eventually sought and much later gained a state-enforced monopoly over the remunerated practice of architecture and title of "architect." They adopted this goal, however, as a defensive strategy to escape competition and did so with reluctance.
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The path from this condition of untrammeled competition to state licensing and full professionalization was long and uncertain. It was several years before private architects expressed any desire for such a remedy or even a sense of interests that were different from those of their colleagues. No private architects' organizations existed until 1876, and the first—the Alliance of Berlin Architects, founded in 1876-77—was local and largely ineffective.58 Even more time elapsed before such organizations appeared in other cities. Not until 1889 did private architects in Cologne form an association (the "Cologne Architects").59 Another twelve years passed before a similar group was formed in Hanover.60 Only in 1903 was a national organization, the Federation of German Architects (Bund Deutscher Architekten, or BDA), formed. The BDA itself moved slowly and with great caution in the direction of licensing and full professionalization. It indicated its indecision in the proclamation issued at its founding, noting that "under the present conditions, protection of the [architect's] title by the state seems difficult to achieve" and "it is feared in many circles [among architects] that [state licensing] would at best [bring] disadvantages to our free artistic calling."61 The political weakness of private architects and disagreements among them prevented any action for more than a decade. As the proclamation indicated, many architects were ambivalent about licensing. They were not convinced that professionalization would improve artistic quality, and they were afraid that the state, through licensing boards, might limit their freedom of design. Economic weakness also impeded the movement toward licensing—and paradoxically provided its major motivation. In fact, weakness best describes private architects' perception of their situation in imperial Germany. The 1903 proclamation of the BDA expressed this clearly: The greatest danger to our artistic life, the worst enemy to our own endeavors is the ruthless commercialism, which, without ideals and governed only by the desire for profit, exploits our otherwise beneficial commercial freedom. In the wide new districts of our cities, one encounters only a cold commercial sense, the withered spiritual poverty of building speculation. . . . The creative architect has long ago lost any influence on the construction of the streets of our new districts; here is the realm of the contractor, trained in the lower trade schools, who has given himself the name of "architect," because this title seemed advantageous to him; and the pitiful members of our calling who are driven by necessity to work for these people must be satisfied with the scantiest of wages.62
Eight years later the New German Building Journal (Neudeutsche Bauzeitung), which supported the private architects' cause, repeated the indictment. The predominant forces in building, it charged, work "to the detriment of art" and were "on one side, the building industry and the building contractors; on the other, the state officials." The private architect had little opportunity to secure commissions because "the private person goes to . . . a building contractor as soon as he decides to have a building constructed." The private architect has even less
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chance of designing public buildings because "the state and municipal authorities" take care of "public buildings with a staff of permanently employed state architects."63 Although it is hard to be certain about whether these views represented all economic levels within private architecture, some evidence suggests that some of the most successful private architects took exception, or were at least less emphatic about them. During the period 1909-16, when the BDA was debating licensing proposals, the chapter from Hamburg, where private architects appear to have been strong, sharply attacked these proposals. Nonetheless, many private architects—perhaps the majority—believed themselves to be in a precarious position, since only a small market for private design had been created. Contractors rather than architects "designed" most private buildings, and the public—and state building officials—assumed that this was normal.64 In 1906, one expert estimated that nonarchitects designed 90 percent of all agricultural and commercial buildings.65 Furthermore, in 1913, the director of a building-trades school (Baugewerkschule) claimed that 75 percent of all buildings were designed by craftsmen and contractors.66 Architects had difficulty competing with contractors, particularly in the area of price. A 1906 Prussian ministerial report noted that most people believed they could build cheaper without an architect.67 Contractors were cheaper because their profit came mostly from construction, not design, which meant that, unlike architects, they could reduce prices on design without affecting their main source of income. They also used the same plans repeatedly, making only slight modifications to suit each customer, while the architect's primary task was the production of fresh and creative designs for each new project. Contractors could also offer package prices for whole projects, including both design and construction. They could offer reduced construction prices at the crucial moment to get a job—often, architects complained, just when they were negotiating with potential clients.68 If architects could not compete on price, then they had to compete on quality. However, this had limited effectiveness because it appealed only to the small number already inclined to use an architect's services. The problem, as architects saw it, was to "awaken an understanding of [their] activity [and] . . . profession in the widest circles of the population."69 The other competitors were state officials. Although the most important state commissions (e.g., for large churches, railroad stations in major cities, important university buildings) were usually awarded in open competitions, permanently employed state building officials designed all other government buildings, including schools, parsonages, post offices, courthouses, office buildings, and all except the largest railroad stations. This amounted to a great deal of construction. For example, Prussian state architect Paul Thoemer (1851-1918) was responsible for the design of three hundred small and medium-sized buildings with a value of fifty-two million marks, plus fifty-one large courthouses with a total value of seventy-six million marks.70 Obviously, the use of Baubeamten on such a scale limited the commissions available to private architects.
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Occasionally the bureaucracies threatened to expand their activities. In 1907, for example, a Prussian agency provoked a BDA protest by providing design help for farmers.71 In 1915 the Westphalia Building Advisory Office in Miinster designed a nursing home in a nearby town, which led to an objection from the German Building Journal.12 In addition to their official duties, many state architects conducted private practices on the side. In 1914, private architects attempted to prohibit Prussian officials from offering private services.73 About the same time, a Hanover private architects' association, the German Private Architects, petitioned the Prussian House of Representatives to prohibit building-trades school teachers from engaging in private practice. A year later, in 1915, the Palatine Private Architects' Association of Kaiserslautern complained in a petition to the Bavarian government about the damage to their practices caused by state officials' private work. One military architect in Kaiserslautern, they contended, carried on a practice worth millions of marks per year. They also requested that a local building-trades school teacher be prohibited from private practice.74 A final cause of weakness was the instability of the building industry, which was subject to far greater and more sudden movements—both up and down— than the economy as a whole. For example, in 1872—one of the most expansive years of the Grunderzeh—while the general category of "industry," including construction, grew an impressive 17 percent, construction alone increased by 52 percent. On the other hand, in 1879—a year of general contraction when industrial production as a whole fell 1.4 percent—the construction industry declined by 17.8 percent.75 Architects were thus particularly vulnerable to economic swings. Their vulnerability was heightened by the small scale of most architectural practices, which limited their resources and resilience. In bad years, such as the late 1870s and early 1880s, even major firms were hard hit. In 1881, for example, the prominent Frankfurt partnership of Mylius and Bluntschli, which had been famous for designing the Hotel zum Frankfurter Hof in Frankfurt, was forced out of business.76 The architects' weakness resulted, therefore, from their economic situation. While industrialization had created a market for private architectural services, it was neither large nor stable enough to provide the economic security and social position desired by the large numbers of architects it attracted. Economic weakness influenced professionalization. On one hand, it impelled private architects toward organization to improve their situation. On the other, it prevented market control and caused disagreement about the desirability of professionalization. Both the political weakness and internal disagreement mentioned by the founding proclamation of the BDA impeded the movement toward licensing. Initially, some private architects explored other means of controlling competition: one was litigation. In 1907, three private architects sued a large Berlin contracting firm for using the title "architect." However, the suit failed to resolve the issue; the trial court ruled against the architects, while the appeals
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court equivocated, allowing the firm to keep the title "architect" on signs on current projects, but not to use it in the future.77 Licensing was also discussed during this time, but in a desultory and indecisive fashion. In 1905, for example, an article in the German Building Journal urged that the titles "engineer" and "architect" be defined by law and restricted to qualified persons. A 1909 article repeated the recommendation.78 Despite the attention these articles received, the BDA made no definite movement toward licensing; furthermore, hesitancy and disagreement characterized discussion of the subject. At the 1909 and 1910 BDA conventions, the Bremen delegation introduced licensing motions.79 These, however, ran into heavy opposition and were referred to a committee for study.80 While the committee was studying, architects were discussing, and continued to do so for the next six years.81 The committee did not report until 1912. When it did, it recommended that the BDA adopt licensing as a goal. The organization, however, took no action. Instead, it continued to debate, taking four more years to arrive at a decision. In 1916, it finally voted; however, this time it asked a committee to "prepare guidelines as soon as possible for the creation of architectural chambers."82 The private architects' decision to seek full professionalization and licensing, therefore, was taken reluctantly, and because they saw no other way of protecting their weak economic and social position. Even this decision, however, did not end the hesitation and indecision. Although during the Weimar era the BDA continued fitfully to support licensing, prominent architects raised concern about what they saw as its dangers to artistic freedom. The debate ended temporarily in 1933 with the Nazis' Gleichschaltung (coordination) of the BDA and other professional and artistic organizations. Yet even after the Second World War, architects' ambivalence continued. It was not until 1959 that architects' chambers came into existence in the states of Baden-Wiirttemberg, Saarland, and Rhineland-Palatinate. Even then, however, private architects' reservations became evident in the 1959 Report of Activities of the BDA, which, far from exulting in these developments, merely mentioned the chambers' existence. In addition, although the BDA continued to work for licensing laws in the remaining states, as soon as they passed, it again expressed doubts.83 In the 1978 edition of the official journal of the BDA commemorating its seventy-fifth anniversary, an article launched a sweeping attack on the entire struggle for licensing, reaching back to 1907. "The barely founded BDA," it asserted, "already suffered then from the leading German vice, which in our day is part of the general paralysis, the desire to have the state regulate everything . . ,"84 Whether or not this is the leading—or even a distinctly German—vice is open to debate. Nevertheless, the inclusion of such an attack in the anniversary issue reveals architects' ambivalence about the course they had followed. The history of German architects reveals a pattern of development that scholars have previously identified in other academic occupations. Architects, however, particularly in the final stage of their professionalization, acted
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primarily—if not exclusively—out of self-perceived weakness rather than strength. The history of professionalization has thus far paid relatively little attention to defensiveness in this process.85 The history of German architects suggests, however, that weakness—at least perceived weakness—could play an important role in the drama of professionalization. Notes 1. For example, Leopold von Wiese, System der allgemeinen Soziologie, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1955); Schelsky, "Die Zukunft des Menschen in der industriellen Arbeitswelt," Soziale Welt 14 (1962): 97-108; Rene Konig, "Die Berufsmoglichkeiten des Soziologen," Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (1962): 286-314; idem, "Der Beruf als Indiz sozialer Integration," Berufsberatung undBerufsbildung 47 (1962): 12-23; Horst Reimann and Klaus Kiefer, Soziologie als Beruf, 2nd ed. (Tubingen, 1969); Wolfgang Siebel, "Soziale Funktion und soziale Stellung des Ingenieurs," JahrbuchfiirSozialwissenschaften 13 (1962): 61—78; Hans Jiirgen Daheim, "Berufliche Intergenerationen-Mobilitat in der komplexen Gesellschaft," Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 16 (1964): 92-124; Theodor Scharmann, "Die Konzentration der Berufe und ihre Bedeutung fur die Berufspadagogik," Soziale Welt 14 (1964): 71-76; Ranier Lepsius, "Kritik als Beruf—zur Soziologie der Intellektuellen," Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 16 (1964): 7591; Hans P. Dreitzel, "Beruf, Arbeit, Eigentum,"Atomzeita/?er (1965): 53-58; Erwin K. Scheuch, "Sozialer Wandel und Sozialforschung," Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 17 (1965): 1-48; Hans Gerd Schutte, "Der Beruf des Drogisten," in Soziologische Probleme mittelstandischer Berufe: Abhandlungen zur Mittelstandsforschung, no. 1, ed. Institut fur Mittelstandsforschung Koln (Cologne, 1962), pp. 57-93 ;Rolff Ziegler, "Der Beruf des Textilingenieurs," in Soziologische Probleme mittelstandischer Berufe, pp. 139-95; Heinrich Abel, Das Berufsproblem im gewerblichen Ausbildungs- undSchulwesenDeutschlands (BRD) (Braunschweig, 1963); Johann Jiirgen Rohde, "Der Arztim SpannungsfeldderGegenwart,"Soz('afe Wfe/f 12(1961): 356-69; Ralf Dahrendorf, "Betrachtungen zu einigen Aspekten der deutschen Soziologie," Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 11 (1959): 132-53. 2. Eliot Freidson, "Professions in the Class Systems of Present-day Societies," Current Sociology 12, no. 3 (1963-64); idem, Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge (New York, 1970); idem, Professional Dominance: The Structure of Medical Care (New York, 1970); idem, The Professions and their Prospects (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1973); and idem, "The Future of Professionalization," in Health and the Division of Labour, ed. M. Stacey (London, 1977); T. Johnson, "Professions and Power," American Journal of Sociology 83 (1977): 1-25; and idem, "The Professions in the Class Structure," in Industrial Society: Class, Cleavage and Control, ed. R. Skase (London, 1977); pp. 93-110; Dietrich Ruschemeyer, "Doctors and Lawyers: A Comment on the Theory of Professions," Canadian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 1 (1964): 17-30; idem, "Professions: Historisch und kulturell vergleichende Uberlegungen," in Soziologie: Rene Konig zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. G. Albrecht (Opladen, 1973), pp. 250-60; M. Friedmann and S. Kuznets,/«c
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Medicine (Toronto, 1975); idem, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (London, 1975); and I. D. Illich et al., The Disabling Professions (London, 1977). 3. M. S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley, Calif., 1977) emphasized the importance of looking at professionalization as a process. 4. For example, see W. Wickop, "Die Abteilungfur Architektur," in Festschrift zur 125-Jahr-Feier der Technischen Hochschule Hannover, 1831-1956 (Hanover, 1956), p. 99. 5. For example, see Hans Reuther, Die Kirchenbauten Balthasar Neumanns (Berlin, 1977), pp. 63, 70. 6. Herbert Ricken,Der Architekt: GeschichteeinesBerufs (Berlin, 1977), pp. 82-84. This bureaucratization proceeded at different rates in different German states, but by the end of the century had resulted in well-established building services in most of them. In 1800, for example, the Prussian administration included a provincial Baumeister (not to be confused with the artisan Baumeister) in every province, supervised by an Oberbau-Departement in Berlin. See Marlies Lammert, David Gilly: EinBaumeister des deutschenKlassizismus (Berlin, 1964), p. 5. For a concise history of these developments, see Paul Ortwin Rave, "Schinkel als Beamter: Ein Abschnitt preussischer Bauverwaltung," Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 52 (1932): 80-90. 7. For Prussia compare Handbuch Uber den Koniglich Preussischen Hofund Stoat auf das Jahr 1843 (Berlin, 18-), pp. 19, 20, 88, 197, 211, 273, 276, 279, 280, 283, 285, 288-89, 296, 297, 302-3, 308, 314-15, 322,326,334-35,349,353-54,358,36162, 365, 368, 377, 381, 382, 384, 386-87, 393, 398-99, 410, 419, 431, 434, 437, 440, 443, 454, 457, 463, 470, 473, 475, 477, 482-83, with Koniglich Preussischer Staats-Kalenderfitr das Jahr 1849 (Berlin, 18-), pp. 37, 201-5, 212, 213, 261, 291, 295, 339, 344,345, 347, 351-52, 357, 361,379,386,395,411,415,417,420,421,423, 444,449-50,453,457, 463,481,486-87,489, 511, 516-17, 518, 519, 524,526, 529, 549, 551, 555, 556, 559, 564, 579, 580, 581, 583, 585, 591, 592, 594, 596, 598,599, 602, 758, 760. 8. The BundDeutscher Architekten adopted this definition as the basis for membership. See "Was wir wollen! Proklamation des BDA, veroffentlicht bei der Griindung im Jahre 1903," reprinted in Bernhard Gaber, Die Entwicklung des Berufsstandes der freischaffenden Architekten: Dargestellt an der Geschichte des Bundes Deutscher Architekten BDA (Essen, 1966), p. 223. 9. "Erinnerung an Eduard Knoblauch," Deutsche Bauzeitung (hereafter abbreviated as DB) 35 (1901): 489-90, 492. 10. This information is based on my prosopography of German architects in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was initially based on the biographies of architects in the exhaustive index in Stephan Waetzold, ed., Bibliographic zur Architektur im 19. Jahrhundert (Nendeln, Liechtenstein, 1978). From the architects described in these biographies, a selection was made of those who were actively involved in architecture, in the territory that became or was the German empire, and about whom sufficient information was available. In addition, using the same criteria, a survey was made of the major German architectural periodicals until 1936. At that point, for reasons not apparent, biographies of architects seem to cease. This procedure resulted in 268 architects, on whom the prosopography is based. 11. Hinckeldeyn, "Geheimer Baurat Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kayser," Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung 41 (1917): 263. 12. The exact number of architects is difficult to determine because census compilers listed architects as part of a group including contractors, architects, and surveyors (Bauunternehmer, Baumeister, and Feldmesser). See Die Berliner Volkszahlung
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(exact title varies) conducted in 1861, 1867, 1871, 1875, 1885, and 1890 (Berlin, 1863, 1869, 1874, 1878, 1883, 1890, 1893, and 1904). For the empire see theBerufsundGewerbezahlungvom5.Junil881, inStatistikdesDeutschenReichs, n.s., vols. 2-4; and the Berufs- und Gewerbezdhlung vom 14. June 1895 in Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, n.s., vols. 102-11. 13. Walter Wagner, "Der Architekturunterricht ausserhalb der Kunstakademien in Mitteleuropa vom Beginn des 16. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts," Architectura 10 (1980): 58—91; Josef Becker, ed., Von der Bauakademie zur Technischen Universitdt: ISOJahre technisches Unterrichtswesen (Berlin, 1949), p. 8; Gustav Griiner, DieEntwicklung der hoheren Fachschulen im deutschen Sprachgebiet: Ein Beitrag zur historischen und angewandtenBerufspddagogik(Braunschweig, 1967); EduardDobbert, "Bauakademie, Gewerbeakademie und technische Hochschule bis 1884: Historische Skizze," in Chronik der Koniglichen Technischen Hochschule, 1799-1899 (Berlin, 1899), p. 3; Albert Hofmann, "Akademie und Baukunst," DB 50 (1916): 270. 14. Festgabe zum Jubilaum der vierzigjdhrigen Regierung Seiner Koniglichen Hoheit des Grossherzogs Friedrich von Baden, in Ehrfurcht dargebracht von der Technischen Hochschule in Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, 1892), p. xi. 15. Quoted in Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie: Beitrag zur Emanzipation der Technik im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1970), p. 64. 16. "Anderung der Vorschriften beziiglich der Vorbildung der StaatsBaubeamten in Baden," DB 13 (1879): 206. See also Kurt Diiwell, "Grundung und Entwicklung der Rheinisch-Westfalischen Technischen Hochschule Aachen bis zu ihrem Neuaufbau nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Darstellung und Dokumente," in Rheinisch-Westfulische Technische Hochschule Aachen, ed. Hans Martin Klinkenberg (Stuttgart, 1970), p. 68; and Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie, pp. 73-74. 17. Wilhelm Treue, "Die Geschichte des technischen Unterrichts," in Festschrift zur 125-Jahrfeier der Technischen Hochschule Hannover, 1831-1856 (Hanover, 1956), p. 60; Manegold, Universitat, Technische Hochschule und Industrie, pp. 73-74; Franz Schnabel, "Die Anfange des technischen Hochschulwesens," in Festschrift anldsslich der 100jahrigen Bestehens der Technischen Hochschule Fridriciana zu Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, 1925), p. 42. 18. Dobbert, "Bauakademie," pp. 102-5. For the preliminary discussion, see "Anderung in den preussischen 'Vorschriften iiber die Ausbildung und Priifung fur den Staatsdienst im Bau- und Maschinenfach,"' DB 3 (1869); "Die neuen Vorschriften iiber die Ausbildung und Priifung fur den Staatsdienst im Bau- und Maschinenfach ," DB 10 (1876): 307-9. On engineering see C. M. Bauernfeind, "Uber die Organisation der Studien und Priifungen an den deutschen Bau- und IngenieurSchulen," Zeitschrift des bayrischen Architekten- undIngenieurvereins 8 (1876): 27. 19. "Anderung in den preussischen 'Vorschriften uber die Ausbildung und Priifung fur den Staatsdienst im Bau- und Maschinenfach,'"DB 3 (1869); "Die neuen Vorschriften iiber die Ausbildung und Priifung filr den Staatsdienst im Bau- und Maschinenfach,"DB 10 (1876): 307-9. 20. Quoted in Dobbert, "Bauakademie," p. 24. See also Frank R. Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaftspolitik in Deutschland, 1750-1914 (Berlin, 1974), pp. 13435. 21. Quoted in Schnabel, "Die Anfange des technischen Hochschulwesens," p. 17. 22. Paul Friedrich Damm, Die TechnischenHoshschulenPreussens, IhreEntwicklungen undgegenwdrtige Verfassung (Berlin, 1909), pp. 3-4; Dobbert, "Bauakademie," p. 24.
15 8
The Nineteenth Century
23. Damm, Technischen Hochschulen Preussens, p. 4; Dobbert, "Bauakademie," p. 42. 24. Quoted in Dobbert, "Bauakademie," p. 35. 25. Damm, Technischen Hochschulen Preussens, p. 6. 26. Dobbert, "Bauakademie," p. 57. 27. Wilhelm Launhardt, Die Konigliche Technische Hochschule zu Hannover von 1831 bis 1881 (Hanover, 1881), p. 11. 28. Crelle, "Ideen fiber zweckmassige Bildungs-Anstalten fur Architekten," Archivfiir die Baukunst und ihre Hulfswissenschaften 1 (1818): 165. 29. Diiwell, "Grundung und Entwicklung," p. 21. 30. Badisches General-Landes Archiv, Facsimile 175, March 1815. 31. C. E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700-1914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1980), p. 241. 32. FritzEiselen, "Hundert Jahre Berliner Architekten-Verein, 1824-1924," DB 58 (1924): 453; Eva Borsch-Suppan, Berliner Baukunst nach Schinhel, 1840-1870 (Munich, 1970), p. 12. 33. P. Walle, "Der Architekten-Verein zu Berlin," DB 33 (1899): 279; Rolf Fuhlrott, Deutschsprachige Architektur-Zeitschriften: Entstehung der Fachzeitschriften fur Architektur in derZeit von 1789 bis 1918 (Munich, 1975), p. 245n. 34. Fuhlrott, Deutschsprachige Architektur-Zeitschriften, pp. 58, 94-95. 35. R. Baumeister, "Vorschlag zu einem Techniker Verein," DB 3 (1869): 19395; idem, "Organisation eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Techniker-Vereins," DB 3 (1869): 383-84; K. Fritsch, "Uber die Grundung eines Verbandes Deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine," DB 5 (1871): 225-26; idem, "Das Statut ist abgedruckt," DB 4 (1870); Eiselen, "Hundert Jahre Berliner Architekten-Verein," 1-3. 36. "Kundgebung des Verbandes deutscher Architekten- und IngenieurVereine,"£>B 13 (1879): 31-33. 37. C. E. McClelland, State, Society, and University, p. 245. 38. Festgabe zum Jubilaum . . . Friedrich von Baden (Karlsruhe, 1892), pp. xcixcii; Dobbert, "Bauakademie," p. 68. 39. "Die Anderungen in der Organisation der preussischen Bau-Verwaltung und die Aussichten fur die Laufbahn der preussischen Baubeamten," DB 10 (1877): 234-35. 40. Festgabe zum Jubilaum . . . Friedrich von Baden, pp. xci-xcii. 41. "Schlechte Aussichten im bayerischen Staatsbaudienste," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung (1907): 415. 42. McClelland, State, Society, and University, pp. 245-46. 43. Ibid., p. 245. 44. "Die Stellung der deutschen Techniker im staatlichen und sozialen Leben," DB 12(1877): 183. 45. Ibid., pp. 183-84; "Bin Wort zur Erziehung der jungeren Techniker," DB 15 (1881): 146; "Das technische Unterrichtswesen Preussens vor dem Abgeordnetenhaus,"£>B 18 (1884): 33. 46. "Statut fur den Verband deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine," DB 4 (1871): 231. 47. "Die neue Universitat und die neue Mittelschule," DB 37 (1903): 174-75. 48. "Die Techniker und ihre Hochschulen am Ende des XIX. Jahrhunderts," DB 33 (1899): 516-17. 49. Richard W. Scott, "Professionals in Bureaucracies—Areas of Conflict," in
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Professionalization, ed. Howard W. Vollmer and Donald Mills (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1966), pp. 265-75. 50. "Verband deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine: Uber die Ausbildung der Baubeamten fur den Verwaltungsdienst," DB 10 (1876): 483. 51. Concern with educational qualifications was also common among German academic occupations; see McClelland, State, Society, and University, pp. 244-46. 52. Dobbert, "Bauakademie," p. 57. 53. "Bin Wort zurErziehung der jiingeren Techniker," Z>5 15(1881): 146; "Das technische Unterrichtswesen Preussens vordem Abgeordnetenhaus,"ZM? 18 (1884): 33. 54. Alfred G. Meyer, "Die Technische Hochschule von 1884 bis 1899," in Chronik der Koniglichen Technischen Hochschule zu Berlin, 1799-1899, p. 134; Damm, Technischen Hochschulen Preussens, p. 260. 55. Diiwell, "Griindung und Entwicklung," p. 69; Damm, Technischen Hochschulen Preussens, p. 263. 56. "Die Hundertjahrfeier der Technischen Hochschule zu Berlin," Zeitschriftfur Architektur und Ingenieurwesen 5 (1899): 689. 57. Ibid., Duwell, "Grundung und Entwicklung," p. 72. 58. Vereinigung von Architekten Berlins, see Gaber, Entwicklung, p. 33. 59. Ibid. 60. Bernhard Below, "Uber die Grundung des Bundes Deutscher Architekten," reprinted in Die Urkunden der Grundung des Bundes deutscher Architekten BDA im Jahre 790.3 (Bonn, 1953), p.5. 61. "Was wir wollen!" p. 217. 62. Ibid., p. 224. 63. "Der Architekt im heutigen deutschen Bauwesen," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 1 (1911): 257. 64. Bruno Specht, "Burgerhaus und Baugewerkschule," DB 27 (1893): 2-4. 65. Paul Reimer, "Zur Neuorganisation der Baugewerkschulen," Der Baumeister 5, no. 5 (1907): 59-60. 66. Hirsch, "Bauschullehrer und Privatpraxis," DB 47 (1913): 558. 67. Cited in Paul Reimer, "Zur Neuorganisation der Baugewerkschulen," pp. 5960. 68. Arthur Lehmann, "Die gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Stellung des Architekten in Sudwestdeutschland," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 10 (1914): 194, 199200. 69. " Bauherr und Architekt," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 6 (1910): 214-15; See also Friedrich Seesselberg, "Der Architekt der Zukunft," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 1 (1911): 1-5; and A. Lehmann, "Von der Laienmeinung Uber die Arbeit des Architekten," Monatshefte fur Architektur 5, no. 5 (1906): 129-31. 70. "Tote: Wirkl. Geheimer Oberbaurat Paul Thoemer," DB 52 (1918): 264. 71. "Die Jahreshauptversammlung des Bundes Deutscher Architekten . . . ," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 3 (1907): 322-23. 72. Untitled article, DB 49 (1915): 43. 73. Hans Uhl, "Zur Frage der Privattatigkeit der Baubeamten," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 10 (1914): 377-80. 74. "Die Schadigung der Privatarchitekten durch die Privatarbeiten beamteter Architekten," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 10 (1914): 328-29. 75. Based on Walther G. Hoffmann, Das Wachstum der deutschen Wirtschaft seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1965), p. 69.
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76. "Totenschau (K. Jonas Mylius),"Z)5 17 (1883): 216. 77. "Der Titel Architekt," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 3 (1907): 81. 78. Gaber, Entwicklung, p. 65. 79. Ibid., pp. 63-66. 80. Ibid., pp. 61-62. 81. "Vermischtes: Keine Architektenkammern!" DB 44 V (1909): 556; A. Neumeister, "Architektenkammern," Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 8 (1912): 415-16; K. Neuenfeld, "Gleiche Themen—Veranderte Pramissen," Der Architekt 6 (1978): 288-89; "Chronik: Zur Titelfrage," Der Baumeister 1 (1914): B305-B307; "Eine Denkschrift der Interessengemeinschaft sachsischer Architektenvereine zur Organisation eines Bauanwaltstandes," in Neudeutsche Bauzeitung 10(1914): 216-17; Gaber, Entwicklung, pp. 61-66. 82. Gaber, Entwicklung, 61-62. 83. Dietmar Brandenburger, "Der BDA von 1960 bis 1977: Aus Jahresberichten und von Bundestagen—Versuch einer kritischen Chronik," Der Architekt 6 (1978): 291. 84. Christoph Hackelsberger, "Auf dem Riicken schwimmend, zuriickblicken," Der Architekt 6 (1978): 290. 85. Claudia Huerkamp, "Die preussisch-deutsche Arzteschaft als Teil des Bildungsbiirgertums: Wandel in Lage und Selbstverstandnis vom ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Kaiserreich," in Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, part 1: Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in internationalen Vergleichen, ed. Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 370-71, 383-84.
II THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
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Profession as Vocation: The German Civil Service JANE CAPLAN
I The inclusion of the civil service in a collection of essays on the German professions raises certain definitional problems at the outset, because one may question whether civil servants meet the classic criteria for a profession. It is true that the German civil service was historically one of the first occupations to adopt many of the standards of organization and conduct that have since come to be associated with professional status; these include rigorous educational prerequisites, a system of training and public certification, a clear career structure, and a strong ethical code embodying an explicit concept of honor in public service, together with a certain distance from market relations. However, most typologies of the "traditional" professions (i.e., clerics, lawyers, and physicians) also emphasize autonomy (as a group, and within the client relationship) as an additional hallmark of professional status, and this civil servants, by definition, do not possess. Thus Max Weber included most professional occupations in his category of the "autocephalous" occupations, while government officials were assigned to the "heterocephalous."1 Indeed, some writers have argued that profession and bureaucracy are themselves antonymic, in that the independence of the professional is critically compromised by any bureaucratic encroachments, either from the state or within professional organization itself.2 This suggests that there is something illicit about including civil servants in a book concerned with professionals. Before concluding that this chapter ought not to have been written, or at least that it does not belong in this collection, we should probe somewhat further into both the typology of the professionalization and the history of the German civil service. In the first place, the postulate of an intrinsic conflict between bureaucracy I am grateful to the German Marshall Fund of the United States for research support during the preparation of this essay.
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and profession has not been universally accepted in the literature on professionalization, Carr-Saunders and Wilson, for example, included the civil service in their study of the British professions without comment, observing only that "public opinion did not grant professional status to the civil service until a system of testing for competence was at work" in the second half of the nineteenth century.3 On a more typological level, Talcott Parsons, one of the earliest and most influential theorists of the subject, argued (revising Weber) that the professions and bureaucracy rested on the same principles of rationality, functional specificity, and universality or impersonality.4 These propositions have been explored further in the more recent literature on the subject, which has also become more historically and sociologically critical than the earlier typological and functionalist accounts. Thus it has been suggested that bureaucratization and professionalization were in fact historically linked developments, and also that there has been a growing convergence between the two institutions in this century. Arthur Stinchcombe, for example, has proposed that bureaucracy and profession are themselves subsets of a single category of rational administration; similarly, Magali Larson has argued that the conflict between professionalism and bureaucracy has been overstated, given the historical correlation between the two institutions, and the tendency to exaggerate the degree to which professionals really possess the autonomy that is supposed to be their hallmark. 5 These and other writers suggest that there is more to say about the relationship between these two institutions than the older literature implied; indeed, the investigation of the relationship between bureaucratic and professional organization has become a primary focus of much of the recent literature. In considering this relationship, it is useful first to distinguish between the general application of the term "bureaucracy" to any form of routinized administration, and the specific bureaucratic system represented by the modern state. Discussions of bureaucracy and profession have had a double purchase, raising questions not only about the relationship between profession and bureaucracy in the first sense, but also about that between the state and professions or the process of professionalization. In general, the existing literature has tended to concentrate on the three principal themes of the shared characteristics and visible convergences of bureaucratic and professional practices, the role in state employment of particular professionals (e.g., teachers, social workers or engineers), and the role of the state in furthering or inhibiting professional development and organization. However, none of these approaches focuses directly on the question that concerns us here: the extent to which civil service is itself a professional occupation. This brings us to a second point about the tradition of historical and typological work on professionalization, namely, its tendency until recently to take an Anglo-American model of professions and professionalization as canonical, irrespective of its appropriateness to other national cases. It is this bias in the ideal model that has been perhaps most frequently deplored by recent writers, who have begun to examine professionalization on a more explicitly comparative and historical basis. The usual criticism here is that the Anglo-
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American model exaggerates the degree of autonomy characteristic of professions, as well as the elements of public service and self-control that are the professionals' stake in the so-called bargain with society by which their autonomy is legitimated. At the same time, this model underrates the potential role of the state in the formation, sponsorship, and protection of professional work. Appropriate though the model of autonomy, self-control, and the distant state may be to Britain and the United States (and this can itself be called into question on the basis that "autonomy" is really an ideological cover for a "monopoly" guaranteed by the state), it simply does not take account of the historical circumstances of professionalization in continental Europe. Thus in Germany, by contrast with Britain and the United States, the establishment of a strong state historically preceded the expansion of those capitalist relations that were to provide the ground for both the development of new professions and the reformation of the old. Historically, the effects of this were felt most strongly in the state's power of control over the educational system, which made it relatively more difficult for the professions to develop independent systems of training and certification in the employment of professionals in the state apparatus, and in the stronger role of the state in sponsoring professional organization. Conversely, the territorial fragmentation of the German polity is also said to have inhibited the development of strong national professional organizations until relatively recently.6 Finally, one might also recall Burton Bledstein's concept of the "culture of professionalism" and question whether it is at all applicable to Germany: "The culture of professionalism emancipated the active ego of a sovereign person as he performed activities within comprehensive spaces [and] incarnated the radical idea of the independent democrat, a liberated person seeking to free the power of nature within every worldly sphere, a self-governing individual exercising his trained judgment in an open society."7 Nevertheless, even if Bledstein's paean to American professional culture resonates unconvincingly with German values, it cannot be claimed that Germany has lacked either its professions (thefreie Berufe) or the equivalent of a culture of professionalism. But the German "professional project"8 differed significantly from the Anglo-American model in its nineteenth-century origins, notably by being attached more strongly to a broader notion of university education (akademische Bildung) than to specialized training and selforganization. Honor and status belonged more clearly to the Akademiker or the akademische Berufe than to the professional per se. Moreover, as suggested, the development of the state was such that in many parts of Germany, notably in Prussia, it exerted a powerful influence as both the organizer of the educational system and the consumer of its products, especially those trained in law. It is not surprising that one scholar has concluded that "if in the Anglo-American context the medical profession was the model for the other professions, in Germany it was, rather, the professionalized lawyer [Jurist] in the civil service."9 In a similar vein, it has been suggested that "in Prussia/Germany it is the ethos of the civil servant that has informed the outlook and orientation of professionals (Akademiker)."10
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These claims, which already suggest compelling reasons for examining the civil service in the context of professionalization, can be made even more strongly if we consider the relationship between the institution and its ideological location. It has become commonplace to point out that the scholarly analysis of the professions once reproduced somewhat uncritically the claims and standards by which professionals judged themselves.*! In this literature, professionals often figured largely as they might wish to see themselves, that is, as members of an institution in which private interest yielded to public service, and the crude calculus of the market was held at bay by virtue of the professional's expertise and client orientation: "The incommensurability of the professional, of the "services" he rendered, and did not merely sell, sought to place his activities outside of the pale of ordinary commodity relationships. This was, and has remained, a decisive feature of the professional who, while offering his services for pay, nonetheless claims for them a value irreducible to that determined by the market."12 In a powerful analysis of this professional ideology, Magali Larson has sought to expose the nature of the "professional commodity" and to return professionals to the market from which they claim to escape. Larson also explores the functional relationship between professional ideology and the dominant ideology, suggesting that professionalism's grounding in a supposedly open educational system helps to mask the material inequality that is produced at the heart of liberal capitalism, in defiance of its own professed commitment to equality.13 Nineteenth-century bourgeois ideology was less willing to acknowledge the market itself as an inherent source of inequality than it was to displace anxiety about this contradiction onto the morally corrosive effects of unbridled capitalist individualism. Within this context, the culture of professionalism becomes intelligible as one means of warding off the threat of a universal commercialization of social being, for it offers a morally secure alternative to the dangers of the market, without negating the importance of the market per se. On this hypothesis, my proposal here is that the professional civil service, the Berufsbeamtentum, occupied the same ideological space for nineteenthcentury Germany as the free professions did for England or the United States, that is, the space of an institution defined by an ethical identity that—as an element in its "cognitive basis"—places it outside capitalist relations, and permits "the 'protection of the social fabric' against the subversive effects of the market."14 In other words, quite apart from the connections between civil service and profession that were established by the employment of particular professionals in the state apparatus, or by the role of the state in education and certification, the German civil service can be seen as having a positional similarity with the Anglo-American profession, in the form of a shared ideological identity and location. At the same time, this location depended on conceptualizing the civil service as something more than merely a rationalized bureaucratic apparatus. Rather, the classical image of the German civil service defined its members as representatives of state sovereignty, and as a socially
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distinctive order. The civil service could be seen either as a Stand (estate or corporation), in the same sense that the Akademiker were also denned as a Stand, or somewhat more neutrally as the Berufsbeamtentum, the professional or career civil service. Whether it was seen as a Stand or a career, the civil service had to secure its monopoly over the executive functions of the state by a process analogous to those by which the professions achieved their own status. Indeed, just as there was nothing that automatically "gave" professional status to certain occupations, so also the functions of the state itself were not given, but had to be constructed and demarcated. By the end of the nineteenth century, the German state had one of the most extensive administrative apparatuses in the world, and one that was organized along highly rationalized and hierarchical lines. By then, the state service distinguished clearly between the Beamte, or civil servants proper, and the classes of nichtbeamtet state employees, who were the clerks (Angestellte) and workers (Arbeiter). Only the Beamte enjoyed the professional privileges of social prestige and economic security; the nichtbeamtet public official, on the other hand, was a contract employee like those in the private sector of the economy. Within the Beamte, only senior civil servants (hohere Beamte) belonged to the category of the university-trained Akademiker. Conversely, the material attributes of beamtet status began to be adopted in the private sector, creating a class of Privatbeamte or professional employees who also enjoyed some of the reflected prestige of civil servants. The comparison that is suggested here does not mean, however, that either the structure or the membership of the Anglo-American professions and the German civil service resembled each other in any detail, or that the latter was in practice an effective realization of its ideological positioning. Rather, it is a matter of seeing how both institutions figured in the ideological explanation and legitimation of their respective societies and polities, in excess of their actual status. This parallelism may then help to explain why it is that the discourse of professionalization has only been a relatively recent import into Germany, whereas that of the civil service has been a flourishing concern since the early nineteenth century. The difference is to be explained not simply as the result of an uneven process of research, but also as the effect of a more profound cultural displacement. For there has indeed been a copious literature celebrating the significance of the professional civil service for the national history and character of Germany. As an example, consider the following observation by one of the most important historians of the German administration, Otto Hintze. Writing in 1911, he praised the lofty virtues which the civil service [Beamtenstand] has never lacked: legal expertise, a sense of duty, selfless industry, a corporate consciousness, an unyielding sense of justice, simple loyalty. . . . The quite unique spiritual constitution [Seelenverfassung] of the civil service is the effect of a long process of education as an estate [Standeserziehung] and indeed of familial cultivation. This effect could not have been achieved through the free play of economic forces. . . . [IJn the case of public officials, it is quite evidently impossible to see them as an institution governed by economic factors. 15
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Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the Beamten were in fact legally distanced from market relations, in that they were engaged by the state not on a contractual basis but by the "Dienst- und Treueverhaltnis," a relationship of service and loyalty. This was the legal hallmark of the status of the Beamte, by contrast with the contractually employed Angestellte and Arbeiter. The Beamten voluntarily committed their labor power for the duration of their working life to the state which acknowledged this by offering them security of employment, and compensation for their renunciation of self-interested economic activity, in the form of a "standesgemasser Unterhalt," or a socially appropriate standard of maintenance for the employees, their families, and in case of death, their dependents. In addition, the Beamten were the beneficiaries of the social prestige attached to their unique status as embodiments of sovereignty, which was an ideological equivalent of the professional's autonomy. In this sense, the concept of professional "incommensurability" also overtly constructed the status of the civil servant in Germany, founding both an ideology and a corpus of public law as its effects. Civil servants were no longer private individuals, but trustees of the common good. In Hegel's classic formulation: The universal class [the class of civil servants] has for its task the universal interests of the community. It must therefore be relieved from direct labour to supply its needs . . . with the result that private interest finds its satisfaction in work for the universal. . . . What the service of the state really requires is that men shall forgo the selfish and capricious satisfaction of their subjective ends; by this very sacrifice, they acquire the right to find their satisfaction in, but only in, the dutiful discharge of their public functions. In this fact . . . there lies the link between universal and particular interests which constitute both the concept of the state and its inner stability. 16
This may be compared with Larson's claims that professions constitute "an autonomous, voluntary, and organized community of peers [whose] standards of quality and probity embody the collective wisdom that ultimately protects the collectivity's livelihood. . . . Professional socialization aims . . . at the internalization of special social controls . . . professions are ideologically constructed as occupations that one enters by calling, or at least by choice. As such, they appear to express an essential dimension of the self."17 Of course, these representations of both bureaucracy and profession were not without contradictions, as the persistent tension between the rhetorics of self-assertion, ethics, and rationality in both roles suggests.18 Moreover, the capacity of this imagery to capture the actual identity of the civil service and its role in German politics and society was far from secure. With these remarks in mind, we can now consider the professionalization of the German civil service in the nineteenth century, and the crisis in the relationship between bureaucracy and professionalism, which, in the opinion of this author, marked the German civil service in the first half of the twentieth century. Given the multifaceted nature of Germany's national and regional civil services in this period, my concentration will be on Prussia and the Reich. This is not because they were
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representative of the German states as a whole (although there was a clear convergence toward the Prussian model), but because both the evidence and the issues are clearest in these cases. II
Historically, the mutually supportive relationship between the ethical identity and the functional efficacy of the German civil service was ideologically secured both by means of its position in a general representation of social order, and by a specific process of socialization into a community of standards and expectations. The latter became increasingly formalized in the course of the nineteenth century, as was characteristic of the professions in general. Along with the internalization of an ethic of service, it included a defined educational and career structure, rules of official conduct, and a disciplinary system to penalize transgressions. If the ethic was in theory a homogeneous ideology applicable to every member of the civil service, the regulation of education and training varied widely according to branch and rank. With the nineteenth century came a formalization of both training standards and the career structure of the civil service. Starting in the early part of the century, most German civil services shifted toward a legal education as the prerequisite for admission to the higher ranks of the administration.19 Thus, in Prussia university training and state examination in law became a condition of appointment to the most senior posts in 1817, supplanting an older and less formalized cameralistic tradition; under the training law of 1846, candidates for the administrative civil service were also prescribed a period of compulsory training in a court of law. The same qualifications for the pivotal local post of Landrat (district president) were prescribed by the 1872 Kreisordnung (district order), revising the traditionally patrimonial character of this official. The legal monopoly of training was further advanced under the terms of the consolidating law of March 1879, with only the reform of 1906 offering a modest opening to administrative skills per se.20 By this time, a similar Juristenmonopol (lawyers monopoly) was in effect in the upper echelons of the most German administrations, placing the senior ranks of the profession clearly among the Akademiker.21 The kind of law taught by the universities also changed in the course of the century, becoming more openly vocational, less adapted to the needs of public administration, and more positivistic in quality. At the same time, the stratification of civil servants into a number of distinct classes or ranks became more strict. Whereas previously the ranks had been relatively permeable (for example, aspirants for established appointments in the senior rank might once have spent a waiting period working as clerks), by the beginning of the twentieth century this kind of mobility had in most cases vanished. Differential educational and salary regulations reinforced rigid career and social hierarchies in the Prussian and other civil services. Its senior ranks remained the preserve of the upper classes throughout the nineteenth century, with the administrative branch being noticeably more aristo-
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cratic in origin than the judicial; self-recruitment from civil service families was also common. Social exclusiveness reflected not only active discrimination or differences in educational opportunity, but also that trained candidates often worked long years as unpaid supernumeraries while awaiting salaried appointment. Yet civil service employment remained attractive for the swelling numbers of law graduates (2,000 in 1876 and 5,601 in 1910), and the Prussian government was able to exploit the oversupply of candidates by both making use of their unpaid labor, and raising the examination standards for civil service appointment.22 The civil service appeared equally attractive to many men of lower rank (and, beginning in the 1880s, women, as some clerical and other posts were opened to them), to whom it offered not only social prestige, but security of employment and salary. Although the precise process varied widely among the states, in general during the century there was a progressive de facto extension of the status of the Beamte to new classes of officials. At the same time, the absolute number of state employees increased along with the expansion of the state's activities. Between 1875 and 1907, there was an almost threefold increase in state employment in Germany. By the early 1900s, the traditional core of the judicial and administrative branches numbered almost 400,000 officials (most of them in the middle rank), while the overall total, which included the military administration as well as new branches such as railways, posts, and insurance, amounted to about 1.2 million.23 Among these were not only the mass of middle-ranking clerks and secretaries, but also growing numbers of specialized professionals such as civil engineers, architects, statisticians, and veterinary surgeons. The aggregate size and occupational diversity of this civil service thus raises the question of whether it is appropriate to regard the entire Beamtenstand as a profession, or whether this designation should, rather, be restricted to that small proportion of the whole whose educational certification qualified them for the ranks of the Akademiker (e.g., about 55,000 of the 390,000 judicial and administrative Beamte). In principle, the German bureaucracy merits Larson's observation about the ideological formation of professions: "A profession is always defined by its elites . . . it is always an elite that speaks to outsiders for the 'whole profession,' maintaining the image of a unified and solidary [sic] community."24 Certainly the classical self-image of the Prussian civil service emphasized its shared identity and ethic, binding the lowly clerk to the ministerial Geheimrat (privy councillor) in a supposedly unified corporation. In practice, however, a number of tendencies were at odds with one another here. First, both government ministers and senior Beamte (to a great extent coterminous categories before 1918, of course) were concerned about the costs in terms of money and elite prestige if all the advantages of the status of the Beamte were enjoyed equally by Oberprasidenten (provincial governors) and vortragende Rate (privy councillors) and by post office counter clerks or locomotive engineers. The first fiscal crisis of the modern Prussian state was not the consequence of expanding welfare expenditures in the 1930s, but threatened in the early 1900s, when administrative costs in general risked exceeding the state's tax resources. One
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possible response to this was to restrict the acquisition of civil service status by denning it more narrowly.25 At the same time, however, it was the shared ethic of the Beamtenstand that convened these socially disparate groups into a coherent institution that was integrated in the hierarchical social order and supportive of the authoritarian state. The loss of this integrating ideology might exact its own political costs, in the sense of weakening the ordinary official's identification with the state. Finally, as a somewhat different issue, the trained Juristen in the civil service were increasingly unwilling to see their career structure and monopoly of the senior ranks eroded by the admission of untrained Aussenseiter (outsiders) into the civil service, with the exception of those few important posts that were regarded as political appointments and were therefore not tenured. In other words, whatever coherence the civil service may have once possessed as a profession was under some strain by the beginning of the twentieth century. At the same time, the civil service was not immune from the process of interest-group formation, which was leading to the establishment of professional organizations and trade unions in the second half of the century. Well before 1900, civil servants of lower and middle rank had begun to join together in professional associations, initially with sociable and welfare objectives, but increasingly with the aim of representing their interests vis-a-vis the state as their employer. Although civil servants remained a largely conservative group before 1914 and situated themselves firmly within the framework of the existing state and social order, grievances about salary levels and disciplinary control figured prominently in this early phase of organization. Articulation into organizations eventually began to expose the divergent interests and concerns of the different civil service ranks and branches.26 These processes thus called into question the smooth imagery of unity between the state and its functionaries, as well as challenging the claim of the professional elite to speak for the civil service as a whole. Ill
"The German Revolution of November 1918," Konrad Jarausch has suggested, "was both an opportunity and a threat to the akademische Berufe," a judgment that is certainly true for the civil service, though in different ways for different groupings within it.27 Part of the history of the civil service in the Weimar Republic is the renegotiation of relations within the civil service, and between it and the government. The overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a potentially socialist republic was itself a political threat of potentially formidable dimensions for all civil servants. In the Reich and in the hereditarily ruled states, Beamten were the sworn servants of the monarch, whose abdication thus threatened to extinguish the legal basis of their employment. Moreover, the SPD had been committed since the 1891 Erfurt program to the abolition of the authoritarian civil service, and its replacement by democratically elected functionaries. Yet these challenges did not in fact lead to a sudden eclipse of the traditional civil service in November 1918, largely because the Ebert regime's
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anxiety to prevent a political lurch to the left dictated that it would rely heavily on the existing administrative and military apparatuses. The importance of the civil service in securing the stability of the new successor state was underscored by the extent to which its functions had grown during the war. An immense administrative apparatus had come to control public life to an unprecedented extent; radical change would, it was feared, produce radical disorder. Thus it was the invocation of Volk and Vaterland rather than the spirit of the new republic that kept civil servants at their posts in 1918. It was partly as the effect of the same movement to bind civil servants firmly to the new state that the Weimar constitution, as well as many of the new constitutions of the Lander (states), included articles confirming their privileged status, notably their rights to tenure, salary, and pension.28 Yet these were also concessions to the demands for formal job security made since before the war by the civil service associations, which were now considerably enhanced in size and militancy.29 In other words, the impact of the revolution was mixed. While many civil servants experienced the fall of the monarchy as a political catastrophe, others, at least in 1918-19, saw in it an opportunity to convert their de facto privileges of office into de jure rights of employment. At the same time, by confirming their freedom of political opinion and association, the republic was offering them a new degree of political leverage. Implicit in the political effects of the revolution was, however, a series of potential risks to the existing professional status of the elite civil service. Although the demands of the radical Left for a thorough reconstruction of the personnel and principles of the administration were defeated in 1918, the reformist parties (the SPD, DDP, Center, and to some extent the DVP) remained committed in principle to some degree of democratization. The cost of a civil service that had remained at its posts in the emergency of 1918 was an administration composed wholly of officials appointed under the politically restrictive terms of the prewar empire, and of uncertain loyalty in regard to the new republic. As Hugo Preuss explained the problem in 1925: "The total collapse of the old system of government had inevitably resulted in a transformation of the innstitutional structure of Reich and Lander which could hardly have been more complete than if it had been the effect of a victorious revolution (which we never experienced). Against this constitutional upheaval stood an administration that was taken over from the old system essentially unchanged, whose core is indeed still a legacy from the era of princely absolutism."30 In Prussia, for example, no more than 10 percent of leading civil servants in the interior administration had voluntarily resigned by early 1921.31 Thus the primary objective of the reformists was, as Ludwig Haas of the DDP put it in 1921, that "we want all posts to be filled with competent people, but we must also demand that they are committed to the republic."32 This aim was pursued with varying and fluctuating energy by the Reich and the different Lander; it gathered somewhat greater momentum after 1920, when the Kapp putsch persuaded the reformist parties that the threat to the republic from the Right was as great as that from the Left, if not more so. The strategy of democratization
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accommodated a policy of selective retirements and appointments on political grounds in the top echelons of the civil service, together with the relaxation of some training and promotion regulations to enable qualified men (sic) to rise more quickly up the career ladder. The highest administrative posts in the Reich, Prussia, and some other Lander had long been nontenured political appointments, but there was much disquiet at the enlargement of this category after 1918, and at the appointment of men qualified by new standards of political association. Although the cautious policies adopted hardly amounted to a comprehensive purge anywhere in Germany, they were quickly interpreted as an assault on the principle of the Berufsbeamtentum. 33 Civil servants who felt that the standards of their profession as well as their personal career opportunities were under attack were supported by a voluble political Right, notably the DNVP and eventually the NSDAP. This was especially the case in Prussia, where one of the more energetic reform strategies was adopted. A good many new senior appointments were in fact promotions or transfers from within the civil service, but critical attention focused on the smaller numbers of socalled Aussenseiter. These were men exempted by a 1920 amendment to the training regulations from the usual professional legal qualifications for the senior civil service, as long as they had equivalent skills and three years' experience in the administration. These powers were sparingly used: among the Landrate in East Prussia, for example, the percentage of men without legal training rose only to 18 percent in 1925, from 11 in 1905; of new appointments after 1918, only 28 of 296 (approximately 10 percent) were in the category of Aussenseiter.34 In Prussia as a whole, although the proportion of professionally qualified civil servants did fall in the 1920s, still almost three quarters of senior civil servants in office in 1929 had followed the professional route of qualification and seniority.35 The reaction of the Right to these fairly modest shifts in personnel policy was exaggerated by their connection to party politics, which now began to play an open role in debates about civil service policy. Before 1914 the close association of the senior civil service with the politics of the government had been disguised by the overall assimilation of government to administration, but in the pluralistic republic political affiliations were visible and highly controversial. Civil servants now had a constitutionally guaranteed right to belong to and work for political parties, and their choices were a test of political loyalty that could figure in personnel decisions. The parties of the Weimar coalition in Prussia operated an informal system of political patronage, in which appointments and promotions to nontenured posts were roughly proportional to party strength. Thus by 1928 about half these posts were in the hands of civil servants associated with the SPD, Center, and DDP, while another 18 percent belonged to the DVP, and a handful to the DNVP. The nominal neutrality of the other 50 percent probably disguised politically conservative views in many cases. At any event, the Right was bitterly critical of the patronage system, not only because it was excluded from it, but also on the grounds that it represented a depreciation of the career civil service. Abusive criticism of these so-called Parteibuch-
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beamten (party book civil servants) formed a particular staple of Nazi condemnations of the politics of the Weimar system. If the tendency of Prussian policy was toward a reorientation of the civil service as a profession, the scope and pace of reform hardly succeeded in transforming it in the 1920s. Although this cannot be discussed here, the civil service itself was divided in its responses to democratization. With the early years of the republic came a temporary radicalization of organized civil servants' attitudes to their terms of employment. This included elements that might in principle have affected the established status of the profession, by assimilating civil service employment more closely to the practices of labor law, and effacing the distinction between Beamten and other employees. The need to assert the salary claims of the civil service in the highly competitive context of the inflation encouraged a degree of unity among the civil service associations, and for a time also suggested collaboration with the powerful trade union movement.36 However, this radical and united moment in the civil service was short-lived. The largest of the civil service associations, the Deutscher Beamtenbund (DBB), retreated from its cautious relationship with the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, which in theory could have developed into some kind of united front between the traditionally separatist blue-collar trade unions, and the white-collar and civil service associations. However, instead of pursuing this, the associations retreated to the more traditional ground of independent professional organization and self-defense. This shift was particularly pronounced during the postinflation retrenchment period (Personalabbau) after 1923, when the civil service associations in effect negotiated a deal with the government to protect their own members' jobs at the expense of the nichtbeamtet employees.37 The DBB moved into a corporatist relationship with the more conservative Reich governments of the mid-1920s, and the civil service was stabilized on an only partially modified basis. Crucially, its distinctive legal status was retained. At the same time, senior civil servants acquired pivotal roles in national policymaking, because ministers who frequently changed portfolios had to rely heavily on their state secretaries, and the cabinets themselves came to include nonparty "experts" (including former bureaucrats) as much as party representatives. In this sense, with the later Weimar years came a resurgence of the authority of the civil service elite. Yet this also underlined the difference between the status of the professional elite and the mass. Having already begun before 1914, the debate about the relationship between Berufsbeamtentum and bureaucracy continued in the Weimar Republic. Suggestions that the ranks of the Beamte should be thinned, perhaps radically, by restricting this status exclusively to an elite, hovered in the background of government policy throughout the 1920s. Moreover, although existing civil service jobs had been relatively reprieved in the 1923 Personalabbau, recruitment to the senior ranks virtually ceased, and prospective civil servants unable to secure appointment joined the growing pool of unemployed professionals. When the depression hit, Bruning's fiscal austerity program inevitably took a toll on civil servants in the form of severe salary reductions;
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furthermore, in many states appointments and promotions were also frozen. Despite his reliance on executive rather than parliamentary government, Briining also refused to work with extraparliamentary pressure groups, and ignored the protests that the civil service associations voiced as much against the tactics as the substance of his policies.38 With the Weimar period thus came an ambiguous process of civil service professional development. It was marked especially by a dualism between the self-organization of the civil service as a profession through its own interest associations, and the direct influence its elite exerted through the executive institutions and administrative policies of the state. The political strategy of the social democratic regime in 1918-19 created a space within which it was possible for civil servants to protect their material interests in terms that appeared appropriate to the republic, but that did not in fact break decisively with the vocabulary and standards of the previous era. They thus remained poised between the ideologies and strategies of standisch (status) self-defense, and democratic participation. Government policy itself veered between these poles, fueling civil servants' fears of deprofessionalization in the sense of a loss of both the prestige and the material rewards conferred by their distinctive legal status. Meanwhile, the republic offered the most senior representatives of the profession an equally complex experience of competition and collaboration. High-level civil servants were involved in a new kind of competition with politicians for legitimacy and monopoly as experts in the business of statecraft, and feared displacement by political appointees. At the same time, the problems of parliamentary government made a party-oriented political monopoly of the means of rule impossible; this authorized a resurgent discourse of administrative expertise, but in a context in which no group had an uncontested hegemony over the interpretation of "the national interest." The strains of the Briining period suggested, moreover, that the capacity of the elite to represent the profession as a whole, either to outsiders or, more importantly, to itself, had been forfeited.
IV It was in this context of professional anxiety and disaffection that the National Socialists mounted a campaign in the early 1930s to attract the Beamten into their ranks. The NSDAP enjoyed a mixed reputation among civil servants before 1933. On the one hand, it was hampered by its notorious antibureaucratism and its powerful contempt for "tradition," as well as by its tendency to extend its critique of the Weimar "system" to the republic's officials. On the other hand, the primary political claim of the NSDAP was that it would refound and unify the German state and nation, and with this agenda restore the status and honor of the professional civil service. The propaganda it directed at civil servants themselves therefore tried to present the NSDAP as the champion of an abused and declining profession, which it promised to reinvigorate. After 1930, the economic and political crisis of the republic created circumstances in which the
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NSDAP was able to focus its attack. The party won considerable electoral support among civil servants, especially in the mass employment and uniformed branches such as the railways or customs service, by attacking Briining's fiscal policies, by deploring the dilution of the professional civil service by the Parteibuchbeamte, and by promising to establish an authoritarian political regime in the place of the ineffectual republic. Nazi propaganda summarized its civil service policy with the promise that one of the priorities of a Nazi regime would be the "restoration of the professional civil service \Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums] ,"39 In fact, the NSDAP leadership placed little priority on the development of elaborate schemes of administrative reform before the seizure of power, and its exploitation of the grievances of professionals was as opportunistic as any of its political strategies. However, senior civil servants sympathetic to the movement were active, in the closing years of the republic and in the early months of the regime, in putting forth their own, sometimes radical proposals for the refoundation of the civil service as both a profession and a partner in the work of the "national revolution." The NSDAP headquarters in Munich boasted a "Domestic Policy Department" in which a number of activist officials struggled with complex constitutional and administrative planning documents, which, however, got short shrift after 1933. Although the party leadership made little effort to cultivate contacts in the administrative elite, some officials who were to become prominent after 1933 did have some influence in the movement before then. Among these were Wilhelm Stuckart and Hans Pfundtner, both of whom were state secretaries in the Ministry of the Interior after January 1933. Similar was the Prussian Regierungsrat (government councillor) Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, who captured the typical views of the professional elite in a long memorandum on the reform of training: "The execution of measures for remodelling the civil service must be put in hand forthwith; for the remodelling of the state depends on the permeation of the administration, down to the last office, with the political will of National Socialism. . . . The proposed reconstruction of the civil service involves a total departure from previous principles. It demands radical and bold decisions. . . . The civil service and the state can liberate Germany and give it the necessary room for its expansion only if the civil service is built up anew from the spirit of the national revolution."40 As in 1918, the new regime in 1933 was constrained to work to some extent with the existing structure and personnel of the administration, rather than to embark on a program of radical change. Indeed, the government contained a strong contingent of ministers who had a civil service or a nationalist rather than Nazi background, and who were backed by a ministerial bureaucracy with whose personnel and values they were closely identified. This created an opportunity for the proponents of a new role for the civil service, notably the Ministry of the Interior, to pursue a twin project for the carefully controlled politicization of the administration, and the reprofessionalization of government. As the Ministry of the Interior envisaged it, this project involved, in essence, the establishment of a strong civil service presence in the constitu-
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tional and administrative structure of the new unitary Reich, and the creation of a new corps of professionals to administer it under Nazi leadership. In theory, then, a partnership between the regime and the civil service was promised, in which an initial period of radical political interventionism would be followed by a renegotiation of the political relationship between government and administration. The initial legislation of April 1933 that inaugurated a political and racial purge of the civil service was in fact entitled "Law to Restore the Professional Civil Service," and it was followed a few months later by an important piece of legislation that was intended to begin the process of structural civil service reform and administrative reorganization. Yet the story of civil service policy under National Socialism became one of increasing pressure, disarray, and paralysis. The administrative apparatus remained crucial to the internal order and functioning of the Nazi state, and, with the disappearance of the parliamentary system, government became, of course, an entirely executive process. On the other hand, exchanging the vagaries of parliamentary process for those of National Socialist policymaking was not necessarily a bargain for the executive; moreover, the existing administrative apparatus was frequently ignored or marginalized, especially in policy areas such as the police and security systems, which were seen as particularly significant by the regime. To be sure, this created new opportunities for a small number of ambitious and well-connected younger bureaucrats, but at the cost of mounting tensions with the older elite. Party leaders like Hess and Bormann, who were charged with overseeing the relations between the Nazi party and the state, maintained a constant pressure on the civil service, insisting on their right to operate a system of political supervision over personnel policy in particular. Their claims were repeated lower down the party hierarchy, as the Gauleiter (district leaders) and lesser party officials exploited whatever power they could muster to intervene in every kind of administrative decision-making process. Under the circumstances, it was perhaps surprising that the civil service managed to retain the degree of independence it did, and that some significant policy objectives (i.e., the issue of a new civil service law in 1937, the abrogation of the Briining pay cuts from 1939) were in fact achieved. But these successes were bought at the price of what was increasingly seen, beginning in the mid-1930s, as a long-term crisis in the profession, which the civil service elite felt powerless to prevent. It is likely that this discourse of professional crisis was exaggerated by the ministers and civil servants involved, both in order to emphasize the urgency of their claims, and as a means of displacing a sense of alienation from the regime that could not be directly voiced. It is also the case that many of the issues that formed the core of their complaints had not simply sprung up after 1933, but had been on the agenda in the 1920s, if not earlier. Nevertheless, the conditions of policymaking under National Socialism gave older fears of professional degradation a sharp new edge. The main evidence of this alleged crisis was the failure of the civil service to attract recruits of sufficient quality, together with a collapse of morale.41 The latter was repeatedly emphasized, perhaps because it was by definition not susceptible of precise measurement, but could be invoked as a vague pall
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enveloping the administrative apparatus and vitiating its authority. The recruitment problem was less straightforward as an issue, partly because in absolute numbers the personnel of the administration in fact grew considerably after 1933. But by 1938 it was clear that the civil service was suffering from a relative shortage of skilled personnel, especially of technically qualified men, as the economy reflated. In the core professional ranks of senior administrative and judicial civil servants, additional alarm was aroused by the catastrophic drop in enrollments in the university law faculties in the 1930s, as prospective students sought out more prestigious and less controversial occupations. Among the conditions identified as responsible for these problems were the competition of the armed services and the heavily bureaucratized Nazi movement for personnel, the deterioration of civil servants' financial situation in comparison to similar groups in the private sector, and the effects of Nazi interventionism in the organization and activities of the administration. As a 1940 report pointed out: "Without exception it is recognized that there is little interest in civil service careers. Young male school-leavers presently try as far as possible for jobs in the private sector, where they will get ahead faster, and not be at the mercy of public criticism."42 In essence, the civil service was suffering from a destructive competition with other elites in Nazi Germany for the appropriation and control of the resources of professional reproduction, both material and ideological. Its policy responses in the 1930s and in the first years of the war included partially successful attempts to restore the financial status of civil servants, and an abandoned project to establish the basis for a new civil service elite by means of a fundamental reform of education and training. From the point of view of this discussion, the important part of these initiatives is that they constituted a deliberate program of professional reconstruction advanced by the ministerial civil service. Although the evidence is not entirely clear, it appears likely that this was a project confined to the civil service elite, which, in the battle for professional self-preservation, was willing to sever its ideological connection with the subordinate ranks of the administrative apparatus. These plans never reached an advanced stage, however, but fell victim to the greater emergencies of the final war years and the marginalization of internal administrative issues in the context of the challenge to national survival. Yet this very failure to entrench a reconstructed civil service firmly within the Nazi polity had the somewhat ironic advantage, as far as the profession was concerned, of leaving its reputation relatively less compromised after 1945 than was the case with industry or the army, for example. It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the reconstruction of the civil service in western Germany after 1945, and its replacement by a new functionary system in eastern Germany, but a few comments can be made.43 In the postwar western zones of occupation, strenuous efforts were made by the Allies after 1945 to implement a fundamental reform of the professional civil service, notably in the American zones. However, this bid to eradicate what the Allies viewed as an authoritarian institution, and in particular to break with the traditional concept and legal status of the Berufsbeamtentum, was defeated by the resistance of the new
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German authorities in the late 1940s. The legal status of civil servants in western Germany rested between 1949 and 1953 on a revised version of the 1937 civil service law, and the reformed legislation adopted in 1965 was a recognizable descendant of the traditional principles of German civil service law. Moreover, although new provisions expanded the category of Aussenseiter, in the 1950s, fewer appointments than ever were of candidates without legal qualification, and the career structure remained essentially hierarchical.44 The professional status of the civil service was thus largely, and unexpectedly, restored in the early years of the Federal Republic. "Professionalism," as both an ideology and a practice, recovered its authority and legitimacy in the German civil service in the immediate postwar era, despite the vicissitudes of the 1920s and 1930s. In the longer term, however, the trends discussed in this essay have produced a rather different situation. By the 1970s, Beamten formed a minority in public employment in the Federal Republic of Germany: In 1971 there were 436,000 Beamten, in contrast to 1,762,000 Angestellten and Arbeiter. In other words, the proportion of Beamten in the administration has fallen from almost 90 percent in 1913, to about 30 percent in 1971,45 Although they still enjoy their special public-law status, the rewards associated with this status are no longer their exclusive property, because material security and other social entitlements are now broadly distributed among the working population, including in all sectors of public employment. At the same time, the importance of political patronage in civil service personnel policy has increased since the late 1960s, and this, together with the retirement of the first postwar generation, has had the effect of altering the career structure of the senior civil service, by loosening the hold of strict qualification and lowering the average age of senior civil servants. The negative side of politicization (i.e., control over civil servants' political affiliations) culminated in the decree of January 1972 authorizing the radicalized supervision of civil servants' political behavior and the expulsion of "enemies" of the constitution—the so-calledBerufsverbot. These trends suggest that, on the one hand, public employment in the Federal Republic in general has been thoroughly bureaucratized in recent years, in the deprofessionalizing sense just discussed. On the other hand, the elite of the profession appears to be involved in a new phase of professionalization which is marked by a convergence between party and state officialdom that has created a new political managerial partnership in government. This might be seen, perhaps, as a new and democratically styled successor version of the professional political partnership long espoused by Germany's administrative elite. Notes 1. Max Weber, "Sociological Categories of Economic Action," in Max Weber, ed., The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, 1964), p. 251. 2. Recent reviews of the literature may be found in Eliot Freidson, "The Theory of Professions: State of the Art," in Robert Dingwall and Philip Lewis, eds., The Sociology of the Professions (New York, 1983), pp. 19-37; Charles E. McClelland, "Zur
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Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe in Deutschland," in Werner Conze and Jurgen Kocka, eds., Bildungsbtirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, part 1, Bildungssystem undProfessionalisierung im internationalen Vergleich (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 233-47. See also A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, eds., The Professions (London, 1964), and A. M. Carr-Saunders, Professions: Their Organization and Place in Society (Oxford, 1928). 3. Carr-Saunders and Wilson, Professions, p. 244. 4. See, principally, the following writings by Parsons: "Professions and Social Structure," in his Essays in Sociological Theory Pure and Applied (Glencoe, 111., 1949), pp. 185-99; "Introduction" to Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, pp. 3-86; and "Professions," International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1968), pp. 536-47. 5. Arthur Stinchcombe, "Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production: A Comparative Study," Administrative Science Quarterly (Sept. 1959), pp. 168-87; Magali Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, Calif., 1977), chap. 11; also Celia Davies, "Professionals in Bureaucracies: The Conflict Thesis Revisited," in Dingwall and Lewis, Sociology, pp. 177-94. 6. For these arguments see, for example, Dietrich Riischemeyer, Lawyers andTheir Society: A Comparative Study of the Legal Profession in Germany and the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), chap. 1; idem, "Professionalisierung: Theoretische Probleme fur die vergleichende Geschichtsforschung," Geschichte undGesellschaft 6, no. 3 (1980): 311-25; idem, Power and the Division of Labour (Stanford, Calif., 1986), pp. 118-37; Charles E. McClelland, "Professionalization and Higher Education in Germany," in Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., The Transformation of Higher Learning, 18601930 (Chicago, 1983), pp. 306-20; McClelland, "Zur Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe." 7. Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976). 8. The concept is Larson's, Rise of Professionalism. 9. McClelland, "Zur Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe," p. 244. 10. Dietrich Ruschemeyer, "Professional Autonomy and the Social Control of Expertise," in Dingwall and Lewis, Sociology, p. 47. See also Hans J. Henning, Das westdeutsche Burgertum in der Epoche der Hochindustrialisierung, 1860-1914. Soziales Verhalten und soziale Strukturen, I: Das Bildungsbtirgertum in denpreussischen Westprovinzen (Wiesbaden, 1972), pp. 483ff. 11. See, for example, Freidson, Theory of Professions. 12. Samuel Weber, Institution and Interpretation (Minneapolis, Minn., 1987), p. 26; emphasis in original. I am grateful to Mary Poovey for this reference. 13. Larson, Rise of Professionalism, chap. 12. 14. Ibid., p. 220. One might also argue that just as there is no "natural history" of professionalization, but a history of determinate interests and conflicts, so also there is no "natural history" of the state, but a similar process of struggle by which monopolies and divisions of labor are established, and a "cognitive basis" of legitimation marked out. 15. Otto Hintze, DerBeamtenstand (Leipzig, 1911), p. 17. 16. G.W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1967), pp. 205, 294; see also the strongly Hegelian writings of the Prussian official Wehnert in the 1830s, discussed in Hans Hattenhauer, Geschichte des Beamtentums (Cologne, 1980), pp. 207-10. 17. Larson, Rise of Professionalism, pp. 226-27; emphasis in original.
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18. Ibid., p. 63: "At the core of the professional project, we find the fusion of antithetical ideological structures and a potential for permanent tension between 'civilizing function' and market-orientation, between the 'protection of society' and the securing of a market, between intrinsic and extrinsic values of work." 19. See Wilhelm Bleek, Von der Kameralausbildung zum Juristenprivileg: Studium, Priifung und Ausbildung der hoheren Beamten des allgemeinen Verwaltungsdienstes in Deutschlandim 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1972); see also Hans-Eberhard Miiller, Bureaucracy, Education, and Monopoly: Civil Service Reforms in Prussia and England (Berkeley, Calif., 1984), chap. 4 especially. 20. Clemens von Delbriick, Die Ausbildung fur den hoheren Verwaltungsdienst in Preussen (Jena, 1917), pp. 7-17. 21. Bernd Wunder, Geschichte der Burokratie in Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1986), p. 78. 22. Ibid., p. 79; Hattenhauer, Geschichte des Beamtentums, pp. 249-55. 23. Hattenhauer, Geschichte des Beamtentums, pp. 255-56; see also John P. Cullity, "The Growth of Governmental Employment in Germany" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1964), and Andreas Kunz, Civil Servants and the Politics of Inflation in Germany, 1914-1924 (Berlin, 1986), p. 32ff. 24. Larson, Rise of Professionalism, p. 227. 25. See P. R. Duggan, "Currents of Administrative Reform in Germany, 19071918" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1968). 26. Kunz, Civil Servants, discusses both the trend toward organizational unity before 1918, and its disintegration after 1923, under the impact of the sectoral antagonisms that accompanied the violent process of economic deflation and stabilization. 27. Konrad H. Jarausch, "The Crisis of the German Professions, 1918-33," Journal of Contemporary History 20, no. 3 (1985): 383. For the role of civil servants in the Weimar Republic, see principally Kunz, Civil Servants; Hattenhauer, Geschichte des Beamtentums, pp. 295-368; Wunder, Geschichte der Burokratie, pp. 110-37; and Jane Caplan, Government Without Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany (Oxford, 1989), chaps. 2 and 3. 28. Article 129 of the Weimar constitution confirmed civil servants' "vested rights" (wohlerworbeneRechte) as inviolable; Articles 128-31 covered other aspects of civil service status, including freedom of political opinion. 29. Kunz, Civil Servants, chap. 2. 30. Quoted in Hattenhauer, Geschichte des Beamtentums, p. 329. 31. Wunder, Geschichte der Burokratie, p. 122. 32. DDP committee meeting, Nov. 11, 1921; K. Wegner and L. Albertin, eds., Linksliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik (Diisseldorf, 1980), pp. 222-23. 33. For democratization policies see, principally, Hans Fenske, "Monarchisches Beamtentum und demokratischer Rechtsstaat: Zum Problem der Burokratie in der Weimarer Republik," in Demokratie und Verwaltung. 25 Jahre Hochschule fur Verwaltung Speyer (Berlin, 1972), pp. 117-36; Wolfgang Runge, Politik und Beamtentum im Parteienstaat (Stuttgart, 1965); Caplan, Government, chap. 2. 34. H.-K. Behrend, "Zur Personalpolitik des preussischen Ministeriums des Innern: Die Besetzung der Landratsstellen in den ostlichen Provinzen, 1919-1933," Jahrbuchfiirdie Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 6 (1957): 202-3. 35. Runge, Politik und Beamtentum, p. 191ff. 36. Kunz, Civil Servants, chaps. 4-6. 37. For the Personalabbauverordnung of October 1923 and its effect on the civil
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service, see Kunz, Civil Servants, chap. 7; see also Andreas Kunz, "Stand versus Klasse: Beamtenschaft und Gewerkschaften im Konflikt um den Personalabbau, 1923/24," Geschichte undGesellschaft 8 (1982): 55-86. For the increasing divergence between the major civil service associations, see Kunz, Civil Servants, chap. 6. The more radical wing of the DBB seceded in 1922 over the critical strike issue, forming the trade union-affiliated Allgemeiner Deutscher Beamtenbund. Senior civil servants had already split from the DBB in 1921 to form the exclusive Reichsbund derhoheren Beamten. 38. See especially Hans Mommsen, "Staat und Biirokratie in der Ara Bruning," in Gotthard Jasper, ed., Tradition und Reform in der deutschen Politik: Gedenkschrift fur Waldemar Besson (Frankfurt, 1976), pp. 81-137; see also, on the problems of civil service policy in the late 1920s and early 1930s in general, Hattenhauer, Geschichtedes Beamtentums, pp. 348-68, and Caplan, Government, chap. 3. 39. For details, see Caplan, Government, chap. 4; see also Thomas Childers, The Nad Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983), chaps. 3 and 4, and Michael Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of'Members and Leaders, 1919-1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 1983). 40. The memo was dated April 1933; reprinted in Hans Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart, 1966), p. 142. 41. For details, see Caplan, Government, chaps. 7 and 8. 42. Deutscher Gemeindetag Dienstelle Osten, Dec. 13, 1940 (BA R 36/86). 43. See Walter Wiese, Der Staatsdienst in der BundesrepublikDeutschland (Neuwied, 1972); Nevil Johnson, Government in the Federal Republic of Germany (Oxford, 1973), chap. 6; Kurt Sontheimer and Wilhelm Bleek, The Government and Politics of East Germany (London, 1975), pp. 86-87, Wunder, Geschichte der Biirokratie, pp. 157-96; see also Kurt Oppler and Erich Rosenthal-Pelldram, Die Neugestaltung des dffentlichen Dienstes (Frankfurt, 1950). 44. See W. Loschelder and [Prof.] Rossler, Ausbildung und Auslese der Beamten (Baden-Baden, 1961), p. 23; J. H. Herz, "Political Views of the West German Civil Service," in H. Speier and W. P. Davison, eds., West German Leadership and Foreign Policy (Evanston, 111., 1957), p. 104. 45. Thilo Ramm, "Labor Relations in the Public Sector of the Federal Republic of Germany: The Civil Servant's Role," in Charles M. Rehmus, e4., PublicEmployment Labor Relations: An Overview of Five Nations (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1975), pp. 101-24.
The Past as Future: The German Officer Corps as Profession MICHAEL GEYER
I Whenever historians and social scientists talk about the military as a profession, they talk about Prussia, but this Prussia has the irritating quality of changing every time it is discussed. If the transformation of the German military during the last two hundred years is a rather straightforward process, then the uses to which this transformation is put in the historical imaginaries have created a veritable excess of meaning. The Prussian officer corps is professional, atavistic, skill-oriented, and heroic; in fact, it is all contemporary images of the military and their oppositions rolled into one. The transformation of the German officer corps entailed the rearrangement of three essential elements, which were shared by all major European land armies. First, the European military established itself as separate from the rest of corporate or civil society in standing armies that actively recruited and trained their members and officers. They organized them in an officer corps. We need to know the changing mode of recruitment and training as well as the changing social identity of the officer corps—insofar as recruitment defines social identity. Second, the European military fused, in one way or another, the social identity of the corps with varying degrees of formal organization, which structured authority within the corps. We need to question the nature of the institutional arrangements and how they maintained the internal cohesion of the officer corps. Third, the military possessed a distinct and explicit rationale for action, which gave its organization purpose and direction. The key aspect for any military organization was and is the unequivocal nature of this mission and its legitimacy. We must ask who defined this mission and how the military mission was legitimized.1 The notion of the "rise of a military profession" gives this transformation a specific meaning. It stresses the shift from a closed, status-conscious corps to one that is open and career oriented; from a hierarchical organization based on 183
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rank and authority to a managerial, functional structure; from an absolutist, interest-oriented mission to one that is public and service oriented. It further states that in all three areas these shifts are motivated by a process of rationalization and scientific determination of military practices, whether this process is enhanced by a separate group of "knowledge experts"—like the "general staff" or "strategic think tanks"— or driven by technological modernization.2 All contemporary notions of "professionalization" link these internal military processes to concepts of societal modernization and industrialization.3 Furthermore, all of them require "professionalism" as a condition for military autonomy. This much seems self-evident. However, the practice of applying this notion causes a great deal of confusion. Thus, the founders of the Bundeswehr organized the army of the Federal Republic as a professional army in contrast to what they considered to be the German military past, including both the "premodern" traditions of the Prussian army and the "vocational" orientation of the Wehrmacht.4 They held out the hope for a politically conscious and professional armed force that would be neither traditionalist nor technocratic. In this endeavor they were supported by a German historiography that insisted on the atavism of a traditional aristocratic elite.5 However, it was exactly this elite that Samuel P. Huntington chose as a model for the military profession. (Not to complicate the matter, Morris Janowitz6 picked what the Germans called the "vocational" tradition and what he called the "managerial soldier" as the key feature of the military.) The same German military thus became the main example for the Western process of military professionalization. We face a perfect reversal of ideas: The German military received (traditionally "American") atavistic connotations, and the American military was represented in the German professional image; then, the Bundeswehr was based on German ideals filtered through a presumed Western (American) and, hence, professional prism. Suffice it to say that we might extend this idea to yet another level by adding the dimension of the military structures of the Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic. As if these contradictory interpretations were not enough, the picture has been further confused by a number of historians and military experts who claimed the German officer corps for yet another tradition that they also consider to be professional, even though (or in their reasoning, because) it maintains an intrinsic difference between the military and civil society. They stressed leadership and group identity as the basic principles of a modern army and considered, once again, the German army as the main example.7 Not even the most aseptic study or the most admiring commentaries on military techniques such as "infiltration tactics"8 can conceal the authors' intention to upgrade yet another meaning of the German military experience, namely that of Fuhrertum (leadership), Gemeinschaft (community), andMannlichkeit (manliness). If the post-Vietnam American army and the post-1973 Israeli army prefer this image, it then becomes their legacy.9 Furthermore, if both German armies rediscover traditions of national solidarity in the same experience, it just goes to show that these interpretations have produced their German echo.10 For us it
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is an indication that all debates on the military profession lead back to German military history. It is baffling how so deliberately monochrome and faceless an entity could be at the center of virtually every interpretative strategy for the military—how a military organization could be itself as well as its opposite and many other things. It is difficult to fathom what to do with these layers of text. But only a fool—and there are surely enough of them—would think in this situation that we actually can reduce this history to the one and only correct history of the German military. Instead, we have to realize that the German military was not just invented in different ways by different historians, but that it was different things; furthermore, this was not just because it assumed different appearances or potentialities, but because it was simultaneously different realities. "Profession" as a strategic political concept (i.e., as the permanent effort to shape the present by remaking the military past with the help of history) allows us to focus on the discursive constitution of these multiple identities. It allows us to study how and why the Prussian-German military continuously produced its own fictitious dualities, that is, of what it was and what it was not. It allows us to explore how and why these dualities shifted over time. The Prussian-German military thus appears to be a rather difficult model for the understanding of the military profession. Yet the legacy of Prussia is unavoidable, because if we talk about the professional military, we do not talk about any military, but about its commonly acknowledged ideal, the Prussian (German) army. Since every successful professionalizing strategy involves reinterpreting the past, every military that calls itself professional reverberates the Prussian model; therefore, for example, were the Prussian officers the first and only ones who invented themselves as (military) professionals? This makes the history of the Prussian military the true nightmare of all modernizers and professionalizers in history and political life. II
Nothing is more deceptive than the continuity of the aristocracy in the Prussian-German officer corps. Some historians have tried to minimize the preponderance of nobles, and they have more of a point to make than the new orthodoxy of German history would like.11 Still, as nouveau as some of the military aristocrats may have been, the officer corps during the nineteenth century was deeply aristocratic after all. The confusion lies in the assumption that the aristocratic quality of the Prussian-German army tells us very much about its trajectory. This presumption leads us straight into the professional mastercode, which was invented just at this time and as such is in need of explanation. We cannot assume that military professionalism and aristocratic privilege were antithetical, but we know that they were played out as if they were in the struggle over the social organization of violence. The challenge was pan-European and came in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, which made necessary everywhere a reconstitution of the armed forces
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and of their place in society. The upheaval of the Napoleonic wars undermined both the way the military had organized violence in the past and the place of the military in state and society. It was a time when simultaneously the social organization of violence was modernized and the autonomy of the absolutist armies was challenged in the name of peace by an expanding civil society. Both trends pushed the military into a postabsolutist, "modern" age, but the two practices were profoundly antagonistic. The Prussian army disintegrated in the defeat against the postrevolutionary armies of Napoleon and was subsequently thoroughly restructured. There have been elaborate debates on the quality of the resulting changes, but the very existence of a dissolution and reorganization must be appreciated in the first place. The trauma of the court-martial of the leading commanding officers of the old army is but one element that cannot be overlooked. It established a precedence that was important for institutions and estates alike. By the same token, within ten years after the defeat of 1806, an aristocratic and absolutist officer corps was replaced by one in which approximately half of the officers were of bourgeois origin. Their number had increased from approximately seven hundred in 1806 to more than three thousand in 1818.12 Surely, these changes indicate an extraordinary break with tradition. Whatever came after it, the Prussian army would never be the same again. It had experienced a cataclysmic transformation, which influenced it despite all efforts during the following decades to forget the changes. It is in this context that "aristocracy" gained a special meaning in that it began to signify heredity and continuity— that is, the enduring quality of authority in the face of its past collapse and the permanence of its subsequent reorganization. Under these circumstances, an aristocratic military could embody its specific class interests in the supreme fiction of the Prussian-German state. It was a fiction not about nobility, but about continuity and heredity in a new state and a distinctly postabsolutist army. The rupture of the military and political identity and consciousness was accompanied by institutional changes that matched and, to a point, surpassed those in revolutionary France. In adapting and acculturating Napoleonic practices, the Prussian army established three organizational principles, which, henceforth, were to dictate the future of all "modern" armies. First, as opposed to the personal authority, there was the elaboration of functional authority in which a complex and interlocking system of institutionally organized authority developed. It ended the arbitrariness of absolutist command and allowed for such new ideals as "scientific training," but also for rationalizing routine tasks like deployment planning. Second, in following France, Prussia systematized army units (using the divisional structure) and made them interchangeable. This more than anything else put an effective end to the regimental tradition and the related systems of a regimental economy and the control of regiments by specific military families. The third element was the territoriality of the military organization, which was linked to the institutional decentralization of the command structure into territorial commands, and the bureaucratic organi-
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zation of domination through the introduction of conscription, thus ending the master-bondsmen relation in the military.13 These combined measures effectively ended the tradition of the Prussian military as an absolutist Gesellschaftsstand (societal estate), because the notion of the military as a societal estate makes sense only as long as the organization of violence is embedded in the corporate fabric of society, both in the sense that civil and military elites are not differentiated and in the sense that military authority and the military system of domination depended on nonmilitary support.14 We know, of course, that in Prussia autocracy and aristocracy maintained control over the military, but the social organization of violence was no longer what it had been. It was postabsolutist, even if it was aristocratic. However, it was the fragmentary condition of the army reform rather than the complete remaking of the army, the simultaneous and incoherent presence of multiple directions within the army and in the relation between army and society, that characterizes the condition of the military in the first half of the nineteenth century. It took nearly half a century—a long first arch of development—to put the various elements of partial change together. The outcome of this process was a professional army. The Prussian state rebuilt an aristocratic corps virtually overnight.15 But in reestablishing continuity, the restorative army moved even farther' away from the absolutist army of the past. The reformers had taken a variety of measures to strengthen a distinct and separate identity of officers. Thus, they revamped, among other things, the military honor code and the election system to the officer corps and strengthened the internal control over the identity of the military.16 Whereas these measures were turned against the intentions of the reformers, they were maintained after 1815—18. They closed, on the one hand, the officer corps against bourgeois recruits, but they also established a distinct corps identity and replaced or, in any case, reduced ties between manors and regiments. Social origins guaranteed the homogeneity of the officer corps, but this basis of its identity was the "military." This military identity, however, remained ambivalent. It was the source of one of the main conflicts within the officer corps, which pitted those who emphasized "character and experience" against those who stressed "merit and achievement" as the main quality of officers.17 It is easy enough to see that the insistence on "character" as the main criterion for recruitment and on experience as the main principle for promotion was a rather heavy-handed means of privileging aristocratic recruits. But this same emphasis also came to define one potential military future. Character and expertise began to signal a set of vocational and experiential qualities that turned the notion of "character" into a skill-oriented model for the officer corps. In many ways, the "aristocratic" notation came remarkably close to what the Germans called afier«/(vocation).18 Perverse as it may seem, meritocratic notions of the officer corps came to emphasize social privilege much more, even if privilege depended on knowledge. The attainment of knowledge constituted a privilege in civil society, which was all the more important because knowledge did not at this time
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translate into performance, but into authority. The merit-oriented ascription of expertise as knowledge placed the military within the context of civil (elite) society, whereas the character-based ascription set military as a corporation and civil society apart. Both notions, however, were new and both engaged in an imaginary construction of the military and its place in society. They both created privilege. The act of restoration, in other words, entailed a process of social modernization. A similar phenomenon can be observed on an institutional level. The reformers aimed at organizing military authority separately, systematically, and hierarchically in an integral bureaucratic system, which gave an area of circumscribed authority to each officer and allotted to the officer corps as a whole the powers of domination over conscripted soldiers.19 They welded together the social identity of the corps with a bureaucratically organized structure of military authority (the War Ministry). This newly gained institutional autonomy was never rescinded, even if the reformers' enlightened decision-making machine was fragmented and compartmentalized in order to reassert a role for the monarch. The fragmentation of the enlightened reformist impulse strengthened autocratic tendencies on the one hand, but on the other hand it prevented the ossification of the military in a system of bureaucratically organized routines as in the civil bureaucracy. In any case, the restorative military rejected all efforts to weaken its separate institutional base and turned it into the foundation of military power. It was decidedly not aristocratic privilege, but the military's ability to control and mobilize resources autonomously, that enabled the Prussian military to withstand popular rebellion and constitutional challenge. The newly gained (reformist) autonomy, in other words, was the prerequisite for the (restorative) struggle to sustain anticonstitutionalism. 20 "Modernizing" tendencies were thus adopted and elaborated piecemeal as restorative practices between 1818 and 1859. Institutional differentiation entailed the rationalization of the military organization, and the evolution of a division of labor within society gave the military a distinct functional identity; both were the consequence of restorative measures. Together, they moved the military into a new age and gave it a distinctly "modern" structure. The elements of this process have been quite commonly associated with professionalization.21 However, rather than promoting the rise of a military profession, they instead facilitated an aristocratic restoration. What is commonly called "professionalization" did not lead to a military profession without an additional political push, which made the discrete "modern" elements cohere into a military profession. In order to understand what ultimately led to the formation of a "military profession," we have to realize that modernizing efforts isolated the military from the mainstream of social life.22 The consolidation of a distinct social and institutional identity salvaged an aristocratic officer corps, but it did not guarantee power and influence in state and society. There was a manifest possibility in the 1850s that the Prussian military would become the impoverished companion to capitalized agriculture and industry. By the 1850s, the
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officer corps had already become the dumping ground for the "dumbest sons [of the aristocracy] who did not want to learn anything."23 The officer corps no longer garnered a social elite. The Prussian army—much like the British army—faced the threat of turning into a "lumpenarmee" led by a "lumpenaristokratie" in the midst of a quickly expanding civil society, which had learned that it needed a military, but did not see any reason to organize violence on its own. In order to survive, the military needed the acknowledgment of its mission as service to the nation. The constitutional conflict over the army reform in the 1860s brought this issue to the forefront. In this conflict, the military propelled itself into the center of the state and of society by asserting its mission as a national priority. The military succeeded in its insistence that it was the only institution that was capable of defining the meaning and implications of its own mission and that the military mission was the chief and only service that the state rendered. It was the second rupture in the development of the officer corps in the nineteenth century, and it closed the first phase of development and established the military as a profession. The story of the army reform of the 1860s and of the ensuing constitutional conflict has been told many times. It was the end of a half-century of liberal constitutional struggles and the beginning of an authoritarian reconciliation between the bourgeoisie and the military. The army reform hinged on the removal of the last remnants of the legitimist masquerade. The constitutional debate challenged exclusivity rather than elite status, lack of accountability rather than authority, and privileged access to state resources rather than the self-definition of the military mission. It was resolved in the mutual agreement of core groups within the military and the bourgeoisie on the autonomy of experts and in the embrace of professionalism as the principle for the social organization of violence. Within the military context, it hinged on the rise of the general staff and its "scientific strategy." Within bourgeois society, it depended on the acknowledgment of a mutually beneficial division of labor between the social organization of production and the social organization of violence. With such characteristics, it rested ultimately on the joint interest in rationalized domination and in the control of men and resources for the purpose of international competition.24 The notion of "military science" as a guiding principle for the ideal "scientific" officer once again originated with the Prussian reformers and was a product of enlightenment culture.25 It reemerged in the 1850s as a startlingly new and genuine professional ideology. Military science had become a "strategic science."26 This science was a complex of ideas and practices that encompassed the military, state, and society. Its practical focus was the conduct of operations—now understood as the production of violence—which was institutionally organized in the systematic control over the increasingly complex process of mobilization and deployment of armed forces. This task fell to the general staff. Whereas the reformers had seen it mainly as a bureaucratic endeavor of resource mobilization, the general staff had come to interpret it as a "scientific," managerial process the systematization and rationalization of
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which was the very essence of general staff work. Operations then became the particular task for a group of military experts. However, this expertise did not simply consist in "skills" that could be attained through experience, nor were they merely intellectual qualities that could be learned in academies. Rather, the technique of systematic deployment was embedded in "eternal laws of strategy." The military's insistence on the scientific quality of strategy is only a language game, for the managerial technique of the general staff rested upon the principles of (military) history as a scientific discipline. It formed the curricular core for the training of future general staff officers.27 It is this link between universal principles—established through history—and rationalized techniques that turned the general staff from an auxiliary agency in the Ministry of War into a hegemonic group of experts that defined the substantive decisions within the command structure.28 More importantly, the general staff and its historians identified—in a discursive masterstroke that was only matched by the victories in the wars of unification—the specific military agenda of planning operations and deployment with the conduct of states. Operational planning was thus embedded in the laws of strategy, which, in turn, reflected the relentless logic of power politics. The general staff, then, became not just the pivotal agency within the military, but the agent of the laws of the state. Furthermore, in implementing these laws the military provided a service to the nation, for which it demanded in return a privileged status and exclusivity. The officers thus saved their autonomy by subordinating themselves to the "demigods" of violence, the general staff officers. Their instrumental and scientific rationale put them within the context of bourgeois discourse, but controlled it by insisting on the necessity of scientific, military training and expertise. The general staff not only invented the autonomy of experts in radically transforming the reformist notion of "knowledge," but at the same time established the principles of their legitimacy. The general staff thus turned the military into a profession. How much of a professional body was the army? First, while the source of funding as well as the monopolistic control over the domain of violence rested within the state at large, the military was able to reject all efforts at political (parliament) or bureaucratic (Ministry of War) control. Second, it was a selfgoverning body with its own ethics, codes, regulations, and tribunals, to the extent that it remained outside of the (civil) law code. Promotion was handled in a systematized fashion of qualified seniority, even if the actual selection process enhanced inequalities and favored a small number of "old" military families. Third, the military organized violence according to its own scientific principles of the eternal laws of strategy, which it inculcated in a lengthy socialization process. Fourth, although it remained a largely aristocratic body, its elite status and social privilege no longer came with birth (even if noble prerogatives facilitated entry into the corps), but derived from membership, which was controlled by the officer corps and depended on expertise. Last but not least, the military did not just work for the common weal (the state) but represented it, defined it, and defended it against other articulations of the national interest. Its
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mission was unequivocal in that it fit self-interest (the defense of social status), Prussian aggrandizement, and the geopolitical logic of an imperial state into a single comprehensive calculus, which was legitimated scientifically, that is, historically. Of course, this rendition of the Prussian-German military as a profession may be more illuminating for what it says about some standard definitions of civilian professions in the twentieth century than for an understanding of the military. Otto Hintze called the military a Berufsstand (profession).29 What matters is that it was a social body that fit perfectly the nineteenth-century regime of bourgeois and aristocratic notables in that it assumed a self-evident elite status of a homogeneous corps, an unquestioned but regulated paternal authority as a principle of organization, and the undebated legitimacy of its mission—which linked the scientific organization of particular tasks to the common weal of the whole nation. In other words, both the social organization of violence and its articulation in terms of expertise were profoundly bourgeois. Therefore, it is indisputable that the Prussian-German military, while an institution for notables, was largely occupied by nobles. Furthermore, it was certainly not a "civil" profession, even though it may have been more of a profession than any in the "civil" category. How can we explain the difference? Everywhere in Europe and the United States the military assertion of control over a body of specialized knowledge has strengthened its elite aspirations. The link between professionalism and elite status, expertise and privilege, is nowhere more clearly expressed than in the case of the military.30 However, as organizers of violence, military elites have always also remained privileged outsiders to civil society. In France these aristocrats were Catholic notables, in the United States Southerners, and in Germany Prussian nobles. Thus, it was possible that the constitution of the military as a profession was the prerequisite for the reinvigoration of the aristocratic traditions. If we look at the plethora of regulations in the 1870s and 1880s, which strengthened aristocratic elements,31 we might as well argue that the more professional the army became, the more it could afford to be aristocratic again. Ill
Wilhelmine society was a society in crisis, but it was also a society that loved its crises and embroidered upon them. Historians disagree on the nature of the societal crisis, and they have only rarely understood the embroidery. However, they hold steadfast to the notion of a clash between a premodern military and a modern civil society that allows them to interpret the military as a reactionary force set against industry and democracy.32 This argument is valid in that it reflects and represents the contemporary discourse on the military, but it does not understand the conditions for its articulation. They consist in the relentless transformation of the social organization of violence. Reactionary as the Wilhelmine officer corps was, it stood at a cusp from which it looked backward in the defense of a regime of military professionals, but was driven forward in organizing violence.
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The strains on this regime of professional notables grew explosively. The military responded on the one hand to public upheavals and sociopolitical mobilizations, but it also expanded into a mass conscript and industrialized army, that is, mobilized in its own right. The services that the military rendered were—with the introduction of universal conscription—provided by the nation for the nation with the military as possessors of specialized knowledge in the middle. This challenge engaged all three aspects of the long-term transformation of the officer corps: social identity, institutional autonomy and cohesion, and the unequivocal nature of the military mission. The patterns of recruitment33 indicated, first of all, a precipitous drop in aristocratic officers from 65 percent in 1880 to 45 percent in 1895 to 30 percent in 1913. It is commonly acknowledged that the slowdown of this decline after 1895-98 is due to a conscious effort to counteract this development. Inasmuch as this was the case, it was only a minor success. Although the share of nobles remained distinctly above average, the steep drop within one generation is equally worth noting. Within the Wilhelmine officer corps, we find not just a growing measure of social heterogeneity, but most of all a deep generational divide, as well. Second, the expansion of the recruitment pool went in close association with efforts to seal off the military as part of the Wilhelmine social elite. The baseline for recruitment now became the same qualifications that applied to the civil service and civilian professions as well, although loopholes existed for nobles and some exclusions existed for Jews and Social Democrats.34 A third feature is more easily overlooked. The rate of self-recruitment was on the rise after the turn of the century, and since this rate was particularly high among nobles, we can speak of the emergence of a caste of military families within the officer corps. These processes only furthered the fragmentation of the corps and pointed to a basic problem of the military's social identity in imperial Germany. The expansion of the army had dissolved the practice of identifying social homogeneity (similarity of background) and social cohesion of the corps. The cohesion of the corps was no longer "naturally" provided by a premilitary socialization and elite connections. It had to be created. Social origins as a source of coherence were replaced by military culture as the main agent for establishing identity; that is, identity now had to be produced/or the military. "Tradition" played a central role in this context; however, traditions were not remnants of the past in the present but newly created artifacts that represented the aura of the past.35 The consequences of this process propelled the military into a new century. In the form of military culture, the social identity of the military profession had become a public good and as such was negotiable. Indeed, the identity of the military was negotiated with a vengeance. The pressures on the constitution of a distinct military culture were particularly strong, because the institutional coherence of the military yielded at the very moment at which the social cohesion of the corps was threatened. The system of notables rested on the principles of a unified, functional organization of authority. While there had always been a degree of specialization, strategic knowledge as military science had integrated all aspects of institutional differ-
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entiation. Only with the industrialization of warfare and the formation of mass armies do we begin to see a reversal of this trend through a tendency toward occupational differentiation. The nineteenth-century Berufsstand had distinguished two kinds of authority, which it combined as "line" and "staff." The line consisted of a hierarchically structured system of narrowing command authority. The staff had no such authority, but it exercised power by maximizing strategic knowledge and by monopolizing and centralizing its expertise. Officers rotated between "staff" and "line" positions. By the 1890s, the general staff was not only organized in a separate tier, but it had also begun to expand dramatically from operational planning into overall management of violence (i.e., operations, mobilization, and deployment).36 General staff officers became the visible hand that organized what had previously been considered the domain of the commander. In this respect they raided the authority of the "line," which led to considerable frictions. Commanding officers, however, increasingly acquired representational tasks as opposed to managerial and instrumental powers, in that their authority came to represent the unity and the cohesion of the corps. As it happened, commanding officers more often than not came from the hard core of a self-recruited officer caste, consisting mostly of a small group of old military families. They became the custodians of military culture.37 Both commanding and managerial officers were increasingly removed from subaltern officers. This gap within the military institution began to widen for two reasons. On the one hand, the expansion of the army required in increasing numbers "tactical" cadres who possessed special knowledge and skills as well as authority over their soldiers, but they were also cogs in a wheel, which they did not turn. Since the size of the army expanded so much and the demands on these officers increased, the role of these officers was no longer simply transitory, even if they were filled by "junior" ranks. Tactical leadership became a crucial element and a distinct task.38 Suffice it to say that these officers were to become the "heroic" officers, which another generation of professional theorists attributed to prehistory. The opposite is the case. The transition from subaltern officer to tactical cadre (the formation of a middle stratum of officers between the top managers of violence and soldiers, and their effort to differentiate themselves from noncommissioned officers who had traditionally occupied this role) and the inordinate expansion of this permanent and no longer age-specific group is one of the key developments in the reorganization of the military profession into a service class. On the other hand, the number of technically skilled officers also increased steadily with the mechanization and industrialization of violence. These officers were "experts" in their own right, but their work was—initially at least—strictly functional and not managerial. In Wilhelmine Germany and in fact all the way into the Third Reich, they remained a subordinate group, or an "oppressed" group, if one believes their own testimony.39 Occupational differentiation and technical specialization thus threatened the institutional unity of the nineteenth-century military. By the turn of the century, the officer corps had developed from a group of hierarchically orga-
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nized notables into a layered system of supervision and management, on the one hand, and a subordinate sphere of tactical and technical experts on the other. This horizontal split was accompanied by a vertical one that set the "heroic" authority of commanding and tactical officers against the instrumental authority of managerial and weapons experts, so that we have roughly a fourfold division of the officer corps. All four groups presented competing claims on the identity of the military. Changes in recruitment patterns and the rearrangement of military tasks eroded the internal cohesion of the military profession, but the military could have still stayed in place if everything else had remained equal. However, the division of labor between military and civil society and the definition of the military mission came under sustained attack simultaneously. The division of labor between military and civil society cracked open at its most crucial seam, that is, at the relation of domination and subordination. This struggle had the appearance of a renewal of the constitutional conflict (and it was fought over the constitutional control of the military), but the actors and issues had changed. The conflict during the early nineteenth century was a struggle over the separation of spheres of power and over the control of the military; at the turn of the century it was a struggle over organizing domination and over the rights of soldiers as citizens. The persistent feature of this struggle is the dissolution of boundaries between the military and civil society in the ongoing renegotiation of relations of domination and subordination. At the same time, the military experienced growing difficulties with maintaining control over the definition of its mission. Control over its own agenda— based on the containment of violence—had been slipping in the arms race ever since the 1890s. The inability to control armaments challenged the instrumental use of violence and, hence, "strategic science" and the claim for autonomy on the basis of a monopoly of expertise. The Schlieffen Plan is a good indication of the futility of strategic science.40 More importantly, the public dimension of the military mission came under attack. The military no longer monopolized the agenda of the state. For the first time, we can observe the rise of opposing experts on arms control and disarmament. 41 Indirect challenges were perhaps even more effective. Alternative national definitions of the common good like welfare, public hygiene, and education challenged the military monopoly in defining the state's mission. This challenge was not only supported by broad social groups, but also buttressed by civilian "professionals" with the same or better claims on science. The simultaneous nationalization of politics and the diversification of the state's mission effectively ended the arrangements of the mid-nineteenth century, which had established the military as a hegemonic profession in control of its mission. Once again, the Prussian-German army reacted with quite extraordinary intensity in reforging the inner bonds of the officer corps and rearranging its relations to what had become an industrial mass society. However, the Wilhelmine army produced not one, but three different answers to the accumulated problems. The creation of a "feudal army" by Wilhelm II spelled military disaster, but
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was an extraordinary visual success.42 He created an officer corps, which organized itself increasingly along managerial lines but gained its identity and its status in the mass production of a military aura. "Feudalization" only makes sense if we understand it as a deliberately designed effort to establish corps identity and military status in society through the manufacturing of appearance.43 The identity of the corps and its status became a public (one might even say media-centered) event. The military was no longer what the officers were by birth (nobles) nor what the officers knew best (a profession of arms), nor was it a functional organization of violence (which some officers wanted it to be). Rather, military unity and status were created in the multiplication of military "signs." Fortresses became castles, maneuvers were social events, and one might even want to point to the creation of "representational arms" (if some, unwisely, hesitate to count battleships among them, then they certainly would have to acknowledge the expansion of guard units and their newly designed traditional uniforms).44 The rise of "feudalism" as an authenticated military answer to the challenges of a mass society and a nascent consumer culture is indeed the unusual contribution of Wilhelminism to military sociology; lest there be any doubt, "Wilhelminism" has become a persistent feature of the twentieth-century military. The Wilhelmine enchantment of the world was clearly not false consciousness, but it was a vision that unified the officer corps and linked the internal identity of the corps to the ascription of public status. This link was so strong because the predicament of military notables echoes in so many ways those of their bourgeois equivalents. In both military and civilian life, it is the challenge to the rule of notables that fueled a hybrid military culture; furthermore, it is not by chance that especially the former archenemies of the military—men of culture and substance—now came around to embrace the military in a world shaped by the demands for efficiency and productivity of corporate German industry.45 Like all imaginary constructions, this one organized power ruthlessly and effectively. Within the army, the "feudal" illusion upheld the hegemony of command authority over functional authority, and in the relations of army and society it established the privileged social status of a corps that had become socially less exclusive. In civil society it reinforced the patriarchal authority of men of culture and substance, and lent an aura to their existence. Most of all, the feudal mystique divided the world into strictly separate military and civilian spheres, even if the two were more than ever merged in the national mobilization for armaments and war. The political meaning of such feudal imagery thus unified the ascription of social status and the definition of social identity with the preservation of command authority and the definition of military objectives. It guaranteed, for the time being, the autonomy of the military profession after the collapse of the unifying and status-defining power of strategic science as basis for military professionalism. The Wilhelmine officer corps was surely no less "expert" than previous armies, but it was no longer able to articulate its scientific expertise in a legitimated mission. Instead, a military culture was created that buttressed
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authority and gave it the aura of a way of life. The special quality of this culture consisted in the ability to unify elite culture and to attract a mass following. Thus, it quickly gained its own social existence, which had ever less to do with the actual organization of violence.46 The First World War transformed this army of peacocks into "workers of steel"—or so was the belief of Ernst Jiinger.47 Jiinger gave one kind of meaning to the deep rupture within the officer corps during the war. Within four years, the size of the officer corps doubled (from 22,112 to 45,923), while the reserve officer corps grew tenfold (from 23,230 to 226,130).48 This socially much more diverse corps developed its own hierarchies and identities. While the "old" officer corps died away in the initial battles and its remnants were scattered or quite literally dismounted,49 two parallel hierarchies emerged and began to compete over the shape of the officer corps. On the one hand, a managerial hierarchy, which was anchored in the general staff, took over the leadership role and extended downward to command positions behind the trenches. These staff officers, relatively well schooled and groomed, constituted an elite that gained its role through planning expertise and managerial qualities.50 On the other hand, there was the large number of "tactical" officers who formed their own hierarchy, often led by reserve officers with relatively little formal training but enormous practical experience under fire.51 These parallel hierarchies were perhaps less separated in what they actually did than in their vision of what the military was. It is not difficult to identify the main features of the front-line officers' construction of the world.52 It is somewhat more important to emphasize that their "heroism" and camaraderie were anything but atavistic, but articulated a technocratic vision of society and of the military. Their front-line "community" was constituted in the "tactical" interaction of machines and their optimal use for the purpose of destruction. Their understanding of war was machine based and industrial; their notion of society at large reflected a similarly interactive "community"—more Durkheim than Tonnies—of functionally related parts. The German front-line ideology was modernist and based on skill and performance.53 At its core, it held notions about the optimization of destruction, that is, the most effective and instrumental use of weapons in the pursuit of victory. Front-line officers not only expected status for their service, but also imagined their service "work" (the organization of violence was articulated in similar terms as welfare work) as laying the foundation of society. In effect, the front-line ideology is nothing but Taylorism for the organization of violence. It is even less common to recognize the ideological aspect of managerial officers. However, their quest for efficiency was no less "irrational" than the ideology of front-line officers. At its core, it entailed the rationalization of the military. Much of the representational baggage was eliminated; status and privilege as guiding principles for the army and the officer corps were reduced in significance, if not entirely eliminated. The Third Supreme Command unleashed a veritable cult of military efficiency,54 which expanded from the military into civil society; the same kind of streamlined organization of
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destruction that was introduced in the military also was to organize the nation at large. In this conception, the general staff (now as national planning agency) claimed hegemony over all aspects of life in the pursuit of the use of all available resources for the purpose of war. These brief characterizations point to the main difference between a "modernist" twentieth-century officer corps and the nineteenth-century "modern" corps of military notables. Whereas the latter demanded privileged status on the basis of their special knowledge and aimed at a control of the common weal, the new class of officers demanded performance and, to that end, control over society in order to mobilize for war. It is a general feature of military professionalism in the twentieth century— as opposed to the nineteenth century—that it is based on the integral national mobilization for war and thus dissolves the boundaries between military and civil society. The military replaces a status-centered notion of its place in society with one that is performance oriented. Twentieth-century military professionals claim professional autonomy not in terms of knowledge or strategic expertise, but in terms of efficiency in the pursuit of their service to the nation. This distinction is expressed in a subtle shift in the social identity of the officer corps. "Service" is common to both. However, the military notables interpreted service as an obligation (Dienst/Pflicht), whereas the twentiethcentury military spoke of service as a specific performance (Dienst/Leistung).
rv The clash over competing notions of the military was resolved in protracted struggles over the definition of the military mission, which reached its zenith in the Second World War. The crisis of the military profession during the Wilhelmine period initiated a second phase of development, which came to a close only in the era after the Second World War. The unifying feature of this second phase is a virtual reversal in the logic of the social organization of violence and the resulting necessity to redefine the nature and the tasks of the officer corps. The military's claim to control its mission depended, as we have seen, on power as expert knowledge. This power consisted in making universal a set of specific practices (i.e., mobilization, deployment, and operations), which relied on purportedly universal, scientific rules. Military activities, however, were always localized in time and space and specifically aimed at containing and limiting violence. The very principle of "strategy" was to limit violence in order to use it instrumentally, which explained why the military was so cherished in the 1860s. Its mission of achieving national aspirations and controlling violence defined military expertise or "strategic science." The essence of nineteenth-century professionalism was to contain violence, to make it purposive, and to turn it into an asset of the state. Science and history served the end of making universal the strategies of organizing the particular, much as Hegel had outlined it for the civil service.55 However, with the industrialization of warfare, the Hegelian ploy was turned
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upside down. Now, the military claims on the nation expanded from the particular to the universal. By 1869, military preparations were permanent; by the Second World War, the claim on resources and on society was national, and by 1945 the threat of violence and annihilation was all-encompassing. The social organization of violence had become total. The definition of the military mission now involved the fate of the whole nation immediately, directly, and collectively. To maintain professional autonomy meant to surrender to the experts of violence not just decisions of life or death concerning (male) individuals as soldiers, but the nation as a whole. This condition entailed a fundamental challenge to the nineteenth-century notion of a profession. The nineteenth-century professionals required the particular, the local, and the specific, which they treated according to universal principles. They were incapable effacing the universal, the collective, and the unbound within the context of their expertise; however, these challenges are exactly what is expected from twentieth-century (military) professionals. The military and, for that matter, the professional history of the years between war indicate what happens when professionals approach nationalized and totalized services while preserving the autonomous control over their mission in the fashion of nineteenth-century professional notables. The German army did not find an unequivocal answer to the expansion of violence; however, once the Third Supreme Command had thrown out the Wilhelmine military culture in favor of its cult of efficiency, it maintained this basic course throughout the interwar years and leaned toward performanceoriented, managerial solution for the organization of violence. In many ways, the Reichswehr represented the ideal of a Janowitzian professional soldiery. It certainly experimented more radically with a performance-oriented reorganization of the military than any army to the present. Thus, the small army of the 1920s attempted to rationalize and standardize criteria for admission by introducing psychotechnical exams, made promotion dependent on standardized character tests, and systematically and centrally evaluated performance. The intensification of training programs and the permanent system of evaluations (championed, incidentally, by von Blomberg, who was later to become war minister) increased the "competitive nature" within the officer corps and established what was, for all intents and purposes, an open efficiency-oriented system of promotion.56 In the Reichswehr, the most competent (not necessarily the most expert or the most knowledgeable) were promoted and the less competent were fired. It proved to be more difficult to neutralize the occupational differentiation within the army and to arrest the trend toward representational authority. However, the Reichswehr succeeded remarkably well in reintegrating the institution. How far the Reichswehr was willing to go becomes evident in the design of the Organizational Division within the General Staff (led by Wilhelm Keitel) to abolish all ranks, except for salary purposes, and to replace them with functional buttons.57 Typically, these efforts were abandoned in 1933, but were reconsidered in 1942. The Reichswehr officer corps, in any case, was more highly trained, more performance oriented, and more "professional" than any other officer corps in German history.
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By the same token, it was the Reichswehr that built its entire mobilization and rearmaments plans on the ability to substitute civilian for military skills and civilian for military commodities.58 Every able-bodied man was ready to become a soldier, as long as he engaged in sports; every tractor could be turned into a tank and every truck into a means of military transport as long as conversions were planned; all infrastructure could be put to military ends as long as appropriate preparations were made in conjunction with civilian authorities. The Reichswehr started from the premise that boundaries between civil society and the military no longer existed. It set out to organize society for the purpose of war according to its efficiency-oriented maxims in a national scheme for converting civil into military society in case of war. This made the Reichswehr into an exceedingly dangerous organization. The Reichswehr officer corps presumed that its dedication to performance and efficiency would raise its status, which was its most basic miscalculation. Instrumental expertise granted (appropriately enough) improved remuneration, but it did not confer status, for status did not depend on performance but on the political negotiation of the significance of the military mission. In the latter respect, the Weimar Republic remained not only deeply divided between the political Left and the political Right. Perhaps more importantly, the Reichswehr also had to sustain its claims against competing elites in industry, the civil services, and civil professions, and it lost out in this competition.59 At the very moment at which the military set out to organize the whole nation, it had to discover that performance would not achieve the end. Military expertise—as performance rather than as scientific authority—legitimated the military mission, and the comprehensive expertise of the military set them against all other professional groups. The Reichswehr faced an additional and—in the light of post-1945 developments—rather striking quandary. Despite its performance orientation, the Reichswehr could not possibly perform; that is, its officers discovered very quickly that under the prevailing balance of forces it could not fight war with "any chance of success."60 The military mission of the Reichswehr was ambiguous in that it readied itself and the nation for a task that it could not possibly fulfill short of self-destruction. The inability of the Reichswehr to fight was not just an unfortunate circumstance, but it was embedded in the historical compromise that shaped and stabilized postwar Europe. Making the German army ready to fight war radically altered the domestic and institutional balance of power. That is, in order to gain a capability to fight war, the Reichswehr had to undermine the domestic order of the Weimar Republic and the international status quo; moreover, this is what the Reichswehr as an efficiency-oriented army did, not for any extraneous reasons, but for the sake of professional performance.61 It was this short-run, efficiency-oriented thrust to gain the capability to defend the nation with a chance of success and, as a prerequisite, to convince a divided nation of the need to be defended by the Reichswehr that tipped the balance against the Weimar Republic. Technocratic, performance-oriented pressures (the quest for rearmament as a prerequisite to gain the capability of fighting war) and the expectation of elite
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social status commensurate with the managerial skills of the officer corps as well as the quest to overcome societal cleavages for the purpose of national preparedness (in sum, qualities that are considered typical for a "modern profession") drove the military profession into a historical compromise with National Socialism. As an unequivocal result of its expertly made plans to fulfill its military mission, the military had begun, by the late 1920s, to push for a reorganization of the state in order to gain access to the necessary resources for rearmament and to gain the institutional means to organize the nation. It had also begun to reach out to the National Socialists in order to solicit their support for the constitution of a genuine military Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), that is, a society that was unified in its support for the military mission as defined by the military.62 The compromise with the National Socialists in 1933 amounted to the programmatic effort to practice "making universal the particular" and to engage in the encompassing mobilization of the nation for war.63 The cooperation with the National Socialists gave the German military almost everything they wanted, but not quite with the result that they desired. The relentless pace of rearmament, with all the ensuing problems for social cohesion and institutional coherence of the officer corps and the power struggles over the control of the military mission, undermined the professional autonomy of the army.64 It is not just that Hitler began to intervene directly into operational planning as the war progressed. Rather, we see the dissolution of the military as a unified social and institutional body in two ways. First, all those bureaucratic support functions that enabled the military to project power (the ones that the reformers had considered central for the military as an institution and organized in a war ministry) segregated from the military-professional center and established themselves as independent agencies.65 Albert Speer's organization of armaments and the National Socialist preparation for conscription through propaganda and the Hitler Youth are two examples of this development. The military shrank in that it lost its autonomous institutional base and became the target of agencies that produced the "means of destruction" in their own right. Second, operational planning was stripped of its universalist and scientific claims. The resulting conflicts over military goals (who and what constitutes the rules of the game, which establish the rules of success) were notorious and highlight the consequences of the collapse of a "strategic science."66 Instead of deducing operational plans from universal principles, the military made operational decisions essentially on the basis of competitive bidding. The conduct of operations went to those who developed the most effective operational design for the specific purpose at hand, or it was (re)defined in the course of the operation. Both developments effectively ended the history of the German military as an autonomous profession, because they destroyed its institutional base. Yet, the emerging army of the Third Reich also completed the radical process of transformation that had begun in the 1890s. As the professional strategy for organizing violence dissolved, a new military emerged. With some caution we can argue that the army that arose from the initial onslaught of the
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war in 1941-42 exhibited all the essential characteristics of both German postwar armies. The late Wehrmacht, the Bundeswehr, and the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) have articulated a new type of professionalism; for lack of a better term, we may call it service sector professionalism, as long as we understand that this kind of professionalism has little to do with the nineteenthcentury military profession. With this change, they completed our second phase of development and may, indeed, indicate the completion of an even more longterm transformation, which had led the German officer corps from an absolutist Gesellschaftsstand to a Berufsstand and finally to the construction of a service class. Let us, therefore, look at the three aspects of the long-term transformation of the officer corps. Developments in recruitment after 1940 broke with the salient features of the period between 1890 and 1930; that is, self-recruitment declined drastically and, at the same time, the officer corps became accessible to much broader segments of the population. Initially, this could be understood simply as a consequence of the dramatic increase of the officer corps, which had grown to nearly ninety thousand men in 1939, or as the result of accelerated rearmament. However, this was not the case; the Bundeswehr and the NVA continued and intensified the same process into the 1980s. The common element in all three armies consists in their lack of attraction for social elites; that is, compared to lawyers, doctors, and (industrial or political) managers they have come to represent distinctly "lower" classes. The core of all three armies has consisted of officers with a white-collar and lower civil service background. However, the margins differ. The late Wehrmacht was the least integrated as a result of a bifurcation of recruitment, which attracted, at the same time, the educated elite and lower class (front-line) officers.67 While the NVA has consciously extended its margins into the latter direction (the politically motivated recruitment of workers68), the Bundeswehr has stretched its recruitment base in the other direction.69 These discrete recruitment strategies, however, have not changed the overall picture. The officer corps of the two German armies has become a rather undistinguished part of an upwardly mobile lower middle class. The consequence of these shifts in recruitment patterns for the social identity of the military is rather striking. The officer corps of all three armies has become remarkably homogeneous again.70 Homogeneity is intensified by extended training and socialization, and it is expressed in fairly similar world views of the officers. However, these officers have not, so far, converted their common experience into a distinct military identity and they do not form a selfconscious class of professionals.71 Officers have a separate identity as a result of negative spatial or social selection; the nature of their workplace (and their salary structure) means that officers tend to live in ghettos. One might add that the military role only pertains to the officers themselves and no longer, in the strict sense, extends status to whole families. The identity of the officer (as tied to the military socialization experience) and social status (as member of the officer corps) have become two different things. The institutional developments during the last fifty years complemented the social one. National Socialist intervention transformed the institutional prac-
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tices of the German military more radically than anything else; this intervention we must understand against the background of the efficiency-oriented tendencies in the Reichswehr, which resurfaced after 1941-42. Between October 1942 and January 1943, a number of far-reaching steps were taken,72 including the following: The reintegration of the General Staff into the officer corps, because "there is only one officer corps"; the abolition of the Abitur as entry qualification for officer candidates, because it was seen as "onesided" and contradicted the "principles of National Socialist performance"; the use of efficiency and performance as the main criterion for advancement; and finally, the radical decentralization of promotion to unit levels, in which the quality of military performance (as opposed to knowledge) now became the decisive criterion for promotion. These measures were a victory of technical skills over culture (Bildung) and of bravery (heroism) over character (nobility). It was the victory of a new kind of military practitioners (in fact, a fusion of our "tactical" and "technical" officers) over military knowledge experts. This victory was preserved despite illusions to the contrary. As we might expect, the NVA pushed toward a more polytechnic weapons-oriented institution,73 while the Bundeswehr stressed the more intellectual and generalist "staff" aspects of the organization of violence;74 both view themselves as the completion of the Prussian reforms, but both have really overcome them. The Prussian reformers had wanted to create a military-intellectual elite of generalists, an aristocracy of spirit that would be characterized by culture and oversight in the pursuit of the organization of violence. The three German armies have instead put military practice at the center of the officers' existence, but military practice has become nothing but military work that is characterized by an increasing division of labor, the growing fragmentation of work processes, and a categorical decline of the autonomy and command authority of individual officers.75 Officers after the 1940s were neither gentlemen, nor commanders, nor really knowledge experts, but instead were skilled technicians. The same officer corps are not known for their solidarity and for the collective spirit of their corps. The fusion of corps identity and institutional practice (the hallmark of the nineteenth-century profession) has fallen apart. We find instead either a fascination with technique (e.g., airplanes, computers) as substitute identities or recurrent revivals of Prussian-German officer values. The formation of Traditionen (traditions) has accompanied the process of technicalization since the 1940s so closely that one might want to argue that the two are inseparably linked. The heightened reference to honor, duty, spirit, the resurrection of military displays (Zapfenstreich), or the addition of insignia (unit symbols) or military dress codes (scarves) are commonly interpreted as residuals of a (perhaps illicit) past. However, they are really a commercialized history of images of collectivity for an otherwise thoroughly individualized corps. Such fetishes are powerful and addictive commodities, but they are not an extension of the present in the past. They are artifacts that are consumed at special occasions in between work routines and life routines at festive occasions.
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A substantive identity of the corps no longer exists. Instead all polls and all memoirs indicate an extraordinary pride in the "service" and its skillful production. In this respect, the NVA and the Bundeswehr have built upon an extraordinarily strong consensus.76 It seems that never before in German history has there been so unified a sense about the necessity of an organization of violence and about the military as its appropriate and only agent. In the two most civilian of German states, in which the social status of the military is low, the military as the national agent for defense services is paradoxically less challenged and more consensually maintained than in any other previous configuration. It seems that the key element in this consensus is the loss of autonomous professional control over the military mission in both Germanics. This control was wrestled away from the military in the Third Reich, never to be reconstituted. However, whereas in the Third Reich "strategic knowledge" was still situated in the nation state and could be attached to the person of Hitler, it rested at the interstices of national and international affairs after 1945. On the one hand, "strategy" evolved into the main issue of an entirely new knowledge industry. It has become the commodity of a mixed market in which academia, the military, and the media organize and disseminate knowledge about "threat" and "security."77 Thus, the definition of the military mission has become unbound. It has entered the "public" domain, even though it is not necessarily democratic. On the other hand, the threat of violence and the fear about security have become permanent and universal forces. They are global phenomena and yet invade everyone's lives.78 They are central aspects of politics and yet remain beyond the control of the two German states. "Strategy" (the system of knowledge about the eternal laws of power) is now literally beyond the military in a universalized system of threat and counterthreat, but in its deinstitutionalized presence, it is also generally accepted. It forms the context within which the military organizes violence by organizing weapons. The essence of the military profession has become the optimal use of weapons systems in a coordinated fashion in order to satisfy the never-ending demand for "security," which is generated by a seemingly uncontrolled and anonymous, global and encompassing threat. The changing definition of the military mission thus fits the changing social conditions and institutional identities. The military has become quite literally a service class, the producer of security. It no longer controls the demand for its services and, hence, possesses no autonomy. However, it relies on the permanence of the demand for security much as the absolutist army could rely on the princely and absolutist demand for resources. Both are precarious, but both prove to be rather stable bases for military existence. Although the military no longer controls, through its expertise, the specification of its services or the kinds of demands on security, it does control and monopolize the use of weapons and, as skilled operators and managers of complex weapons systems, officers have managed to thrive.
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V The military shares a great number of common features with civilian professions and it is, moreover, one of those social institutions that has moved from one kind of (elite) professionalism to another kind of (service-oriented, massbased) professionalism. In any case, there seems at the moment not a single definition for "profession" that would not apply to the military as well and, in fact, does so much better than for many other groups. Then again, there is something disturbing about calling the military a profession. It simply does not sit right. It seems that even the most perfect fit of definitions cannot quite account for what the military does and how the military does it. How does the military organize violence and to what extent does this procedure distinguish the military? In order to provide its services, the military requires the labor power of young, able-bodied persons (not bondsmen) and it needs weapons that are paid for by taxes and manufactured in special arsenals. The use of people to do service/or the people (let us not question this element for a moment) distinguishes the military from most other civilian professions or, in any case, from the definitions that we have. That this labor is not done for the purpose of the physical sustenance of the individual, but may very well entail the physical destruction of the individual—that there is in other words no real "labor market" for conscripted citizen soldiers—distinguishes the military from entrepreneurs and makes comprehensible the military's need for the state. As the site of legally regulated domination, the state was capable of extracting labor power for the military. This condition does not necessarily disqualify the military as a profession, but it is a salutary reminder that services do not simply depend on expertise. The debate on professions is too much wrapped up in the nexus of knowledge and power in order to realize that power is necessary to use knowledge. Perhaps the Prussian military was so successful because its best officers recognized the power of knowledge and used their knowledge of power. By controlling its resources (men and money) through the powers of state domination and defining its services (mission) through the powers of knowledge, the Prussian military became the nightmare of all constitutionalists and the dream of all professional ists. However, this was also a rather unstable situation. The more the army grew, the more difficult it became to control military labor power and to keep it from organizing and mobilizing. German state theorists have long recognized this phenomenon and called it "the socialization of the state."79 The threat of Vergesellschqftung has become the single most important impetus for technological innovation as a means of substituting labor by machines in the twentiethcentury military.80 This impetus, in turn, transformed radically the social organization of violence. At the high point of this tendency toward substitution in the nuclear age, the organization of violence was so capitalized that machines or weapons systems seemed to provide all the essential services and the military turned into engineers—expert handlers of machines. It is not by chance that with this period came a new outbreak of the professional debate, because the
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military now seemed to be entirely free from its previous oppressive quality and seemed to do nothing but serve the people expertly. This is, of course, Janowitz's service profession, which was capable of sublimating the element of domination into the spheres of pure managerial and performance knowledge. Some may, of course, wonder if servicing the "bomb" really qualifies as providing a "service" and if the organization of violence ever can be a service for the people. Suffice it to say that they are neither the only nor the first ones to raise the issue; however, it must also be said that writers have emphasized repeatedly not just the "honor," but also the altruism of dying for the people. It is not for us to decide this issue, but we note that it informs the normative codes that have shaped our understanding of the military. Indeed, the military is distinguished from most other professions because this issue remained alive. What then does the military provide? It was not considered to provide "services" for the longest time, but it was rather a means for the acquisition of booty, resources, territory, and population. The military was a productive asset, and it took the notion of peace in the nineteenth century to dislodge this notion. Only the separation of a logic of production from a logic of destruction made the notion of "service" possible. This "bourgeois" turn (most beautifully elaborated by Adam Smith and most clearly rationalized by Clausewitz81) led to professional armies, and it was the Prussian military that defined this turn in terms of its military autonomy. The Prussian military established its mission as a service to the state in the sense that it articulated the (violent) logic of the state system rather than any particular interest. This was the essence of its autonomy, and it is not difficult to rediscover this kind of "realist" reasoning behind the current professional project since the 1940s and in every defense of the Prussian-German state.82 Rather than analyzing this notion of "service," we should note that the nature of this "service" has long changed and the Prussian-German experience was part of this change. The "socialization of the state"—both democratization and the rise of alternative professional projects—did to the professional mission what mass conscription did to the professional institution. It transformed the nature of the military "service," because it forced the military to raise the issue of how one could serve the people. However, the answers were troubling. One of them was practiced in the German army during the years between the wars and articulated by nationalists like Ernst Junger. The organization of violence by the state served the people in that it allowed the (re)organization of a more vigorous and efficient society on the basis of violence; a society that lived off violence was free of the constraints of production and constituted itself autonomously. Violent people's power, expertly directed by the military, formed the counterpoint to a society that was subordinated to the totalitarian demands of the corporate industrial management of everyday life.83 This option was defeated in the Second World War. The other answer sheltered society from a universal threat of violence, which was the very basic social myth of the cold war. However, the protective notion of an encompassing service mission (the "female" alternative84 for the male option of the Germans) did not simply envelop an otherwise civil society that went about
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its own business. Rather, the violent state of the outer world and the enveloping organization of violence to protect against it lent meaning to the inner (civil) world. The immediate fallout of the protective professionalism in its proper meaning of service professionalism after the Second World War was the "militarization" and "nuclearization" of the social vision.85 The people's power was articulated in terms of a consuming passion for security, and missiles put the most private desires on public display. The nuclear "umbrella" lent aura to everyday life—the "strategic forces" transformed into largely representative arms. While the military actively engaged in "therapeutic" intervention to reorganize society in the German option, the "protective" option provided the meaning for civil society to define itself.86 The trend toward "democratization" was the prerequisite of the redefinition of the military service as a service for the people. It was also the prerequisite for the transition from a science-based military profession to a military service class. In this latter capacity the military lost its autonomy, but was lodged in the midst of the public, whose articulation it became. The military service began to define the public vision. In this, the military mission is better secured, but it may also be more dangerous than ever.
Notes 1. Morris Janowitz ("Armed Forces in Western Europe: Uniformity and Diversity," Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 6 [1965]: 225-37), who is best when he follows Emile Durkheim (The Division of Labor in Society [New York, 1964] and the brilliant Philip Abrams ("Armed Forces and Society: Problems of Alienation," in The Armed Services and Society: Alienation, Management, and Integration, ed. J. N. Wolfe and J. Erickson [Edinburgh, 1970], pp. 24-37; idem, "The Late Profession of Arms: Ambiguous Goals and Deteriorating Means in Britain," Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 6 (1965): 238-61. 2. The basic texts on the military as profession include Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Practice of Civil-Military Relations (New York, 1957); Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York, 1960); Samuel Finer, The Man on Horseback (Harmondsworth, England, 1976); Jacques van Doom, ed., Military Profession and Military Regimes: Commitments and Conflicts (The Hague, The Netherlands, 1969); idem, The Soldier and Social Change (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1975); Amos Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times (New York, 1977); and Maury Field, The Structure of Violence: Armed Forces as Social Systems (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1977). 3. Gerke Teitler, The Genesis of the Professional Officer Corps (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1977); Dennis Showalter, "Army and Society in Imperial Germany: The Pains of Modernization," Journal of Contemporary History 18 (1983): 585-618. 4. Donald Abendheim, Reforging the Iron Cross: The Search for Tradition in the West German Armed Forces (Princeton, N.J., 1988). 5. Manfred Messerschmidt, "Das Verhaltnis von Wehrmacht und NS Staat und die Frage der Traditionsbildung," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 17 (April 1981), has caused a major controversy. 6. Huntington, Soldier and State; Janowitz, Professional Soldier.
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7. MartinL. van Cre\eld, Fighting Power .-German and U.S. Army Performance, 19391945 (Westport, Conn., 1982); TrevorN. Dupuy, A GeniusforWar: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1979). 8. For example, Timothy Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War (Fort Leavenworth, Kans., 1981). 9. Edward Luttwack, Strategy and Politics: Collected Essays (New Brunswick, N.J., 1980); Martin L. Van Creveld, Military Lessons of the Yom Kippur War: Historical Perspectives (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1975); Trevor N. Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The ArabIsraeli Wars, 1947-1974 (New York, 1978); Uri Milstein, The History of the Israeli Paratroopers [in Hebrew], vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1985), pp. 561-63. Milstein speaks of the "germanization of the IDF" (thanks to Ammon Finkelstein for this and other references that reinforce the point.) 10. Abendheim, Reforming the Iron Cross, pp. 256-89; Martin Esser, Das Traditionsverstandnis des Offizierkorps: Eine empirische Untersuchung zur gesellschaftlichen Integration der Streitkrafte (Heidelberg, 1982). 11. Ulrich Trumpener, "Junkers and Others: The Rise of Commoners in the Prussian Army, 1871-1914," Canadian Journal of History 14 (1979): 29-47; Gunther Martin, Die burgerlichen Exzellenzen: Zur Sozialgeschichte der preussischen Generalitdt, 1812-1918 (Dusseldorf, 1979). As balance see Daniel J. Hughes, The King's Finest: A Social and Bureaucratic Profile of Prussia's General Officers, 1871-1914 (New York, 1987) and his "Occupational Origins of Prussia's Generals," Central European History 13 (1980): 13-33. 12. Hanns Hubert Hoffman, "Eliten und Elitentransformation in Deutschland zwischen der franzosischen Revolution und der deutschen Revolution," in H. H. Hoffman, ed., Deutsche Fuhrungsschichten der Neuzeit (Boppard, 1980), pp. 101-38. Manfred Messerschmidt, "Die preussische Armee," in Messerschmidt, Deutsche Militargeschichte, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 60-64. 13. Dennis Showalter, "The Retaining of Bellona: Prussia and the Institutionalization of the Napoleonic Legacy, 1815-1876," Military Affairs 44 (1980): 57-63; also see his Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany (Hamden, Conn., 1975). 14. Otto Busch, Militarsystem und Sozialleben im Alten Preussen: Die Anfdnge der sozialen Militdrisierung des preussisch-deutschen Generalstabes (Berlin, 1962); Jupp Hoven, Der preussische Offizier des 18. Jahrhunderts: Eine Studie zur Soziologie des Staates (Diss. phil., Leipzig [Zeulenroda], 1936). 15. Messerschmidt, "Die preussische Armee" and his "Die politische Geschichte der preussich-deutschen Armee," in Messerschmidt, Deutsche Militargeschichte, vol. 4, no. 1, especially pp. 110-31. For the smaller German states, see Wolfgang Petter, "Deutscher Bund und deutsche Mittelstaaten," in Messerschmidt, Deutsche Militargeschichte, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 259-301. Bavaria did not follow the Prussian trend: see Hermann Rumschottel, Das bayerische Offizierkorps, 1866-1914 (Berlin, 1973) and Wolf-Dieter Gruner, Das bayerische Heer, 1825-1864: Eine kritische Analyse der bewaffneten Macht Bayerns vom Regierungsantritt Ludwig I bis zum Vorabend des Deutschen Krieges (Boppard, 1972). 16. Karl Demeter, Das deutsche Offizierkorps in Gesellschaft und Staat, 1650-1945 (Frankfurt, 1965), pp. 126-40; Manfred Messerschmidt, "Werden und Pragung des preussischen Offizierkorps—Ein Uberblick," in Offiziere im Bild von Dokumenten aus drei Jahrhunderten, ed. Militargeschiehtliches Forschungsamt (Stuttgart, 1964), pp. 68-79.
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17. Rudolph Stadelmann, Scharnhorst: Schicksal und geistige Welt: Ein Fragment (Wiesbaden, 1952); Messerschmidt, "Werden und Pragung," pp. 63-75; Demeter, Offizierkorps, pp. 81-89. 18. Werner Conze, "Beruf," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. W. Conze et al., vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 490-507. 19. On a theoretical level, see Jacques van Doom, "The Officer Corps: A Fusion of Profession and Organization," in van Doom, The Soldier and Social Change, pp. 2946; Rudolf Schmidt-Biickeberg, Das Militarkabinett der preussischen Konige und deutschen Kaiser, seine geschichtliche Entwicklung und staatrechtliche Stellung, 1787-1918 (Berlin, 1933). On the decentralization of command, see Gerhard Ritter, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk: Das Problem des Militarismus in Deutschland, vol. 1 (Munich, 1959), pp. 124-58, and generally, Friedrich Meinecke, Das Leben des Generalfeldmarschalls Hermann vonBoyen (Stuttgart, 1899), vol. 2. On conscription see Herbert Handel, Der Gedanke der allgemeinen Wehrpflicht in der Wehrverfassung des Konigreichs Preussen bis 1819 (Frankfurt, 1962). 20. Alf Liidtke, "'Gemeinwohl,' Polizei und 'Festungspraxis,'" in Staatliche Gewaltsamkeit und innere Verwaltung in Preussen, 1815-1850 (Gottingen, 1982); idem, "The Role of State Violence in the Period of Transition to Industrial Capitalism: The Example of Prussia from 1815 to 1848," Social History 4 (1979): 175-221. 21. Magali S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, Calif., 1977); Eliot Freidson, "The Theory of Professions: State of the Art," in The Sociology of Professions, ed. Robert Dingwall and Philip Lewis (New York, 1983). 22. Rudolf Stadelmann, Moltke und der Staat (Krefeld, 1950). Detlef Vogel, Der Stellenwert des Militarischen in Bayern, 1849-1875: Eine Analyse des militdr-zivilen Verhdltnisses am Bespiel des Militdretats der Heeresstdrke und des Militdrjustizwesens (Boppard, 1981). 23. Demeter, Offizierkorps, p. 14. 24. Manfred Messerschmidt, Zum Verhdltnis von Militar und Politik in der BismarckzeitundinderWilhelminischenAra (Darmstadt, 1973); Gordon Craig,The Politics of the Prussian Army (Oxford, 1955), pp. 136-79. The changes in bourgeois liberalism are perhaps best described in Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Literarische Kultur imZeitalter des Liberalismus, 1830-1870 (Munich, 1985). See also James Sheehan, GermanLiberalismin the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978). 25. Eberhard Kessel, "Grolman und die Anfange des preussischen Generalstabes," Militarwissenschaftliche Rundschau 9 (1944): 120-29; Detlef Bald, Der deutsche Generalstab, 1859-1939: Reform und Restauration in Ausbildung und Bildung, (Bonn, 1977), pp. 16-33, and Detlef Bald, ed., Militarische Verantwortung in Staat und Gesellschaft: 175 Jahre Generalstabausbildung in Deutschland (Koblenz, 1986); Max Jahns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften vornehmlich in Deutschland, 3 vols. (Munich, 1883-1901); Julius von Hardegg, Skizzeeines Vortrages uber Generalstabswissenschaftmil einem ausfilhrlichen Inhaltsverzeichnis und einem Nachtrag (Stuttgart, 1854). 26. Rudolf von Caemmerer, Die Entwicklung der strategischen Wissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1904); A Bergounioux and P. Polirka, "Strategic et ideologic: la doctrine Pideologie militaire prussienne, de Moltke 1'Ancien a Ludendorff," Revue Internationale d'HistoireMilitaire 37 (1977): 55-76. 27. Bernhard von Poten, Geschichte des militar-erziehungs- und bildungswesens in den landen deutscher Zunge (Berlin, 1889-1900); Eckardt Opitz, "Der Weg der Militargeschichte von einer Generalstabwissenschaft zur Subdisziplin der Geschichtwissenschaft," in Entwicklung undSelbstverstdndnis von Wissenschaft, ed. Hans-Joachim Braun and Rainer H. Kluwe (Frankfurt, 1985), pp. 7-78. Reinhard Bnihl, Mil-
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itdrgeschichte und Kriegspolitik: Zur Militdrgeschichtsschreibung des preussisch-deutschen Generalstabes, 1816-1945 (Berlin, G.D.R., 1973). 28. We lack a current history of the German General Staff. See Larry Addington, The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff, 1865-1941 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971). Walter Gorlitz, Der deutsche Generalstab: Geschichte und Gestalt (Frankfurt, 1950). 29. Otto Hintze, "Der Beamtenstand," in his Soziologie und Geschichte, ed. Gerhard Oestreich 2nd ed. (Gottingen, 1964), pp. 66-125. See also the revealing parallels in Bernd Wunder, Privilegierung und Disziplinierung: Die Entstehung des BerufsbeamtentumsinBayernundWurttemburg, 1780-1825 (Munich, 1978). 30. It is particularly clear for France. See David Ralston, The Army of the Republic: ThePlaceoftheMilitaryinthePoliticalEvolutionofFrance, 1871-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Rocolle, "Note sur le recrutement des cadres superieurs dans 1'armee frangaise avant la premiere guerre mondiale," Revue Internationale d'Histoire Militaire 37 (1977): 77-81; Francois Cailleton, "Elite Selection in the French Officer Corps," Armed Forces and Society 8 (1982): 257-74. 31. Messerschmidt, "Werden und Pragung," pp. 79-84; Hans-Martin Ottmar, " Ursachen und Hintergrunde zur Entwicklung deutscher militarischer Tradition vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis 1914," in Tradition in deutschenStreitkraften bis 1945, ed. Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Herford, 1986), pp. 67-208. 32. The canonical texts for this interpretation are Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism, rev. ed. (New York, 1959), and Eckart Kehr, Economic Interest, Militarism, and Foreign Policy: Essays on German History (Berkeley, Calif., 1977). 33. Martin Kitchen, The German Officer Corps, 1890-1914 (Oxford, 1973); Holger Herwig, The German Naval Officer Corps: A Social and Political History (Oxford, 1973); idem, "Aliens nur noch Seelenadel! The Prussian Nobility and the Imperial German Navy, 1888-1918," Canadian Journal of History 15 (1980): 197-206; see also the essays in Das deutsche Offizierkorps, 1860-1960, ed. Hanns Hubert Hofman (Boppard, 1980). 34. Werner T. Angress, "Prussia's Army and the Jewish Reserve Officer Controversy Before World War I," Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute 17 (1972): 19-42. Reinhard Hohn, Sozialismus undHeer, 3 vols. (BadHomburg, 1961-69). 35. See the essays in Tradition in deutschen Streitkrdften, but also Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (New York, 1983). 36. For example, Wilhelm Groener, Lebenserinnerungen, ed. Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen (Gottingen, 1957). 37. The group is discussed in Wilhelm Deist, "Zur Institution des Militarbefehlshabers und Obermilitarbefehlshabers im Ersten Weltkrieg," Jahrbuch der Geschichte Mittel- und Osteuropas 13-14 (1965): 222-40. 38. There is no specific study on the subaltern ranks of the officer corps. However, see scattered references in Bernd-Felix Schulte, Die deutsche Armee, 19001914: Zwischen Beharren und Verandern (Diisseldorf, 1977). 39. Wilhelm Braeckow, Die Geschichte des Marine-Ingenieurkorps (Oldenbourg, 1974); Karl Justrow, Feldherr und Kriegstechnik (Oldenbourg, 1937). 40. Gerhard Ritter, Der Schlieffenplan: Kritik eines Mythos (Munich, 1956). 41. lost Dulffer, Regeln gegen den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen 1899 und 1907 in der internationalen Politik (Berlin, 1981). 42. Wilhelm Deist, "Kaiser Wilhelm II in the Context of his Military and Naval Entourage," in Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations, ed. John C.G. Rohl and N. Sombart (Cambridge, England, 1982), pp. 169-92; Isabel Hull, The Entourage of Wilhelmll, 1888-1918 (New York, 1982); and especially her "Prussian Dynastic Ritual
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and the End of Monarchy," in German Nationalism and the European Response, 18901945, ed. Carol Fink et al. (Norman, Okla., 1985). 43. This whole complex has not yet been studied. Yet in my opinion our image of a genuinely "feudal" Prussian conies from Wilhelm II and was translated into a mass product by Stroheim's Hollywood productions. It is the cunning of twentieth-century history (which is the history of images) and a testament to the power of imaginary constructs, if social historians have come to accept this Prussian officer as material reality and if they imagine Hollywood, when they think of Prussia. 44. Holger Herwig, Luxury Fleet: The Imperial German Navy, 1888-1918 (London, 1980). There is no study on the guards. 45. Roger Chickering We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the PanGerman League, 1886-1914 (London, 1984); lost Dulffer and Karl Holl, eds., Bereitzum Krieg: Kriegsmentalitdt im wilhelminischen Deutschland, 1890-1914 (Gottingen, 1986). 46. In the interwar years, the link between military imaginary and professional organization of violence was split, with the former being almost completely absorbed by paramilitary groups. See W. F. Williams, "Versuch einer Definition paramilitarischer Organisationen," in Militarismus, ed. Volker R. Berghahn (Cologne, 1975), pp. 139-51. See also Paul Virilio, Guerre et cinema, vol. 1: Logistique de la perception (Paris, 1984). 47. Ernst Jiinger, "Feuer und Bewegung," in E. Jiinger, Essays I; idem, "Betrachtungen zur Zeit," in E. Jiinger, Werke, vol. 5 (Stuttgart, n.d.), pp. 109-22; idem, "Der Arbeiter," inEssays II, pp. 9-213, especially pp. 163-213: "DieTechnik als Mobilisierung der Welt durch die Gestalt des Arbeiters." 48. Wilhelm Deist, "Zur Geschichte des preussischen Offizierkorps, 18881918," in Hofman, Das deutsche Offizierkorps, pp. 39-58. 49. C. von Altrock, ed., VomSterbendesdeutschen Offizierkorps (Berlin, 1922); Jeno von Egon-Krieger, Die deutsche Kavallerie in Krieg undFrieden (Karlsruhe, 1928). 50. See Albrecht von Thaer, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der OHL, ed. Siegfried A. Kaehler (Gottingen, 1958). 51. Hellmuth Gruss, in "Aufbau und Verwendung der deutschen Sturmbataillone im Weltkrieg" (Diss. phil., Berlin, 1931), inadvertently points to the significant role of former civilians. 52. Eric J. Leed, No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (London, 1979). 53. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Geschichte undEigensinn (Frankfurt, 1981), pp. 797-850; Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (New York, 1984). 54. Michael Geyer, Deutsche Riistungspolitik (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 98-117. 55. Jane Caplan, '"The Imaginary Universality of Particular Interests': The Tradition of Civil Service in German History," Social History 4 (1979): 299-317. 56. William A. Robertson, "Officer Selection in the Reichswehr, 1918-1926" (doctoral thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1978); David N. Spires, Image and Reality: Making of the German Officers, 1921-1933 (Westport, Conn., 1984). 57. Michael Geyer, Aufrustung oder Sicherheit: Die Reichswehr in der Krise der Machtpolitik, 1924-1936 (Wiesbaden, 1980), p. 16. 58. Michael Geyer, "Der zur Organisation erhobene Burgfrieden," inMilitarund Militarismus in der Weimarer Republik, ed. Klaus-Jurgen Miiller and Eckardt Opitz (Dusseldorf, 1978), pp. 15-100. 59. Michael Geyer, "Professionals and Junkers: German Rearmament and Politics in the Weimar Republic," in Social Change and Political Development in Weimar Germany, ed. Richard Bessel and E. J. Feuchtwanger (London, 1981), pp. 77-133.
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60. Geyer, Aufriistung oder Sicherheit, pp. 188-99. 61. Michael Geyer, "Etudes in Political History: Reichswehr, NSDAP, and the Seizure of Power," inTheNaziMachtergreifung, ed. Peter D. Stachura (London, 1983), pp. 101-23. 62. Ludolf Herbst, Der totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft: Die KriegswirtschqftimSpannungsfeld von Politik, Ideologic und Propaganda, 1939-1945 (Stuttgart, 1982); Manfred Messerschmidt, "The Wehrmacht and Volksgemeinschaft," Journal of Contemporary History 18 (1983): 719-44. 63. Klaus-Jiirgen Miiller, Armee, Politik und Gesellschaft in Deutschland, 1933-1945 (Paderborn, 1979); see also Caplan, '"The Imaginary Universality of Particular Interests.'" 64. Wilhelm Deist et al., Ursachen und Voraussetzungen der deutschen Kriegspolitik (Stuttgart, 1979). 65. This process was part and parcel of a general development in the Third Reich; see Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London, 1985), pp. 61-81. However, this process of fragmentation is not limited to the Third Reich; see Robert R. Alford and Roger Friedland, Powers of Theory: Capitalism, the State and Democracy (New York, 1985), pp. 202-22. 66. Michael Geyer, "German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 19141945," in Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Peter Paret, 2nded. (Princeton, N.J., 1986), pp. 527-97. 67. Detlef Bald, Vom Kaiserheer zur Bundeswehr. Sozialstruktur des Militars: Politik der Rekrutierung von Offizieren und Unteroffizieren (Frankfurt, 1981); Reinhard Stumpf, Die Wehrmacht-Elite: Rang- und Herrschaftsstruktur der deutschen Generate undAdmirale, 19331945 (Boppard, 1982); Gunnar C. Boehnert, "The Third Reich and the Problem of 'Social Revolution': German Officers aridSS," in Germany in the Age of Total War, ed. VolkerR. Berghahn and Martin Kitchen (London, 1981), pp. 203-17; BerndWegner, Hitlerspolitische Soldaten: Die WaffenSS, 1933-1945 (Paderborn, 1982). 68. K. Greese and A. Voerster, "Probleme der Auswahl und Forderung der Offizierskader in der NVA (1956-1963)," ZeitschriftfurMilitargeschichte 5 (1966): 3247; Dale R. Herspring, East German Civil-Military Relations: The Impact of Technology, 1949-1972 (New York, 1973). 69. See the essays of Meyer and Rautenberg in Hofman, Das deutsche Offizierkorps, as well as Bald, Vom Kaiserheer zur Bundeswehr and his "The German Officer Corps: Caste or Class?" Armed Forces and Society 5 (1979): 642-68. 70. M. Donald Hancock, The Bundeswehr and the National People's Army: A Comparative Study of the German Civil-Military Policy (Denver, Colo., 1973). 71. In this respect I disagree with Wilfried von Bredow (Die unbewaltigte Bundeswehr: Zur Perfektionierung eines Anachronismus [Frankfurt, 1973]) and the generalized reflection of past German experiences in Wido Mosen (Bundeswehr—Elite der Nation ? Determinanten und Funktionen elitarer Selbsteinschatzungen von Bundeswehrsoldaten [Berlin, 1970]). However, both indicate the degree to which old sentiments about status are lingering. See Ralf Zoll, "German Civil-Military Relations: The Problem of Legitimacy," Armed Forces and Society 5 (1979): 523-59. 72. Stumpf, Wehrmacht-Elite, pp. 328-29. 73. Ullrich Riihmland, Die Offiziersausbildung in derNVA (Bonn, 1974). 74. Giskert Hoffman, "Der Wandel der Begriffe 'Ausbildung,' 'Bildung,' und 'Erziehung' in der Bundeswehr," in Streitkrdfte im gesellschaftlichen Wandel: Sozialwissenschaftliche Analysen zum Selbst- und Vmweltsverstandnis moderner Streitkrdfte (Bonn, 1980) as well as Abendheim, Reforging the Iron Cross.
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75. Bernd Proll, Bundeswehr und Nationale Volksarmee in Stoat und Gesellschaft: Legitimation, Motivation undgesellschaftliche Integration (Frankfurt, 1983). 76. Apart from Proll, see Bernhard Fleckenstein, ed., Bundeswehr und Industriegesellschaft (Boppard, 1970); Rolf Zoll, ed., Wie integriert 1st die Bundeswehr? Zum Verhdltnis von Militdr und Gesellschaft in der Bundeswehr (Munich, 1979); as well as the brief summary of opinion polls by Hans-Jurgen Rautenberg ("Sicherheitspolitik im offentlichen Bewusstsein," Der Militdr-Brief 3, no. 2 [1988]), which, however, may already be a matter of the past. In more general terms this issue is discussed by FranzXaver Kaufmann, Sicherheit als soziologisches und sozialpolitisches Problem: Untersuchungen zu einer Wertidee hochdifferenzierter Gesellschaften (Stuttgart, 1970). 77. Lawrence Freedman, Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York, 1984); Michael Mandelbaum, The Nuclear Question (New York, 1979); Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon: Strategists of the Nuclear Age (New York, 1983). 78. Len Ackland and Steven McGuire, Assessing the Nuclear Age (Chicago, 1986). 79. Alfred Weber, Die Krise des europdischen Stoatsgedankens (Stuttgart, 1925). 80. Geyer, Rustungspolitik, pp. 9-23. 81. See the essays by Paret and Earle in Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy, and especially Raymond Aron, Penser la Guerre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1976). 82. For example, Huntington, Soldier and State, or David Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order, 1870 to the Present (New York, 1978). 83. Herbst, Der totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft, and Michael Geyer, "The State in National Socialist Germany," in Statemaking and Social Movements, ed. Charles Bright and Susan Harding (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1984), pp. 193-232. 84. Carol Cohn, "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals," Signs 12 (1987): 687-718; see also the essay by Sara Reddick, "The Rationality of Care," in Women, Militarism, and War: Essays in History, Politics and Society Theory, ed. Jean Elshtain and Sheila Tobias (Totowa, N.J., forthcoming). 85. Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York, 1985). The title of Harvard Nuclear Study Group's Living with Nuclear Weapons (Cambridge, Mass., 1984) raises expectations that the book does not meet. 86. Hauntingly explored by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow (New York, 1973) and explained by Larry May, ed., Recasting America: Culture andPolitics in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago, 1989). See also Virilio, Guerre et cinema, and James Fernandez, "Exploded Worlds—Text as a Metaphor for Ethnography (and Vice Versa)," Dialectical Anthropology 10 (1985): 15-26.
The Professionalization of Applied Economics: German Counterparts to Business Administration DAVID F. LINDENFELD
The subject of business as an occupation rarely enters into scholarly discussions of the professions. Reasons for this exclusion are easy to discover: The profit orientation of business appears to be poorly matched with the service ideal of the traditional professions. Yet sociologists have not always been comfortable with a simple dichotomy between the two types. One of Talcott Parsons's major points in his seminal article of 1939 was to question the division between "egotism" and "altruism" as a basis for distinguishing such roles. Instead, he pointed to aspects of professional behavior found in modern, bureaucratized business (and government), including appeals to rationality, claims to expertise as a qualification for authority, and a certain impersonality.1 Recent theorists have in a sense turned Parsons on his head by emphasizing that professionals also behave in self-aggrandizing ways, however inseparable these may be from their high-minded ethical pronouncements.2 In any case, given the state of flux in current theorizing about professions, it would be unwise to judge prematurely which groups deserve the label and which do not—particularly if there is strong empirical evidence for their inclusion. Such evidence exists for the career of business administration. The term is of American coinage, traceable to Professor A. Lawrence Lowell, who was one of the founders of the Harvard Business School (1908). Lowell clearly saw this new institution as a professional school, which would be analogous to law and medical schools.3 The origin of the term points to the strongest linkage between business administration and the other professions, that is, an advanced educational curriculum that establishes an accepted career ladder. It is also clear that a parallel development occurred in Germany. With the years between 1898 and the First World War came a proliferation of business schools and programs at the university level in both countries—twenty-five in the United States, seven in 213
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Germany.4 The motives were similar, as well. To quote a representative example from the Aachen Chamber of Commerce: It is obvious that the demand for academic education of businessmen will push further back the point in time when they can pursue their careers and begin to earn. But other types of occupations, such as technicians, engineers, architects, lawyers, administrative officials, mining officials, clergy, teachers, doctors, and so on, must invest a considerably greater measure of time and money to complete their training. . . . Should it really be asking too much of the business elite to spend a few years more than before to round out their theoretical knowledge?5
Admittedly, this career ladder did not imitate the traditional callings in every respect. There were to be no state certification examinations for entrance; rather, the acquisition of an academic degree (Diplom), which was based on an internally administered examination, served to establish competence. Nor did the proponents of this "professional" education claim a monopoly on qualifications for business leadership; it was still admissible for someone with a gift for entrepreneurship or management to advance to a position of great responsibility without the blessings of academia. However, it was felt that the complexities of modern industrial society made this "self-made man" increasingly less likely. In the literature of the 1890s and 1900s, references are abundant to a missing elite of experts in business and industry that could only be filled by higher education.6 The type of expertise that a business school could confer was admittedly not a specialized brand of technical knowledge—in this respect it differed from many other professions—but rather in a specific type of skill. As the rector of the Munich business school expressed it, The basis of every real commercial success is the commercial mentality, the capacity to evaluate and to use an economic situation, to predict an economic situation and to create one for use. This commercial mentality shows itself not in mere knowledge, but in initiative, in the deed; it can only be effective when it has continued opportunity to develop. The same modern formation of our economic life which creates new tasks for the director of a large association or a giant corporation, renders more difficult the training of men who are equal to such tasks. 7
Such pronouncements take us to the heart of the Sonderweg (separate path) debate, since in establishing such schools, members of the German bourgeoisie were attempting to confront the implications of industrialization. How were their efforts received by the older elites? Did the schools succeed in training a new generation of business leaders? Given the clear basis for comparison with the American process, were there major differences of approach between the two countries? The sociological literature on the professions can contribute something to the debate, since much of it suggests that the crucial differences were not between Germany and the "West" but between the continent and the Anglo-American tradition; it tends to shift the dividing line from the Rhine to the Channel. This is especially true with respect to the relation of the profes-
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sions to the state; the Anglo-American tradition supports professions that are more self-regulating and autonomous, whereas on the continent the categories of "professional" and "official" tend to merge.8 The case of the German business schools can help us to test the clarity of this theoretical division as well.9 The history of German business education before the 1890s is uneven. There were several flourishing secondary schools in the eighteenth century, but they did not survive into the next century.10 This was probably due in part to the new laissez-faire ethos, in part to the prestige of humanistic education, and in part to the growth of the technical institutes, which absorbed some of the business curriculum. The first such technical school at Karlsruhe had a department for commercial subjects, and the later ones at Berlin and Braunschweig evolved out of secondary schools that taught business subjects. However, as these developed into genuine institutes of higher education, the commercial curriculum was dropped.11 Saxony was the only state to develop an extensive network of commercial secondary schools, and this led to the establishment of teachertraining institutions in Leipzig and Dresden. Elsewhere, the majority of businessmen and merchants left school after nine years to take up an apprenticeship. By so excluding themselves from the last three years of secondary school and from the final examinations (Abitur), they cut themselves off from the educational ladder that led to the most prestigious professions, that is, those that presupposed university-level training. As late as 1895-96, only 7 of 494 Abiturienten (candidates for matriculation) in Hanover listed business as their future career.12 The first person to agitate for a business school in Germany during the late nineteenth century was the industrialist Gustav von Mevissen. As a self-made and self-taught man, Mevissen realized that the usual educational fare for businessmen (accounting and bookkeeping) was inadequate to meet the demands for executives. In a memorandum that closely resembled that of Joseph Wharton in Philadelphia two years later, Mevissen unveiled his plans for a school in 1879. It was to be mainly for bankers and merchants; industrialists, in his opinion, belonged in the technical schools.13 Also, in contrast to Wharton, Mevissen felt that the university was not the proper place for such a school. "The student of the university," he wrote, "looks down on some indispensable requisites of mercantile activity as unworthy of himself," finding this truer of German universities than those of other countries.14 Mevissen established a foundation for the school, which was to open when contributions reached one million marks. A motion to provide the funds was brought before the Rhineland provincial diet in 1893, but was defeated in part as a result of the opposition of another Rhenish industrialist, Baron Karl von Stumm-Halberg. It is not surprising that agitation for business schools should have increased during the 1890s, for during that decade German entrepreneurs were engaged in conflicts on a variety of fronts. The Agrarian League had formed to represent farm interests and had opposed Chancellor Caprivi in his free trade policies. Labor agitation was increasing, to culminate in the Hamburg dockworkers'
216
The Twentieth Century
strike of 1897. Many entrepreneurs also harbored a deep suspicion of the academic economists—the so-called Kathedersozialisten (academic socialists)— for their sympathies with labor and for social reform. Stumm-Halberg disliked the idea of business schools, but he liked the regular university instruction even less, which led in 1895 to his attack on the Kathedersozialisten in the legislature. This confrontation had the unfortunate effect of politicizing university appointments to chairs of economics for several years thereafter; thus professors who did not share the views of the Kathedersozialisten were suspect as being tools of the industrialists. 15 These developments only reinforced Mevissen's notion that business education belonged outside the university. Under these circumstances, an Association for Mercantile Instruction was formed in the Rhineland in 1896 to promote the cause of business schools. It enlisted an aspiring academic, Richard Ehrenberg, who was persona non grata to the Kathedersozialisten because of his support of the employers in the Hamburg dockworkers' strike.16 Ehrenberg polled a large number of merchants, chamber of commerce secretaries, and industrialists; he reported that 249 of 301 respondents favored the establishment of business schools, 11 were conditionally in favor, and 41 were against.17 The schools that resulted in the following years were the product of cooperation among persons from different walks of life and social standing; for example, businessmen working through the chambers of commerce or as individual philanthropists, mayors and other civic leaders, academics who were willing to cooperate, teachers in the commercial secondary schools. Conspicuous in their absence or subordinate role were the state ministries of culture and instruction. The new schools represented an innovation in German higher education at the time by virtue of their relative independence from the state. Only in the case of Leipzig did funding come from state government, and in this instance only in a modest amount. While ministries of education and commerce exercised certain regulatory functions, or sometimes had representation on governing boards, the decision making was largely the responsibility of the private sector and local government. In this sense, the movement signifies a certain convergence with "Western" patterns of advanced industrialization toward a mixed economy—just as the "Progressive era" in American history represents a convergence from the opposite direction, namely from private initiative toward a society that recognized the increased role of the state. The first several schools represented differing conceptions of the educational needs of businessmen. The Leipzig school (1898), the first to open its doors, was administered jointly by the Leipzig Chamber of Commerce, the teacher-training institute, and the university. The students were admitted to university lectures for relevant subjects such as economics and for completion of their general education, while the faculty from the teacher-training school contributed instruction in bookkeeping and correspondence. The second school, in Aachen (1900), was likewise designed to draw on existing resources. In this case, however, a clear decision was made not to affiliate with a university, but with a technical institute. The Leipzig alternative proved to be the more viable because enrollments exceeded expectations (more than three hundred
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217
students by 1900), while the Aachen school closed after ten years because of poor enrollments.18 The school at Frankfurt (1900) represented a third alternative that was common in both Germany and the United States, namely, that business leaders should be part of a professional administrative elite that would embrace both the public and private sectors. The attractiveness of this idea was due in large part to the sluggishness of the state-supported universities in adjusting their training of civil servants to the demands of industrial society.19 Precedents already existed in the Parisian Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques and the new London School of Economics. The Frankfurt school was established mainly as a result of the work of an industrialist and philanthropist, Wilhelm Merton, and of the mayor, Franz Adickes. Adickes in fact had a separate vision of building a university in Frankfurt, but he grasped Merton's proposal as a first step to that end.20 The Cologne school (1900) was the culmination of Mevissen's efforts. In his last years, Mevissen found Professor Eberhard Gothein at Bonn, who was willing to carry on the work and could actually talk to industrialists. Gothein soon enlisted the aid of the mayor, Wilhelm Becker, and, after some stormy sessions, enlisted the support of the city council.21 This was the first school with a complete course of study for commerce and industry within one institution. It attempted to meet the demands for both general and special education that the previous institutions had only partially fulfilled. The same was true of the school at Berlin (1906), which was supported entirely by the socalled Elders of the Berlin Mercantile Community, a private corporation that dated back to 1820. The Elders had originally petitioned the Prussian Ministry of Education to introduce courses at the university, but when this failed, they proceeded on their own. The advisory board was composed of representatives from the corporation, the faculty, the state ministries of commerce and education, the university, and the technical institutes. Its first rector and founding spirit was Ignaz Jastrow, a Berlin professor and admired teacher who, like Gothein, had changed from history to economics.22 From all the literature generated by these institutional beginnings, several other motives emerge for their founding in addition to that of preparing a professional elite, including social status as well as local pride and civic boosterism. The very formulation of Ehrenberg's questionnaire of 1896 reflected the preoccupation with social status of the merchant class. Two of his five general questions included the following: Have you felt that the merchant enjoys greater respect in foreign countries than in Germany? If so, which one? Do you believe that the type of education of the merchant is relevant to this? Have you had the experience that the merchant class of other countries knows how to elicit greater understanding for its interests, and knows how to effectuate these interests more easily, than in Germany? If so, do you believe that this could be remedied through appropriate education? 23
218
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Of eighty-six responses from within the German empire that Ehrenberg published, forty-five answered the first question in the affirmative, twenty negative, and twenty-one either could not decide or claimed it depended on the circumstances. The second question brought a similar response, with fortyseven affirmative, fifteen negative. Fifteen responses specifically mentioned the higher prestige of the military and bureaucracy. The results also showed that social status and educational attainment were not necessarily linked in the minds of businessmen: Of those who addressed the second part of each question, an equal number thought that education was or was not relevant to respect and effectiveness (twenty-three each). Indeed, many found that the previous educational structure was adequate or better. In response to the question, "What in your experiences and views is the strength and weakness of the German mercantile class compared to that of other countries? Do you believe that the type of education is relevant here and, if so, which?" Thirty-five responses identified education as a strength and thirteen responses specifically mentioned superior training in foreign languages. If the founders of the business schools were nevertheless willing to link social status and education in their speeches and writings, then it was undoubtedly due to their interest in promoting an institution in their native city. Mevissen was the first to mention this, desiring that Cologne have an institute of higher education to compete with Bonn and Aachen.24 By 1900, civic leaders in Hanover, Dresden, Magdeburg, Darmstadt, Giessen, and Rostock were also discussing the possibility of establishing a school.25 All of these motives entered into the most controversial issue in the formation of the business schools, that is, what were to be the entrance requirements?26 Many urged the Abitur, preferably from aRealschule orRealgymnasium, as the only meaningful path to a university-level higher education. Only in this way could the need for general education be met, as well as the status requirements of placing the businessman on par with the established educated elites. Others argued that by making the high school requirements so difficult, the business schools would be excluding precisely the group whose educational level and social status they wished to elevate, namely, the merchants themselves. The responsibility of proper general education should fall on the business schools, not on secondary education. Some proponents of this view even argued that a youth who had left school after six years (with the so-called one-year volunteer certificate, referring to their claim to abridged military service) and became an apprentice was actually better prepared for business subjects than his contemporary who had spent those three years in Gymnasium learning foreign languages, literature, and natural science. These apprentices should be admitted to the business schools without an entrance exam. At the 1897 meeting of the Association for Mercantile Education, this second option passed by a vote of fifteen to eleven. It became the basis for all the entrance requirements of the new institutions except—significantly—Aachen. In fact, the number of Abiturienten ranged between 28 and 45 percent during the years 1906 to 1913 at Cologne, between 14 and 28 percent at Berlin, and between 18 and 30 percent at Leipzig (excluding foreign students).27 The supporters of the
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219
broader requirements had other arguments to support their position: The schools should train teachers for commercial secondary schools and provide continuing education for merchants, diplomats, and civil servants already in their careers.28 These broad goals and requirements obviously represented a considerable adulteration of the notion of a professional elite. Indeed, only school supporters in Frankfurt mentioned this purpose specifically in their bylaws. In 1905, a newly formed Association of German Business School Diploma Holders (later shortened to Association of German Business School Graduates) felt compelled to urge a halt to projects for new business schools; in a petition to the Prussian Ministry of Commerce in the following year, they warned of the dangers of an oversupply of highly educated businessmen who would have to accept positions below their perceived station—a warning that had been sounded by Stumm twelve years earlier.29 The warning nevertheless came too late to prevent the opening of two more schools in Mannheim and Munich (1908 and 1910), with the latter opening despite protests from threatened interests in Nuremberg.30 Schools later opened in Konigsberg in 1915 and Nuremberg in 1920. Enrollment figures for the prewar years show that the older institutions were more successful in attracting students. In the winter semester of 1913-14, Leipzig had 502 students, Cologne 600, Frankfurt 525, Berlin 590, Mannheim 192, and Munich 184. These numbers also demonstrate the institutional health of the first four schools, although certainly not all students attained the Diplom.31 Also, these figures include a high percentage of foreign students who were mostly from Austria-Hungary and Russia: 61 percent in Leipzig, 22 percent in Cologne, and 40 percent in Berlin.32 The available statistics also give an indication of the success of the schools in attracting children of businessmen. In 1913-14 this was 50 to 60 percent for the four leading schools.33 A more complete occupational breakdown is available for Cologne (see table 1). This information shows that the group sending the second highest proportion of students to the schools was state officials. These represented 24.4 percent of the total enrollment in Cologne in 1914; a study of the Mannheim student body reveals the same result, as do the Prussian statistics of the 1920s.34 There was clearly a lot of lateral mobility from the career of official to that of businessman. Despite the striking growth of the business schools, their graduates encountered much resistance in the years before the war. This resistance came in part from the business community and in part from academia. A student from Leipzig who had gone on to university complained that banks were not willing to look at his job application, because "one does not accept graduates" ("man nahme keine studierten Herren!").35 A graduate of Cologne found himself ineligible for a position in the Reichsbank because he had not completed the nine years of secondary school.36 The most cogently expressed objections came from the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, which resisted the trend of the other big cities. In their opinion, merchants learned the essentials of their trade in practice, not in the lecture hall; therefore, an additional two years of higher education would only retard the process. They recognized the need for general
220
The Twentieth Century Table 1. Occupations of Fathers of Cologne Students 1SS 1901 no. percentage
I. Independent entrepreneurs
a. b. c. d.
in commerce in banking in big industry in restaurants
II. Officials a. Upper-level officials in private commerce and industry b. state and local officials
III. Master craftsmen IV. Farmers
V. Other occupations requiring academic training VI. Retired TOTAL
WS 1905-6 no. percentage
WS 1910-11 no. percentage
SS 1914 no. percentage
35
51 .5
170
55. 9
228
48.5
256
40.8
21
30 .9
10
143 5 68 12
30.4 1.1 14.5 2.5
25.5
19 .1 1.5
26 .6 1. 3 24. 7 3. 3
160 6
13 1
81 4 75
68
10.8
23
33 .8
78
25. 6
148
31.5
201
32.0
7 16
10 .3 23 .5
29 49
9.5 16. 1
61 87
13.0 18.5
48 153
24.4
3
4 .4
11
3.,6
32
6.8
22
3.5
16
5. 3
23
4.9
45
7.0
—
22
1.0 3.5
7.6
4
5.9
6
2. 0
14
3.0
72
11.5
3
4.4
23
7. 6
25
5.3
32
5.1
68
100 .0
304
100. 0
470
100.0
628
100.0
Source: C. Eckert, "Handelschochschulen," in A. Ziegler, ed., Handbuchfiir das kaufindnnische Unterrichtswesen, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1916), p. 495.
education for business, but claimed that this rightly belonged in the nine-year secondary school. Further broadening of horizons was best accomplished by an extended stay abroad rather than by a certificate of higher education at home.37 The opposition of university professors ranged from the most trivial to the most searching. As Akira Hayashima has shown with his collection of documents on the controversy in Cologne, school officials expended great amounts of energy on the piecemeal acquisition of status symbols, such as the right to use the title Ordinarius (granted only in one exceptional case by the Kaiser), a golden chain to be worn at official ceremonies, and the inclusion of the title Diplom Kaufmann in the city address book.38 Substantive objections came from established professors such as Gustav Cohn, Adolph Wagner, and Lujo Brentano. They were concerned lest higher education become a mere means to an end, specifically the pursuit of business's self-interest to the exclusion of the broader social good. According to Cohn, such a broader view could be acquired through the study of political economy at a university, rather than through a business school.39 The notion that the latter was undignified and materialistic was still widespread and perpetuated the ill feeling between businessmen and the
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221
university.40 In addition, professors raised the objection—certainly not peculiar to Wilhelmine Germany—that the new schools brought with them a dilution of academic content by including subjects that really belonged in secondary school (such as bookkeeping and accounting).41 Finally, there were the objections of Max Weber, who warned against the perpetuation of the caste system based on academic certificates and titles; he also noted with alarm that Cologne allowed fraternities.42 In any case, the outside resistance only seemed to redouble the efforts of the business schools to achieve equal status with the universities. The next step in this direction was the demand to grant doctoral degrees. As we have seen, the founders of the Frankfurt business school had seen that institution as a step toward establishing a university, which naturally would confer a doctorate. As this process moved forward in about 1910, the directors at Cologne decided that they did not want to lose their most promising students to the Frankfurt school, so they demanded the right to grant the doctorate as well.43 After the war, Cologne also became a university; as at Frankfurt, the business school now became the faculty of economic and social sciences. This in turn put pressure on the remaining schools, lest they lose their most advanced students to the universities. The process thus acquired a momentum that proved irresistible. These pressures were compounded by the economic situation of the early 1920s in which inflation eroded the assets of these private and quasi-municipal institutions, which threatened the schools' very survival. One casualty was the Munich school, which was absorbed into the technical institute; at Leipzig, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Mannheim the finances had to be renegotiated, frequently with increased state aid.44 Under these circumstances, Berlin acquired the right to grant the doctorate in 1926, Mannheim in 1929, Leipzig, K6nigsberg, and Nuremberg in 1930.45 Such academic respectability naturally presupposed—and also helped encourage—the growth of a scholarly discipline that was to be the peculiar property of the business schools; that subject was of course business itself. Not only did it develop into a distinctively German contribution to applied economics, but it also helped shape the occupational structure of business administration in Germany. At the outset, however, it was far from clear what the content of this new subject should be. One index of its instability was the varying terminology by which it was known: Handelstechnik (commercial technique), Handelsbetriebslehre (commercial business theory), Handelswissenschaft (commercial science), Privatwirtschaftslehre (private economics), Betriebswirtschajtslehre (business economics), although the last two came to predominate by the 1920s. The reasons for this instability are not hard to discern. For one thing, there was no previous hard science on which it could draw; economics could not provide that need. This set the business curriculum apart from that of the technical schools. Another source of instability was the drive for institutional autonomy on the part of the business schools, which prevented an easy marriage of business and engineering curricula. Thus there was certainly an interest in Fredrick Taylor's scientific management in Germany before the war, but it was
222
The Twentieth Century
centered in the technical rather than the business schools. It was not until the 1920s that business education entered the technical schools on a large scale.46 Finally, there was no consensus among the founders of the business schools on the merits of a specialized versus a broad education. Gothein and Ehrenberg, for example, were skeptical about business as an autonomous discipline because it lacked the capacity to develop a broad view.47 This ambivalence helps explain why Jastrow at Berlin—one of the staunchest advocates and best-loved teachers of business—failed to develop it into a genuine science.48 Jastrow had previously been skeptical of an overly narrow preprofessional training, which he had observed during a visit to the United States, and he was wary of disciplinary changes that purported to offer new content.49 After being relieved of his post as rector for quite arbitrary reasons in 1914, he devoted himself increasingly to the field of public administration.50 The person who was most responsible for giving business economics its direction was Eugen Schmalenbach of Cologne. Unlike Jastrow, Schmalenbach pursued a single specialty with directedness and purpose over decades; he viewed his subject as an applied, technical science, not one devoted to general education. Schmalenbach was the son of a small businessman of precarious means, and had entered the first class of the Leipzig business school—without Abitur—in 1898 (many of the later leading professors in business economics were his contemporaries).51 Given that much of the teaching there was done by former secondary school teachers whose knowledge lay in bookkeeping and accounting, it is not surprising that these became the center of Schmalenbach's research interests. In addition to making original contributions in this field, Schmalenbach succeeded in generalizing the assumptions underlying accounting to form a general technique of conducting a business, namely, to keep it solvent and efficient. In his eyes, this way of thinking was distinct from that of political economy, with its categories of production, distribution, and consumption for a society as a whole.52 The study of business economics quickly developed the basic accoutrements of an autonomous academic discipline. Schmalenbach launched the first journal of business economics in 1906; another followed two years later, and four textbooks appeared between 1910 and 1912. By the eve of the war, it had developed a sufficient literature to generate its own Methodenstreit (conflict of methods). Scholars argued with each other—and economists—over whether business was a part of economics or an autonomous subject, and over whether it was a true science or an applied technology.53 According to one commentator writing in 1926, the debates showed no sign of diminishing.54 In practice, however, by 1920 a dominant view had emerged that business was a separate subject, with its main organizing principle being the standpoint of the individual business enterprise rather than the whole society, and its main norm being profitability.55 The centrality of finance in the discipline helped shape the professional character of business leadership positions in a way not duplicated outside Germany. A particular type of consulting occupation arose there known as Treuhandswesen. Literally translated as "trusteeship," this term does not convey
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223
what was involved. The term originally reflected that much of the capital in German industry came from large investment banks. These banks naturally had an interest in the finances of their prospective clients, and appointed trustees to investigate. This soon led to the formation of Treuhand companies to carry out this function, the expertise of which was in auditing but the services of which soon expanded into giving advice to the companies themselves on a variety of matters. Between 1890 and 1918,78 such companies had been established; 264 more appeared in the troubled years 1919-23; 134 more came into being between 1924 and 1927.56 Schmalenbach himself had established a seminar in Treuhandswesen in 1906 and started his own company the following year. The other schools soon followed suit with seminars, and many faculty members did consulting work as well. The development of Treuhandswesen certainly fits a minimum notion of professionalization, namely, a new field requiring expert knowledge acquired through higher education, though without stringent entrance requirements or guarantees. Meanwhile, another distinct career pattern was developing through the universities, namely, that of "practical economist." The need for this separate group grew out of the multitude of associations, both private and public, that flourished in Germany during the Second Empire and became bureaucratized earlier than their counterparts in the United States. Foremost among these groups were the chambers of commerce, which developed in lieu of the guilds in the nineteenth century. According to the law governing the chambers of 1870 (revised 1897), they had the dual function of representing the interests of business and also serving as the link between the state administration and the business community. Their duties included communicating legislation to business, writing recommendations on policy, issuing regular reports to the Ministry of Commerce, overseeing education of businessmen, and communicating with the press. It became obvious that these duties demanded the services of full-time persons who were known as secretary orSyndicus. By 1905 there were 122 such full-time positions.57 In addition, private trade associations began to employ professional consultants, as did employers' associations and professional cooperatives. To be able to represent and communicate so many things to so many people demanded persons of broad background and suitable social status (i.e., university training). A Syndicus with academic training lent respectability to a business association.58 Law and economics were the most desirable subjects, but the former contained much material irrelevant to the tasks, so that economics became the preferred subject. Practical economists, then, according to one definition, were those who "stand beside the business and technical heads of economic enterprises and are also active in public administration, in interest groups as advisers and heads."59 In 1901, the Association of German Economists (Deutscher Volkswirtschaftlicher Verband) was founded to further the career interests of this group; by 1907 it had about seven hundred members. In the same year, it was estimated that there were between thirteen and fourteen hundred practical economists in Germany, either employed or looking for jobs.60 Also, in that year, the Verein fur Sozialpolitik
224
The Twentieth Century
conducted an investigation regarding what would be the best training for this new group. The phenomenal growth of this occupation must be seen in the light of not only the tempo of Germany's industrialization but also the increase in university students, which approximately doubled between 1895 and 1914.61 Given the difficulties of entering the civil service, the careers in private associations were very attractive, because they offered monetary rewards at a far earlier age and did not require an entrance examination. In the words of one commentator, "the jurist who has failed the first or second examination tends to discover suddenly that he is splendidly suited for the career of practical economist."62 The popularity of economics as a field of study increased still further with the war's end; returning veterans found it as one of the few "open" fields that required no extended training period before employment. In the winter semester 1919-20, there were 10,670 students majoring in economics, compared to 3,836 in 1914.63 By September 1919, the Association of German Economists had grown to 3,118 members. Naturally, not all of them found positions as practical economists. The peak of enrollments attained in the early 1920s was not to be duplicated until the 1950s. Such a swelling of numbers led to renewed and urgent calls for a revamping of the economics curriculum. At this time, the only sort of certification for a student in economics was the doctoral degree, a goal that was obviously beyond the reach of most students. In 1920, the Verein fiir Sozialpolitik once again considered this issue. Professors like Jastrow complained that the conditions of mass instruction prevented any meaningful training in economic thinking. Businessmen complained that the economists were too theoretically oriented and could contribute little or nothing to running a business. Especially striking was the report of the Society for Economic Education in Frankfurt, which polled the large businesses in the area. The results were overwhelmingly unfavorable: Businessmen preferred to hire jurists, who were at least trained in a definite technique and could assist in handling legal issues. Even the Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt found the educational level of economists to be too low.64 The main result of this discussion was to initiate a movement for an intermediate degree (Diplom), which would be awarded upon successful completion of an examination after at least six semesters. This was analogous to the degrees in business and engineering. Among those who called for it at first were the student organizations. One reason frequently given for the degree and examination was to introduce some consistency into a field that still lacked a body of "hard" knowledge. The federal Ministry of Education undertook negotiations with the professors in the following years, and the new degree was instituted in April 1923, despite some vociferous opposition.65 The discussions reveal that the main influences in shaping the requirements for the Diplom came from within the universities rather than from the business world. To what degree did these flourishing programs and career patterns approximate a process of professionalization? Fortunately, both the Association of Business
225 225
Economics The Professionalization of Applied Economics Table 2.
Occupations of Business School Graduates, 1924 1924
businessmen 1. Independent businessmen 2. Directors, managers, and other heads 3. Head clerks [Prokuristen] [Prokuristen] 4. Authorized agents [Bevollmachtigte] [Bevollmachtigte] 5. Departmental and branch heads 6. Undersecretaries [Direktionssekretare] [Direktionssekretare] firms 7. Representatives of foreign foreign firms 8. Independent financial consultants [Treuhander} [Treuhander] 9. Directors and head clerks of Treuhand firmsfirms 9. 10. Treuhand officials officials 111. 1 . Auditors Auditorsofofbusinesses businessesand andcombines combines 12. Administrative heads of state bookkeeping departments [Regierungsrate] [Regierungsrate] Accountants 13. Accountants 14. Professors 15. Research assistants secretaries [Syndici] 16. Chamber of commerce secretaries [Syndici] 17. Teachers of business 18. Other
149 124 124 81 33 69 27 6 36 16 33 16 3 12 13 12 17 30 11
Source: E. Walb, "Der akademisch-gebildete (Diplom-) Kaufmann," Merkbldtter fur Berufsberat und der deutschen Zentralstelle fur Berufsberatung der Akademiker e.V., no. 13 (Berlin, 1927), [7].
School Graduates and the Association of German Economists published surveys of their graduates in 1924 and 1919, respectively. In the former case, 688 of the 1,062 respondents gave their occupation (see table 2). Although it is impossible to say how many in the first category were heads of big businesses and thus belonged to the classification of business leaders, categories 2 to 5 would fall under the definition definition given at the time.66 These come to 307, or 45 percent of the total. Categories 8 to 10 comprise the Treuhander, which taken together equal 85, or 12 percent of the total. In the latter case (see table 3), definition of practical economist, categories 2, 4, and 8 would conform to the definition and number 911, or 29 percent of the total. Category 3, employment in the significant overlap with the career patterns of business private sector, reveals a significant school graduates. Although such growth figures are impressive, they still fell far short of constituting a monopoly on business executive positions. According to the rector of the Leipzig business school in 1930, the percentage of corporate directors who were graduates (of all business schools) was 6 percent in 1908, 8 percent in 1913, and 20 percent in 1929.67 This lack of a single educational business administration from the traditional profestrack continued to separate business sions. Indeed, business economics spread to the universities in the 1920s, thus dissipating rather than consolidating the process of professionalization. This
226
The Twentieth Century TableS. Occupations of German Economists, 1919 1. Public officials
818
2. Representatives of interest groups in private sector
436
3. Employment in private sector 4. Representatives of interest groups with [official] legal basis [e.g., chambers of commerce]
414
5. Self-employed 6. Students
7. Army or POWs 8. 9. 10. 11.
Representatives of miscellaneous interest groups Unaccounted for Research assistants and scientific institutes Unaccounted for and using placement service
12. Representatives of employee interest groups 13. Retired
327
261 177
152
148 146 105 59
47
28
Source: }. Jastrow, ed., Die Reform der staatswissenschaftlichen Studien: Funfzig Gutachten. Schriften des Vereins fur Sozialpolitik, vol. 160 (Munich, 1920), pp. 39394.
was a result of the regulations for the new economics Diplom, which required the new subject when offered in universities. As a consequence, the number of business economics lecturers in universities other than Cologne and Frankfurt increased dramatically from 8 in 1914 to 58 in 1925.68 In order to be competitive, the business schools raised the minimum study to six semesters for their Diplom examination and began to require the Abitur for it, so that the requirements matched those of the economics examinations.69 This led to a certain equilibrium between the two types of institutions, reflected in the overlapping of curricula and of career aspirations (see tables 4 and 5). The pattern underlying these changes was the blurring of the distinction between economics and business economics, rather than increasing specialization. German economics particularly, with its previous historical and public orientations, needed business economics to cover the private sector and to lend it some analytical spine. Furthermore, business economists were still undecided about whether their body of knowledge constituted a science or a technique; there were still many who saw business education as conveying a set of skills rather than a systematic body of knowledge. These ambiguities remained with the field also into the period after the Second World War, again in contrast to the usual expectations about professionalization.70 Did this pattern constitute a German peculiarity? Were these ambiguities a result of a distinctive reluctance to modernize? A comparison with the literature on American business education is illuminating here.71 Certainly there were differences: Enrollments in the United States continued to increase throughout the 1920s, whereas in Germany they declined after the peak of 1920. The immense prestige of the German universities and their orientation toward state service created initial difficulties for business educators that their American counterparts did not have to face, namely to define their separate
The Professionalization of Applied Economics Table 4.
111
Major Fields of Students in Prussia, 1924-27
Major Field Universities Economics Business economics Business schools Economics Business economics
WS 1924-25
WS 1926-27
3,913 2,009
2,662 2,407
18
128 1,671
2,124
Source: G. Plum, "Die Entwicklung des betriebswirtschaftlichen Studiums in Preussen," Zeitschriftfur Betriebswirtschaft 4 (1927): 868.
TableS.
Selected Career Aspirations by Major of Prussian Students, 1926-27
Career Aspiration
Universities Business Economics economics
Merchant Industrial official Commercial school teacher
Business schools Business Economics economics
1,007
907
—
498
604 89
295 801
— —
149 610
Source: Plum, "Entwicklung," pp. 868, 870.
identities while still imitating the universities. Even though the German business schools began as independent of the state bureaucracy, their further development brought them closer to the traditional bureaucratic pattern, partly out of financial necessity during the 1920s and partly by the pressure to imitate the universities themselves. But underlying these differences were more important similarities. The relation of general to special vocational education was no more firmly resolved in the United States than in Germany. The battle was simply fought out in the context of a different set of institutions. Thus, Americans argued about whether business should be an undergraduate or a graduate program, about its relation to the liberal arts curriculum, and about the proper place of economics. There was the same reluctance to tie business education down to a specific body of knowledge and the same status distinction between a liberal education and a "trade school."72 In sum, the statement in a Ford Foundation report on American business in 1959 could as easily be applied to Germany at the same time: "business is not yet a profession, but . . . it is beginning to resemble one."73 If the model of professionali/ation is nevertheless relevant to business, then it is because it was in the minds of the actors of the time, not merely of the historians and sociologists who write about them. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that it was but one model that vied for the loyalties of those actors; another was academic institution building. In addition to this historical devel-
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opment, the sheer weight of numbers in a mass society has made the path to the establishment of expert elites uneven and rocky. One can conclude that the very conditions of an organized and bureaucratized economy that favor the proliferation of professions also generate pressures that undermine it. Notes 1. Talcott Parsons, "The Professions and Social Structure," Social Forces 17 (1939): 457-67. 2. Dietrich Ruschemeyer, "Professionalisierung: Theoretische Probleme fur die vergleichende Geschichtsforschung," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 6 (1980): 323-24. Ruschemeyer finds a common thread in the work of Eliot Friedson and Magali Larson in their emphasis on the pursuit of monopolistic goals. 3. Melvin T. Copeland, And Mark an Era: The Story of the Harvard Business School (Boston, 1958), pp. 6-7, 13. 4. On the United States, see James S. Bossard and J. Frederic Dewhurst, University Education for Business (Philadelphia, 1931), p. 235. The first American business school, the Wharton School, was founded in 1881. 5. Richard Ehrenbetg,Handelshochschulen, 3 vols. (Braunschweig, 1897), 1: 220. 6. Ibid., 1: 4; Max Apt, Zur Handelshochschule-Bewegung in Deutschland (Berlin, 1907), p. 4; Karl Biicher, "Die Handelshochschulbewegung in Deutschland," inDie Entwicldung der Volkswirtschaft, 2nd collection (Tubingen, 1918), p. 357. 7. Moritz Julius Bonn, "Die Aufgaben der Handelshochschule Miinchen," inDie Aufgaben derHandelshochschule Miinchen (Munich, 1911), pp. 17-18. 8. Eliot Freidson, "The Theory of Professions: State of the Art," in Robert Dingwall and Philip Lewis, eds., The Sociology of the Professions (New York, 1983), pp. 24-26; Dietrich Ruschemeyer, "Professional Autonomy and the Social Control of Expertise," in Dingwall and Lewis, Sociology, pp. 46-47. 9. The term "business school" is being used as a translation for the German Handelshochschule. The literal meaning of Handel is trade, and a person who engaged in it was aKaufmann, or merchant. Thus, it might seem that this type of education was not directed to "business" as a whole, but only to a special type. In fact, the terms Handel andKaufmann were frequently used as generic terms, covering both commerce and industry. 10. Fritz Redlich, "Academic Education for Business," in his Steeped in Two Cultures (New York, 1971), pp. 201-12. 11. Reinhard Riese, Die Hochschule aufdem Wege zum wissenschaftlichen Grossbetrieb (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 309. 12. Gustav Cohn, "Handelsakademie," Soziale Praxis 6 (1897): 870n. 13. Gustav von Mevissen, "Denkschrift iiber die Griindung einer Handelshochschule in Koln," in Akira Hayashima, "Zur Geschichte der Kolner Handelshochschule," Kwansei Gakuin University Annual Studies 29 (1981): 185-91. See Steven A. Sass, The Pragmatic Imagination (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 21-23, for Wharton's memorandum. On Mevissen, see Joseph Hansen, Gustav von Mevissen, ein rheinischesLebensbild (Berlin, 1906). 14. Mevissen, "Denkschrift," p. 187. 15. Dieter Lindenlaub, Richtungskampfe im Verein fur Sozialpolitik (Wiesbaden, 1967), pp. 57-82. 16. Ibid., p. 81. On Ehrenberg's continuing troubles with the academic econo-
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229
mists, see Robert R. Locke, The End of the Practical Man (Greenwich, Conn., 1984), pp. 119-21. 17. Ehrenberg, Handelshochschulen, 1: xiv. 18. A. Hayashima, "Die Frequenz der deutschen Handelshochschulen, 18981920," Kwansei Gakuin University Annual Studies 32 (1984): 123; Georg Obst, "Die deutschen Handelshochschulen," Zeitschriftfur Handelswissenschaft undHandelspraxis (hereafter abbreviated a s Z H H ) 1 (1908): 192-93. 19. See my "Education of Prussian Higher Civil Servants in the Staatswissenschaften, 1897-1914," in Erk Volkmar Heyen, ed., Historische Soziologie der Rechtswissenschaft (Frankfurt, 1986), pp. 201-25. For American counterpart, see Sass, Pragmatic Imagination, pp. 21, 23, 73-79; Copeland, And Markan Era, pp. 3-5. 20. Paul Kluke, Die Stiftungsuniversitdt Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, 1972), pp. 32-42. 21. Marie Luise Gothein, Eberhard Gothein: Ein Lebensbild (Stuttgart, 1931), pp. 114-22. Gothein had to overcome the suspicions of the Catholic party that he was seeking to establish a Protestant bastion in Cologne (pp. 119-20). 22. On the origins of the Berlin school and on Jastrow's abilities, see Redlich, "Academic Education," pp. 222-28. 23. Ehrenbetg, Handelshochschulen, 1: xii. The following tabulations are my own. 24. Hayashima, "Geschichte, p. 185; Hansen, Gustav vonMevissen, p. 828. 25. "Handelshochschulen," NationalZeitung, July 11, 1900. 26. Ehrenberg, Handelshochschulen, 3: 66-97. 27. Hayashima, "Frequenz," pp. 140-41. 28. ChristianEckert, "Handelshochschulen," in Adolf Ziegler, ed.,Handbuchfur das kaufmannische Unterrichtswesen, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1916), pp. 457-60. 29. Hayashima, "Der Kolner Weg zum Promotionsrecht," Kwansei Gakuin University Annual Studies 30 (1982): 37-38. On the association, see Robert R. Locke,Endof Practical Man, p. 212ff. 30. On Mannheim and its difficulties, see Reinhard Riese, Hochschule aufWege, 308-24. On Munich and the later schools, August Wilhelm Fehling, "Collegiate Education for Business in Germany," Journal of Political Economy 34 (1926): 558ff. On competition with Nuremberg, Johannes Steindamm, "Zwei Handelshochschulen in Bayern?" Zfftf 3 (1909): 111-12. 31. Verband deutscher Diplom-Kaufleute e.V., ed., Kaufmannisches Hochschulstudium:EinMerkblatt (Stuttgart, 1922), p. 8. Nevertheless, those who did achieve the Diplom tended increasingly to study for more than four semesters (Locke, Endof Practical Man, pp. 202-3). 32. Hayashima, "Frequenz," pp. 130-36. 33. Ibid., p. 129. 34. The Cologne figures are drawn from Table 3; on Mannheim, see Hanna Holzwart, "Das Studium an der Mannheimer Handelshochschule" (Ph.D. diss., Heidelberg, 1921), cited in Riese, Hochschule aufWege, p. 320. On the 1920s, see Karl Goetz, "Die Studierenden der Betriebswirtschaftslehre auf den Preussischen Hochschulen," Zeitschrift fur Betriebswirtschaft 3 (1926): 959-60. 35. M. Griinberg, Kritische Darstellung der bestehenden Handelshochschulen in den HauptkulturldndernEuropas (Leipzig, 1910), p. 8. 36. Hayashima, "Promotionsrecht," pp. 50—52. 37. Apt, Handelshochschule-Bewegung, pp. 5-8. 38. Hayashima, "Promotionsrecht," pp. 34-37, 40-43, 53-55. On Munich, see M. J. Bonn, Wandering Scholar (London, 1949), pp. 152-53.
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39. Gustav Cohn, "Handelsakademie," p. 870; Adolph Wagner, "Zur Frage des Werts kaufmannischer Handelsschulen," Der Tag, May 16, 1903. On Brentano's position, see Georg Obst, "Verhaltnis der Privatwirtschaftslehre zur Volkswirtschaftslehre," ZHH 12 (1913): 357. 40. Obst, "Verhaltnis," p. 361. 41. Griinberg, Kritische Darstellung, p. 9. 42. Hayashima, "Max Weber und die deutschen Handelshochschulen," Kwansei Gakuin University Annual Studies, 35 (1986): 143-76; for translation of Weber's main attack, see Max Weber on Universities, ed. and trans. Edward Shils (Chicago, 1973), pp. 36-39. 43. Hayashima, "Promotionsrecht," pp. 56-57. 44. Fehling, "Collegiate Education," pp. 555, 557-58. 45. Ibid., pp. 74-75; H. Nicklisch, "Zur Geschichte der Handels-Hochschule Berlin," in Berliner Hochschul-Taschenbuch (Gottingen, 1925), p. 35; Hayashima, "Frequenz," p. 125. 46. The relation of business and engineering education in Germany, France, and England has been thoroughly discussed by Locke and need not be repeated here. See especially Locke, End of Practical Man, pp. 102-8, 227-36. 47. On Gothein, see Hayashima, "Geschichte," p. 203; Ehrenberg,Handelshochschulen, 3: 15. 48. Redlich, "Academic Education," pp. 200, 225; Elly Heuss-Knapp, Biirgerin ZweierWelten (Stuttgart, 1961), pp. 50, 51, 53. 49. On his visit to the United States, see Redlich, "Academic Education," pp. 224-25, 241; on his attitudes to disciplinary reform, see J. Jastrow, ed., Die Reform der staatswissenschaftlichen Studien: Funfzig Gutachten: Schriften des Vereinsfiir Sozialpolitik, vol. 160 (Munich, 1920), pp. 147-49. 50. Redlich, "Academic Education," pp. 230-32; Verhandlungen des Vereins fur Sozialpolitik in Keil 1920: Schriften des Vereinsfiir Sozialpolitik, vol. 161 (Munich, 1921), pp. 22-29. 51. Walter Cordes, ed., Eugen Schmalenbach: Der Mann—Sein Werk—Die Wirkung (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 10-14. His colleagues included Heinrich Nicklisch, Fritz Schmidt, Willi Prion, Balduin Penndorf, Ernst Pape, and Hermann Grossman. 52. Eugen Schmalenbach, "Betriebswirtschaftler als hohere Verwaltungsbeamte," Zeitschrift fur handelswissenschaftliche Forschung 14 (1920): 132-37. For Schmalenbach's theoretical contributions, see Locke, End of Practical Man, chap. 4. 53. Obst, "Verhaltnis," pp. 357-59; Eckert, "Handelshochschulen," p. 477; Karl Diehl, "Privatwirtschaftslehre, Volkswirtschaftslehre, Weltwirtschaftslehre," Jahrbucher fur Nationalokonomie und Statistik 46 (1913): 433-82; Rudolf Dietrich, "BegrundungeinerBetrieb-Wissenschaft,"Sc/zm0/fer.s./aM>Mc/! 37 (1913): 595-653. 54. Fehling, "Collegiate Education," p. 567. 55. This was more or less the view of the editors of both the journals and the influential economist Karl Diehl of Freiburg. SeeObst, "Verhaltnis," pp. 360-61;H. Nicklisch, "Handelswissenschaft und Handelspraxis, habt acht!"Zffi/ 10 (1917), 2; Diehl, "Privatwirtschaftslehre," pp. 461-62; Schmalenbach, "Betriebswirtschaftler," pp. 132-34. Schmalenbach disagreed with "profitability" as the norm, preferring calculability, because this would include socialist economies as well. Arguing that business should be part of economics, and that profit considerations should be subordinate to those of the whole were Lujo Brentano, Schar at Berlin, and Weyermann and Schonitz, both at Freiburg. 56. Locke, End of Practical Man, pp. 260-67; the figures are on p. 263.
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57. Hermann Edwin Krueger, "Der Beruf des praktischen Volkswirts," SchmollersJahrbuch 31 (1907): 1312; also Jastrow, Reform, pp. 380-84. 58. Krueger, "Beruf," p. 1335. 59. Christian Eckert in Jastrow, Reform, p. 37. 60. Krueger, "Beruf," pp. 1320, 1329. 61. Konrad Jarausch, "Frequenz und Struktur: Zur Sozialgeschichte der Studenten im Kaiserreich," in Peter Baumgart, ed., Bildungspolitik inPreussen zurZeit des Kaiserreichs (Stuttgart, 1980), p. 123. 62. Krueger, "Beruf," p. 1327. 63. Ludwig Pohle, "Diplomprufung fur Volkswirte und staatswissenschaftliche Promotion," Schmollers Jahrbuch 46 (1922): 862. 64. Ibid., pp. 184-85. 65. Adolf Weber, "Das Diplomexamen fiir Volkswirte," Jahrbucher fiir Nationalokonomie und Statistik 65 (1923): 289-318, gives a summary of the development. For opposition, see Hermann Schumacher, "Warnruf zur geplanten Reform der volkswirtschaftlichen Studien," Schmollers Jahrbuch 46 (1922): 893-921. 66. Ernst Walb, "Der akademisch-gebildete (Diplom-) Kaufmann," Merkblatter fiirBerufsberatungderDeutschenZentralstellefurBerufsberatungderAkademikere.V., no. 13 (Berlin, 1927), [2]. 67. "Festrede desRektors Prof. Dr. [Hermann] Grossmann,"FeierderVerkundung des Promotionsrechts am 2. Juli 1930 (Leipzig, 1930), p. 19. 68. Carl Haacke, "Die wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaftliche Lehrtatigkeit in den deutschen Universitaten 1913-14 und 1924-25" (Ph.D. Diss., Cologne, 1927). 69. Fehling, "Collegiate Education," pp. 573, 579. 70. Knut Borchardt, Denkschrift zur Lage der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Wiesbaden, 1960), pp. 7, 28, 33. 71. Bossard and Dewhurst University Education (see note 4); Robert A. Gordon and James E. Howell, Higher Educationfor Business (New York, 1959); Paul S. Hugstad, The Business School in the 1890s (New York, 1983). 72. See Bossard and Dewhurst, chap. 3, pp. 332-35; Gordon and Howell, Higher Education, pp. 4-6, 44, 46; Hugstad, Business School, chaps. 3-4, p. 118. 73. Gordon and Howell, Higher Education, p. 73.
Femininity as a Vocation: Gender and Class Conflict in the Professionalization of German Social Work YOUNG SUN HONG
In 1899, for the first time ever, the "Girls' and Women's Groups for Social Work" in Berlin offered a twelve-month course for women interested in making a career of social work. Although at the end of the nineteenth century the idea of giving middle-class women formal education in social work was still very new, social work training by 1914 had been institutionalized in the form of female social work professional schools (soziale Fmuenschulen) in several big cities because of the support of bourgeois feminists and charity reformers. The development of social work as a paid activity carried out by trained professionals continued through the first decades of the century and by the mid-1920s social work had already evolved into a full-time, paid occupation, something that would have been unimaginable to the pioneers of social work reform. Although the occupational census of 1907 did not mention social welfare officials (Sozialbeamten), the 1927-28 law regulating state bureaucratic salaries for the first time devoted a specific category to social workers.1 As one of the newest social service professions, the development of the social work profession had an intimate relationship to the formation of the modern social welfare state, which itself had been accelerated by the churning of traditional class structures and the polarization of social relations during the First World War and the 1918-19 revolution. This new political climate forced the social work profession to articulate more clearly its own idealized, depoliticized understanding of social work. However, the profession became increasingly dependent on both public and private welfare agencies, which sought to impress on the profession a vision of modern social work very different from that of the profession itself. The process of professionalization is not a natural development, and any study of the historical development of the modern social work profession must 232
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233
take into consideration the changing structure of German politics and society. This is especially important because the question of restructuring the social welfare system in Germany became highly politicized during the war and the immediate postwar period. The social work profession emerged in a historical context characterized by the social and political mobilization of such traditionally marginal groups as women and industrial workers in the period of social transformation at about the turn of the century. The profession, however, initially recruited its members largely among women from the upper and middle classes. This original gender and class specificity of the social work profession would play a significant role in determining both the particular professional self-understanding and the marginality of the predominantly female profession within the male-dominated, bureaucratic social welfare sector in the Weimar Republic. Furthermore, as the Social Democrats came to play a more active role in domestic politics in the 1920s, the "bourgeois" ideals and practices of the existing private and confessional social welfare agencies would be increasingly criticized by the organized working class and by the newly formed socialist social welfare organization, Workers' Welfare. This essay will describe four important aspects of the development of the social work profession in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. The first part will examine the emergence of the social work profession, the professional selfunderstanding of which was expressed in terms of an ideology of femininity and a conception of social work as a particularly feminine calling (ein burgerlicher Frauenberuf) through which the "moderate" bourgeois feminists had sought to justify their expanded role in the public sphere in prewar Wilhelmine Germany. The second and the third parts will describe the foundation of the national organization of professional social work schools and of professional associations during the war and the immediate postwar period as the main institutions for promoting the interests of the profession. The fourth part will analyze the increasing influence of public and private welfare organizations on the development of the profession during the Weimar Republic. At this point it will be shown how, in the long run, the immediate political needs of welfare agencies worked together to circumscribe sharply the sphere of professional training and autonomous activity of the female social workers. Consequently, the crisis of the social work profession in the late 1920s was largely the product of the widening gap between the highly idealized professional ethos of the female social workers, on the one hand, and the reality of their role as marginal, poorly paid employees of bureaucratically oriented welfare agencies, on the other. I
The emergence of modern social work as an institution for mobilizing bourgeois women in Germany in the 1880s had an intimate connection with the feminist movement and the charity reform movement, which were to give social work its clearly bourgeois character. The participation of bourgeois women in the traditionally male activities of poor relief and social work was a phenome-
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non specific to the social transformation of late nineteenth-century Germany. Bourgeois feminists, who regarded social work as a female cultural mission ultimately leading to social harmony between classes, saw in modern social work an opportunity to justify and facilitate their public role by contributing to the progress of the nation. These pioneers of the social work profession made intense efforts to recruit and systematically train women of the upper and middle classes for modern social work as a way of fulfilling their self-assigned mission, which they understood as a "women's social obligation" or as a "feminine service duty" parallel to the male obligation to compulsory military service. Second, the bourgeois charity reform movement—the goal of which was to rationalize traditional punitive poor relief (Armenpflege) to enable it to respond better to the new forms and scope of poverty in a modern industrial society— worked for the introduction of such new preventive social welfare services as maternity and infant care, which created the opportunity for women's participation in the field.2 Ideologically, the call for the increased efficiency of charity organizations and the idea of modern social work based on scientific knowledge and practice reflected a desire to restore the public legitimacy of traditional charity in response to the challenge posed by an increasingly class-conscious, organized working class who saw the Armenpflege and private charity activities as instruments for disciplining the poor. Since the 1890s, the working class had already increasingly objected to "bourgeois charity" and sought to avoid sacrificing suffrage rights for "breadcrumbs."3 The patrimonial character of Armenpflege was most clearly embodied for the working class in the person of the poor guardian (Armenpfleger). The nineteenth-century German poor relief system was based on the principle that poverty had primarily moral causes and therefore emphasized the personal interaction of the poor guardians with the indigent through house visits as the best way of judging the extent to which these people morally merited communal relief. This honorary, communal post had been traditionally reserved for men, especially those of the Mittelstand4 (middle class), even though the administrative regulations implementing the poor law in most of the German states did not explicitly bar women from the membership on the poor relief board. Although worsening economic conditions made it increasingly difficult to find middleclass volunteers with enough leisure time to assume the duties of the post, male poor relief administrators and guardians staunchly opposed the idea of recruiting women to relieve the shortage of qualified men and guarded jealously against "promoting a 'sport' for women."5 In Berlin in 1896, for example, the poor guardians threatened the communal administration with their collective resignation if women were permitted to serve in the communal charity organizations.6 They assumed that women's involvement in the public role of poor guardians would lend momentum to the broader movement for women's emancipation and sought to rationalize the exclusion of women from public office by expressing a paternalistic concern that all sorts of "immorality" surrounding the poor would pose a danger to women of good standing. 7 Against this background, women's participation in the male-dominated
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235
sphere of public poor relief administration symbolized the enhancement of women's public role. National organizations of bourgeois women had put the issue of the discrimination against women in this field on the political agenda constantly since 1868 when the General German Women's Association demanded for the first time women's right to participate in poor relief administration and services.8 Their demand began to gain strength as it gradually converged with the broader stream of the bourgeois charity reform movement, which advocated the replacement of the dilettantish and sentimental almsgiving carried out by incompetent and untrained poor guardians with a more rational social work administered by scientifically trained social workers.9 These reform-minded male charity administrators who championed women's formal introduction to the male-dominated poor relief system, however, regarded the gender division of labor as universal and natural and felt that female participation in poor relief activities was a natural extension of their specifically domestic, female virtues of self-sacrifice and devotion to others. They argued that female social workers should limit their activities only to those areas of poor relief directly related to the specifically female duties as housekeepers and mothers, while the responsibility for poor relief administration should remain in the hands of men whose objective and rational nature made them better suited for these activities. These men argued that women inherently lacked the toughness and authority necessary to deal with the deceptive and demoralizing poor. Instead, they maintained, women's activities should be restricted to visiting poor women, children, and girls, to providing them with education in the basics of household management, and to inculcating in them the basic bourgeois virtues of frugality, order, and industry.10 Women's attacks on male exclusionism and their demand to participate in public poor relief activities ran parallel with their efforts to educate and train women in modern scientific social work. Prior to the First World War, social work training was primarily conceived in terms of voluntary, unpaid activity performed by young women from the upper and middle classes, and the educational preparation for these activities constituted an essential part of the feminist goal of opening higher education to women. Most of the earlier social work schools for women, including the one in Hanover created by the German Evangelical Women's Association, had been established under the auspices of bourgeois feminist organizations. The influence of feminism on the development of the social work profession was reflected, on the one hand, in the social composition of the profession and, on the other, in its self-understanding, both of which were important elements in the shaping of the collective identity of social work professionals. Starting with the creation of the Girls' and Women's Groups for Social Work in 1893 and followed by the Soziale Frauenschule in Hanover in 1905 as the first institutionalized social work schools in Germany, leading educators aimed specifically at recruiting women of higher social origin for social work training. For example, among the eighty-six students who attended the Hanover school from 1905 to 1910, not a single one came from a working-class family. Rather, the highest portion (22 percent) were daughters of high-ranking bureaucrats,
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followed by those of businessmen (20 percent) and clergymen (17 percent).11 Because middle-class women had been traditionally confined within the domestic sphere without any opportunity for higher education or professions, social work training was originally intended to provide young graduates of secondary girls' schools with a broader knowledge of social and political sciences and economics as well as women's issues. After completing their training, social workers equipped with scientific knowledge and skills were expected to work actively as "diagnosticians" in the cause of social reform. Given the significance bestowed upon social work as a means of satisfying and justifying the subjective need of young affluent women to participate in the public sphere, the everyday routine of social work, which in many respects was an extension of housework into the public sphere, was exalted as a highly ethical vocation by leading educators in the profession. They argued that social work was qualitatively different from mere industrial and technical labor primarily because social work demanded a sense of "personal" devotion to work conceived of as an individual "calling." Only a person with a particular aptitude was believed capable of possessing the "charismatic" personality necessary to perform social work. According to leading social work educators, the social worker should assume an independent and responsible role that would allow her to realize fully her personal values in her work. They also argued that the level and nature of social work training should correspond to its status and function; otherwise, social workers would be relegated to menial tasks inconsistent with their vision of the nature of social work. Professional social work schools were nearly universally "social women's schools" in the first phase of their development, which reflected the intention of the leaders to make social work into an exclusively feminine realm. One of the leading moderate bourgeois feminists and social worker educators, Alice Salomon, argued that the sphere of women's public activities was one in which women's natural abilities and inclinations could be most fully realized and that had not yet been and could not be filled by men.12 Social work was to be a calling in which women could simultaneously realize their natural biological, and their public political roles. Organized and administered in accordance with the ideals of femininity and motherhood, women tried to justify their expanded role in the public sphere by arguing that social work, because it represented an extension of women's natural, domestic activities, should be an exclusively feminine calling (Frauenberuf), the tasks of which could not be performed just as easily or as well by men. In this way, motherhood and femininity became powerful ideas for simultaneously mobilizing middle-class women for the pursuit of political rights and for social work. The German feminists' emphasis on the ideology of motherhood and the concept of social work as an exclusively feminine sphere of public activities gained new momentum with the disintegration of radical feminism after 1908, following the new associational law that brought about the mass influx of conservative, upper-class women into the bourgeois feminist movement. 13 The Federation of German Women's Associations, under the leadership of Gertrud Baumer, adhered to the ideology of femininity and to the gender division of
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237
labor. These moderate feminists argued that women should be granted an opportunity to cultivate in society and for the nation the essence of their "female nature," which was now seen in terms of a spiritualized vision of femininity and maternity.14 Instead of criticizing the prevalent patriarchal conception of femininity and the existing sexual ordering of society and demanding full equality of women, leading feminists popularized the ideal of the "new woman" who combined the natural feminine intuition of motherhood with intellect and who also had a strong desire to develop fully her natural endowment through public work. Both moderate bourgeois feminists and female professional elites tended to turn the gender distinction into the fundamental category for the division of labor in their attempt to justify an expanded role for women in the public sphere. Yet their desire to feminize the profession was destined to be a distinct disadvantage for their aspirations to professional status in the period following the outbreak of the war when social work was to be integrated and functionally diversified within a male-dominated bureaucratic hierarchy. II
During the decade after 1914, the experiences of war, revolution, and inflation provided the decisive impetus for the political polarization of the German social welfare sector and its fundamental organizational restructuring in the early 1920s.15 The modern German social welfare system as it developed in this period, with its distinct organizational characteristics and its underlying political and religious implications, was the product of a three-way political conflict among the traditionally preeminent private confessional and humanitarian charity organizations, the emergent public welfare system, and the working class as the largest group of potential welfare clientele. In the amazingly brief period from the last years of the war until the mid-1920s, the social welfare sector recapitulated a development that had taken place in the political sphere over a fifty year period, notably the political mobilization of traditionally marginal social groups, the penetration of state authority into a sphere previously governed by private confessional and secular humanitarian values and interests, the development of organized interest groups in the social welfare sector, the administrative centralization and rationalization by the competing social welfare agencies, and finally the development of corporate institutions the purpose of which was to mediate political conflict that the political sphere proper had proved incapable of solving. The war years marked a turning point in the development of the social work profession in Germany. The social dislocation brought about by the war and scarce financial resources accelerated not only the prewar bourgeois charity reform movement but also the development of national public welfare organizations and state regulation of the welfare system. As material deprivation due to the war spread to an increasing number of social groups, the state regarded the implementation of a new form of standardized and qualitatively improved
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wartime welfare, which would be separate from the traditional poor relief, as a political necessity in order to maintain public morale and, more importantly, to prevent the decline in social status among the middle classes and the disruption of existing social relations.16 This rationalization of the social welfare system created an unprecedented demand for social work professionals capable of dealing with new organizational and legal problems of the modern social welfare system. Many social work schools had to shorten their training period in order to keep pace with the demand for workers and to modify teaching curricula in order to satisfy the immediate practical needs of public and private welfare agencies.17 Consequently, the social work profession began to attract the critical attention of the state, which attempted by means of state testing and licensing requirements to channel the development of the profession in accordance with its own needs, not necessarily those of the social workers themselves. Faced with increasing state intervention and the uncontrolled proliferation of new social work schools, the social work profession began to articulate its own self-understanding more consciously and to create organizations to represent its own interests. Under the leadership of Alice Salomon, the existing, fairly well-established schools came together in 1916 as a national association, the Konferenz der deutschen sozialen Frauenschulen, the aim of which was to guard against any diminution of the level of professional training18 by establishing minimum standards for the professional training among the member schools, thereby eliminating the less qualified training institutions from competition.19 The most immediate impetus behind the foundation of the Conference seems, however, to have been the Prussian government's attempt to alter the orientation of social work training, which conservative bureaucrats had long regarded as far too liberal. The Prussian Ministry of the Interior had already planned in 1916 to establish a separate system of schools that would compete with the existing schools and that would place heavy emphasis on vocational training and on social hygiene.20 Soon, however, this plan had to be modified because the Prussian Ministry of Culture and Education also insisted on emphasizing pedagogics in social work training. 21 The ordinance issued on September 10, 1918 was a compromise between the two ministries, but both of them demanded that female social workers should confine their role to those areas concerning "child, mother, and the family" and felt that "students should not be saturated with theories exceeding their comprehension and what their future occupation requires."22 The government and the leading social work schools differed fundamentally in their conception of female social work training, especially concerning the status of social workers within the bureaucratic structure of the social welfare system. Leading female educators and practitioners were eager to give their students a comprehensive theoretical foundation that would enable them to assume a role of autonomous female professionals equal and not subordinate to male physicians and bureaucrats. 23 However, those men immediately charged with supervising social workers (i.e., medical doctors and administrators of
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social welfare organizations) felt that the first thing to be avoided was "excessively" learned female social workers whose education would give them a feeling of independence that would lead them to ignore the bureaucratic hierarchy and to refuse to defer to the authority of their male superiors. The Prussian ministries had a more narrow definition of the "actual needs" of social workers than did the bourgeois feminists, and they felt that the area of competence of female social workers should be strictly limited to those areas, such as nursing and child care, in which their services were "indispensable." Consequently, they objected to the broader theoretical orientation of the existing social work schools. The leading members of the Conference objected to the standardized state testing of social work professionals because they believed that such testing was incapable of measuring those personal qualities upon which their conception of social work rested. Instead, they argued that an evaluation of the students as future social work professionals should be left to the schools themselves.24 The first two meetings of the Conference, to which both ministries sent delegates, were mainly occupied with the problem of redesigning teaching curricula in response to the threat that the Prussian social work schools would not be accredited if they did not comply with the planned ordinance.25 Even though the directors of the three oldest social work schools in Berlin had been consulted formally during the drafting of the ordinance, their views were virtually ignored by the ministries.26 The final version of the ordinance required a long period of preparatory training in both clinics and kindergartens, the purpose of which was to accustom the students to strict institutional rules and to train them in the specialized skills required of mere technical attendants. Also, the actual period of social work training was to be shortened and, even then, two thirds of the theoretical teaching was to be devoted to hygienic courses at the expense of general education in the social sciences. The revision of the ordinance in accordance with the wishes of the Conference had to await the collapse of the empire and the subsequent enfranchisement of women. The students of the social work seminar in Frankfurt took the initiative and petitioned the newly created Prussian Ministry of National Welfare in February 1919 for an alteration of the existing ordinance.27 Under these circumstances, the Conference found it "absolutely necessary to take a step in this matter"28 and also petitioned the Ministry of National Welfare. The ordinance was criticized as the "sediment of an outdated idea," which failed to value "change in women's role in society" by "intentionally ignoring a comprehensive education in general social sciences."29 The professional educators felt that the newly attained formal political equality would make it less difficult for female social workers to play the independent and responsible role that they envisioned for modern social workers. After a series of meetings between the Conference and the Ministry of Welfare and the renamed Ministry of Science, Culture and Education, a modified ordinance was issued in 1920 that implemented the Conference's program. Although some of these educators continued to object to state regulation, they recognized that it was unavoidable and were able to reach a compromise on favorable terms with the ministries. By the early
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1920s Prussian examination and licensing standards had also been adopted by most other German states, and the regional mobility of the profession had been secured by the agreement among the state governments guaranteeing the reciprocal recognition of social work licenses. Ill
To the extent that the successful advancement of professional interests depended on the degree of homogeneity within the profession concerning both training and working conditions, the foremost task of the social work profession was to develop a monopoly on fully trained professionals and to limit as much as possible the number of volunteer and poorly trained workers. This strategy of "advancing the level of the social work profession as a whole" for the sake of the "Standesinteressd' (interest of the profession) was crucial for the professional enhancement of both public esteem and the average salary level.30 Yet from its very inception, the social work profession had to overcome a great deal of resistance to its claim as the exclusive source of trained social workers. The reason lay largely in a common belief that modern social work evolved from a voluntary altruism rooted in human nature, which implied that everyone, regardless of his or her competence in social work, could adequately perform social work activities. Even the idea of demanding higher material rewards for services was seen as contradictory to the spirit of altruism. Social work with a service ethic at its heart should not, according to this line of reasoning, be evaluated by a "market price," which would be the "most evil sin against the holy spirit" of social work.31 In this respect, the main function of the professional social work associations was to organize the labor market along monopolistic lines while, on the other hand, attempting to establish a homogeneity within the profession by inculcating in their members a specific set of professional norms and ethics and by integrating altruistic service ideals into theBerufsethos (professional ethos). Since the social work profession was still in its infancy and encompassed many diverse fields, the importance of these professional values lay in their ability to give the disparate groups of social work professionals a strong feeling of collective identity and social status. Social work professional organizations in the full sense emerged during the First World War with the establishment of the Deutscher Verband der Sozialbeamtinnen and the Verein katholischer deutscher Sozialbeamtinnen, both of which excluded voluntary workers from their membership. Before the emergence of professional organizations, either the alumnae associations of the major training schools, the Deutscher Verband der Jugendgruppen und Gruppen fur soziale Hilfsarbeit, or more rarely, a union of white-collar workers had provided the framework through which social work professionals had been linked. Most important, practicing social workers did not at first feel any pressing need for professional associations since paid social work had not been traditionally considered as a primary source of income but rather as a means of
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meeting the subjective needs of those affluent bourgeois women who were satisfied with a token compensation for their work. When the outbreak of the war forced a large number of women to earn their living as social workers, the eschewal of material interests by voluntary workers due to their belief in the value of voluntary devotion to their work was attacked by self-conscious professionals as an empty and arrogant gesture by members of the leisured class.32 Accordingly, the tension and mistrust between voluntary workers and professionals was heightened during the war and the creation of professional associations reflected the self-consciousness of this second generation of social work professionals whose views on women's economic independence and their political role differed from those of the founding generation of social workers such as Salomon and Baumer. The developing social work profession also had to overcome the problem of the sudden influx of "inadequately" trained social workers into the market during the war years, which created a chaotic and highly heterogeneous mixture of both working conditions and the level of training of the new entrants into the profession. For example, according to a survey of late 1917, among 181 female social workers employed in greater Berlin, 44 percent had entered the market after the outbreak of the war; of these same 181, however, only 24.5 percent had received the full training in social work schools, 17.8 percent only preparatory practical training, and 34.4 percent no training whatsoever.33 Acting on the assumption that the poor working conditions of the profession were due to the high percentage of untrained social workers and to the lack of control over those entering the labor market, both the Conference and the professional associations worked together very closely to attain well-defined legal status regarding such issues as employment contracts, salary, vacation, and pensions. Worst of all, most female social workers employed in public welfare offices were not even integrated into the bureaucratic order and, instead, worked as salaried employees based on personal service contracts and suffered under the disadvantages of short periods of notice and no pension rights. According to a survey performed by the Zentralstelle fur Gemeindeamter der Frau at the end of the war, those female social workers fully trained in the soziale Frauenschulen received much lower salaries than low-ranking male officials with only an elementary school education. Also, while a female supervisor of an unemployment bureau was entitled only to the fifteenth salary grade, a male colleague of the same rank qualified for the seventh.34 With the end of the war, a new dimension of social conflict emerged in the labor market for social welfare professionals. Following demobilization and the 1918-19 revolution, female social workers had to face the possibility of being replaced by either demobilized soldiers of Social Democrats.35 As a result, social workers rushed to join trade unions or professional associations to protect their interests. For example, the membership of the Deutscher Verband der Sozialbeamtinnen grew from 603 in 1918 to 2,029 in 1920.36 In the period of popular " zeal for unionization," professional associations had to deal with a fundamental question regarding the organizational form best able to represent
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their interests. At first, the social work professional associations attempted to affiliate with either Preussischer Kommunal-Beamten-Verband or the Christian Trade Union in order to strengthen their power base. But the refusal of the professional associations to accept either the principle of class antagonism or the strike as a means of representing their interests blocked this path. The professional associations also tried to deter their members from joining unions by charging higher membership fees for those social workers who chose to belong to both a professional association and a trade union.37 After this failure, the fear of losing both existing and potential members to other trade unions led leaders of the profession to stress the "unsoundness" of trade unionism and of the principle of class conflict.38 These efforts to turn rank-and-file social work professionals away from the trade union movement ran parallel to the resurgence of their highly idealized professional ethos. The profession's "social obligation" should, they argued, supersede any "selfish" consideration of material interests and provide the basis for the "solidarity" between social welfare agencies and workers.39 In addition, since social work as a profession differed sharply from manual labor and unskilled clerical work, they repeatedly tried to justify the necessity of protecting politically "neutral" professional associations from mass organizations. The enhanced self-image of the profession with its emphasis on the peculiarity and the cultural mission of social work was above all intended to legitimate and safeguard the predominantly bourgeois character of the profession against political pressure from below during the revolutionary period.40 Even in the mid-1920s, the social work profession remained the domain of women from the higher social classes. Among 2,866 employees of public welfare offices surveyed, 67 percent had attended high school while only 19 percent had only an elementary school education; the ratio between high school graduates and elementary school graduates was even wider among licensed professionals, 73 percent to 13 percent.41 Since professional training in institutionalized school entailed a large investment in both time and money, girls from working-class families had traditionally been excluded from professional training. Most existing training schools had set high admissions requirements, which included a high school education and a license as either a nurse or a Kindergartnerin (or aJugendleiterin, youth leader). Moreover, the minimum three years of training in professional schools required a great financial sacrifice for less affluent families. Especially during the revolutionary period and the early 1920s, the Social Democratic plan for a modern democratic social welfare system posed an immediate threat to the profession's control over social welfare services. Based on their conviction that the ultimate cause of poverty lay in the nature of capitalism as a social system rather than in the moral inferiority of the poor, the Social Democrats attacked traditional charity as an "antiquarian evil" designed to consolidate the bourgeois social order.42 The socialist conception of social welfare called for the nationalization of social welfare and advocated both that social services should be a human right and that all individuals should
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have the right to participate in determining the structure of the social welfare system. The Social Democrats believed that the successful creation of a democratic social welfare state hinged on the mobilization of the public, especially the working class.43 As the statutes of the Social Democratic welfare organization, Workers' Welfare (founded in December 1919) show, this mobilization of the working class was viewed as a vital means to "maintain and uplift the selfconsciousness of the mass" by freeing those receiving social help from the influence of bourgeois social workers.44 The most immediate danger to the interests of the social work profession was the Social Democratic argument that social workers should possess a genuine understanding of the poor rather than a more formal scientific knowledge and that, therefore, they should be recruited from the working-class social workers who were firm in their socialism. This led to an increasing interest of Workers' Welfare in training Social Democratic social workers. For this reason, organized working-class women demanded a reform of social work training, which would make the social work profession accessible to the proletariat.45 Under pressure from the Social Democrats, the Reich Ministry of the Interior arranged, in cooperation with the three main trade unions and several state ministries, a special six-month training course for working-class women in the soziale Frauenschulen of Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich early in 1920.46 But despite a favorable evaluation of those students by faculty members, the Conference lobbied successfully, in "the interest of social welfare,"47 against a continuation of this program.
IV The organized representatives of the social work profession proclaimed its ostensible political neutrality and the irreconcilability of class politics and the social work profession. Instead of relying on unionization, the organized profession attempted to advance its interests by linking its role and function to the public interest. Especially in the critical years following Germany's defeat in the war, social work professionals emphasized their function of social reproduction as Volkserzieherin (people's teacher) and Volksmutter (people's mother).48 In this period, the main strategy of the organized social work profession was to lobby both governmental administrations and public and private welfare organizations for their ultimate goal of limiting the number of social work professionals (numerus clausus) and securing the predominance of fully qualified, licensed professionals.49 The professional associations united to form a loose Working Committee in 1920 with the aim of advancing their common interests through lobbying activity. The labor market for the social work profession improved in a relatively brief time. According to the statistics of the central placement office of the Working Committee, the percentage of totally
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untrained social workers decreased from 20 percent in 1920 to 4 percent in 1922, while the percentage of those who had been trained in professional social work schools increased from 8 percent to 41 percent in the same period.50 The results were much better in public welfare agencies than in the private sector. This alliance that the leaders of the profession sought with the organized social welfare agencies, however, revealed its limits as the latter involved themselves steadily in determining the training and working conditions for social workers. In 1921, the leading nationwide welfare agencies sponsored, for the first time, a conference to which not only agencies but also the Conference and professional associations sent delegates to discuss the problem of the reshaping of the social work training system. This conference was devoted primarily to the question of recruiting and training of supervisory personnel. Traditionally, social work administrative positions had been assigned to male career bureaucrats with little specialized knowledge of the social welfare field. This had been the main cause of friction between social work professionals and their administrative directors, and this conference was directly interested in the problem of career mobility for female professionals. Since existing accredited professional schools were exclusively for women, who in practice occupied middle-ranking posts as salaried professionals, there were two possible solutions to this problem: Either women's professional schools would have to be upgraded to enable women to undertake administrative responsibilities, or the social welfare discipline would have to be institutionalized as an independent branch of the social sciences and incorporated into university curricula. However, neither of these options was actually implemented. The consensus among the delegates of the welfare organizations was that senior administrative staff would have to be recruited from among those men who had been educated in law, medicine, or economics but who also had some knowledge of the social sciences. This made it clear that the various social welfare agencies expected the women's social work schools to educate women only for middle-ranking positions. A 1925 survey of public social workers in Prussia showed that the majority (77 percent) worked as salaried employees while only a small number (23 percent) became career public officials.51 The recommendation of the Prussian Ministry of National Welfare that female social workers should be paid the same as female elementary school teachers was not always followed by local administrations. The inability of those few schools under feminist influence to resist effectively the devaluation of the profession during the Weimar years was largely due to the overriding importance of the immediate political needs of the major private welfare agencies in determining the terms of the professionalization of social work. Because the major Weimar social welfare legislation explicitly demanded licensed social work professionals in both public welfare offices, the major private welfare agencies viewed control over the training of these social work professionals as the key to securing their influence over public welfare. This is the most important reason why the major private welfare organizations made such extensive efforts to gain control over the social work training schools. They all tried to train and place social workers who would be very
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responsive to their own "unique" values and conception of social welfare and who would fully utilize the opportunities for cooperation between public and private welfare in order best to promote the interests of the private agencies. More importantly, the significance of social work professionals for the organized private welfare lay in that the "value-freeness" of the social work profession—the argument of which was repeatedly directed in the 1920s at the welfare clientele themselves as well as the general public—could be easily adapted to fit the immediate desire of the private agencies to depoliticize the social welfare sector by fending off intervention by the state, the socialist welfare organizations, or the various self-help organizations of welfare clientele themselves. The increasing predominance of private over public welfare was furthered by the repeated economic crises, which made it impossible for the state alone to undertake all the necessary welfare activities. Also, professional schools felt themselves increasingly dependent on the public and private social welfare agencies.52 First, the national fiscal crisis forced welfare organizations to cut their personnel, and this issue was made more sensitive by the saturation of the social work labor market. This greatly increased the influence that agencies, as future employers, could exercise over the shape of the profession as a whole. Second, as more professional schools encountered financial difficulties, they grew increasingly dependent on social welfare agencies and the government for financial assistance. But this financial support was only gained at the cost of giving both public and private agencies substantial influence over their curricula. The labor market for social workers had begun to deteriorate since the summer of 1923.53 While in 1922 there had been 1.2 job openings for every applicant, in 1924 the job market became even tighter with only 1 opening for every 2 applicants. In 1924 only 39 percent of the applicants were able to find positions in social work fields, and a considerable number of new graduates of professional schools were forced to take lower status jobs outside the social work profession. Even after the relative stabilization of the German economy, the social work market was faced with a crisis situation. In the two-year period between 1927 and 1929, the number of professional school graduates increased by 800 percent while the number of positions available actually decreased by 25 percent.54 The increasing instability of the market was also accompanied by a devaluation of rank-and-file professionals. While fully trained professionals remained relatively unaffected by the guidelines governing the cutback of personnel, they became heavily overburdened with additional duties resulting from the dismissal of many social workers.55 After the revolution, the leaders of the social work profession tried vigorously to insulate the social work profession from the Social Democratic criticism of its "bourgeois" character, and its idealized vision was reaffirmed during the postwar period of political and social ferment through a more intensified professional ethos that repeatedly stressed the value-neutrality of the profession. However, this new professional ethos came increasingly into contradiction
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with the objective circumstances of the profession brought about by the rationalization of the social welfare system during the Weimar Republic. The professional associations and their Working Committee proved incapable of halting the deterioration of labor and working conditions, negotiating a favorable wage scale, or advancing social workers to the status of Beamten. Unable to reach these goals by themselves, in the late 1920s the social work professional organizations instead began to affiliate with the Bund der Berufsorganisationen des sozialen Dienstes in which were also represented such typically female occupations as kindergarten teachers, youth workers, and mid wives.56 By the end of the Weimar Republic, many self-conscious social workers became aware of the contradiction between their dual role as professionals on the one hand and as bureaucrats or as salaried employees on the other. Reflection on their situation by many social workers was further promoted in the late 1920s as the profession began to attract members of the proletariat youth movement. Social work professionals were increasingly forced to work within a centralized and bureaucratic social welfare sector and were deprived of that freedom of action that was essential to the idealized professional ethos so successfully inculcated in students by the professional training schools. Moreover, job security for social workers became increasingly uncertain as the demand for professional social workers in the German social welfare state became progressively dependent on the economic conjuncture of the late 1920s. Welfare recipients themselves also became very critical of the growing discrepancy between the professional ethos of individualized help on the basis of personal contact and bureaucratic social work practices based on stricter guidelines as to what constituted need. Quite often social welfare administrators had to deal with physical or verbal assaults from welfare recipients in public welfare offices, and the former were advised to keep clubs handy in the office.57 In one city a man wielding a shoemaker's hammer in his hand chased a social worker away from his house yelling "Get out of here with your hypocritical face, you and your help. You're a bunch of liars. You all ought to be strung up."58 Because of its mixture of bureaucratic and professional characteristics, the social work profession has often been categorized as a "semiprofession." However, this term tends to presuppose the validity of the ideal/typical model of professionalization to which the so-called established professions correspond most closely.59 While these classical professions had completed the "professional project" before industrialization and the emergence of both an organized working class and the modern social welfare state, the history of the social work profession in Germany is peculiar in that during the period of the revolution and the Weimar Republic, the social work profession, which had been strongly influenced by the values and the political demands of the bourgeois feminist movement, found itself increasingly caught between the organized working class with its own conception of the role of social welfare in an industrial society and the demands of the centralized, bureaucratic, and male-dominated organized public and private welfare agencies.60 The specific form of the German social welfare system and of the social work profession were determined by the changing relation of state and society
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and the balance of national political power in the crucial period of the war, revolution, and inflation. Within the political constellation after the First World War—which only accelerated the long-term crisis of the authoritarian social structure—bourgeois women social workers found their highly idealized understanding of social work as a unique calling for women of higher social origin challenged by the organized working class who criticized the condescending, tutelary pretensions of bourgeois social workers. Especially, social workers of working-class origin criticized the existing professional training system as an obstacle to working-class participation in social welfare activities, and they argued that their very working-class origin and their ability to share the everyday experiences of the poor better qualified them as social workers than did the professional ideals of bourgeois women social workers. The challenge from below was coupled with an attack from above by conservative male bureaucrats and the private social welfare organizations that resisted the demands of the bourgeois feminists for extended political rights and administrative responsibilities and that attempted to channel the development of the social work profession to meet their own immediate needs. This essay has dealt with the historical evolution of the German social work profession within the context of the politics of welfare reform during the later war years and the Weimar Republic. It was partly an attempt to examine how the opportunities for women to advance their political and economic demands were shaped by social relations and the changing balance of national political power. The reshaping of the German social welfare system after the end of the war was itself characterized by a three-way conflict among private welfare organizations themselves, between the socialist social welfare organization and the confessional and humanitarian private welfare organizations as a whole, and between the state and the private welfare organizations. In the extremely desperate and volatile situation of postwar Germany, neither the confessional organizations, nor the socialists, nor public welfare were willing to compromise their own absolute religious or political values, and this conflict among church, society, and the state within the social welfare sector was very quickly displaced into the political sphere and elevated to the level of a fundamental political question. In the end, the major private welfare organizations were forced to cooperate with the socialists and with public welfare offices only through national social welfare legislation that threatened to deprive the private organizations of all initiative in the social welfare sector. The crisis of the private welfare sector precipitated by its politicization during and immediately following the war gradually led to the recorporatization of the social welfare sector through the creation of umbrella organizations, the so-called Spitzenverbande, which enabled the organized private welfare agencies—and especially the confessional ones— to assert more effectively their claim that their orientation toward transcendent, absolute values made them into the legitimate representatives of the general interests of the poor themselves and of society as a whole, in contrast to those groups—primarily the socialist Workers' Welfare—which represented only particular political interests. The rightward shift in the balance of national political power in the
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mid-1920s allowed the private welfare agencies to reach an accommodation with the state and to institutionalize in the Weimar social welfare legislation both the primacy of private over public welfare and an individualized, moralizing approach to welfare services that the confessional and interconfessional agencies regarded as the method best suited for evaluating the moral responsibility and the "merit" of the indigent individual, which they felt to be the primary criterion for the distribution of relief. The foundation for this neocorporatist response to political conflict in the social welfare sector was provided by the legal recognition of the semipublic status of the Spitzenverbande, which made them into subsidized agents of the state but with the administrative autonomy that allowed them to dispense relief in accordance with their own religious and political values and at the expense of certain social groups. More importantly, the social work profession itself provided the cornerstone for this neocorporatist cooperation between the state and the private welfare sector. Objecting to the socialists' demand for the direct representation of welfare clients themselves and of the various self-help organizations in the decision-making process of the social welfare system, the major private welfare organizations saw in the cultivation of professional social workers who possessed a specialized body of knowledge and who share their political and moral values yet another way of ensuring the depoliticization of the social welfare sector. Trained in social work schools controlled directly and indirectly by the major private welfare organizations but employed mostly in public welfare offices, the cadre of professional social workers played an important role in mediating the previously insurmountable conflict of interests between the private confessional and humanitarian charity organizations and the state in the welfare sector, and in overcoming the greatest fear of the major private charity organizations that public welfare, by distributing aid in a mechanical, uniform manner, would undermine the moral fiber of the indigent individual. This desire to depoliticize the social welfare sector was the fundamental problem that accelerated the transformation of social work from the voluntary activity that had motivated the first generation of bourgeois, feminist social workers before the war into a full-time, paid profession in the 1920s. However, the inability or unwillingness of the leading social work professionals—who had been deeply influenced by moderate bourgeois feminism and its idealized, nonpolitical conception of social work—prevented them from cooperating with Social Democratic social workers. This made both groups unable to resist effectively the steady deterioration of their working conditions and the increasing circumscription of their sphere of autonomous activity as the major social welfare attempted to rationalize and bureaucratize their organization and operation in the 1920s. Notes 1. K. Truhel, Sozialbeamte (Sagen, 1934), p. 4. 2. For an overview of the historical development of Armenpflege, see W. Roscher,
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System der Armenpflege und Armenpolitik (Stuttgart, 1894), and E. Munsterberg, Die Armenpflege (Berlin, 1897). 3. For more on workers' criticism of the prewar charity system, see M. Jacobsohn, Die Arbeiter in der offentlichen Armenpflege (Leipzig, 1911). 4. For detailed statistical information, see Jacobsohn, Arbeiter, pp. 52-60. 5. Quoted in P. Chuchul, Die Heranziehung von Frauen zur offejitlichen Armenpflege (Leipzig, 1896), p. 42. 6. A. Salomon, Soziale Frauenbildung (Berlin, 1908), p. 50. 7. H. Radomski, Die Frau in der offentlichen Armenfiirsorge (Berlin, 1917), p. 25f. For a feminist critique of the poor guardians' mishandling of the post, see A. Salomon, Soziale Frauenpflichten (Berlin, 1902), chap. 2. 8. D. Hirschfeld, "Die Mitwirkung der Frauen in der Armen- und Wohlfahrtspflege in Deutschland," speech given at the International Congress of Public and Private Charity, Copenhagen, 1910, p. 6ff. 9. For national debates on the recruitment of middle-class women for the Armenpflege service, see Brinkmann and Zimmermann, Ehrenamtliche und berufsamtliche Tatigkeit in der stddtischen Armenpflege (Leipzig, 1894); see also A. Levy und H. von Frankenberg, Die berufliche undfachlicheAusbildung in der Armenpflege (Leipzig, 1907). 10. For the patriarchal conception of women among male poor guardians, see Weibliche Hulfskrdfte in der Wohlfahrtspflege. Schriften der Centralstelle fur ArbeiterWohlfahrtseinrichtungen, no. 10 (Berlin, 1896) and Chuchul, Heranziehung. 11. According to a list of graduates of the school shown in its 1911 prospectus. 12. Salomon, Frauenbildung, p. 102. 13. For more detail on the emergence and the subsequent disintegration of radical feminism in Germany, see R. Evans, The Feminists (London, 1977), pp. 106-12, 199— 203. 14. For more on the ideas of moderate bourgeois feminism, see A. von ZahnHarnack, 80 Jahre Frauenbewegung, 1849-1928 (Berlin 1938). 15. For contemporary studies of the history of the modern German welfare system, see E. Wex, Die Entwicklung der sozialen Fiirsorge in Deutschland (Berlin, 1929), and H. Wolfram, Vom Armenwesen zmn heutigen Fursorgewesen (Greifswald, 1930). 16. The government issued numerous regulations to ensure that wartime welfare services would be qualitatively superior to and administratively separate from the traditional poor relief in view of the political and military interests at stake. 17. Thirteen new social work schools were established between 1916 and 1918, many of which were under the control of local government and organized private welfare agencies. 18. At its first meeting on Jan. 24, 1917, members passed a resolution warning both public and government against the proliferation of social work schools. Stadtarchiv Frankfurt am Main (StAF) Magistral: Vereine 6, no 4. 19. Archive of the Fachhochschule fiir Sozialarbeit und Sozialpadagogik in Berlin (AFHSS): a letter sent to Salomon from the director of the Frauenseminar fiir Soziale Berufsarbeit in Frankfurt am Main, June 14, 1917. 20. Historisches Archiv der Stadt Koln (HASK): compartment 535, no. 5. The minutes of the meeting among several important government officials on Sept. 25, 1916 concerning a plan for new social work schools and state certification. 21. StAF: Vereine 6, no. 3. Minutes of the Dec. 13, 1919 conference concerning the alteration of the regulations on state social work examinations. 22. HASK, 535/6, discussion of Oct. 13, 1916. The quotation comes from Ministerial Director Kirchner.
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23. StAF: Vereine 6, no 3. Minutes of the December 13, 1919 meeting concerning the alteration of the regulations on state social work examinations. 24. For more on the conference's views on the question of state licensing, see StAF, Vereine 6, no. 4: a petition of the Deutscher Verein fur Armenpflege und Wohltatigkeit; StAF, Vereine 6, no. 3: Minutes of Dec. 13, 1919. 25. Stadtarchiv Miinchen (StAM), school board 3516; minutes of the conference meeting on Oct. 27, 1917. This was the main reason why the conference established a special committee to examine hygienic curricula as demanded by the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. 26. A. Salomon, Die Begrunderin des sozialen Frauenberufs in Deutschland: SDV (Cologne, 1958), p. 78ff. 27. StAF: Vereine 6, no. 3. 28. StAF: Vereine 6, no. 4, a letter of Feb. 17, 1919 from the president of the Conference (Salomon) to its members. 29. Ibid., a draft of the April 17, 1919 petition. 30. G. Israel, "DieSozialbeamtin als Gliedder Volksgemeinschaft,"Dj'eFra« 25 (Dec. 1917): 86. 31. L. Koepp, "Ehrenamtliche und soziale Berufsarbeit," Die Frau 23 (May 1916). 32. The public call for the creation of a social work professional association was helped along through two influential essays that appeared in 1916: H. Wachenheim, "Die Berufsorganisation der sozialen Hilfsarbeiterin," Blatter fur soziale Arbeit 8 (April 1, 1916); and G. Israel, "Berufliche Organisation und soziale Hilfsarbeit," Die Frauenfrage 18 (April 16, 1916). 33. H. Wachenheim, "DieLage der Gross-Berliner Sozialbeamtinnen,"Die Fraw 26 (Dec., 1918): 82ff. 34. E. Altmann-Gottheiner, "Ausbildungand Anstellungs-verhaltnissederKommunalbeamtinnen," Die Frau 25 (April 1918). 35. A. Beerensson, "Weg und Ziel," Die Sozialbeamtin 1 (Oct., 1919). 36. Deutscher Verband der Sozialbeamtinnen (ed.), 10 Jahre soziale Berufsarbeit (Berlin, 1926), p. 15. 3 7. Geschichte und Probleme der Berufsbewegung katholischer deutscher Sozialbeamtinnen, Verein katholischer deutscher Sozialbeamtinnen (ed.) (Cologne, 1930), pp. 3738. 38. Die Sozialbeamtin, the main professional social work journal, devoted its earlier issues to the organizational question. 39. H. Turnau, "Die Schwierigkeiten in der Organisation der Sozialbeamtinnen, " Die Sozialbeamtin 1, no. 2 (Dec. 1919); "Berufsarbeit und offentliches Leben," Die Sozialbeamtin 1, no. 3 (Feb., 1920). 40. See, for example, A. Salomon, "Soziale Arbeit und Sozialismus," Die Frau 26 (June 1920). The Social Democrats accused the Prussian social welfare training ordinance of Oct. 1920 of favoring only those candidates of higher social class by establishing substantial financial requirements that members of the working class were not able to satisfy. 41. M. Heynacher,DieBerufslagederFursorgerinnen (Karlsruhe, 1920), pp. 66-69. 42. For the socialist concept of modern social welfare, see "Revolution und Armenpflege," Volksstimme Chemnitz, Nov. 3, 1919; M. Todenhage, "Partei und Wohlfahrtsausschiisse," Vonvdrts, Sept. 16, 1921; Bericht fiber die Frauenkonferenz der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands in Kassel on Oct. 9-10, 1920 (Berlin, 1920); I Caspari, "Fremde Wohltat—eigene Wiirde," Vorwdrts, Nov. 14, 1920.
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43. The most influential theoretical analysis of social welfare work by the Social Democrats was H. Simon, Aufgaben undZiele der neuzeitlichen Wohlfahrtspflege (Stuttgart, 1922). 44. For the statutes of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt organization, see H. Wachenheim, "Ausbildung zur Wohlfahrtspflege," Die NeueZeit 39, no. 13 (June 24, 1920): 303. 45. For more, see the resolution of the 1921 SPD conference in Gorlitz. 46. Bay. Hauptstaatsarchiv, MK 42943, "Course for the development of professional work in the social welfare for girls and women from the working class." Nov. 28, 1919. 47. Archiv des Deutschen Caritasverbandes (AdCV), DK 142/31, the minutes of the Conference meeting on Oct. 24, 1921. 48. See, for example, J. Joos, "Unser Weg zum Volke," Mitteilungen des Vereins katholischer Sozialbeamtinnen Deutschlands 3, no. 1-2 (Jan.-Feb. 1919); H. Weber, "Gedankenzur Winterarbeit," ibid., 3, no. 9-10 (Sept.-Oct. 1919). 49. AdCV, DK 142-F31, the minutes of the Conference meeting on Oct. 24, 1921. The conference and the Working Committee of the Professional Associations struggled to standardize the level of pay in accordance with three categories of training: the untrained, those with training alone, and those with both training and license. 50. Soziale Berufsarbeit regularly reported the changing tendencies of the social work job market. 51. Heynacher, Berufslage, p. 36. 52. In the mid-1920s, for example, the Catholic Caritasverband succeeded in creating its "organic union," which encompassed the professional schools and associations of Catholic social workers. The attempts by the latter to safeguard their autonomy and feminist orientation were unsuccessful. AdCV, DK 142/2a, correspondence of Nov. 26, 1923, Dec. 19, 1923, and Jan. 16, 1924. 53. For the regulations reducing the number of employees in the social work profession and a report on the 1923 market situation, see Soziale Berufsarbeit 4 (1924). 54. These statistics are taken from Soziale Berufsarbeit for the period. 55. Those either younger or older than the median age group (twenty-four to forty) found it especially difficult to find or retain employment. 56. See Geschichte und Probleme der Berufsbewegung katholischer deutscher Sozialbeamtinnen (Cologne, 1930); 25 Jahre Sozialer Frauenberufsverband, 1903-1928 (n.d.). 57. Tmhel,Sozialbeamte, pp. 108-9. 58. Ibid., pp. 112-3. 59. For a more theoretical discussion, see Thomas Oik, Abschied vom Experten (Weinheim, 1986). 60. For discussions on recent developments in the profession see S. Miiller and H.-U. Otto, eds., Sozialarbeit als Sozialbiirokratie? Zur Neuorganisation sozialer Dienste (Neuwied, 1980); H.-U. Otto and K. Utermann, eds., Sozialarbeit als Beruf: Aufdem Weg zur Professionalisierung? (Munich, 1973).
Conflict Within the Legal Profession: Simultaneous Admission and the German Bar, 1903-1927 KENNETH F. LEDFORD
In recent years, historians of Germany have turned increasingly toward a study of the professions as a means of understanding the Burgertum (middle class), especially the BUdungsbiirgertwn (educated middle class), as a whole. Interest in the professions and professionalization has produced a series of studies treating specific occupational groups and illustrating particular aspects of the professionalization process.1 The purpose of this essay is to contribute to the emerging concrete historical investigation of the professions in Germany by examining a structural fissure within the German legal profession, that is, a fundamental conflict of interests between district court lawyers and superior court lawyers, that occurred especially between 1903 and 1927. Friction between those two groups, climaxing in the 1920s, contributed to a paralysis and decay in the influence of the national bar association (Deutscher Anwaltverein; DAV), and hence to a failure or shortcoming of the "professional project" of German lawyers.2 Because of the greater involvement of the state in the professions, many sociologists have minimized the professionalization process in Germany in comparison to England and the United States.3 Magali Sarfatti Larson contends that the Prussian-German model of the reform of the legal profession in the nineteenth century is closer to that of the civil service than to the AngloAmerican free professions.4 Hannes Siegrist offers a corrective to this view, concluding that the "professionalization" from above of lawyers in Germany resulted in a mixture of the civil servant model and both traditional and modern forms of professions.5 Konrad Jarausch has argued, however, that lawyers are among the free professions in Germany that come the closest to the AngloAmerican pattern of professionalization.6 Despite the high level of state involvement with the private bar in Germany, lawyers possessed substantial autonomy to shape the organization of their profession, lending support to 252
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Jarausch's position. How well they took advantage of that organizational autonomy to advance their professional project is the subject of this essay. Larson has proposed two methods for understanding professionalization: as a process of organization of a market for services and as a process of collective social mobility. Both of these approaches, but especially the latter, emphasize the degree of organization of the profession, the success of which determines the "collective credit rating" of the group with respect to both the general public and other social actors such as the state. The professional association of a mature modern profession displays both a division of the powers of professional governance among various groups of practitioners and also the establishment of a hierarchy of power and prestige that all practitioners recognize and generally accept. The successful professional association, then, is a "stable coalition," the organizational basis of which is not subject to challenge by insurgents, because they lack the power to form effective rival associations.7 Larson's analysis focuses the attention of the researcher on the unity of a profession, particularly on the power and influence of the professional association, as a key indicator of the relative success or failure of the professional project. In the development of the German legal profession, the necessary unity of professional organization appeared to have been created when the new framework for the practice of law became effective in 1879. Indeed, in the first years after 1879, the DAV functioned as a "stable coalition" of lawyers, containing conflict and succeeding in retaining the allegiance of lawyers to a unified profession. The new legal constitution of the bar, however, contained a fundamental structural flaw, and increasingly the DAV proved unable to contain or mediate conflict between constituent groups of lawyers. As a result, district and superior court lawyers formed rival associations as weapons for their conflict, circumventing the influence and authority of the DAV. The outcome of this struggle was a blow to the professional autonomy of lawyers, for the bar presented itself to the outside world as fraught with warring factions, with the emasculated DAV reduced to irrelevancy. Whether the professional project of lawyers in Germany was never "mature," only seemingly so before 1905, or whether a process of deprofessionalization occurred during the 1920s, the disunity of the bar weakened its influence with both the government and the public, and contributed to a feeling of beleaguerment among lawyers as economic conditions worsened. On October 1, 1879, four new laws (the Imperial Justice Laws of 1877-79) became effective, which created a wholly new legal framework for the private practice of law in Germany. The Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (Court Constitution Law; GVG) unified the judicial system. It established four levels of courts: district courts with exclusive initial jurisdiction in civil cases for amounts up to three hundred marks (§ 12); superior courts with exclusive initial jurisdiction for larger sums and appellate jurisdiction for most cases from the district courts (§§ 70, 71); courts of appeal with appellate jurisdiction for cases from superior courts (§ 123); and an Imperial Supreme Court at Leipzig with appellate Jurisdiction for cases from the courts of appeal.8 The Rechtsanwaltsordnung
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(Lawyer Code; RAO) similarly unified the legal profession. It abolished the former bifurcation into Advokatur (university-trained lawyers who advised clients and prepared cases) an&Prokuratur (practically trained practitioners with a monopoly of courtroom representation). Any person qualified to serve as judge possessed a right to admission to the bar in the federal state in which he had passed the second bar examination (§§ 1, 4).9 Free entry into the bar was one basic principle of the RAO; localization was the other. Lawyers were admitted to only one court and had to reside within the jurisdiction (§§ 8, 18). Most observers viewed localization as the necessary concomitant of one of the basic principles of civil procedure, mandatory representation by a lawyer (Anwaltszwang), which prevailed only at collegial courts (i.e., superior courts and courts of appeal) (§ 74). Lawyers traded freedom of movement for this partial monopoly of representation, because Anwaltszwang did not apply at district courts.10 The law excluded district court lawyers from trial representation in civil cases before superior courts. Similarly, it excluded superior court lawyers from appearing before the courts of appeals. The statutes thus created three distinct groups of lawyers with competing economic interests, one at each level of court. A superior court lawyer could appear in any district court in the country and compete with district court lawyers for clients, but a district court lawyer could not represent even regular clients on appeal before the superior court. Conversely, district court lawyers could not compete with superior court lawyers for cases within the initial jurisdiction of the superior courts. They thereby lost the more valuable cases (amounts in controversy over three hundred marks) of their regular clients to superior court lawyers.11 In addition to competition from superior court lawyers, district court lawyers faced competition from non-legally trained "legal counselors" (Rechtskonsulenten) or "trial agents" (Prozessagenten). Although the economic competition was no doubt real, the greater grievance of district court lawyers involved status. They felt professionally demeaned and degraded by being forced to compete with and argue against legal advocates of much lower social origin and educational background than themselves. District court lawyers feared that the public would fail to distinguish carefully between them and the Rechtskonsulenten and would forget that district court lawyers had the same educational background as superior court lawyers and were to be afforded the same degree of respect.12 The RAO permitted district court lawyers to apply for admission before the superior court for the district in which they lived, while retaining their admissions and residences at their district courts. This admission before both district and superior courts while living in the district court town was a status called "simultaneous admission" (Simultanzulassung). The decision to grant the application for simultaneous admission lay in the sole discretion of the justice ministry of the federal state (RAO § 3). District court lawyers possessed a mandatory claim to simultaneous admission only when the court of appeal and the executive board of the local lawyers' chamber (Anwaltskammer) unanimously agreed that such was in the interests of the administration of justice (RAO
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§ 9).13 Different states pursued differing policies regarding simultaneous admission; while many states, such as Saxony, Baden, and Wurttemberg, routinely granted permission for simultaneous admission, the justice ministries of the two largest states, Prussia and Bavaria, routinely refused it.14 Thus the law created a fault line through the apparently unified legal profession. It permitted superior court lawyers to cultivate district court practices if they so desired, entering into direct competition with district court lawyers. It forbade district court lawyers from representing any party, even regular clients, before superior courts. Soon after the turn of the century, frictions and tensions between these two groups of lawyers began to emerge. Little friction arose between district court and superior court lawyers in the first years after the legal reforms, for the following three reasons. First, the transitional provisions of the RAO granted any lawyer already in private practice simultaneous admission to the superior court in the district of residence so long as the application was made within three months after October 1, 1879 (§ 107). Thereafter, the decision whether to grant applications for simultaneous admission lay with the discretion of the various justice ministries. The RAO thereby initially created a class of simultaneously admitted lawyers, but it was fated to die out if justice ministries exercised their discretion restrictively (and it did in fact die out in Prussia). Second, few lawyers practiced solely before district courts. Because of the fear of stimulating trivial and unnecessary litigation, it had been the policy of many state governments before 1879 to concentrate lawyers at the superior courts. The result was that a very high proportion of district courts had no trained lawyer admitted before them. 15 On January 1, 1880,ofthe l,910district courts in the empire, only 289 were served by a lawyer. Only 165 lawyers, of a total of 4,091 in all of Germany, were admitted solely before a district court. 16 District court lawyers, therefore, were a tiny group at first, with no distinct corporate voice. A third reason for a lack of friction between district court and superior court lawyers was the practice of dividing fees in superior court cases. In a normal case, the fee tariff granted a larger fee to the superior court lawyer as plenipotentiary than to a district court lawyer as correspondent. Superior court lawyers, in return for a steady stream of referrals, agreed to an equal division of the total fee. Some superior court lawyers, however, disputed the practice and argued that fee splitting violated professional ethics by underbidding. A decision of the Supreme Disciplinary Panel for Lawyers (Ehrengerichtshof) in 1888 ruled that fee splitting in fact constituted unethical underbidding on the part of the superior court lawyer. Although fee splitting persisted, the official ethical position of the bar remained that it was impermissible.17 The expanding German economy after 1879 created a rapidly growing demand for legal services, with the following two results. First, the number of lawyers grew rapidly in absolute terms. Much of this growth only met the demand that had gone unsatisfied under the former system of numerus clausus (admission restriction), but much of it was also a response to expanding opportunity. Concern soon arose about possible overcrowding of the profes-
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sion, and the long struggle over the issue of limitations on admission began. Second, lawyers from this expanding pool increasingly began to seek admission before district courts. Whereas fewer than 10 percent of district courts in the empire had a lawyer admitted before them in 18 80, almost 85 percent had one by 1915 (165 of 1,910; 1,617 of 1,953, respectively). Perhaps even more dramatic was the shift in proportion between the superior and district court bars. In 1891, the first year in which reliable figures are available, the ratio of superior to district court lawyers was more than three to one. By 1915, it was barely two to one. While the number of members of the bar grew from4,091 in 1880 to 13,051 in 1915, the number of members of the district court bar grew more rapidly, from 165 to 3,123.18 District court lawyers therefore emerged as a significant group for the first time after 1879. After the turn of the century, they began to assert themselves in the organs and associations of the legal profession. They began a struggle for status, income, and power within the profession that culminated with the legislative adoption of mandatory simultaneous admission in 1927. At about the turn of the century, concern began to grow about the position of district court lawyers. Although Prussia promoted the settlement of lawyers in small district court towns by early conferral of the notarial upon them, many observers feared that a combination of gradual inflation, the prohibition of fee splitting, and competition from Rechtskonsulenten would cause a migration of lawyers from district courts to collegial courts.19 District court lawyers expressed their resentment at the inequity of a system of admission that barred them from representing their regular clients before superior courts while permitting superior court lawyers to compete with them for cases at their district courts. They began to agitate within the DAV for reform and succeeded in placing the topic "How can the position of lawyers admitted before the district courts be strengthened?" on the agenda for the Sixteenth Lawyers' Convention in Strassburg in 1903. Discussion on that question was, however, postponed until the next convention in 1905. Articles in the Juristische Wochenschrift in 1903-5 established both the specific arguments and the rhetorical tone of the debate, which lasted until 1927. A district court lawyer named Bamberger, from Aschersleben in Prussia, published in 1903 the position paper that he would have presented at Strassburg. District court lawyers, he argued, appeared to the public to be second-class lawyers. Whereas lawyers at collegial courts had Anwaltszwang, district court lawyers not only had no Anwaltszwang but also had to contend with competition from all of the 7,500 lawyers in the empire, from litigants representing themselves, and from every Rechtskonsulent that the court saw fit to admit. Moreover, the law limited the jurisdiction of district courts to petty cases (Bagatellsachen). This slighted position necessarily diminished the prestige of district court lawyers. Bamberger argued that this serious problem justified reform, regardless of any consequent reduction in the income of superior court lawyers. The key grievance was the injury to prestige; on behalf of district court lawyers, he disclaimed any interest in increasing their incomes. Bamberger
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recommended two means of strengthening their position; first and most important, simultaneous admission should become a matter of right, and second, the jurisdictional amount for district courts should be increased from three hundred to five hundred marks.20 Bamberger closed his article by proposing that district court lawyers resort to self-help by demanding representation on the executive boards of the lawyers' chambers in proportion to their share of the total bar. District court lawyers distrusted these bodies, believing them to be dominated by collegial court lawyers who used their majority to advance their own interests.21 A superior court lawyer, Hans Stolzle of Kempten in Bavaria, quickly responded. Setting a pattern that spokesmen for superior court lawyers thereafter consistently followed, he treated the issue solely as one of economics. While it was true that district lawyers enjoyed no statutory Anwaltszwang, it was indisputable that they usually enjoyed a de facto monopoly; in fact, the increasing number of district court lawyers was driving superior court lawyers out of the district court practice. Moreover, the RAO limited superior court lawyers to one court as well, and they too had to relinquish their clients to other lawyers when their cases went up on appeal. Because the number of lawyers in each superior court town had grown quite rapidly, they faced far stiffer competition. Furthermore, living was cheaper in the small district court towns. If district court lawyers considered it demeaning to compete with or argue against lay people and Rechtskonsulenten, Stolzle noted that their lot was selfchosen. He agreed that the admission of Rechtskonsulenten was an affront to the prestige of the entire legal profession, not just district court lawyers; the remedy for that was to eliminate the Rechtskonsulenten. Stolzle saved his harshest words for the proposal to broaden the jurisdiction of district courts. To raise the limit to 1,000 marks (as some district court lawyers desired) would mean nothing less than the annihilation of the superior court bar; such a proposal was simply not discussable.22 In 1904 and 1905, the pages of the Juristische Wochenschrift were filled with the debate.23 District court lawyers invoked the public interest, arguing that simultaneous admission would broaden the public's choice of lawyers for superior court cases, lower the cost of trying cases, and fulfill the "right" of the public to have a lawyer in their hometown who could handle all of their legal matters at the trial court level. Furthermore, it would eliminate the danger of reintroducing the old system of Prokuratur and Advokatur by an indirect means, with district court lawyers preparing cases for superior court lawyers, who then had the exclusive right to appear before the court and plead them.24 From the very beginning, the tone of the debate was harsh, hostile, and accusatory. Leaders of the district court bar already threatened an organizational split within the practicing bar if they did not soon achieve their goal of simultaneous admission.25 The heated tone of debate made the crucial nature of the question of simultaneous admission clear when the Seventeenth Lawyers' Convention convened in Hanover on September 13, 1905, to debate the question: "The situation of lawyers admitted only before a district court and its improvement. "26
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At this convention, the great champion of the cause of district court lawyers, Eduard Rose of Harburg, delivered the keynote address. His argument was calm, but he clearly articulated the underlying threat of the district court lawyers. The bar as a whole had to accede to their demands "in order to nip in the bud a schism within the bar, which is only distantly possible at this time."27 What was at stake was purely a question of status (eine reine Standesfrage). It was simply unjust and inequitable that a district court lawyer, who had exactly the same secondary education and who had had to apply the same diligence and pay the same costs for a legal education as a collegial court lawyer, should be excluded from superior court cases and confined in his sphere of professional activity merely because he had been admitted to a district court. "Where the duties are the same, the rights should also be the same."28 One by one, Rose answered the objections to simultaneous admission. He argued that superior court lawyers had often asserted but never proved that simultaneous admission would result in significant economic damage to them. The improved position of district court lawyers could lessen the overcrowding of the superior court bars by drawing lawyers away to district court towns. Ultimately, however, the material interests of superior court lawyers could never be decisive but would have to yield to the ideal interests of district court lawyers in status, prestige, and equality with collegial court lawyers. Simultaneous admission, Rose argued, was the only effective remedy for the degraded position of district court lawyers. Raising the jurisdictional competence of district courts would not address the issue of status and prestige; winning election to the executive boards of lawyers' chambers was merely a tiny step on the way to the goal of equality with collegial court lawyers. He rejected the suggestion that superior court lawyers be excluded from district court practice, thereby freeing district court lawyers from their competition. Such a solution was the opposite of what district court lawyers wanted; they wanted instead to eliminate the barriers that held them in the position of second-class lawyers.29 Rose's address provoked a short and sharp response from a superior court lawyer. Siegfried Krimke, who practiced at the small superior court in Verden, not far from Harburg, dismissed the arguments concerning prestige; every lawyer, like every person, has the social position that he makes for himself. He articulated the standard retort of superior court lawyers to the aspirations of district court lawyers: "Gentlemen, just as the entire social question is essentially no purely ideal question, we are also dealing here with a pure question of money."30 If simultaneous admission were introduced, then superior court lawyers at small superior courts would suffer great economic hardship. The interests of superior court lawyers were no less important than those of district court lawyers, and the former should not be injured in order to rectify the hardships of the latter. Unconvinced by Krimke's arguments, the Seventeenth Lawyers' Convention, with only a few dissenting votes, endorsed simultaneous admission and charged the executive committee of the DAV with the task of lobbying the "legislative bodies" of the empire to adopt the necessary amendment to § 9 of
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the RAO.31 The Eighteenth Lawyers' Convention in Mannheim in 1907 examined proposed reforms of the Imperial Justice Laws of 1877-79, and in the course of its discussion again addressed simultaneous admission. After the airing of the usual arguments for and against the proposition, the convention endorsed it, adopting with an "overwhelming majority" the resolution that "all lawyers admitted to a court within the district of a superior court are to be granted admission to that superior court."32 Despite the apparent success of the district court lawyers in 1905-7, their victory was not final. In fact, the activism of district court lawyers began to evoke a counteractivism among superior court lawyers. Superior court lawyers began to attend the lawyers' conventions in ever greater numbers. Later in 1907, at the Nineteenth (Extraordinary) Lawyers' Convention in Leipzig, the number of superior court lawyers in attendance almost doubled, while that of district court lawyers grew only by half. 3 ' The Reichstag adopted the reforms to the Imperial Justice Laws, despite the opposition of the DAV, and increased the jurisdictional limit for district courts to six hundred marks (effective June 1, 1909). Relations between district court and superior court lawyers deteriorated rapidly. Although district court lawyers had won two resolutions of support for simultaneous admission from the DAV in 1905 and 1907, and although the question of reforms to the Imperial Justice Laws occupied the legal world, the Ministry of Justice and the Reichstag showed little inclination to amend the RAO. This lack of progress frustrated district court lawyers. Resolutions by the executive boards of several lawyers' chambers in opposition to the increase in jurisdictional amount sharpened their anger. In 1907, district court lawyers founded a separate bar association in Bavaria, and this was followed in 1909 by the establishment of a national Association of German District Court Lawyers (Verein Deutscher Amtsgerichtsanwalte, e.V.), led by Eduard Rose.34 Although this association became a corporate member of the DAV, it established the precedent of a special-interest subgroup of the bar forming its own association to advance its goals, first within the framework of the DAV, but—as hints in the writings and speeches of district court lawyers had made clear ever since 1903—if necessary outside the framework of the DAV and in direct conflict with it or with other special-interest subgroups of lawyers.35 Because the legal reforms of 1907-9 had not introduced simultaneous admission, district court lawyers again placed it on the agenda of the Twentyfirst Lawyers' Convention at Breslau in 1913. The author of the official position paper, which had been published in advance of the convention, treated the matter as settled and moved that the DAV reaffirm its position in favor of simultaneous admission.36 The keynote speakers at the convention shared this conviction, citing the resolutions at Hanover and Mannheim, and argued that such a step was necessary to raise the status of district court lawyers.37 However, superior court lawyers in attendance certainly did not consider the question settled. They raised again the specter of economic ruin for lawyers practicing before superior courts that were small and medium-sized. The jurisdictional reforms of 1909 had already enriched district court lawyers at the
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expense of those at superior courts, and the former should now be satisfied. This was no time to undertake an experiment that would endanger the largest segment of the bar.38 Superior court lawyers were themselves ready to threaten: Do not believe that you will avoid the impending schism if you adopt simultaneous admission. To be sure, superior court lawyers at small and medium-sized courts have not yet organized; that is their disadvantage against district court lawyers, and it is explicable by the fact that heretofore the question has been addressed only from the standpoint of the district court lawyers. (Quite right!) Only he who has organization has power. But I do not know whether it would be a desirable condition if another group, an association of lawyers at small and medium-sized superior courts, appeared alongside the association of district court lawyers. (Laughter.) You will not avoid a schism by the endorsement of simultaneous admission, but rather you will precipitate one. (Quite right!)39
After much heated debate, the 1913 Lawyers' Convention tabled the question of simultaneous admission and referred it to the Committee on Professional Affairs of the DAV for study.40 That panel convened on January 31, 1914, and defeated two motions favorable to simultaneous admission. With the intervention of the First World War, the matter officially rested until 1920.41 District court lawyers, however, had suffered a significant defeat. Whereas their aspirations had found a generally favorable reception within the DAV prior to 1913, their actions had galvanized superior court lawyers into resistance. Especially after the increase in the jurisdictional competence of the district courts in 1909, superior court lawyers felt besieged. They exerted their strength as the majority within the DAV at Breslau in 1913, if not to reverse the position of the bar association, at least to exile the issue of simultaneous admission to procedural and parliamentary limbo. After the war, the Association of German District Court Lawyers sought to revive the question of simultaneous admission within the DAV. In a time of great economic hardship for lawyers, as well as for the rest of German society,42 the Association in September 1920 petitioned the executive board of the DAV to apply to the government for an emergency decree permitting simultaneous admission. In the petition, however, the district court lawyers revealed that they had already made submissions and personal presentations to the appropriate governmental authorities.43 This assertion of autonomy was a statement that the decision of the DAV wouldnof determine the outcome; it carried out the threat of independent action, which had only been made in 1913. At its meeting on December 4 and 5, 1920, the executive board of the DAV endorsed simultaneous admission and referred the matter to the Committee on Professional Affairs to debate draft legislation. The chairman argued that the existing conflict threatened the bar to its very foundation and that unity must be restored by adoption of simultaneous admission, despite the possibility of economic harm to superior court lawyers.44 For the leadership of the DAV, the question was no longer one of the merits of simultaneous admission, but rather how to
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defuse the conflict between district and superior court lawyers and preserve the unity of the practicing bar. The renewed endorsement of simultaneous admission by the DAV had exactly the opposite effect. Superior court lawyers founded the Association of German Superior Court Lawyers at Leipzig on January 23, 1921, "in order to prevent the statutory introduction of mandatory simultaneous admission." Although the members of this association did not withdraw from the DAV, they demanded representation of their organization on the Committee on Professional Affairs as it studied the question. The Committee co-opted three leaders of the superior court faction and two from the district court lawyers, as well as representatives from the regions where simultaneous admission prevailed, and met to discuss the matter on April 23, 1921.45 The charge of the Committee on Professional Affairs was to discuss means of implementing simultaneous admission with as little economic hardship to superior court lawyers as possible, but the representatives of the two specialinterest associations insisted that the committee reexamine the merits of the question de novo. Fearing that another resolution for or against simultaneous admission by the DAV would only sharpen the conflict, the committee established a subcommittee composed of representatives of the district court and superior court lawyers' associations and chaired by a lawyer who belonged to neither group, to secure an agreement between the groups and to report back.46 The battle continued in the professional press. Most contributors lamented the "ugly and wretched" conflict; the practicing bar needed to maintain its unity at all times, but especially in times of economic hardship and hostility toward the bar from all sides. The practicing bar must exercise its right of selfpreservation against outside enemies, but it was hampered in doing so by the split within its ranks. Even observers who doubted whether simultaneous admission was in either the general interest of the bar or the particular interest of the district court bar believed that the disadvantages that arose from the disunity caused by the dispute outweighed those disadvantages that would result from its introduction. The only remedy to the continuing damage to the fabric of the practicing bar was for every lawyer to seek a compromise between factions. The opposing special-interest organizations must find common ground and compromise rather than each seeking the radical implementation of its maximum program.47 The very survival of the DAV as the effective voice of the practicing bar was at stake. If the associations of the district and superior court lawyers took it upon themselves to petition directly for administrative or legislative changes, if they arrogated to themselves the exclusive right to speak for their constituencies on the subject of simultaneous admission, then the unitary expression of the opinion of the bar would be lost. In considering legislative reforms affecting lawyers, the government could dismiss the positions of the factions as specialinterest group pressures, and as unrepresentative of the interests of the bar as a whole or of the interests of justice. In the absence of a clear expression from the DAV, the government, as the only source of disinterested comment, would simply decide the matter in its free discretion. Lawyers would lose all influence
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in matters of great importance to them if they did not settle their internal dispute internally.48 Yet all of these calls for unity did not deter the partisans of the district and superior court lawyers from threatening each other and the DAV. The executive boards of local associations of district court lawyers resolved to use all possible legal means to achieve their goal. Initially they should seek representation of the executive boards of lawyers' chambers in proportion to their numbers and, failing that, in the last resort create an entirely separate organization, which would have its own lawyers' chambers and newspaper. These dramatic measures would certainly become necessary if superior court lawyers pursued their stubborn opposition to the legitimate aspirations of district court lawyers. District court lawyers also threatened an attack on Anwaltszwang, which had been the fundamental basis of market control and monopoly. If Anwaltszwang were abolished, then district court lawyers could practice freely at superior courts, but so could other, nonlawyer competitors. The rival associations boycotted each other in the district of the court of appeal of Kiel for several months in 1922 until an agreement to split fees was finally reached. District court lawyers regularly walked out of meetings of lawyers' chambers after their applications for simultaneous admission had been denied, expressing their contempt for organizations that they accused of being dominated by superior court lawyers.49 Superior court lawyers also threatened to escalate the warfare. They argued that the actions of district court lawyers would force them to seek admission to the courts of appeal, increasing tension within the profession and unleashing an internecine war involving all members. They directed their threats toward the DAV as well, warning it to stay out of the conflict between the special-interest associations. The DAV should not seek to act as arbiter in a case in which neither party wished arbitration and in which neither party would recognize the binding force of the arbitral decision.50 Both groups of lawyers had clearly come to believe that the struggle would result in total victory for one side and total defeat for the other, and the DAV was irrelevant to the outcome. The irreconcilable hostility of the two groups of lawyers blocked all efforts by the DAV and its committees to find a compromise solution. The subcommittee of the Committee on Professional Affairs reported in 1922 that its deliberations had collapsed. Superior court lawyers refused to concede the validity of the endorsement of simultaneous admission by the executive board of the DAV. Both special-interest associations called on the DAV to withdraw from the discussions and to leave it to them to settle the matter. The Association of German District Court Lawyers complicated matters by submitting to the Ministry of Justice a draft emergency decree granting simultaneous admission without first clearing it with the DAV, which was in violation of guidelines worked out previously by the DAV and accepted by both special-interest associations. They also published an open letter to the minister of justice calling for an emergency decree and attacked superior court lawyers in the daily press for causing the rising costs of representation.51 The DAV tried again to reach a compromise between the two factions in the
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Committee on Professional Affairs in 1924 and again in both January and February of 1925, but both times the discussions broke down. District court lawyers refused to discuss the merits, considering the issue to have been settled in 1905, 1907, and 1920, and superior court lawyers refused to discuss economic safeguards unless the whole question of the merits was reopened.52 The Association of German District Court Lawyers refused to assent to a resolution that would have limited petitions directly to the government by both groups to the issue of simultaneous admission, in return for the DAV abandoning that issue; the committee had to report to the DAV its inability to reach a result.53 By July 1925, the DAV had to concede its inability to mediate in the dispute and declared that it must "abstain from taking a position, inwardly or outwardly," with regard to the matter.54 District court lawyers continued their direct efforts to obtain simultaneous admission. Rebuffed by both the Prussian and federal ministries of justice, they made written petitions to the Reichstag, beginning in May 1925.55 Both associations presented the Reichstag with numerous petitions and position papers during 1925 and 1926; the ultimate result was the adoption of simultaneous admission by an amendment to the RAO on March 7, 1927.56 Thus, the district court lawyers achieved for all practical purposes a complete victory in the long struggle for simultaneous admission. The two special-interest associations did not dissolve themselves, but the acrimonious debate ended. The solution to the problem, however, came at the expense of the professional autonomy of lawyers. Fritz Ostler had noted that "the forced peace dictated by the legislature in 1927 could have been had much earlier as a negotiated peace."57 In many ways the German legal profession appeared to have sprung into life fully formed and professionalized in 1879. Old distinctions between practitioners disappeared, and the DAV surged to the fore in the collective mobility project. The development of the district court bar, with separate interests in conflict with those of collegial court lawyers, shows that a better conception of 1879 is to view it as the beginning of the process of placing the legal profession on a modern footing.58 The reforms of 1879 removed artificial barriers to the creation of a bar based on market demand for legal services. They established a protected market—a monopoly—but only for lawyers at collegial courts. The demand for trained legal representation at nonmonopolized district courts was so great that, within a generation, the district court bar grew from a negligible size—less than one twentieth—to one quarter of the total. Although deferential at first to the distribution of power within the profession, this new segment of the bar came to believe that the established hierarchy within the profession did not accord it the benefits of the "silent contract"59 between society and the professional. Certainly, district court lawyers were relatively deprived in status in comparison to collegial court lawyers. This sense of relative deprivation found expression in a drive for equality, in the form of the struggle for simultaneous admission. District court lawyers believed that, in the process modernization, the German bar had lost the unifying principle of "horizon-
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tality" (the acceptance of the same norms, aspirations, and expectations as the result of the same professional education), and they saw simultaneous admission as the means of reestablishing it.60 In the course of the conflict, the rival groups adopted tactics that shattered the monopoly of professional representation, which the DAV had previously enjoyed. District court lawyers sought relief from the DAV because it was the only national forum for lawyers and because they believed that the executive boards of the lawyers' chambers were biased. They met with moderate success initially, but superior court lawyers, who held a numerical advantage, soon asserted their strength. Between 1905 and 1913, the DAV became the object of the battle between the two factions. Each wished to capture it as the surest means of protecting its interests, showing its symbolic and actual importance as the sole legitimate expression of the corporate will of the bar. After the war, when each group had formed its own special-interest association, the DAV became merely one of the terrains of struggle. It no longer was the sole expression of the corporate will of the bar, but rather another forum in which the combatants could pursue their dispute. The factions threatened the DAV with schism, provoking it to irenic extremes in the early 1920s in order to mediate between them. The DAV no longer functioned as a " stable coalition" of interests within the bar, but merely as an ineffectual referee. By circumventing the DAV and petitioning the ministries and the Reichstag directly, the special-interest associations merely confirmed that their unwillingness to allow the DAV to settle the conflict had already made it irrelevant. As Ostler observed, the DAV was irrelevant to the ultimate decision by the Reichstag to adopt the only amendment to the RAO between 1879 and 1933. The paralysis brought on by the factional quarrel weakened the DAV as it sought to lead a united profession to meet the extraordinary economic exigencies and other challenges of the 1920s.61 The quarrel reduced the symbolic and actual authority of the DAV as it sought to protect and expand lawyers' field of professional activity, weakening its influence with other social actors. It was a fragmented and compromised professional association, then, that led German lawyers into the final crisis of the Weimar Republic. The dispute over simultaneous admission helped set the stage for the final adoption of and acquiescence in illiberal solutions to the problems besetting the profession and the nation. Notes 1. See, for example, Claudia Huerkamp, Der Aufstieg der Arzte im 19. Jahrhundert. Vom gelehrten Stand zum professionellen Experten: Das Beispiel Preussens (Gottingen, 1985); see also Werner Conze and Jurgen Kocka, "Einleitung," in Conze and Kocka, eds., Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Part 1. Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung im internationalen Vergleich (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 9-26; and Charles E. McClelland, "Zur Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe in Deutschland," in Conze and Kocka, Bildungsburgertum, pp. 233-47, 233. Finally, see Jurgen Kocka, "Biirgertum und Biirgerlichkeit als Probleme der deutschen Geschichte vom spaten
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18. zum friihen 20. Jahrhundert," in J. Kocka, ed., Burger und Biirgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1987), pp. 21-63. An issue ofGeschichte und Gesellschaft treated "Professionalization in Historical Perspective" in 1980. See especially Dietrich Riischemeyer, "Professionalisierung: Theoretische Probleme fur die vergleichende Geschichtsforschung," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 6 (1980): 311-25. 2. Founded in 1871, the DAV was the focal point of an impressive professional organization. It published the major professional journal for lawyers, the Juristische Wochenschrift (JW) and sponsored biennial lawyers' conventions (Anwaltstage), which debated specific issues of topical interest to lawyers. The DAV prided itself on being the corporate voice of lawyers and exercised great influence in the shaping of the legislation of 1877-79. Dietrich Riischemeyer, Lawyers and Their Society: A Comparative Study of the Legal Profession in Germany and the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 174-75. The government regularly sought the opinion of the DAV on issues of importance to the bar. See Fritz Ostler, Die deutschen Rechtsanwalte, 18711971, 2nd ed. (Essen, 1982), pp. 86-97, 221-25, for a description of the organizational development of the DAV from its founding to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. 3. The older functionalist analysis of the professions focused largely on AngloAmerican examples and emphasized the autonomy of professional development from the state. A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, The Professions (Oxford, 1933); Talcott Parsons, "The Professions and Social Structure," in Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory, rev. ed. (New York, 1954), pp. 34-49. For a criticism of this parochialism, see Riischemeyer,Lawyers, pp. 14-15. 4. Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, Calif., 1977), pp. xvii—xviii. 5. Hannes Siegrist, "Gebremste Professionalisierung—Das Beispiel der Schweizer Rechtsanwaltschaft im Vergleich zu Frankreich und Deutschland im 19. und fruhen 20. Jahrhundert," in Conze and Kocka, Bildungsbiirgertum, pp. 301—31. For a discussion of the traditional and modern patterns of professionalization, see Albert L. Mok, "Alte und neue Professionen," Kolner Zeitschrift filr Soziologie und SozialPsychologie 21 (1969): 770-82. 6. KonradH. Jarausch, "The Crisis of German Professions, 1918-33," Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 379-98, 380. 7. Larson, Rise of Professionalism, pp. xvi, 66, 69, 71-72. Jarausch, in "Crisis," p. 380, suggests a focus on five elements in the examination of professionalization, one of which is the professional autonomy and organization of a profession, as they determine the success or failure of interest-group politics. Where a fundamental disunity prevails, the profession is severely hampered in prosecuting its interests. 8. Because the bar before the supreme court was a closed body, selected by the presidium of the court and limited in number, they are not considered in the following discussion of lawyers in private practice. 9. Any generalization about the organization of the practice of law prior to 1879 must be qualified because of the multifarious rules in the many German states. The classic and exhaustive description is Adolf Weissler, Geschichte der Rechtsanwaltschaft (Leipzig, 1905), especially chaps. 21, 47, and 53. Im many states, the distinctions between Advokatur and Prokuratur had already been abolished (e.g., Prussia) or had fallen into desuetude through the custom of a Prokurator being also an Advokat (e.g., Hanover). The principle of free entry into the bar (freie Advokatur) represented a great
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victory that lawyers had long sought, freeing them from their previous subjection to civil service discipline, especially in Prussia. For the story of that struggle, see Helga Huffmann, Kampf umfreie Advokatur (Essen, 1967). For purposes of self-administration and self-discipline, the lawyers of the district of each court of appeal formed a lawyers' chamber (Anwaltskammer). Each had an executive board (Vorstand) elected by the membership. There was no imperial lawyers' chamber, and no unifying body at the national level. As a result, the DAV presented the only unified national voice of the bar. 10. Localization embodied the existing practice in most German states. "Motive zumEntwurf einer Anwaltsordnung," JW7:33 (Feb. 15, 1878): 38-40, 42. 11. RAO § 27. District court lawyers could appear in criminal cases in any court (except the Imperial Supreme Court) and in civil cases before superior courts even as a plenipotentiary representative (Prozessbevollmachtigter), but only if the client retained a superior court lawyer who deputized the district court lawyer. 12. On the practice of appointing Rechtskonsulenten, see Heinrich Dittenberger, "Die Praxis hinsichtlich der Zulassung von Prozessagenten und der Zuriickweisung geschaftsmassig verhandelnder Bevollmachtigter gemass § 157 ZPO," JW 42:1121 (Dec. 1, 1913), especially the chart at pp. 1124-28. Theoretically, the appointment of Rechtskonsulenten was reserved for district courts where no lawyer had chosen to settle. As Dittenberger's chart shows, however, there often were Rechtskonsulenten at district courts that had one or even two lawyers. 13. Adolf Friedlander and Max Friedlander, Kommentar zur Rechtsanwaltsordnung vom 1. Mi 1878, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1930), p. 59. See also Verein Deutscher Amtsgerichtsanwalte (e. V.), ed., Simultanzulassung: Handbuch zum Reichsgesetz vom 7. Marz 1927 (Berlin, 1931), pp. 33-58. 14. According to the Association of German District Court Lawyers, the Prussian government denied simultaneous admission because it wanted to divide the bar into three separate groups, with one at each level of court, in order to prevent the emergence of a unitary profession and better to control the splintered bar. Simultanzulassung, p. 45. 15. Weissler, Geschichte, pp. 417, 525. In Hanover, admission to the Advokatur had been unrestricted in collegial court towns, but lawyers could settle in district court towns or in the countryside only with the permission of the Ministry of Justice. Theodor Roscher, "Gerichtsverfassung und Anwaltschaft im einstmaligen Kurstaat und Konigreich Hannover," in Festschrift zum siebzehnten Deutschen Anwaltstage: Hannover 1905 (Hanover, 1905), pp. 5-116. 16. Reichs-lustizumt, Deutsche Justiz-Statistik, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1887), table IV, pp. 30-31. 17. "Ehrengerichtliche Bestrafung zweier Rechtsanwalte wegen Gebuhrenteilung, "7W 17:92 (Feb. 23, 1888). For an historical overview of the practice of feesplitting, see Robert Held, Die Gebuhrenteilung: Referat der 3. Abteilung des 4. Ausschusses des Deutschen Anwaltvereins, Publication of DAV no. 12 (Leipzig, 1928). Observers expressed surprise at the proscription of a practice that had generally been viewed as acceptable and predicted dire consequences for both the prestige and income of district court lawyers. "Gebuhrenteilung und Lokalisierung,"/iy 17:193 (Apr. 27, 1888): 193-94. 18. Reichs-lustizamt, Deutsche Justiz-Statistik, vol. 17 (Berlin, 1915), table V, pp. 24-25. There were 1,060 district and 3,395 superior court lawyers in 1891; 3,123 and 6,662 in 1915. Ibid., pp. 23-25. Superior court lawyers expanded into district court practice as well, seeking
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formal simultaneous admission usually to the district court in the same town as their superior court; such admissions increased from 485 (1880) to 3,967 (1915). As a result, even in Prussia, there were by 1913 generally no separate district and superior court bars in superior court towns. The number of lawyers admitted to a superior court and a district court not in the same town—the true class of simultaneously admitted district court lawyers—grew at a much slower rate, from 373 in 1880 to 893 in 1915, and that growth lay almost entirely outside of Prussia and Bavaria. 19. Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, p. 71. For the Prussian policy of early conferral of the notarial in order to encourage lawyers to serve small district court clients, see Simultanzulassung, p. 35. 20. Bamberger (Aschersleben), "Durch welche Mittel ist die Stellung der Amtsgerichtsanwalte zu starken?" JW 32:377 (Nov. 4, 1903). 21. District court lawyers were correct in their belief that they were underrepresented on the executive boards of the lawyers' chambers. In the district of the court of appeal of Celle (encompassing the Prussian province of Hanover), only one ever served on the fifteen-member executive board before 1904. Eduard Rose from Harburg was elected in 1904, at a time when there were 86 district court lawyers of a total of 263. He remained the lone district court lawyer on the board until 1925, when an amendment to the bylaws increased the size of the board. "Jahresbericht fiir das Geschaftsjahr," 1881-1928, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin-Dahlem), I HA Rep. 84a, pp. 21912-13. 22. Hans Stolzle, "Durch welche Mittel ist die Stellung der amtsgerichtlichen Anwalte zu starken? Entgegnung auf den Artikel des Herrn Rechtsanwalts Bamberger von Aschersleben im Nr. 46 und 47 S. 377 der Juristischen Wochenschrift vom 4. November 1903," JW 32:428 (Dec. 5, 1903): 430. Interestingly and revealingly, Stolzle referred to district court matters as "Bagatellobjekte" ("petty amounts in controversy"), showing remarkable insensitivity to the status concerns of district court lawyers whose practices were limited to handling such matters. 23. The same arguments recurred in the various articles: Eduard Rose (Harburg), "Die Starkung der Stellung der bei den Amtsgerichten zugelassenen Rechtsanwalte," JW 33:49 (Feb. 1, 1904); Balzer (Lorsch). "Die Stellung der nur bei einem Amtsgerichte zugelassenen Rechtsanwalte und deren Verbesserung. I," JW 33:380 (July 1, 1905); Schulze (Delitzsch), "Die Stellung der nur bei einem Amtsgerichte zugelassenen Rechtsanwalte und deren Verbesserung. II,"/W 33:382 (July 1, 1905). 24. Balzer, "Stellung," p. 381; Rose, "Starkung," pp. 50, 49; Arnold Ziese, "Die Stellung der nur bei einem Amtsgerichte zugelassenen Rechtsanwalte und deren Verbesserung. Ill," JW 34:385 (July 1, 1905): 386. 25. Ziese "Stellung," p. 382; Rose, "Starkung," p. 51. 26. A summary of the response of superior court lawyers to the arguments of district court lawyers may be found in Wilhelm Liitkemann (Hanover), "Noch einmal die Stellung der 'nur bei den Amtsgerichten' zugelassenen Rechtsanwalte," JW 34:225 (May 2, 1905). 27. " Verhandlungen des XVII. Deutschen Anwaltstages zu Hannover am 13. und 14. September 1905," JW 34:569 (October 16, 1905): 601. 28. Ibid., p. 603. 29. Ibid., pp. 607, 608, 615. For the suggestion of the creation of an exclusive district court bar, as a stepping stone to the collegial bar, see Adolf Weissler, "Die Amtsgerichtsanwaltschaft der Kern der Anwaltfrage," Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung 10:762 (Sept. 1, 1905): 767-68.
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30. "Verhandlungen des XVII. Deutschen Anwaltstages," p. 610. 31. Ibid., p. 615. See also "Bericht des Referenten Justizrat Schatz, Leipzig," enclosure B, inDeutscher Anwaltverein, ed., Urn die Simultanzulassung: Bericht fiber die Ausschussverhandlungen imDeutschen Anwaltverein, part 1 (publication no. 3) (Leipzig, 1925), pp. 22-43, 22 (hereafter cited as Urn die Simultanzulassung 1; the report will be cited as Schatz, "Bericht"). The outcome of the lawyers' convention in Hanover was all the more remarkable when one considers that, of the 384 participants, 300 practiced before collegial courts, 75 only before district courts, and only 9 were simultaneously admitted before district and superior courts. Ostler, DeutscheRechtsanwdlte, p. 74. 32. "Verhandlungen des XVIII. Deutschen Anwaltstages zu Mannheim am 11. und 12. September 1907. Stenographischer Bericht," JW 36:592 (Oct. 15, 1907): 636-37. 33. Ostler (DeutscheRechtsanwdlte, p. 75) reports that there were 510 collegial and 130 district court lawyers at Mannheim and 1,003 and 189 at Leipzig. 34. Ibid., p. 76. 35. The New Year's commentary in the JW in 1913 lamented the resolution by the district court lawyers' association to "take matters into their own hands" and to make reform proposals directly to the government instead of going through the channels of theDAV. Neumann, "Zum neuen Jahr." JW 42:1 (Jan. 2, 1913): 1. 36. Victor Berger, "Freiziigigkeit und Simultanzulassung: Gutachten erstattet im Auftrage des Vorstandes des Deutschen Anwaltvereins fur den XXI. Deutschen Anwaltstag,"yW42 (July 1, 1913), suppl. to no. 13, p. 15. 37. "Verhandlungen des XXI. Deutschen Anwaltstages zu Breslau am 12. und 13. September 1913. Stenographischer Bericht."JW42 (1913), suppl. to no. 20, p. 16 (Max Friedlander), p. 27 (Marnier). 38. Martin Goldschmidt (Ostrowo), ibid., pp. 39-41, and idem, "Simultanzulassung," JW42:831 (Sept. 15, 1913): 842. 39. "Verhandlungen des XXI. Deutschen Anwaltstages," Martin Goldschmidt (Ostrowo), p. 40 (cited in Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwdlte, p. 77). 40. Ibid., pp. 41-42. The Committee on Professional Affairs (also referred to as the "Fourth Committee") had jurisdiction over professional matters, changes to the lawyers' statute and fees statute and so on. Heinrich Dittenberger, "Fiinfzig Jahre Deutscher Anwaltverein, 1871/1921," JW 50:969 (Sept. 1, 1921): 1018. 41. Schatz, "Bericht," pp. 23-24; Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, pp. 77-78. 42. Landsberg, "Die Notlage der Anwaltschaft," JW 47:73 (Feb. 1, 1918), and Ostler (Deutsche Rechtsanwdlte, pp. 152-60, 202-16) describe the economic distress among lawyers toward the end of the war. 43. Schatz, "Bericht," p. 24. The effects of the wartime and postwar inflation were especially harsh for district court lawyers. As prices increased, an increasing number of cases of even a petty nature exceeded the jurisdictional limit of district courts. This "migration of cases" to superior courts seemed to district court lawyers to indicate most sharply the need for simultaneous admission. See Simultanzulassung, p. 44. For the situation during the hyperinflation, see Noest, "Die Lage der Amtsgerichtsanwalte," JW 52:6 (Jan. 1, 1923). and Hermann Raabe (Barmstedt i. Hoistein), "Das Ende der Deutschen Amtsgerichtsanwaltschaft," JW 53:900 (June 15, 1924): 901. 44. Schatz, "Bericht," p. 25. 45. Simultanzulassung, p. 44; Schatz, "Bericht," p. 25; and Meyerowitz (Magdeburg), "Zur Simultanzulassung," JW 50:1179 (Oct. 10, 1921): 1181.
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46. Schatz, "Bericht," pp. 25-26. 47. Giese(M6rsa. Rh.), "Aufhebung des 'ortlichen' Anwaltszwangs oderSimultanzulassung," JW 50:610 (June 1, 1921); Noest, "Zur Simultanzulassung," JW 50:1179 (Oct. 10, 1921); Werner (Magdeburg), "Zur Simultanzulassung," JW 50:1182 (Oct. 10, 1921): 1183. 48. Meyerowitz (Konigsberg), "Zur Simultanzulassung," JW50:1180 (Oct. 10, 1921): 1181. 49. Giese, "Aufhebung des 'ortlichen' Anwaltszwangs," p. 611; Hawlitzky (Forst), "Zur Simultanzulassung," JW 50:1184 (Oct. 10, 1921), p. 1185; Raabe, "Das Ende der Deutschen Amtsgerichtsanwaltschaft," p. 900, note 1. 50. Carstens (Cottbus), "Zur Frage der Simultanzulassung der Amtsgerichtsanwalte beim ubergeordneten Landgericht," JW 50:873 (Aug. 1, 1921): 875. 51. Schatz, "Bericht," pp. 26-28, 28-30. 52. The debates of the Committee of Professional Affairs in January and February of 1925 are reproduced in Um die Simultanzulassung 1, pp. 3-20, and Deutscher Anwaltverein, ed., Um die Simultanzulassung:Bericht tiber die Ausschussverhandlungen im Deutschen Anwaltverein, part 2 (publication no. 4) (Leipzig, 1925), pp. 3-24 (Um die Simultanzulassung 2). The first session ended on a hopeful note, but the second collapsed as a result of the implacable opposition of the two factions. 53. Um die Simultanzulassung 2, p. 24, with the resolution reprinted as enclosure 4, p. 27. 54. Simultanzulassung, pp. 44-45. 55. Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, p. 186. Ostler reports that in the beginning only the Communists were interested in the concerns of the district court lawyers. 56. These petitions and position papers are reprinted in Simultanzulassung, pp. 193-323. The law went into effect on January 1, 1928, and the federal states were allowed to make transitional provisions for a period of eight years, in order to ameliorate the negative effects on superior court lawyers. 57. Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, p. 183. 58. Mok distinguished between old and new professions and professionalization processes and classified law among the old, indicating that its professionalization took place before the onset of industrialization. Mok, "Alte und neue Professionen," p. 771. Huerkamp had criticized Mok's classification for medical doctors, and her criticism seems also to be valid for lawyers. Huerkamp, Der Aufstieg der Arzte, pp. 1819. McClelland suggests the need to consider that even ancient professions such as law underwent a modernization and rationalization after the onset of industrialization. McClelland, "Zur Professionalisierung," p. 238. 59. Riischemeyer, "Professionalisierung," p. 316. 60. Mok, "Alte und neue Professionen," p. 778. 61. Jarausch ("Crisis") summarizes some of the challengers on pp. 385 and 387. For a treatment in greater depth, see Ostler, Deutsche Rechtsanwalte, pp. 145-225.
Women and the Professions in Germany, 1900-1945 JILL STEPHENSON
It would probably never occur to a historian to write an essay entitled "Men and the Professions." For the most part, publications on the professions and professionalization—like publications on the vast majority of historical subjects and debates—fall de facto into the unarticulated but implicit category of "men's history," which is known simply as "history." Even in light of the substantial amount of work that has appeared in approximately the last twenty years on "women's history," which has been written by men as well as women, there remains a self-conscious ghetto mentality that is at least partly the product of a fear among feminist historians that a genuine integration of women's experience into mainstream history will once more submerge it in the massive tide of male-dominated political, economic, intellectual, and even social history—although in this last category there is a greater focus on women's past than can be identified in other fields of history. In short, there is concern that women may once again become largely invisible.1 The result is that, in addition to pursuing research in virtually uncharted territory, like women's sexuality or occupations staffed almost exclusively by women,2 historians still continue to write essays specifically on women's experience, as distinct from men's, in areas where both—but with women usually considered a minority—are represented. This chapter is in keeping with that tradition. Analyzing women in the professions, then, is rather different from discussing the development of either a single profession or the professions as a whole since even to write of women in the professions is to assume that there was a more or less homogeneous class or caste of women professionals. In a superficial sense this was the case, because until recently there were—in any country—so few women represented among the different professions that they were usually exceptional, and therefore conspicuous: The temptation to regard them as all having the same aspirations, problems, and responsibilities has proved hard to resist. Perhaps this is partly why some recent research in Germany has focused on biographies of individual women, in order to evaluate 270
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how idiosyncratic each case was, or to try to arrive at a typology of women who have experienced higher education and professional employment.3 At a time when women in professional positions were exceptional, each case was unique. The professions to be considered here are those areas of employment for which a specialized, lengthy, and rigorous training is required-—normally including a period of study in a university—and that therefore have developed esprit de corps and exclusivity. The discussion will focus chiefly on the older "free professions," in medicine, law, and the universities, as well as on teaching in the higher schools.4 In these professions the majority of the staff were male and the position of women was, and in some areas remains, a contentious issue, particularly in the case of married women. This is partly true also of newer professions, like architecture and engineering. By contrast with these male-dominated professions, there are also "caring professions" (e.g., sick and nursery nursing, midwifery, social welfare work), which were and are overwhelmingly staffed by women. In these professions, low status and low pay have ensured that they remain apart from the "free professions," the largely male membership of which regard them as distinctly inferior. This perception pervades attitudes in society as a whole, and has developed into a double bind: Men are less attracted to the "caring professions," except as physicians or surgeons, because the rewards and status are low; but the rewards and status remain low because these occupations continue largely to be, and to be seen as, typical women's jobs. I
Especially prior to the First World War, the few women who breached the male professional strongholds were from a similar background; they competed with men who were mostly, like themselves, from comfortable middle-class families, on terms that had earlier been determined by a previous generation of men of similar or higher social status. Thus research into women in the professions has been an elitist pursuit derived from a liberal interpretation of equal rights for women, because professional opportunities had had—along with political representation—the highest profile, which was in turn at least partly because the liberal women activists' aim was to promote equality in that area, that is, the area that concerned them. In the last twenty years, however, the emphasis has shifted, for the generation of the 1960s were inspired not only by women's lib but also by the New Left. They therefore tended to argue that higher education and the professions were peripheral (for others but not themselves!) to the immediate concerns of ordinary women. Thus the whole range of so-called women's work has been investigated, mostly showing that regardless of how downtrodden working-class or peasant men might be, the wives and daughters of these men had an even less enviable life.5 Above all, there has been a great deal of research on the characteristic that undeniably distinguishes women from men; namely, their gender-specific sexuality and reproductive role. These are the preoccupations of a group of (mostly women) historians for whom the
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interests of a narrow category of professional women—who have had to match explicitly male standards—are less relevant than a "condition of women" question.6 Since these preoccupations distinguish women as women, they are felt to provide a much greater sense of solidarity than can be gained from small sectional groups the female members of which may think that they have more in common with their male colleagues (e.g., in the professions) than with the broad mass of their "sisters." In fact, it is at least implicitly—and at times explicitly—maintained that women in professional positions are different from their male colleagues, and that their conception and conduct of their profession are qualitatively different from those of men. This belief has led to attempts by some professional women to redefine their role so that the question posed by Patricia Branca, "By what criteria does one measure success for women?"7 invites the answer: "different criteria from those for men." However, in practice, women still have to meet male-determined requirements in order to win a place in a profession. The Sex Discrimination Act in Britain and the campaign for an equal rights amendment in the United States8 have not altered the rites and ethos of the professions. The idealistic attitudes of the 1960s and 1970s have passed, with recognition that the quality of the gains made then (with women predominantly in the lower-paid, lower-status ranks of a profession, apart from a very few role models who scaled the heights) has been for many disappointing. To this day, in advanced countries the higher levels of the professions have remained largely male preserves, with a few women barristers and judges, medical or surgical consultants, and higher civil servants, who still serve as mere tokens of what women can achieve in the latter part of the twentieth century. Where there are large numbers of women in a profession, they are most likely to be in low-status or less well-paid sectors: In the Soviet Union, for example, the overwhelming majority of poorly paid teachers in primary schools and in positions without vertical mobility in the secondary schools, and of low-paid general practitioners in medicine, are women.9 There is among those who believed that liberation was imminent in the 1960s and 1970s a certain disillusionment; although few legal barriers prevent women from filling prestigious professional posts, there is still the massive, invisible, but tangible prejudice that on balance men are better suited for the most responsible, powerful, and best-paid positions.10 That attitude is evident now, but it was also prevalent in the era of the First World War. By 1930, the hard-won gains of 1918 and later seemed piecemeal and often meager, partly because there were competing interests. It is often forgotten that, in Germany after 1918, it was not only women who had legitimate grievances about the artificial barriers to progress that required redress, and who sought "emancipation"; there were also groups of men whose aspirations were just. If the First World War had provided new avenues for women in many areas of life—including the universities, in which women's representation rose steadily from 1914—it had disrupted the career patterns of men whose studies or early working life had suffered while they served their country in the armed forces. Once the war was over, the survivors returned to study and/or to resume a career. There was also, from the beginning of the
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Weimar Republic, a commitment to extend to other men—especially from the manual working classes—opportunities in higher education and the professions, which had been denied to them in the strongly hierarchical and conservative empire. With a limit on the number of career opportunities, who had the greater right to realize their potential and aspirations—women who had previously been denied the chance to demonstrate their abilities, or men who had offered the supreme sacrifice and survived, or men who had in effect been as disadvantaged as women before the war? This example teaches a salutary lesson, to which there are no easy answers. Special pleading on behalf of one deserving group may make for good feminist, or conservative, or socialist rhetoric, but it cannot disguise the problem that, in situations in which the number of positions is limited, the advancement of members of one group can be achieved only at the expense of members of other groups. II
During the last century, two influences have particularly determined the extent of opportunities for women in higher education and the professions, in Germany as well as in other advanced European countries. First, there is the primacy of economics, of the state of supply and demand in the professional market, which was strongly affected by the condition of the nation's economy. Thus, in time of recession or depression, with the job market shrinking, men and women have competed for scarce positions. Demographic trends have at times exacerbated this problem, with the high birthrate cohorts of the 1870s to 1900s contributing to dramatic increases in the number of students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Conversely, the arrival in the 1930s of the very low birthrate cohorts of the First World War years—and the only slightly higher ones of the 1920s—at the age for university entrance signaled the likelihood of a shortage of recruits for the professions. The other influence is partly contingent on the economic market principle, but also partly independent of it: the attitude of male students and professionals regarding the admission of women to what they inherently assumed to be their own exclusive territory. Doctors, lawyers, professors, and bureaucrats had a well-defined and considerable status that they wished to enhance, not to share. Businessmen and industrialists aspired to this status, if not for themselves at least for their sons. The route to the professions ran through the universities, and middle-class sons entered higher education in increasing numbers toward the end of the nineteenth century, giving rise to concern that the professions would be flooded with too many practitioners and therefore would lose their exclusiveness.11 Much of the opposition to the admission of women to professions like medicine and law came not from prejudiced petit bourgeois or ignorant misogynists, but from intelligent and well-educated male professionals who feared competition from women and who resented the potential threat that women posed to the masculine society of individual professions and of universities, where the student fraternities were aggressively status-conscious and male chauvinist. 12 Economic
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problems simply added substance to the complaints made on irrational grounds about the presence of women in exclusively masculine territory. Before 1900, then, the difficulties facing German women who aspired to higher education and a professional career were daunting, with both formal and informal barriers. For a start, to achieve admission to a profession, and to be accounted a success in it, women had to meet criteria determined by men, since the professions (except for teaching in girls' schools) were almost exclusively the preserve of men before 1918. The nature, functions, and collective attitudes of each profession were largely entrenched before women were admitted to it, and bore the hallmarks of bourgeois masculinity. Michael Kater evocatively describes how "the medical art was . . . a very visible one, not unlike sabrefencing," in which the surgeon became, during the First World War, "the most manly, most heroic of the doctors."13 After the First World War when, for the first time, a small number of women were admitted to male bastions like the legal profession and the higher civil service, they had to adapt to customs and conventions that had already been molded by the male membership. For example, qualifications for access to some of the professions had been established well before 1914, for the economic and social conditions created by the wave of rapid industrialization from the 1870s demanded increasing numbers of trained practitioners in both traditional and new specialties.14 In most cases, initial education for a profession took place in the universities, from which women were excluded in Germany before 1900, although some German women studied at Swiss universities. University courses prepared aspiring doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, and civil servants for the crucial state examinations, the successful completion of which afforded the basic credentials for admission to a particular profession. Thus the first prerequisite for women aspiring to enter a profession was an academic education similar to that of men, which would equip them to take the Abitur, and thus qualify for admission to a university—once German universities had accepted women as fully matriculated students. Baden led the way, opening its universities at Freiburg and Heidelberg to women in 1901, and other states followed, with the major breakthrough in Prussia in 1908. Even so, it was a struggle to prepare women for the Abitur, since most girls attended only elementary school, and the few senior school pupils attended the genteelHohere Tochterschulen, which prepared young ladies of social standing for their presumed destiny as a bourgeois Hausfrau. With coeducation theoretically an anathema, and only occasionally and grudgingly permitted where no academic girls' school existed, the new feminist organizations, which had been led by confident and articulate women like Helene Lange, campaigned to make opportunities in higher education and the professions a reality for the rising generation, and to this end they opened their own academic senior schools devoted to teaching willing and able female students. This enabled small but important numbers of women students to obtain the Abitur and enter German universities. 15 In their separate sphere, then, some women had, before the First World War, managed to win equality of opportunity with men, not on their own terms, but because they had imitated the agenda followed by men to prepare
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themselves for university study. The implicit understanding was that women had to prove that, in intellectual prowess, they could be not merely as good as men but actually the same as men. Thus, the answer to the question, "By what criteria does one measure success for women1?" in the professions was, and mostly remains, "the same as for men." The idea that women could compete successfully with men in an intellectual arena that was overwhelmingly dominated by men was, however, an affront to conservatives—including many doctors and lawyers—before and after the First World War. The outrage and fear felt by male professionals as they contemplated the prospect of female colleagues was genuine, giving rise to bizarre notions conjured up to support the customary division of function by gender. Women, it was said, had a brain lighter in weight than that of a man; the physical and mental strain of academic study could damage them. The dissection of cadavers would be an affront to women's natural modesty, argued some doctors. Male teachers said teaching was too much of a strain for women; this, they claimed, had been borne out by the higher incidence of absenteeism among female than among male teachers.16 Perhaps remarkably, considering the weight of opposition to female students and professionals, the number of female students in German universities rose to 3,368 in the summer of 1913, representing 5.6 percent of the student body.17 It took courage to persevere in an unfriendly atmosphere and to endure sometimes outright hostility from male fellow students and staff alike. Small wonder, then, that the feminists specifically attempted to foster a new and separate identity in fields from which women had been excluded. With the need for many middle-class young women to receive an education to prepare them for employment appropriate to their social status, and with advances in medical sciences—including areas of specific concern to women, like gynecology— there was a conscious attempt to nurture female teachers and female doctors. In the legal profession, however, the question simply did not arise; as James Albisetti has observed, "There is virtually no such thing as a history of female lawyers in Imperial Germany."18 There were a few female law students before the war (47 in the summer of 1913, for example), and there were 191 in the summer of 1918.19 But legal practice remained closed to women until after the war, as did academic posts in universities. Prejudice against women as students and as qualified professionals in medicine, teaching, and law did not cease with the end of the First World War. Many of the male professionals who had tried to resist the admission of women to these occupations before the war were still active after it. Professors, for example, made it clear that they deplored the presence of growing numbers of female students, and, by their example, encouraged male students—often returned from the war—to treat them with contempt.20 There was bitter resentment at the violation of the male professional sanctum by female graduates who had been able to complete their studies during the war, while many male students were in the armed forces. The main secondary school teachers' organization refused to admit women teachers to membership, and women doctors felt the need to establish their own professional magazine.21 This
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continuity of attitudes in influential places, including the professions themselves—regardless of the political revolution of 1918—is absolutely fundamental to an understanding of the actual position of women professionals in both the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. During the 1920s and later, even men who were not ardent conservatives (far less Nazis) regarded women as "always more intuitive and irrational," and opposed a lengthy and expensive education for women when they would spend little or no time in a career before marrying.22 There were, of course, men who were sympathetic with the aspirations of their female colleagues (actual or potential), but traditional values persisted—especially in middle-class homes—and were the essential precondition of a rearguard campaign against women's employment on equal terms with men. The statements of intent in the Weimar constitution—about equality of the sexes within marriage and the removal of all discrimination against women in the public service (which included large numbers of teachers, as well as doctors, lawyers, and civil servants)—were but the pious hopes of a few liberals. It may be true that "women proved to be docile participants in the political process when it came to feminist issues, "23 but many prominent feminists were middle-class liberals who had believed that the "career open to talent" would be enough to allow the able and the highly motivated to succeed, male or female. Institutional and individual prejudice proved that it was not enough. In particular, a major obstacle facing feminists of all attitudes, both before and after the war, was the unpopularity of their campaigns not only with men, but also with many women. The middle-class Hausfrau of the era before 1914 was not transformed into a feminist activist once the Kaiser had abdicated, nor were the more biddable of her daughters. Whatever prejudices men retained or overcame, large numbers of women were suspicious of "emancipation," seeing it as a threat to their way of life and to the stability of society. This accorded with the teachings of both the Evangelical and Catholic churches: For them, women should remain in the subordinate place assigned to them by St. Paul. The Christian churches consistently justified the so-called "traditional" division of labor, and German women were strongly influenced by their church.24 For feminists, it had certainly been a struggle when the imperial establishment set the antifeminist tone. Yet the very entrenchment of that establishment could make any gains (e.g., entry to the universities) seem massive because of deep official prejudice against "women's rights." In a way, the scope for disappointment was much greater in a democracy, because the possibilities seemed almost infinite. Victories were won, including the appointment of the first women university professors, who in 1927 founded their own professional organization. Discrimination against married women teachers was forbidden, and women were finally admitted to the legal profession in 1922, in the face of strong opposition.25 These reforms were dismissed as derisory by radical feminists and Communists, while the latent strength of the old Right was underestimated, but still remained sufficient to ensure that the setbacks increasingly seemed more numerous than the victories, even if there continued to be victories. The Lander jealously preserved their autonomy in internal affairs,
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which was a complication that persisted in the policies of Reich governments. The result was that in Oldenburg and Hamburg, for example, the justice minister could flatly refuse to appoint female judges or officials.26 Again, the constitution's provisions protecting the rights of married women in the public service were sometimes ignored at Land level, while in the Reichstag majority support for a law to enforce these rights was not forthcoming.27 Yet this reality was concealed by the substantial increase in the number of female students throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. Their numbers in the universities rose from 3,368 in the summer of 1913 (5.6 percent) to 7,182 (10 percent) in the summer of 1918; after slight fluctuations in the early 1920s, the figure rose again until in the summer of 1931 there were 19,394 women students, as 18.7 percent of a record enrollment of 103,912. It is worth emphasizing the marked increase in the absolute number of male students, even while women were increasing their proportion overall.28 This led to an everincreasing supply of aspiring professional recruits, with categorical surpluses and much talk of there being "a crisis" in the professions. There were thousands of unemployed teachers of both genders, while the prospect of "proletarianization and destruction" in the legal profession brought calls for a quota system (numerus clausus) for either law students or the admission of graduates to the profession, while in medicine a generational conflict developed, including prejudice on the grounds of gender.29 Ill
The two influences determining attitudes toward women students and professionals—the primacy of economics and militant male opposition to the advancement of women—could be found in any industrialized or industrializing country in the last century. But in Germany the study of women professionals in the first half of the twentieth century has—like so much else—been dominated by the attitudes and policies of the National Socialists. Nazi propaganda has been widely regarded as an accurate commentary on the history of both the Weimar and Nazi eras, especially concerning women's experience. Its general outline was that Weimar governments had facilitated the "emancipation" of substantial numbers of women, and that Hitler's regime had—true to its Kampfzeit (period of struggle) pledges—discriminated against intellectual or academic women by drastically limiting the number of female students in universities and colleges, and by evicting women from professional positions that they had won and held during Weimar. Nazi ideology had, it seemed, triumphed in this case, as elsewhere. This old orthodoxy has died slowly, and still has vestiges of life.30 A major faulty assumption is to consider Nazi Germany in something of a vacuum, regardless of attitudes and policies in Germany before 1933; on the contrary, to appreciate the experience and fate of female students and professionals in the Third Reich, Nazi policies toward them have to be assessed within the context of an evolution dating from about 1900. Among German historians it has become a commonplace that the Weimar
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Constitution of 1919 made promises that its authors were in no position to fulfill, and that the Civil Code of the Empire—effective from 1900—remained the law of the land until 1945 and beyond. But the code enshrined the values of a society the bases and contours of which were fixed in the later nineteenth century—in the face of rapid and massive change—and it therefore remained, after 1918 as before, the major obstacle to modernizing reforms. It is true that opportunities for women were extended after 1918, but not as far as was once believed. Furthermore, the concessions that were made came under attack from the start and were severely threatened during the depression, in about 1930. The newly won rights of married women professionals, in particular, were an easy target for opponents of equal rights for women in general. Exploiting the widespread mood of despair that bordered at times on hysteria, the Nazis struck a sympathetic chord among many with their rationalization of the misogynist parts of their propaganda: Their emphasis on the separate development of the sexes and the application of differing criteria for the achievements of men and women was neither original not unpopular.31 But while Nazi misogynism was genuine (even inherent in the dogma), the Third Reich was also to some extent confined by the primacy of economics. With the passing of the Depression and then the prospect (from about 1936) and later the reality of the shortage of skilled and highly trained personnel, the Nazi leadership tried, increasingly desperately, to recruit single or married women to take on manual, clerical, or professional work and to enter the universities and colleges, which during the Second World War admitted record numbers of female students to fill the places vacated by men who had been conscripted.32 This brief sketch can be enhanced by supporting detail, but, more important, questions remain about the extent of continuity in opportunities and attitudes from the late nineteenth century and how far these conditioned the socalled emancipation of the 1920s and the reaction of the 1930s. How far was Nazi policy idiosyncratic and a break with continuity? How far did the Nazis discriminate against female professionals as females? How far should the question of married women professionals be treated separately from the question of women in the professions generally? These questions are manageable; but implicit in them is a hidden value system based on the attitudes of the individual asking the questions. To ask how far a particular profession, or a government on its behalf, should be criticized for not admitting "enough" women is to assume a judgment about what would be "enough." Would 50 percent be an acceptable figure? For that matter, when opponents of women's admission to the professions say that there are too many of them, what do they suggest? The only ready answer to each of these questions is "more" and "fewer" of them, respectively.
IV Especially during the depression with an oversupply of candidates, the primacy of economics set established doctors, lawyers, and teachers against the young, who visibly coveted their position. In addition, aspiring women professionals
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were viewed as ambitious interlopers by males both old and young, especially in medicine, an subject that was increasingly favored by female students. Kater paints a depressing picture of the dependent and inferior status of women doctors, and quotes a Leipzig practitioner who claimed in 1930 that the flood of new doctors could be stemmed only by closing the universities to women. By 1933, their own professional organizations had imposed a 5 percent quota on women physicians applying for certification.33 Women trying to build a career in the legal profession suffered even more. The admission of women to legal practice in 1922 was a breakthrough, but fierce resistance within the profession to attempts by women to establish themselves continued. In 1925, there were a mere 55 women lawyers, as 0.4 percent of the profession, and their proportion increased only to 1.3 percent by 1933. The customary arguments about women's physiology preventing rational thought were underpinned by fears that women might be permitted to sit in judgment on men. Thus, their chances of promotion from the lowest levels of the profession were very slim even before 1933.34 These poor prospects did not discourage female law students altogether, but their numbers declined temporarily after 1922, from 716 in the summer of 1922 (compared with more than 20,000 men) to 473 in the winter of 1925-26, while the numbers of men also fell. They peaked in the overcrowded summer semester of 1931 at 1,258, reflecting a real gain, while men's representation was less than 20,000.35 Record numbers of students in 1930-33—almost a fifth of whom were women—posed a further threat to the unemployed doctor, teacher, or lawyer, and provoked opponents of women's rights to revive old prejudices. Like Jews, women formed an identifiable and unpopular group whose exclusion from the professions could now apparently be justified as a necessity in time of emergency.36 In particular, the Nazis' slogan "jobs first for the fathers of families," in the professions as elsewhere, reinforced their high-profile attacks on women's rights advocates, partly for ideological reasons, but also out of urgent political convenience. As opportunists, they pursued this campaign not least because they knew that it was widely popular, appealing to many middle-class families, including the women as well as the men. In middle-class circles, it was generally assumed that a married woman did not take paid employment outside the home, and that it was not worth providing further opportunities for a few spinsters. There had been only a very few married women teachers and doctors before 1914,37 but after 1918, while some women professionals positively wished to continue working after marriage, others went on working out of financial necessity. Many people failed to appreciate this distinction, and the issue of married women professionals became confused with wider questions of educational and professional opportunities for women generally. Married women became the scapegoat for an unrealistically large part of Germany's unemployment problems, and for the surplus of candidates for the professions in particular. This culminated in an attack on the Doppelverdiener, the second wage earner in a family—in practice, the wife. Whereas this was aimed at employed married women in general, it was eagerly embraced by opponents of the married woman
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professional. These included (and had done so since before 1914) unmarried women professionals, who deplored the employment of a woman with a husband to support her while there were equally qualified jobless single women.38 The result was the law of May 30, 1932 on "the legal position of women in the public service," which permitted the dismissal of married women employees in the public service if their "financial maintenance seems . . . to be guaranteed in the long term."39 Only the Communist party opposed the bill; the Socialists voted for it, and the Staatspartei (formerly the Deutsche Demokratische Partei), to which many liberal feminists belonged, abstained, bowing to popular opinion. It was hardly their finest hour. This Weimar legislation anticipated the spirit of early Nazi policy, so that, in a sense, some Nazi policy toward women in the professions was merely a continuation of policies espoused by the last Weimar governments. The Nazis were, it seemed, swimming with the tide, confirming male dominance in public and professional life and defending the traditional image and role of women. The Nazis certainly encouraged misogynists to air their prejudices, but the depression had made these respectable before Hitler came to power. However, although Nazi male leaders were pleased enough to remove women (not merely married women) from positions of prestige and influence, that was not their immediate priority. Their early restrictions on women in the professions were largely a by-product (but not one unwelcome to them) of policies the twin bases of which were crisis management and racial and political witchhunts. It has been argued that women were the targets and victims of Nazi policies as women, and that women figured among the categories of second-class citizens to be dispossessed of their rights.40 Certainly, the dismissals and demotion of women professionals in and after 1933 can be seen at least superficially as antiwomen policies—measures that discriminated against women students and professionals—over and above attacks on the "racially undesirable" and the "politically unreliable." Modifications of the law of May 30, 1932, notably by a law of June 30,1933, facilitated the dismissal of married women from the public service, and debarred women from a tenured post in it until the age of thirty-five. This same law also sanctioned pay differentials between men and women, which was contrary to the equality pledge given in the Weimar Constitution. Hitler's notorious decision in 1936, that women law graduates should no longer be admitted as judges and counsel, and his equally peremptory decision in 1937 that women should be excluded from the highest offices in the public service, were certainly antiwomen policies that were taken at a time when the imminent problem was not a surplus but a shortage of personnel in the professions. However, these two restrictions should be seen as the idiosyncratic whim of the dictator, which was obeyed but not wholly shared, by his reliably Nazi ministers and officials who had to enforce them.41 The overriding Nazi objective was to ensure that those who were influential in society (e.g., as teachers, doctors, lawyers) could be relied on to practice their profession in a manner that was, at the very least, not hostile to National Socialism. The politically reliable male and female did not need to be dismissed. On the contrary, for utterly loyal female Nazis, there were desirable
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jobs in the leadership of the women's section of a particular profession; for example, during the 1930s the leader of the Nazi women lawyers' organization, Dr. Use Eben-Servaes, was a prominent figure, second only to the Reichsfrauenfiihrerin (Reich Women's Leader), Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, in terms of prestige and public exposure. This accorded with the proclaimed Nazi intention of separating the sexes for most activities, including intellectual ones, but it also ensured that some women would enjoy prestige, if only as the figurehead of an organization without genuine power.42 One might ask, however, how much autonomy men's professional associations retained after 1933? The male professionals who had welcomed the Third Reich had probably not expected the coordination (Gleichschaltung) of their own professional organizations, in which they were made to conform to the demands of the Nazi leadership. In that unwelcomed context, there was a brutal equality between the professional organizations of men and women in the Third Reich. The purging of the professions and civil service in 1933-34—starting with the law of April 7, 1933 "for the reestablishment of the professional civil service"—was clearly a concerted attack on non-"Aryans" (in practice, Jews) and the politically unreliable, including mainly Communists, Socialists, and liberals, who were in positions of prestige and influence. It may be true that Nazi professionals understood "reprofessionalization" to mean excluding women as well;43 certainly, many men welcomed the Nazis' apparent determination to implement their propaganda pledges about removing women from their profession, and were doubly pleased when men were hired to replace them. By contrast, some female Nazi supporters protested at instances of dismissed women being replaced by men.44 But the overwhelming majority of women teachers who were dismissed under the terms of this law were non-Aryan. When there were instances in which proportionately more women were dismissed or demoted, it was often because the kind of women who had breached the considerable barriers to advancement in a man's world were assertive feminists or political activists.45 This put women professionals in a position of double jeopardy as feminists and professionals, since the Nazi leadership loathed feminists and viewed intellectuals with deep suspicion. During 193 3—34, there was much apparent purging at the governmental center and through local initiatives. Some authorities went beyond the limits permitted under Nazi legislation; for example, Hamburg started forcing even single women teachers to retire at the age of fifty-two. But there was no wholesale campaign to remove women from employment—professional or other—contrary to persistent mythology; indeed, leading Nazis like Wilhelm Frick, the Reich minister of the interior, were at pains to deny that such a campaign was either in process or anticipated.46 Certainly, women continued to have substantial representation in medicine and teaching. The number of women doctors continued to rise in both absolute and relative terms, reaching 3,650 (7.6 percent of the total) by 1939. Even before the war, the demands of Nazi organizations like the SA and the SS were draining the shrinking pool of male doctors, creating new opportunities for women, although they tended to be at the least prestigious and lowest-paid levels.47 Women teachers continued to
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dominate girls' higher education with their share on the staff of these schools falling by a mere 2 percent between 1931 and 1939 to 68 percent, in spite of the purges of 1933-34 on the one hand and, on the other hand, falling school rolls during the 1930s, as well as attempts to engage more male teachers. In this situation, at least, undesirable women teachers were being replaced by those considered to be reliable, and many of the former were demoted rather than dismissed. During the 1930s several women were appointed to university lecture posts—including those in the "masculine" scientific areas—but not before undesirables had been dismissed, with many, like their male colleagues, taking refuge abroad.48 The profession in which women were most obviously at a disadvantage remained law: After various piecemeal restrictions, Hitler pronounced in 1936 that women should not be appointed to courtroom posts, as judges or counsel. Yet this must be seen in the context of the extreme difficulties for women who aspired to a legal career at any time before 1933. Generally, "the position of women lawyers was characterized by unceasing discrimination," admittedly more so in the Third Reich, but also substantially before it.49 However, the very fact that organizations of Nazi women teachers, doctors, lecturers, and lawyers were formed and given official recognition indicates that there was an acceptance by the new regime not merely of the existence but also of the need for women professionals.50 At no time was this more true than during the Second World War. The enlistment of increasing numbers of men beginning in 1939 resulted in vacancies in medicine that could only be filled by women doctors. In teaching at all levels, the picture was the same. Even married women were encouraged to return to teaching or medicine. But Hitler's inflexible opposition to the practice of law by women remained substantially intact throughout, with a few minor modifications that were explicitly extraordinary measures in the emergency of wartime.51 For female students, early attempts to restrict their numbers were followed (beginning in the mid-1930s) by increasingly anxious encouragement for women to enroll and to choose subjects in which they had not formerly been well represented, or welcomed (e.g., engineering, architecture, law). It was clear that a shortage of skilled personnel was imminent, with the lower birthrate cohorts of the First World War years failing to replace fully those of the fecund prewar years, and also with the extra demands made on young people through service schemes and conscription. The pledge to reduce women's numbers had been partly an emergency tactic, partly a sop to antifeminist opinion (within and outside the NSDAP), and it was not rigorously fulfilled. Women's share of places in universities was 16 percent in the summer of 1934, as it had been in the summer of 1929, although it began to decline thereafter52—but, ironically, to the dismay of Nazi policy makers. The call-up of men during the Second World War allowed women unparalleled opportunities as students, so that in early 1940 they accounted for 25 percent of all students, while in some disciplines and in some universities they formed the majority.53 The need to continue producing graduates took precedence over ingrained prejudice among Nazi leaders and male professionals alike.
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V To what extent were Nazi policies toward women professionals merely misogynist? What complicates this question may be the need to distinguish what was purely traditional male chauvinism of the kind explicitly practiced both before and after 1918, from what was singularly Nazi policy. The dismissal of nonAryans and political opponents falls into the latter category, although political and racial discrimination was hardly unknown before 1933. But was Nazi discrimination against women in the instances cited, among others, simply a degree stronger than measures enacted or contemplated by Weimar governments, or was it unequivocally qualitatively different? Was it more oppressive than the restrictions that had denied women admission to higher education before 1900 and to the legal profession before 1922? Or are these the wrong questions? Current research on women's history (especially in medicine and reproduction) suggests that the starting point should be the disadvantages suffered by women in the Third Reich on grounds of gender, which were as fundamental and as inescapable—if not as implacably lethal—as racial discrimination. From that perspective, the measures that deprived women of opportunities were horribly logical. The inconsistencies and anomalies that undermine this argument can, it appears, conveniently be dismissed as the temporary by-product of a massive war, after which women would once again have been relegated to an entirely subordinate status. But there are answers to these points, insofar as hypotheses count as answers. First, the numbers of casualties and prisoners of war ensure that many women had to continue in work after the war, including professional work. A large portion of graduates available for professional work was, inevitably, female, given women's share in university enrollments during the war. That would have been true even in a victorious Third Reich, where, in addition, the need for large numbers of recruits for nonmanual work (with a helot empire to run) would have created opportunities for women, at least for a generation. However, a second point is that some of the inconsistencies and anomalies were manifest well before the war. For example, that some of the women leaders of Nazi women's professional organizations were married suggests that objections to the employment of married women were far from doctrinaire. As with so much (other than the racist policies) in the Third Reich, pragmatism or convenience took precedence over simplistic ideas that had often been, in their turn, pragmatic or convenient. There had been strong prejudice against women professionals, especially if they were married, long before the Nazis rose to prominence. Their ability to absorb a multiplicity of often mutually contradictory points of view (including those about women) and to project them confidently as policy was what helped them to power. Nazi leaders and male professionals were united in unremitting male chauvinism, which ensured that German women would be unlikely to rise to the levels in professions at which the rewards and the prestige were greatest. German women were not, however, alone in this problem. Discrimination against women who wished to compete with men for positions in which
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intellectual ability and qualifications were a prerequisite occurred not only in Germany, but also in other advanced countries in the first half of the twentieth century, and, indeed into the present time. Professional work has consistently been regarded as desirable, because of its status, its remuneration, and, for many, the satisfaction it provides. The higher the level of satisfaction (e.g., as in areas of medical and legal practice), the more tenaciously the beneficiaries have endeavored to maintain their exclusive position. In any society, those who have first enjoyed these advantages (usually white middle-class men) have shown great determination in maintaining their position and repelling intruders from other sections of society (i.e., other classes, minorities, and women). In Germany in the first half of the twentieth century, this is a large part of the reason for the barriers faced by women aspiring to a professional career. The vicissitudes of economic conditions and policy have been the other main determinant. In the twelve-year Reich, with severe Depression at first, followed by the buildup of a partial then a total war economy, there was only limited room between these two determinants for distinctively National Socialist policies to make an impact, whatever propaganda might boast to the contrary. None of this is to deny that Nazi leaders were male chauvinist, antifeminist, and anxious to see women returned to their traditional role as housewife and mother—not least because of the clear decline in the German birthrate in the twentieth century.54 But how many women were there in the highest offices or at the highest levels of the legal profession before 1933? Gertrud Baumer, a liberal feminist leader, had looked very much like a "token woman" in her solitary splendor as a senior civil servant and junior minister in the Reich Ministry of the Interior until her dismissal in early 1933. Even so, her dismissal, like that of so many women as well as men, was on the basis of the civil service law of April 7, 1933, which permitted dismissal on grounds of race or politics. For the Nazis, she was objectionable as a liberal and a feminist.55 Being a feminist was not, however, the same as simply being a woman, and National Socialists were well able to distinguish between the two. The novelty of National Socialism was not that its leaders deplored feminism and believed that men and women had different intellectual capacities and emotional dispositions, although they did, indeed, plenty of non-Nazis in Germany and elsewhere—both male and female—subscribed to these views before, during, and after the Second World War. The additional, peculiarly Nazi, ingredient was the obsessiveness with which it was insisted that women's vital role as the guardian of the future health and strength of the "racial community" should not be compromised in any way—for example, by the admission of women to careers in which masculine characteristics like ambition and competitiveness might divert them from their biological destiny. This certainly conditioned Hitler's attitude toward highly educated women, but they were not alone in being affected by it; German Aryan women as a whole were his target. Students and professionals were a part of this group, since their identity was defined first and foremost by their gender. Therefore, the demands that the Nazi state made of them as women were to take precedence over other demands and over their own inclinations. This appallingly simplistic, totalitarian ap-
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proach was blurred by the exigencies of a series of crises from the 1920s to the 1940s, so that "The National Socialists' image of women, apparently so anachronistic [my italics], was thus a very welcome one," and not only "to many men."56 By contrast, the implications of the revolutionary aspects of that image, the contours of which were traced by racial and population policy, were illuminated only partially, but clearly enough to differentiate the long-term prospects for intellectual and professional women, among others, under Nazi rule from the reactionary prejudices of the average male chauvinist professional.
Notes 1. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Boston, 1977), contains essays on women in various times and places. 2. See, for example, Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny (New York, 1984); see also Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation imNationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen, 1986). 3. For examples, Gabi Forder-Hof f (Berlin) is working on a collective biography of women economists and social scientists in Germany during the period 1890-1934. 4. On "old" and "new" professions, see Charles E. McClelland, "Professionalization and Higher Education in Germany," in Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860-1930 (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 306-7. Joanne Schneider's essay on Volksschullehrerinnen and Young Sun Hong's essay on social work as a burgerlicher Frauenberuf, both in this volume, deal with "typical women's occupations." 5. See, for example, Arthur E. Imhof, "Women, Family and Death: Excess Mortality of Women in Child-bearing Age in Four Communities in Nineteenth -Century Germany," and Robyn Dasey, "Women's Work and the Family: Women Garment Workers in Berlin and Hamburg Before the first World War," both in Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee, eds., The German Family (London, 1981). 6. See, for example, Karin Hausen, ed., Frauen suchen ihre Geschichte (Munich, 1987); Bridenthal et al.,5i'o/o^y;Gabi Forder-Hoff, "Frauen inder Wissenschaft: Zur Entstehung 'weiblicher Wissenschaft' zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts," inTillmann Buddensieg, Kurt Duwell, and Klaus Sunbach, eds., Wissenschaftin in Berlin— Gedanken (Berlin 1987), pp. 63-69. 7. Patricia Branca, Women in European History Since 1750 (London, 1978), p. 217. 8. Lisa Tuttle, Encyclopedia of Feminism (London, 1987), pp. 96-98, 291; Sylvia Ann Hewlett, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women's Liberation (London, 1988), pp. 161-78. 9. Martin Walker, The Walking Giant: The Soviet Union Under Gorbachev (London, 1987), p. 177. 10. Hewlett, Lesser Life, pp. 28-29, 54-57, 65-67; John Ardagh, Germany and the Germans (London, 1988), pp. 163-65; Hans-Jiirgen Puhle, "Warum gibt es so wenige Historikerinnen?" Geschichte undGesellschaft 7, no. 3-4 (1981): 364-93; Jon Craig, "The Old School Tie Still Makes for a Silk Future," The Sunday Times, London, April 17, 1988, on the elite among English barristers: "It is not merely in social class that the bar discriminates. Only 4 of the 57 silks are women, and out of the total of 635
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QCs [Queen's Counsel], only 25 are women. The two black QCs who took silk last week were the first ever. . . . " 11. McClelland, "Professionalization," pp. 307-10; John E. Craig, "Higher Education and Social Mobility in Germany," p. 224, both in Jarausch, Transformation; Charles E. McClelland, "Structural Change and Social Reproduction in German Universities, 1870-1920," History of Education 15 (1986): 185-89; Sibylle Meyer, "Die muhsame Arbeit des demonstrativen Miissiggangs: Uber die hauslichen Pflichten der Beamtenfrauen im Kaiserreich," in Hausen, Frauen, pp. 178-79. 12. Michael H. Kater, "Physicians in Crisis at the End of the Weimar Republic," in Peter D. Stachura, ed., Unemployment and the Great Depression in Weimar Germany (London, 1986), pp. 49-61; Stefan Bajohr and Kathrin Rodiger-Bajohr, "Die Diskriminierung der Juristin in Deutschland bis 1945," Kritische Justiz 13 (1980), no. 1; Jill Stephenson, "Girls' Higher Education in Germany in the 1930s," Journal of Contemporary History 10 (1975): 42-44, 47; Claudia Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten und Bildungsbiirgertum: Zur Lage studierender Frauen, 1900-1930," in Hannes Siegrist, ed., BiirgerlicheBerufe:Zur Sozialgeschichte derfreien undakademischen Berufe im internationalen Vergleich (Gottingen, 1988), p. 202. 13. Michael H. Kater, "Professionalization and Socialization of Physicians in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany," Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 685. 14. McClelland, "Structural Change," pp. 179-92; idem, "Zur Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe in Deutschland," in Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka, eds., Bildungsbiirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, part 1, Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in internationalen Vergleichen [Industrielle Welt, vol. 38] (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 237-47. 15. Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement in Germany, 1894-1933 (London, 1976), pp. 17-21, 26-28; James C. Albisetti, "Frauen und die akademischen Berufe im Kaiserlichen Deutschland," in Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Annette Kuhn, eds., Frauen in der Geschichte VI (Dusseldorf, 1985), pp. 291-96. 16. Stephanie Habeth, summary of a conference paper ("Die Freiberuflerin und Beamtin") delivered in Essen in 1983; Albisetti, "Frauen," p. 291; Evans, Feminist Movement, pp. 175-77; Kater, "Professionalization," p. 688; Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten," p. 202. 17. Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das Deutsche Reich (hereafter abbreviated as SJDR) (1923), p. 318; Huerkamp ("Frauen, Universitaten," pp. 205-10) provides a profile of the social background of women students before 1914. 18. Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten," pp. 200-204; Albisetti, "Frauen," p. 288. 19. SJDR (1923), p. 318. 20. Kater, "Professionalization," p. 688; Bajohr and Rodiger-Bajohr, "Diskriminierung," p. 40. 21. Konrad H. Jarausch, "The Crisis of German Professions, 1918-3 3, "Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 386-87; Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten," p. 215. 22. Stephenson, "Girls' Higher Education," pp. 42-43; Jill Mclntyre, "Women and the Professions in Germany, 1930-1940," in Anthony Nicholls and Erich Matthias, eds., German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler (London, 1971), p. 182. 23. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, "Beyond Kinder, Kuche, Kirche: Weimar Women in Politics and Work," in Bridenthal et al., Biology, p. 55. 24. Ibid., pp. 34, 42-43; Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (London, 1975),
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pp. 18-19; Mclntyre, "Women," p, 181; Doris Kaufmann, "Vom Vaterland zum Mutterland: Frauen im katholischen Milieu der Weimarer Republik," in Hausen, Frauen, pp. 254-79. 25. BridenthalandKoonz, " Beyond Kinder," p. 36; Jarausch, "Crisis," pp. 38687; Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten," pp. 214-15; Stephenson, Women, pp. 14749. On married women teachers, compare Use Gahlings and Elle Moering, Die Volksschullehrerin: Sozialgeschichte und Gegenwartslage (Heildelberg, 1961), pp. 104-10. 26. Bajohr and Rodiger-Bajohr, "Diskriminierung," p. 44; Stephenson, Women, pp. 20-23, 150; Mclntyre, "Women," p. 181. 27. Stephenson, Women, p. 150. 28. SJDR (1923), p. 318; ibid. (1924-25). p. 357; ibid. (1928), pp. 509-11; ibid. (1929), pp. 408-9; ibid. (1930), pp. 454-55; ibid. (1931), pp. 430-31; ibid. (1932), pp. 426-27. Huerkamp ("Frauen, Universitaten," pp. 210-11) discusses the social background of women students after 1918. 29. Stephenson, Women, p. 151; Herbert A. Strauss, "Wissenschaftler in der Emigration," in Jorg Troger, ed., Hochschule und Wissenschaft imDrittenReich (Frankfurt, 1984), p. 56; Kater, "Physicians in Crisis," pp. 50-59. 30. For example, Gordon A. Craig, The Germans (London, 1984), p. 164; Ardagh, Germany, p. 162. 31. Stephenson, Women, pp. 13-15, 116-18, 124-26, 130-32, 150-55; Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda (Princeton, N.J., 1978), pp. 16, 31, 41. 32. Stephenson, Women, chaps. 1, 8, and 9. 33. Jarausch, "Crisis," pp. 388-90; Kater, "Professionalization," p. 688. 34. Bajohr and Rodiger-Bajohr, "Diskriminierung," pp. 42-45; Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten," pp. 214-15. 35. SJDR (1924-25), p. 357; ibid. (1928), p. 509; ibid. (1932), pp. 426-27. 36. Jarausch, "Crisis," pp. 390-93. 37. Albisetti, "Frauen," p. 297; Gahlings and Moering, Volksschullehrerin, pp. 75-88, "Der Kampf um das Zolibat der Lehrerin." 38. Albisetti, "Frauen," pp. 296-97; Stephenson, Women, pp. 150, 154. 39. Stephenson, Women, pp. 153-54; Huerkamp, "Frauen, Universitaten," p. 217. 40. For example, Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and NaziPolitics (New York, 1987), p. 3. Chapter 6 is entitled "The Second Sex in the Third Reich," pp. 175-219. The term "secondary racism" was coined by David Schoenbaum (Hitler's Social Revolution [London, 1967], pp. 187-88) to explain the Nazi view of "[t]he natural inferiority of women." 41. Stephenson, Women, pp. 157-58, 170-74, 178-80. 42. Ibid., pp. 160, 164, 167, 171, 175; Koonz, Mothers, pp. 200-202, 218-19. 43. Jarausch, "Crisis," pp. 391, 393. 44. Stephenson, Women, p. 157. 45. Ibid.,pp. 155-58. Several of the contributors in Troger, Hochschule, agree that most dismissals of professionals were on racial or political grounds: for example, pp. 23 (Kater), 72 (Moller), 102-3 (Kiihnl), 124 (Preuss). 46. Stephenson, Women, pp. 158, 165-66. 47. Ibid., pp. 158-59; Michael H. Kater, "Medizinische Fakultaten und Medizinstudenten: Eine Skizze," in Fritz Kudlien, ed., Ante im Nationalsozialismus (Co-
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logne, 1985), p. 96; Michael H. Kater, "Medizin und Mediziner im Dritten Reich: Eine Bestandsaufnahme," Historische Zeitschrift 244 (1987): 318-22. 48. Stephenson, Women, pp. 165-68, 175-77; Strauss, "Wissenschaftler," p. 59. Emigration damaged German intellectual life, especially when several individuals in the one discipline departed. Britain benefited considerably from (for example) the influx of a number of gifted male and female pharmacologists. Information from Dr. R. P. Stephenson. Gerhard Hirschfeld of the German Historical Institute in London, is writing a study of emigre professionals. 49. BajohrandRodiger-Bajohr, "Diskriminierung," pp. 45-48, 50. See also Rita nalmann, Eire Femme sous le III Reich (Paris, 1982), p. 87. 50. Stephenson, Women, pp. 164-65, 167, 180. 51. Kater, "Medizinische Fakultaten," pp. 96, 101; idem, "Medizin," pp. 32022; Bajohr and Rodiger-Bajohr, "Diskriminierung," pp. 48-50; Stephenson, Women, pp. 176-79. 52. SJDR (1930), pp. 454-55; ibid. (1935), pp. 520-21; ibid. (1936), pp. 544-45; ibid. (1937), pp. 580-81; Jacques R. Pauwels, Women, Nazis, and Universities: Female University Students in the Third Reich, 1933-1945 (Westport, Conn., 1984), pp. 146-50. 53. Pauwels, Women, Nazis, and Universities, pp. 96-97, 101-5, 152-53; Stephenson, Women, pp. 137-40; Institut fiir Zeitgeschichte Archiv, MA441/6, frames 2-757139-41, "Zur Lage an den deutschen Hochschulen im Sommersemester 1942"; Kater, "Medizinische Fakultaten," p. 101. 54. John E. Knodel, The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871-1939 (Princeton, N. J., 1974); Jill Stephenson " 'Reichsbund der Kinderreichen': The League of Large Families in the Population Policy of Nazi Germany," European Studies Review 9 (1979): 350-75. 55. Stephenson, Women, pp. 29, 155. 56. Detlev J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life (London, 1987), p. 177.
Psychology in Twentieth-Century Germany: Science and Profession MITCHELL G. ASH
Whether the natural sciences are or are not professions might appear to be a nonissue in Germany, for the sciences were institutionalized there as university disciplines, hence as parts of the academic profession. Yet even commonly accepted accounts of the German universities as uniquely receptive of science recognize that the entry of experimental methods into the academic fold was not easy and followed no simple pattern. For each new discipline, negotiations were necessary to convince university colleagues that such methods deserved the hoary designation of Wissenschqft (science), and to persuade nonscientists of their practical value. The success enjoyed by a given field depended on a complex interaction of innovations in science, demand for trained personnel in relevant economic sectors, mobilization of relevant interest groups such as industrialists or teachers, and the individual initiative of scientists, businessmen, or state officials. Thus, it appears that a linear account proceeding from academic institutionalization to societal professionalization is not adequate for science-based professions in Germany, because the two processes were often, if not always, intertwined. 1 This essay considers the historical relationship of academic and professional status for the case of psychology in Germany, and assesses the impact that the discipline's scientific standing or lack of it and its relations with society had on both. Contrary to standard histories that portray linear progress from philosophical speculation to experimental science, and thence to professional standing, academic psychology in Germany remained a specialty of philosophy for two generations longer than it did in the United States.2 This occurred in part because German psychologists believed that continued links with philosophy were both intellectually justified and institutionally necessary. But precisely those links inhibited psychology's professionalization, which ultimately came as much in response to external demands as to pressure from within. Professional status, once secured, assured the institutional independence of the discipline, but guaranteed it neither undisputed scientific standing nor exclusive control of access to professional practice. 289
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The case of psychology, precisely because of its ambiguous outcome, has significant implications for attempts to develop general models of professionalization and to discover whether the history of the professions in Germany conforms to such models. Some of these implications will be discussed in the conclusion. However, the history of psychology in Germany as both science and profession has been shaped at least as much by the course of German history as by any general dynamic of professionalization. The chapter therefore follows the conventional organization of twentieth-century German history into four periods: the Wilhelmian period to 1918, the Weimar era to 1933, the Nazi era to 1945, and the postwar years. In all of these time frames, psychology faced the same twofold challenge of achieving scientific standing and demonstrating the practical significance of psychological knowledge—scientific or not. Although psychologists responded to both of these challenges in each of the four periods, the field remained uncertain of both itself and its place in German society.3 The Wilhelmian Period Psychology in German-speaking Europe at the turn of the century was less a science or even an organized discipline than the promise of one. That promise came most prominently from Wilhelm Wundt and Franz Brentano. Wundt, who founded the world's first continuously operating psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879, was originally trained as a physiologist. Stimulated by the evident success of experimental method in sensory physiology and by Gustav Theodor Fechner's psychophysics, which purported to measure the relations between stimuli and sensations, he propagated a "physiological" psychology as the foundation upon which the human studies could be constructed. 4 Brentano and his students were philosophers who believed that a careful phenomenology of consciousness aided by experimental methods could achieve what one of them, Carl Stumpf, called a "measuring theory of judgment." In an 1891 essay, Stumpf argued that psychology and epistemology were, or ought to be, coordinate endeavors: the former provided useful information about the origin of concepts, while the latter determined the principles for establishing their validity.5 These hopes received support from the revision of Fechner's psychophysics by Wundt, Georg Elias Miiller, and others to show that it measured not sensation but judgment. In their opinion, this established the philosophical relevance of the results. Equally significant was Hermann Ebbinghaus's study of memory (1885), which was the first successful attempt to apply quantitative methods to so-called higher mental processes. Ebbinghaus memorized meaningless series of syllables and cantos from Byron's Don Juan, then measured the amount of each kind of material retained over time, thus obtaining a statistical curve of forgetting. Although he did not claim to know what memory is, he said his procedure showed how it worked. Both of these techniques, refined to fine arts by Muller and others, soon became classical exemplars of experimental method presented in all psychology laboratory courses.6 Psychology had long
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been taught as a part of philosophy in the universities and as part of the socalled philosophical propadeutic in the Gymnasien. Thus, the idea of an empirical psychology did not come as an invasion from outside, but rather as a program of radical reform from within philosophy. Seven of Wundt's students or associates went on to become professors of philosophy in German universities outside Leipzig and founded psychological laboratories of their own. By 1914 there were fourteen such laboratories in Germany, and a Society for Experimental Psychology had been organized in 1904.7 Such advances did not obscure disagreement about styles of institution building. Wundt organized his laboratory along lines that Justus Liebig had first drawn, as a hierarchically structured research and teaching institution where students became scientists by practical application. The other founders of experimental psychology in Germany recognized the pedagogical value of laboratory instruction, but saw no need "to follow Wundt and the Americans" and mass-produce scientists, as Stumpf put it. 8 Instead, they carefully groomed a researcher elite imbued with philosophical interests. In either case, however, the field was not a vehicle for social mobility, but was socially reproductive, like philosophy itself. Wundt noted in 1893 that the students in his laboratory were mainly future Gymnasium teachers. The psychological experiment as practiced there and in other German institutes usually employed small numbers of subjects and emphasized training in objective self-observation. This was a place where children of Bildungsburger (the middle class) and aspirants to that status could meet to observe themselves and one another, affirming even with this new method the traditional value of self-cultivation.9 The psychologists' program met with skepticism from other philosophers from the start. Wilhelm Dilthey claimed in 1894, for example, that the assumption that consciousness was a mosaic of elementary sensations connected by association, which appeared to be a necessary foundation of the new scientific psychology, was contrary to fact. The fundamental psychological reality was "experienced structure," with thought, feeling, and will in dynamic interaction. Dilthey maintained that only a psychology that accepts the primacy of such structures and thus relegates experiment to a secondary role can legitimately aspire to become the basis of the human studies.10 Another line of attack began with southwest German Neo-Kantian philosophers' distinction between natural scientific laws and philosophical norms or values. On this basis, Heinrich Rickert placed experimental psychology firmly in the natural sciences, thus excluding it from philosophy. Edmund Husserl offered powerful support for this position in his attack on epistemological "psychologism," the idea that true propositions about knowledge can be derived by induction from experiences of knowing. To discover the essence of consciousness, he averred in 1911, it is not necessary for philosophical faculties to accede to "the pressure of the natural scientists" and give professorships of philosophy to experimenters "who have no more inner sympathy for philosophy than chemists or physicists." 11 In 1900, William Stern touched the cultural heart of the matter when he warned that if experimentalists continued on their current course, the result
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would be a "psychology without a subject." As early as 1867, Friedrich Albert Lange had proclaimed the unsettling program of a "psychology without the soul." Philosophers in Germany traditionally saw themselves, with philologists, as the guardians of subjectivity and of Wissenschaft, which merged in the ideal of self-cultivation, or Bildung. Thus, the philosophers' critiques were defenses against the incursion of natural-scientific methods on their territory, and also expressions of anxiety about the erosion of traditional humanistic values.12 The tension climaxed in 1912, when experimenting psychologist Erich Rudolf Jaensch (about whom more will be said) was named to succeed the NeoKantian Hermann Cohen in Marburg with the support of natural scientists in the philosophical faculty but over the objections of the local philosophers. The resulting protest yielded 107 signatures on a petition against appointing any more experimenting psychologists to chairs of philosophy. This was roughly two thirds of the philosophy teachers in German-speaking universities. As experimenter Karl Marbe pointed out, however, only 41 percent of full professors in philosophy signed, and only 7 percent of the signers had published anything on psychology. The dispute defined the lines of conflict more clearly than before, but no significant institutional change resulted. Rather, there was general agreement with Wundt's conclusion that only a "philosophically educated man, filled with philosophical interests" should have the right to teach psychology.13 One way of establishing the field's institutional independence would have been to demonstrate its practical potential, and there were several attempts to do so. As early as 1896, the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who studied with Wundt in Leipzig, pioneered the use of experimental methods in diagnosing mental disorders. Another prominent program was in pedagogical psychology, which had been proposed by Wundt's student Ernst Meumann and supported by "psychology clubs" organized by teachers in Leipzig and other cities. Both Kraepelin and Meumann based their attempts to apply experimental psychology on the concept of "intellectual work," which they took to be measurable with standard or modified psychophysical techniques. A further example of applied work was William Stern's "differential psychology." Among other things, he refined the method of scoring Alfred Binet's mental tests, coining the term "intelligence quotient" in 1911. Stern also worked in criminology, trying to develop methods of assessing the veracity of statements in court. Karl Marbe applied similar methods to determining the responsibility for traffic and industrial accidents, and offered his services as a consultant to insurance firms. Finally, Hugo Munsterberg proclaimed that a new science of "psychotechnics" could be an alternative to crudely mechanistic Taylorism, helping to place people in jobs suited to their mental and behavioral capabilities.14 However, none of this had proceeded far beyond the programmatic stage by 1914, and the relation of such applied work to psychology as science or to other disciplines such as psychiatry and pedagogy remained unclear. Wundt, for example, withdrew from the editorial board of the Archiv fur die gesamte Psychologic, which Meumann edited, because he opposed emphasizing applied
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work until the scientific foundations of psychology were firmer. When leaders of the Society for Experimental Psychology openly called for independent chairs at their 1912 congress in Berlin, the Prussian state and Berlin city officials present responded with indications that psychologists still needed to demonstrate the practical value of their methods. Wundt concluded in 1913 that neither experimental psychology's scientific standing nor applied psychology's potential was sufficient as yet to persuade German state officials to fund independent chairs of psychology at all universities. The only way the field could justify its existence in the university system was to remain part of the general philosophical education of Gymnasium and university teachers.15 The situation began to change during the First World War, when psychologists adapted psychophysical and other techniques in the military (e.g., to test the skills of airplane pilots and ground-based aircraft observers or to help develop range finders for artillery). These contacts led to the establishment of a psychological section in the Reichswehr in 1922, which later became the foundation for the professionalization of the field.16
The Weimar Period During the era of the republic, psychology in Germany continued to face the twofold challenge of scientific legitimacy and practical relevance, but with increasing emphasis on the latter. Between 1918 and 1927, six new positions in psychology were created in technical academies with a view to developing psychotechnics, and departments of applied psychology were added to some university institutes for the same reason. By 1932, applied psychology and psychotechnics were taught in twenty-three German universities, nine technical academies, and one commercial academy. In 1930, the psychotechnical service of the German railways, which had been founded by Walter Moede of the Berlin Technical Academy, had thirty-nine full-time and part-time employees and had tested 17,210 workers for reaction time, eye-hand coordination, and related skills. In addition, psychotechnicians worked in the postal system and in state and national labor and unemployment insurance agencies. However, many of these new professionals were engineers with a brief training course in psychotechnics, not psychologists.17 In the universities, basic research with philosophical or pedagogical aims continued to predominate. The institutional situation improved somewhat at first, with three new institutes established between 1914 and 1925, but remained more or less static thereafter. The Society for Experimental Psychology invoked the war service of the field in a quiet appeal to state governments and university faculties in 1921 to establish independent chairs, or at least to consider the interests of psychology in filling philosophical chairs, but to little avail. Institutional stopgaps included moving existing psychology chairs and institutes from philosophical to natural sciences faculties (e.g., Frankfurt in 1914, Giessen in 1922, Jena in 1925), and securing equal recognition for
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doctoral examinations in psychology an a "philosophical discipline' alongside pedagogy and philosophy proper (e.g., Wurzburg in 1921).18 The founding of the Jena laboratory in 1923 reflected the role that politics, both "high" and academic, could play in this situation. The original sponsor was the Zeiss lens-making company in Jena, which hoped for relevant applications from experimental research in vision. However, the Socialist-Communists coalition government of Thuringia took over the project and appointed Wilhelm Peters, who was an expert in intelligence testing, hoping to use his expertise in its egalitarian school reform program. This led to indignant protests from Peters's erstwhile colleagues in the philosophical faculty, who refused to speak with the new appointee. He resolved the issue after the fall of the coalition by moving his institute to the natural sciences faculty.19 In situations in which such moves did not occur, psychologists retained a double identity as both professors of philosophy and directors of research laboratories. The theoretical debates of the period reflected that fact, as psychologists tried to find a middle ground between commitment to a philosophical anthropology based on natural and scientific methods, and defense of traditional humanistic values. An important example of such attempts was Gestalt theory. Protesting against atomism and mechanism in older experimental psychology, the Gestalt theorists Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka proposed to reformulate psychology's categories on the basis of the claim that not sensations, but structured wholes and the dynamic relationships among them are the primary data of mental life. In this position they were sharply challenged by other psychologists, but mainly because their holism did not go far enough. Taking their cue from Dilthey's concept of experience, proponents of the so-called Leipzig school of "holistic psychology" (Ganzheitspsychologie), for example, asserted that the Gestalt theorists had neglected the constitutive role of feeling and will in experience. They thus reproduced the dichotomy between Germanic Kultur and Western civilization that was central to conservative thought at the time.20 During the Weimar era, a similar pattern occurred in debates on the status of applied psychology. Contributing to the argument over the rationalization of industry, Fritz Giese of Stuttgart's technical academy claimed, for example, that psychotechnics, far from being a mere tool for increasing productivity, "moves toward a harmonizing Romanticism" via a "philosophy of work," emphasizing workers' personality development.21 However, such talk left psychotechnicians who engaged in it vulnerable to competition from practitioners of so-called scientific graphology and characterology. With the help of handwriting analysis, Ludwig Klages and others claimed to discover people's true inner lives, because the expressive movements in handwriting represented nothing less than the soul's self-expressive power. In their view, such methods were better suited to personnel selection for employees than either academic psychology's tests, which they dismissed as trivial, or the methods of industrial psychotechnics, such as reaction time measurements, oriented as they were to merely external achievement.22 Others also contested different sectors of applied psychology's territory.
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Philosophical pedagogue Eduard Spranger, for example, opposed using standardized tests in Gymnasium admissions as falsely understood democracy, "for the individual is viewed here in the end as something measurable and graspable in numbers, not as a structural principle of the soul."23 In the army, a decadelong conflict among officers, psychologists, and physicians over control of specialist and officer selection was ultimately resolved by giving each group a role in the process. Even the term "applied psychology" remained ambiguous, referring to both technological applications and the use of psychological ideas in the study of art or literature.24 By 1927, talk began of what Vienna professor Karl Buhler called "the crisis of psychology"—in other words, the discipline's apparent inability to agree on either its aims or its methods. This was a reprise of William Stern's similar diagnosis in 1900, which in turn echoed that of Wilhelm Windelband a quarter century earlier. As Stern had put it, "there are many new psychologies, but not the new psychology."25 Shortly after Buhler's book appeared, others began speaking of a "crisis of psychotechnics." Depending on the writer's political position, the phrase referred either to the alleged failure of applied psychology to be helpful in the rationalization of industry, or to the accusation that many psychotechnicians worked solely for management's interests and were unsympathetic to workers' welfare.26 Such talk was clearly not limited to psychology. The crisis trope was ubiquitous in Weimar culture, for reasons that went beyond the problems of any discipline. Psychologists, however, proved unwilling to decide how to deal with their crises. In 1929, a statement by the executive committee of the former Society for Experimental Psychology—newly renamed German Society for Psychology—made clear that the field's leaders desired to have it both ways. They offered to train the members of the newly emerging psychological profession, while at the same time insisting that the connections of their work to philosophy were "stronger than ever."27 Yet it was difficult to see how the members of a discipline could provide reliable practical training when they disagreed on fundamental issues of method and theory. Danzig professor Hans Henning suggested that applied psychologists needed to learn experimental techniques because "the naked reality of economic life demands exact, natural-scientific objectivity. One does not get far economically with literary-philosophical theories."28 Such claims had been made on behalf of experimental methods in other disciplines for nearly a century. But without a coherent program for linking basic study and research to occupational training in psychology, this was wishful thinking. Karl Buhler, chairman of the German Society for Psychology, spoke in 1931 of a net loss of chairs in the field, in words poignantly reminiscent of military defeat: "The entire east and western Prussia today lack psychological institutes with regular academic heads: Konigsberg, Breslau, Bonn are lost. . . . The external situation is serious; without sufficient support from state agencies and outside the university, psychology in Germany must fall behind and decay, where it began so hopefully two generations ago."29 It was in this institutionally weakened condition that psychology entered the Nazi era.
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The Nazi Period In psychology as elsewhere, interrelated institutional and ideological struggles dominated the first years after the Nazi takeover. The civil service law of April 7, 1933 led to the dismissal or forced retirement of five of the fifteen full professors in psychology and a total of twenty of the twenty-eight university teachers in the field ranked associate professor or higher. The Nuremberg laws of 1935 and the incorporation of Austria into the Reich in 1938 later added to this total. These losses did not result from any official policy against psychology per se, but mainly because the people involved were Jews or married to Jews. The designation "Jewish science" applied to psychoanalysis, which was both intellectually and institutionally separate from psychology. Shortly after the civil service law was promulgated, the German Society for Psychology undertook a coordination (Selbstgleichschaltung) by accepting the resignations of the Jewish members of its executive committee, although no law then required this. At the society's congress in September, Leipzig professor Felix Krueger, a Volkisch conservative who had been its chairman since 1932, called on psychologists to join in Germany's "psychological renewal." There was no official protest against the removal of Jewish psychologists from their posts. Instead, Krueger wrote his colleagues that he had intervened personally with the authorities in Berlin to be sure that vacated positions would be filled with psychologists, rather than "pure" (i.e., non-psychologist) philosophers or pedagogues.30 Only one psychologist openly resisted the new politics, the Berlin professor and Gestalt theorist Wolfgang Kohler. His courageous protest rested on a combination of pragmatic considerations (who would replace so many outstanding scientists?), moral principles (Jews are citizens entitled to the protection of the law), and traditional status prerogatives (institute directors have the right to appoint whom they please to assist them). The regime had little respect for any of these claims. Kohler gained some support from holdovers in the Prussian Ministry of Science and Education against uncontrolled Nazi student attacks on his institute, and mobilized pressure on the Foreign Ministry from abroad. He thus managed (surprisingly for those who still support a rigidly totalitarian conception of the Nazi state) to maintain his position in Berlin until 1935. Newly Nazified careerists in the philosophical faculty ultimately forced him out by denouncing his assistants to the Gestapo for allegedly behaving in a "communistic" manner. However, the man who sought to replace Kohler, former military psychologist Johann Baptist Rieffert, failed to implement his plan to make the Berlin Psychological Institute a center of research into such topics as the gestures and character of Jews. He had "forgotten" to mention his earlier membership in the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands on his political questionnaire, and was dismissed after less than a year. Thus Rieffert could destroy or greatly weaken the psychology that had existed in Berlin, but could not replace it with a Nazified alternative.31 Elsewhere, attempts of this kind were more successful. Most notorious in this regard was Erich Rudolf Jaensch (mentioned earlier), who revised the
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personality theory he had developed in the 1920s to make it conform with Nazi race theory. Earlier, he had distinguished structurally "integrated" from more labile or "synesthetic" personality types, but had not presented them as unequal. After 1933, he considered "synesthetics" inferior and named the Jews as important examples, although they were not the only representatives of this so-called antitype (Gegentypus). This thinking became the psychological basis for Ludwig Bieberbach's "German mathematics." Jaensch assumed control of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologic—the leading German journal of psychology—in 1933 and made it into a platform for such work. In 1936, he succeeded Krueger as chairman of the German Society for Psychology. Others also adapted their theories to conform with what they took to be the demands of the day. Jena professor and "holistic" psychologist Friedrich Sander went so far as to endorse the "removal" of persons "foreign" to the German racial and cultural fabric.32 Still other psychologists favored more pragmatic rather than ideological adaptations. Former Jaensch co-worker Oswald Kroh, for example, redirected his pedagogical research to the goal of a "volkisch study of humanity" (volkische Menschenkunde) based on the dual criteria of "volkisch achievement and political fitness" (Eignung).33 After Jaensch's death in 1940, Kroh became chairman of the German Society for Psychology. Kurt Gottschaldt, a former student and assistant of Kohler who had been associated with Communists in the 1920s, headed the newly created Psychological Department of the Kaiser-WilhelmInstitute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics from 1935 to 1945. It was there that he carried out extensive studies on the psychological development of twins under the protection of institute director Eugen Fischer, without joining the Nazi party.34 Philipp Lersch, who had already made a reputation in the 1920s with his work on the use of facial expression in personality diagnostics for the Reichswehr, continued this research after 1933 and advanced to full professorships in Breslau, Leipzig, and Munich, apparently also without joining the party.35 Lersch's career was possible because of the spectacular growth in military psychology, which would be the most important development in psychology under Nazism. This was a direct result of rearmament and the reintroduction of compulsory military service in 1935, which increased demand for officers. In 1933, the psychological section of the army employed 33 people; however, by 1938, the number of psychologists working in the army and navy alone had increased to 170, which was equivalent to nearly half the membership of the German Society for Psychology in 1932. By 1941, there were between 450 and 500 psychologists in the Wehrmaeht, including the army, the navy, and the air force. The demand was so great that many people without significant training in psychology, mainly teachers who had had courses in the subject, had to be hired. Wehrmaeht psychologists were civil servants with the equivalent of officer rank, and the civil service code required that they complete a formal state examination in their specialties. Neither the doctorate in philosophy, which most psychologists held, nor any pedagogical certificate satisfied this requirement. Thus, in 1941 a committee of military men, physicians, and academics developed a diploma examination, or DPO (Diplomprufungsordnung),
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which was the first professional certificate in psychology. This quickly led to the creation of new professorships, and to the filling of long-vacant chairs, such as Wolfgang Kohler's in Berlin, which went to Kroh. Psychology had at last emancipated itself from mater philosophia by offering concrete, practical services to the military. In his triumphant Christmas message to the German Society for Psychology, Kroh spoke of "significant progress" and said German psychologists could well look upon the year 1941 with satisfaction.36 Utter normality was the most impressive characteristic of this development. American psychologists, too, had given their discipline prominence by giving technical assistance to the military with the Army intelligence tests during the First World War. 37 The psychology that achieved professional status in Germany, however, made only secondary use of intelligence testing. As Ulfried Geuter points out, a shift in psychological research from cognition-oriented experimentation to personality theory and diagnostics, or "characterology," had already begun in the 1920s, preceding the growth of Wehrmacht psychology. There was thus no separation of professionalization in psychology from its scientific content. The "characterology" deemed useful by the Wehrmacht was not Jaensch's ideologically manipulated variety, but rather specific tests of prospective officers' intelligence, control of emotional expression, strength of will, and ability to command, which were all traditional qualities of the Prussian officer. Intelligence was assessed with standardized paper-and-pencil tests; the other qualities were measured by observation in prestructured command situations, utilizing "intuitive" techniques developed by Lersch but drawing also on Klages's work on expressive movements. This mix of tests and controlled intuition in the service of elite selection was clearly different from the sorting functions performed on soldiers of all ranks by the Army intelligence tests in the United States.38 Jiirgen Kocka writes that professions strive for "monopoly control of services and freedom from control by others" as well as material rewards and social prestige "based on competence, professional ethics and the special importance of their work for society and the common weal." This case clearly raises difficult issues for some of these criteria, for psychology achieved professional status in Germany by directly serving the military in a state preparing for and then conducting aggressive war. Geuter's interviews with former Wehrmacht psychologists are disquieting in this respect. Many psychologists apparently regarded military psychology as a safe haven in which they could do high-quality, practical work without being forced to join the Nazi party, at least until the early 1940s. Thus, for them "professional ethics" meant professionalism for its own sake, predicated on a steadfast refusal to consider the ends to which it was directed. If this was autonomy, it was limited indeed.39 In 1942, newly professionalized German psychology suffered two serious setbacks. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists succeeded in eliminating medical subjects from the diploma examination; also, for reasons that remain unclear, first the air force and then the army disbanded their psychological services. Geuter suggests that the air force had little use for its psychological service after
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the Battle of Britain, since demand for pilots far exceeded supply. The army, too, was short of officers after the invasion of the Soviet Union stalled in the winter of 1941-42; moreover, the need for expert assistance in officer selection disappeared once battlefield experience became available.40 But the diploma examination proved to be durable; its structure and content remained consistent until the 1970s. Clearly, psychologists found new sources of demand for their expertise after 1945. The Postwar Years In western Germany, the development of psychology after 1945 can be divided into three stages.41 During the first postwar decade, psychologists reconstructed their institutional bases in the universities. By 1954, twelve full professors were in place who had held that title before 1945, including Oswald Kroh at the Free University of Berlin and Friedrich Sander in Bonn. Only one openly Nazi professor permanently lost his post. Exceptions to the trend were Heinrich Diiker in Marburg, who had been a political prisoner in the 1930s, and returned expatriate Curt Bondy in Hamburg. This continuity in personnel ensured the continuation of old conflicts, for example, between Gestalt theory and holistic psychology. However, with its emphasis on what Mainz professor Albert Wellek called "prerational forces," the latter approach was more easily integrated into the dominant postwar personality concept, Philipp Lersch's "layer theory," which he had already developed in 1938. In 1947, Lersch wrote in support of personal freedom and independence against the threat of the "loss of individualism" (Vermassung), thus upholding traditional Bildungsbiirger values while ignoring the rather different aims that had governed the use of his thinking in the Nazi era.42 On the practical side, applied psychology reemerged in the same sectors as in the 1920s, but with a firmer institutional base. Labor psychologists took up psychotechnics in a revised form of what had been used in the German Labor Front, emphasizing characterological interpretations of individuals' attitudes toward work in the plant rather than specific tests of work operations. In 1953 and 1955, the first career positions for psychologists in the Federal Republic of Germany were created first in federal, then in state and communal labor offices and unemployment insurance agencies, employing 200 psychologists by the end of the decade. Educational counseling was another growth area for applied work. The number of counseling centers increased from about 50 in 1950 to 230 in 1960; by that time, psychologists had replaced physicians and social workers as the leading employees. Like labor psychology, the pedagogical and developmental psychology employed in these agencies drew on issues from the 1920s, especially regarding youth and delinquency. With the reestablishment of military psychology in 1957, the cycle of continuity was complete. But it was in this period that applied psychologists successfully organized themselves for the first time. The Association of German Professional Psychologists (Berufsver-
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band deutscher Psychologen, BDP), which had been founded in the British and American zones in 1947 and 1948 and nationwide in 1949, grew more than tenfold from 118 members in 1949 to 1,231 in I960.43 Beginning in the mid-1950s, a second, overlapping stage began, as American experimental and statistical techniques increasingly influenced West German research practice. This had relevance for the practical realm as well. With the emergence of a social market economy accompanied by a welfare state in the Federal Republic of Germany, demand increased for various forms of psychological diagnostics. But the emphasis on trained intuition that had seemed so well suited to elite officer selection appeared less suitable for the needs of state employment, welfare, and education administrations. American-style aptitude, intelligence, and personality testing, backed by sophisticated multivariate statistics, appeared to fit the new situation better; however, the senior professoriate had a vested interest in the older methods. These specific changes, in combination with the general reorientation of much of West German industry, culture, and society toward the United States, formed the background to the Methodenstreit (conflict of methods) that raged through the 1950s. The battle ended in more or less complete victory for the "Americanizers."44 With the generation after 1960 came enormous expansion in the discipline's academic base and increasing diversification of its applications, coinciding with and supported by rapid growth of the West German university system in the same period. The number of psychological institutes doubled from eighteen in 1961 to thirty-six in 1982. Student enrollment increased 907 percent from 2,055 to 18,574 between 1960 and 1980, and scientific personnel increased more than twelve times from 89 to 1,097 in the same period.45 A leading sector in this expansion was clinical psychology, which had begun a similar upward spiral in the United States ten years earlier. A reformed diploma examination statute approved in 1973 gave students a freer choice of specialties after required preliminary courses, leading to still further growth in the clinical sector and more pressure for courses in that area.46 All this might have been good news; indeed, the introduction of an admissions restriction (numerus clausus) in this period put psychology in a hitherto unknown elite position among university disciplines. But the expansion and diversification of professional opportunities also posed problems for academic psychology, stimulating debates about the purpose of the field that are all too familiar to American psychologists. In his chairman's address to the German Society for Psychologists in 1978, for example, social psychologist Martin Me spoke of the danger that "from a science psychology will become a trade guild of health practitioners" ("eine Berufskunde von Heilpraktikern"). Later, he expressed open skepticism that increasing numbers of clinical psychologists would inevitably lead to official recognition as a "healing profession" and consequent access to reimbursement from health insurance agencies. Arguments about the priority of science versus healing, or of basic versus applied research, have not been solved in West Germany as they have tended to be in the United States, by relegating most applied research elsewhere, for example to departments of education or social work. Though this has occurred
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to some extent, the fact remains that under West German law only the psychology diploma assures official recognition and employment in bureaucratic agencies, or conveys the right to health insurance reimbursement for practice as a consultant, counselor, or therapist. This option is increasingly exercised by newly trained psychologists, who in any case face limited employment chances in industry or government. The issue of health insurance reimbursement for such practice, however, is so cloudy that some clinical psychologists have registered with insurers in the same category as homeopaths, who have been recognized as healing professionals since the Nazi period, in order to qualify. To complicate the issue still further, the title "diplomate in psychology" (Diplam-Psychologel-in)—abbreviated tongue-twistingly as Dipl. -Psych, for graduates of university programs—is protected by law, but the title "psychologist" is not. Conclusion More research is needed to secure and elaborate some of the findings reported here, especially for the postwar period, and to explore more fully psychology's history in the Soviet occupation zone and the German Democratic Republic. But perhaps enough has been said to indicate the complexity of this discipline's scientific and professional history in twentieth-century Germany. What are the implications of that history for more general models of professionalization? It seems clear, first of all, that the very nature of the twofold challenge posed to all science-based professions in Germany precluded any simple, linear progression from scientific to societal success. At least the possibility of successful application was a precondition for the institutionalization of most experimental disciplines in the German universities; scientific standing was not enough. Such standing was important in a culture that claimed to value Wissenschaft so highly, but even the disputed scientific status of psychology did not prevent its successful application in the Wehrmacht. Even now, the primacy of strictly natural-scientific methods in the discipline is by no means uncontested, and the relation of experimental methods to potential applications is not unambiguous. The so-calledPraxisschock striking recent graduates as they enter the labor force has become proverbial. To deal with this problem and to protect basic research, one prominent experimenter and theoretician has proposed a two-track training system separating those destined for practical work from would-be scientists after the first semesters of common study.48 Linear-progression models of professionalization have been challenged recently by alternative approaches. One comes from political economy and states, very baldly summarized, that in the professionalization process demand for a particular knowledge is either created or reshaped by its purveyors. Institutionalization is thus not a natural result of knowledge growth, but serves the need to structure—ideally to achieve monopoly control of—the market for that knowledge. To the degree that this is successful, both the financial and the power position of knowledge producers and practitioners improve.49 This
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market model appears to work for psychology in Germany only in a negative sense, if at all. Its applicability to cognitive contents like those of laboratory psychology seems questionable in any case, though it may well fit the conversion of laboratory methods into salable technology. The main point here, however, is that psychology in Germany achieved professional status primarily as a civil service occupation, not as a competitor for markets outside the state. Moreover, even after the mix of state employment and self-employment diversified after 1960, psychologists never monopolized the market for any of their "products," either theoretical or practical. They garnered at best substantial control of particular market segments at various times, but even this was always contested by and had to be negotiated with other claimants, from graphology and pedagogy to psychiatry, psychotherapy, and social work. A further challenge to older models of professionalization emphasized the acquisition of cognitive authority over market control. Since demand for knowledge and related practices can be fulfilled in a variety of ways, the model states that in professionalization one subgroup must achieve an authoritative position in order to persuade other socially relevant groups that its knowledge and associated practices deserve preference and ultimately exclusive rights over others. In the case of American medicine, Paul Starr has claimed that basing only one or two branches of research and practice on experimental natural science was sufficient to give physicians an enormous advantage in authority, which they used to compete against rivals even in areas in which science did not yet justify their claims to superiority.50 The differences between the authority and the market model are obvious, but they are also compatible, because acquiring cognitive authority is in both a means to an end, not an end in itself. The authority model appears most applicable to the case at hand. German psychologists' wish to maintain traditional links with philosophy until the 1940s—in contrast to American psychologists' urge for independence—was not only based on institutional constraints but had deep historical roots. They hoped to draw from one of the most respected wellsprings of traditional authority in their culture. The problem was that it was not possible to acquire this particular form of cognitive authority with experimental methods. Perhaps the shift in emphasis beginning in the 1920s to "intuitive" or "characterological" methods was an adaptation to this fact, even before the Nazi regime inscribed "intuition" and "character" on its ideological banners. But that strategy—if such it was—worked only temporarily, if at all. Psychologists have never had an authoritative position in prewar German or postwar West German society comparable with that of American psychotherapists and childrearing experts. They are now, and arguably always were, primarily functionaries offering instruments to carry out policy goals determined by others. Only a minority work as entrepreneurs satisfying consumer demand, although the number and variety of such niches has grown considerably since 1960. In either case, psychologists remain deeply dependent on an administered society, either helping to make it work or aiding others to cope with its workings. This raises again the issue of autonomy. Richard Whitley distinguishes
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between "strong" and "weak" professions according to whether control rests with employers or practitioners. By this criterion, psychology in Germany clearly fits the latter category.51 However, this might include other professions such as medicine and law, which in Germany have been called "free" but which in fact have been dependent on the state in various ways throughout their histories. For psychology in Germany, the role of government as both certifying agent and primary employer of professionals has also been central. The nature of that role and the identity of the state agencies involved have changed over time, but for reasons that had more to do with changing social needs as defined by government officials than with the needs or desires of scientists or professionals. For this reason, the line from institutionalization to professionalization in psychology was not straight, and was certainly not exclusively determined by the inner logic of psychological science. Rather, both scientific legitimacy and societal status have had to be negotiated with varying partners inside and outside the discipline according to social, political, and economic circumstances, with uncertain results. For such negotiations to succeed, or even to occur, both academics and practitioners had to have something to offer and agencies something to give. In this context, the history of psychology, like that of other professions in Germany, has also been inseparable from that country's social and political history.
Notes An early version of this chapter was presented at a miniconference on the history of science and the professions held at the University of Iowa in May 1987. Thanks are due to the participants, and also to Geoffrey Cocks and Ulfried Geuter, for helpful suggestions. Thanks also to the Director and staff of University House at the University of Iowa, who provided refuge and support during completion of the final version. 1. Examples of the considerable literature behind these statements include the following: David Cahan, "The Institutional Revolution in German Physics, 18651914," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 15 (1985): 1-66; Rudolf Stichweh.Zwr Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen: Physik in Deutschland, 1740-1890 (Frankfurt, 1984); Arleen Tuchman, "Experimental Physiology, Medical Reform, and the Politics of Education at the University of Heidelberg: A Case Study," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 61 (1987): 203-15. See also the chapters by Claudia Huerkamp and Jeffrey A. Johnson in this volume. 2. Kurt Danziger, "The Origins of Modern Psychology," in Allen R. Buss, ed., Psychology in Social Context (New York, 1979), pp. 25-45; David E. Leary, "Wundtand After: Psychology's Shifting Relations with the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences and Philosophy," Journal ofthe History of'the Behavioral Sciences 15 (1979): 231-41. The most prominent standard account is Edwin G. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology [1929], 2nd ed. (New York, 1950). 3. The following is a necessarily brief summary of a large and growing literature. Readers who wish more detailed evidence for the claims made here should consult the sources cited.
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4. Wilhelm Wundt, GrundrissderPsychologie [1896], 8th ed. (Leipzig, 1907), pp. 18-19; Logik [1880-83], 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1920-21), vol. 3, chap. 3. On the evolution of Wundt's program, see William R. Woodward, "Wundt's Program for the New Psychology: Vicissitudes of Experiment, Theory and System," in William R. Woodward and Mitchell G. Ash, eds., The Problematic Science: Psychology in NineteenthCentury Thought (New York, 1982), pp. 167-97. 5. Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [1874], 2 vols., ed. Oskar Kraus (Leipzig, 1924-25); Carl Stumpf, "Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie," Abhandlungen der koniglich bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1 klasse, 18 (1891): 501-2; Tonpsychologie, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1883), p. 43. 6. On the revision of psychophysics, see Woodward, "Wundt's Program," p. 177ff. On the impact of Hermann Ebbinghaus, Uber das Geddchtnis (Leipzig, 1885), see Werner Traxel, ed., Ebbinghaus-Studien 2: Internationales Hermann-EbbinghausSymposion Passau vom 30. Mai bis 2. June 1985 (Passau, 1987). 7. Ulfried Geuter, ed., Daten zur Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie, vol. 1 (Gottingen, 1986); Mitchell G. Ash, "Academic Politics in the History of Science: Experimental Psychology in Germany, 1879-1941," Central European History 13 (1980): 264, n. 37. For references to psychology in Prussian state teachers' examination requirements, see Konrad Jarausch, Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberalism (Princeton, N.J., 1982), pp. 147-48. 8. Stumpf to Friedrich Althoff, Oct. 20, 1893, cited in Ash, "Academic Politics," p. 272; see Wilhelm Wundt, "Das Institut furexperimentelle Psychologie," in Festschrift zur Feier des SOOjdhrigen Bestehens der Universitdt Leipzig (Leipzig, 1909), vol. 4, pp. 131-32. 9. Wilhelm Wundt, "Psychophysik und experimentelle Psychologie," in Wilhelm Lexis, ed., Die deutschen Universitaten (Berlin, 1893), p. 456; Kurt Danziger, "The Origins of the Psychological Experiment as a Social Institution," American Psychologist 40 (1985): 133-40. 10. Wilhelm Dilthey, "Ideen iiber eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie" [1894], Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5. [1924], 6th ed. (Gottingen, 1974), pp. 139-240. See Rudolph Makreel, Wilhelm Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Sciences (Princeton, N.J., 1975), pp. 93, 131ff., 207ff. 11. Heinrich Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft [1898], 2nd ed. (Tubingen, 1910), p. 152; Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 1 (Halle, 1900); idem, "Philosophic als strenge Wissenschaft," Logos 1 (1910-11): 319, 321 n. 1. 12. Friedrich A. Lange, "Seelenlehre (Psychologie)," in K. A. Schmid, ed., Encyklopaedie desgesamtenErziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens [1867], 2nded. (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 521-614; William Stern, "Die psychologische Arbeit des 19. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift fur Padagogische Psychologie 2 (1900): 329-52, 413-36. See Irmingard Staeuble, '"Subjektpsychologie oder subjektlose Psychologie'—Gesellschaftliche und institutionelle Bedingungen der Herausbildung der modernen Psychologie," in Mitchell G. Ash and Ulfried Geuter, eds., Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie im 20. Jahrhundert: Bin Uberblick (Opladen, 1985), pp. 19-44. 13. Wilhelm Wundt, "Die Psychologie im Kampf urns Dasein," in Kleine Schriften, vol. 3, ed. Max Wundt (Stuttgart, 1921), p. 543; Karl Marbe, Die Aktion gegen die Psychologie: Eine Abwehr (Leipzig, 1913), p. 22; Mitchell G. Ash, "Wilhelm Wundt and Oswald Kulpe on the Institutional Status of Psychology," in Wolfgang G. Bringmann and Ryan D. Tweney, eds., Wundt Studies (Toronto, 1980), especially pp. 406-16.
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14. Karl Marbe, "Die Bedeutung der Psychologic fur die iibrigen Wissenschaften und die Praxis," Fortschritte der Psychologic undihrer Anwendungen 1 (1913): 5-82. On Kraepelin and Meumann, see Siegfried Jaeger, "Zur Herausbildung von Praxisfeldern der Psychologic bis 1933," in Ash and Geuter, Geschichte, pp. 83-112. On psychotechnics, see Hugo Miinsterberg, Psychologie und Wirtschaftsleben (Leipzig, 1912); Siegfried Jaeger and Irmingard Staeuble, "Die Psychotechnik und ihre gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungsbedingungen," in Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 13, ed. Francois Stoll (Zurich, 1981), pp. 53-95; Matthew Hale, Jr., Human Science and Social Order: Hugo Miinsterberg and the Origins of Applied Psychology (Philadelphia, 1980). 15. Wundt, "Die Psychologie im Kampf," p. 543. See Ash, "Academic Politics," pp. 278, 280-81; Wolfgang G. Bringmann and Gustav A. Ungerer, "Experimental versus Educational Psychology: Wilhelm Wundt's Letters to Ernst Meumann," Psychological Research 42 (1980): 57-74. 16. Ulfried Geuter, "Polemos panton pater—Militar und Psychologie im Deutschen Reich, 1914-1945," in Ash and Geuter, Geschichte, p. 146ff. SeePeterR. Hofstatter's introduction in Deutsche Wehrmachtpsychologie, 1914-1945 (Munich, 1985). 17. "Die behordlichen psychotechnischen Einrichtungen in Deutschland," Industrielle Psychotechnik 1 (1930): 346-56, cited in Alexandre Metraux, "Die angewandte Psychologie vor und nach 1933 in Deutschland," in Carl-Friedrich Graumann, ed., Psychologie imNationalsozialismus (Heidelberg, 1985), p. 228. On the institutionalization of psychotechnics, see Ulfried Geuter, Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologie imNationalsozialismus [1984], 2nded. (Frankfurt, 1988), p. 88ff. 18. Karl Marbe, "Die Stellung der Psychologie an den deutschen Uni versitaten," Bericht iiber den V. Kongress der Gesellschaft fur experimentelle Psychologie (1921), p. 151ff.; Ash, "Academic Politics," p. 281; Geuter, Professionalisierung, pp. 93-94. 19. Georg Eckardt, "Die Griindung der Psychologischen Anstalt in Jena (1923)," Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Friedrich-Schilkr-Vniversitat Jena, social and linguistic series 22 (1973): 517-59. On the relations between education and research practices in German psychology, see Kurt Danziger, "Social Context and Investigative Practice in Early Twentieth-Century Psychology," in Mitchell G. Ash and William R. Woodward, eds., Psychology in Twentieth-Century Thought and Society (Cambridge, Eng., 1987), pp. 13-34. 20. Ulfried Geuter, "Das Ganze und die Gemeinschaft: Wissenschaftliches und politisches Denken in der Ganzheitspsychologie Felix Kruegers," in Graumann, Psychologie imNationalsozialismus, pp. 55-87. Mitchell G. Ash, "Gestalt Psychology: Origins in Germany and Reception in the United States," in Claude E. Buxton, ed., Points of View in the Modern History of Psychology (San Diego, Calif. 1985), pp. 295-344. 21. Fritz Giese, Philosophic der Arbeit (Halle, 1932), p. 265, cited in Metraux, "Die angewandte Psychologie in Deutschland," p. 244. For the context of such remarks, see Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the ThirdReich (Cambridge, Eng., 1984), especially chaps. 1-2, 7. 22. See, for example, Ludwig Klages, Die Grundlagen der Charakterkunde [1910], 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1926). 23. Eduard Spranger, "Diedrei Motive der Schulreform," Monatsschriftfurhohere Schulen 20 (1921): 267. 24. Geuter, "Polemos panton pater," p. 153f.; Julius Wagner, "Angewandte Psychologie," in Emil Saupe, ed., Einfuhrung in die neuere Psychologie (Osterwieck, 1928), pp. 203-19.
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25. Karl Biihler, Die Krise der Psychologic (Jena, 1927); Stern, "Die psychologische Arbeit des 19. Jahrhunderts" (cited in n. 12), p. 415. 26. Metraux, "Die angewandte Psychologie in Deutschland," p. 230ff. 27. "Kundgebung der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Psychologie: Uber die Pflege der Psychologie an den deutschen Hochschulen," Bericht fiber den XL Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Psychologie (1930), p. viii. 28. Hans Henning, Psychologie der Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1931), p. 203. 29. Karl Biihler, "Ansprache des Vorsitzenden," Bericht Uber den XII. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Psychologie (1932), p. 3 30. Geuter, Professionalisierung, pp. 99-102; Ulfried Geuter, "German Psychology During the Nazi Period," in Ash and Woodward, Psychology in Twentieth-Century Thought and Society, pp. 168-69. 31. Wolfgang Kohler, "Gesprache in Deutschland," Deutsche AllgemeineZeitung (Berlin), national edition April 28, 1933, reprinted in Graumann, Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 305-6. Mitchell G. Ash, "Das Psychologische Institut der Universitat Berlin und die Zeitschrift 'Psychologische Forschung' vor und nach 1933," in Graumann, Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus, especially pp. 120-30. See Mary Henle, "One Man Against the Nazis—Wolfgang Kohler," American Psychologist 33 (1978): 939-44, and Ulfried Geuter, "'Gleichschaltung' von oben? Universitatspolitische Strategien und Verhaltensweisen in der Psychologie wahrend des Nationalsozialismus," Psychologische Rundschau 35 (1984): 198-213. 32. See Ulfried Geuter, "Nationalsozialistische Ideologic und Psychologie," in Ash and Geuter, Geschichte, especially pp. 179, 185ff.; Geuter, "German Psychology During the Nazi Period," pp. 172-73. 33. Oswald Kroh, "Die Psychologie im Dienste volkischer Erziehung," in Charakter und Erziehung: Bericht fiber den 16. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Psychologie (1939), p. 43. 34. Kurt Gottschaldt, interview with the author in Gottingen, Aug. 5, 1987; Michael Stadler, "Das Schicksal der nichtemigrierten Gestaltpsychologen im Nationalsozialismus," in Graumann, Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus, especially pp. 152-57. 35. Philipp Lersch, Gesicht und Seele: Grundlinien einer mimischen Diagnostik (Munich, 1932); idem, Der Aufbau des Charakters (Leipzig, 1938); Mitchell G. Ash and Ulfried Geuter, "NSDAP-Mitgliedschaft und Universitatskarriere in der Psychologie," in Graumann, Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus, p. 272. 36. Oswald Kroh, "Bin bedeutsamer Fortschritt in der deutschen Psychologie: Werden und Absicht der neuen Prufungsordnung," Zeitschrift fiir Psychologie 151 (1941): 1-19; Geuter, Professionalisierung, pp. 255-67; idem, "German Psychology During the Nazi Period," pp. 174-79. 37. Franz Samelson, '"Putting Psychology on the Map': Ideology and Intelligence Testing," in Buss, Psychology in Social Context (cited in n. 2), pp. 103—68. 38. Geuter, Professionalisierung, especially chap. 3; idem, "German Psychology During the Nazi Period," p. 176ff. 39. Jurgen Kocka, "Einleitung," in Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka, eds., Bildungsbiirgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, part 1 (Stuttgart, 1985); Geuter, Professionalisierung, chap. 9. 40. Geuter, "German Psychology During the Nazi Period," pp. 179-80. See also the chapter by Geoffrey Cocks in this volume. 41. Lack of space does not permit the Soviet zone and German Democratic Republic to be discussed here. See Friedhart Klix, et al., eds., Psychologie inderDDR,
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2nd ed. (Berlin, G.D.R., 1980); see Brigitte Schunter-Kleemann, "Leipziger Allerlei: Psychologie in der DDR," Psychologic heute, June 1980. 42. Philipp Lersch, DerMensch in der Gegenwart (Munich, 1947), p. 79. See Peter Mattes, "Psychologie im westlichen Nachkriegsdeutschland—Fachliche Kontinuitat und gesellschaftliche Restauration," in Ash and Geuter, Geschichte, especially pp. 205f.,210f.,215. 43. Ibid., pp. 206ff., 217-18. For a more detailed account, see Rainer Maikowski, Peter Mattes, and Gerhard Rott, Psychologie und ihre Praxis: Geschichte undFunktion in der BRD (Frankfurt, 1976). 44. Peter R. Hofstatter, Einfuhrung in die quantitativen Methoden der Psychologie (Munich, 1953), p. 3; Albert Wellek, DerRuckfall in die Methodenkrise der Psychologie und ihre Uberwindung (Gottingen, 1959), pp. 6, 28f. See Alexandre M6traux, "Die Methodenstreit und die Amerikanisierung der Psychologie in der Bundesrepublik, 1950-1970," in Ash and Geuter, Geschichte, especially pp. 236-44. For the broader context, see, for example, Volker Berghahn, The Americanization of West German Industry, 1945-1973 Cambridge, Eng., 1986. 45. Heinz Heckhausen, "Zur Lage der Psychologie: 1982," Psychologische Rundschau 34 (1983): 1-20. 46. Martin Irle and Friedrich Strack, Psychologie in Deutschland: Bin Bericht zur Lage vonForschung undLehre. DFG-Denkschrift (Weinheim, 1983), p. 37. 47. Martin Irle, "Zur Lage der Psychologie: 1978," Bericht tiberden31. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Psychologie (Gottingen, 1979), vol. 1, p. 22; Irle and Strack, Psychologie in Deutschland, p. 6. 48. Theo Herrmann, Psychologie als Problem (Stuttgart, 1979). 49. Magali S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, Calif., 1977); Eliot Friedson, Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge Chicago, 1986). For a discussion of the relevance of these approaches to Germany, see Charles E. McClelland, "Zur Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe in Deutschland," in Conze and Kocka, eds., Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, part 1 (cited in n. 39), pp. 233—47. 50. Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York, 1982), especially chap. 3. 51. Richard Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences (Oxford, 1984), p. 20.
The Professionalization of Psychotherapy in Germany, 1928-1949 GEOFFREY COCKS
On October 23, 1942, a letter from the office for science in Alfred Rosenberg's Nazi party organization for the oversight of doctrine was sent to the party chancellery in Munich concerning the deputy director, Johannes Heinrich Schultz, of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy in Berlin. The letter from Rosenberg's office said that there was no objection to Schultz giving lectures on psychotherapy since he was a noted psychotherapist and displayed no political, philosophical, or personal blemishes. Moreover, the institute with which Schultz was associated was directed by Matthias Heinrich Goring, who was "a close relative of the Reich Marshal."1 In Nazi Germany, to be a relative of a powerful figure like Hermann Goring was a political imprimatur or, for a rival, most often a sign that nothing was to be done. In this case, Schultz, whatever his own merits as far as the Nazis were concerned, was safe and even favored because of his association with the Goring name. The role played by Matthias Heinrich Goring, who was a neurologist and psychotherapist from Wuppertal-Elberfeld in the Ruhr,2 in the history of psychotherapy in Germany is a prime example of the importance not only of the individual but also of historical accident. Goring provided the protection and prestige necessary for the institutionalization of a marginal medical discipline between 1936 and 1945. The accident of a Goring connection, however, brought to partial professional fruition a number of dynamic intellectual and institutional trends in the realms of medicine, psychology, and social policy in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century. The Third Reich accelerated a process of professionalization among German psychotherapists that had begun in 1928 with the founding of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy. This society, which by 1930 numbered almost five hundred members, was the chief organizational expression of a strong new trend among physicians, especially neurologists (Nervertdrzte), that stressed the importance of psychological influences in mental and physical illness. This trend, which was embodied most significantly in the psychoanalytic movement emerging from Vienna at the turn of the century, 3 had been 308
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strengthened during the First World War when cases of "shell shock" were successfully treated by psychoanalytic methods. This was a direct challenge to the reigning psychiatric establishment in Germany, which considered mental illness as physical in origin and rejected "psychodynamic" interpretations as unscientific and indulgent of supposed conflict in the patient's mind. Although the German wartime government displayed some interest in this new approach, after 1918 German psychiatry retained its dominant position in the universities and the state medical bureaucracy. Among other things, the great majority of psychiatrists continued to view "war neuroses" as manifestations of either congenital defect or a lack of will and continued to reject in their role as government consultants such applications for disability pensions.4 During the war, psychiatrists had practiced "disciplinary therapy" determined by a "moral view of neurosis."5 Nonetheless, after the war the psychoanalysts established training institutes and clinics, at Berlin in 1920 and at Vienna in 1922. Although the General Medical Society had embraced a diversity of views on the status and role of psychotherapy in medicine, it was led after 1933 by those who since its founding had sought professional autonomy for the discipline. The Nazis in their campaign against "the Jew" were to destroy the autonomous Freudian movement and favor traditional psychiatry in a ruthless "biological" program of sterilization and "euthanasia" against a broad grouping of the "incurably insane,"6 but conditions in Hitler's Germany also benefited the professional ambitions of the psychotherapists who reorganized themselves under Goring's leadership. Aside from Goring, opportunistic psychotherapists exploited the organizational disorder of the Third Reich as well as the Nazis' interest in an Aryanized field of psychology to ensure the "care and control" (Betreuung) of a loyal and productive Volk. The resultant professional gains provided for a continuity of institutional development along the disciplinary boundaries between medicine and psychology after 1945. This has created a tie between past and present, which had been earlier obscured by professionally protective claims for either the complete suppression of psychology in medicine under Nazism or its clandestine preservation.7 So even though psychotherapists in the Third Reich had the unique professional advantage of the Goring name, their experience between 1933 and 1945 also shows that basic characteristics of professional life in Germany were compatible with the Nazi dictatorship.
I The traditional Anglo-American model of professionalization has stressed the reality and desirability of professional autonomy from state sponsorship or control. It is the practitioners themselves who organize, practice, and regulate their profession for the benefit of their clients in terms of expertise and standards and for themselves in terms of market control—the latter either through a classic liberal free market or by restricting the number of practitioners. The German (and Continental) tradition of strong state claims on
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education, law, commerce, and health offers a different model of professionalization but one that reminds us that even in Britain and the United States the modern bureaucratic state has been a necessary part of professional development. This does not mean that the state, even in Germany, has determined the process of professionalization. Research into the history of the professions in Germany has to some extent supported recent studies in German social history, which have revealed the surprising degree of organizational initiative and autonomy "from below" of groups advancing and defending their ideas and interests within a complex industrial society and economy. Although special German statist and authoritarian traditions still played a role, especially within the political elite, more universal features and forces of modern industrial society worked a powerful influence. Integration into the state system was a major goal of the psychotherapists. In terms of achieving these ends, their record was dismal. Not only did they face significant established opposition, but their very success in establishing themselves in various occupational realms also aggravated the problem of differentiating themselves from other professions, especially medicine, and of finding a disciplinary identity among the numerous fields scattered between medicine and psychology. Coupled to this was the chronic theoretical and practical disunity among psychotherapists concerning the cause, nature, and treatment of psychological disorders as well as an equally chronic division over the question of lay therapy. Without such differentiation and concomitant unity, psychotherapy could never achieve licensure by the state as a profession. Only one of their number won a post (and a minor one at that) teaching psychotherapy at the university level. They failed to have psychotherapeutic treatment included under the state health insurance scheme. Furthermore, the medical offices of the Reich Ministry of the Interior never acknowledged an autonomous psychotherapy, remaining firmly in the hands of traditional university psychiatry. Professional development along such lines would come only in the successor states. But the extralegal nature of the Nazi regime made such formal victories superfluous for the short term, because the Goring Institute received de facto recognition through the support of various agencies of the regime, the military, and industry. Moreover, such autonomy prevented absorption by the psychiatrists and provided the freedom to set standards for training, including the trademark "training analysis," and practice. The therapists' small numbers also spared them the market difficulties experienced by larger and more developed professions such as lawyers and doctors in general. And it was only during the war that rival psychiatrists attempted to compete with the psychotherapists by introducing electroshock and drug therapy into German asylums.8 This was done to meet heightened Nazi demands for productivity from members of the "Master Race," to try to limit the growing competence of the Goring Institute (which by 1945 would have 290 members, 215 training candidates, and branches in several cities), and to escape the professional blind alley of the murder of mental patients suffering from "hereditary" disorders. In 1944, an article in Joseph Goebbels's prestige paper Das Reich accurately reported the de
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facto professional status of psychotherapy in the Third Reich: "Psychotherapy . . . has made great strides in the last decade and in Germany has been visibly acknowledged by the state through the recent elevation of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (in Berlin) to a Reich Institute in the Reich Research Council."9 The initiative of the psychotherapists under Goring exploited the realities of Nazi governance. Gleichschaltung, the process by which individuals and groups were "coordinated" in service to the regime, was not simply imposed from above by a monolithic totalitarian state but was to a great extent self-imposed from below by various groups defending their interests and seeking their places in the new order. Goring, for instance, was not forced on the psychotherapists by Nazi officials within either the party or state medical bureaucracy, but was drafted by anxious and opportunistic colleagues who rightly saw him as a valuable means of protection and promotion. One of them in the fall of 1933 was moved as a result of Goring's assumption of leadership to speak of the "genuinely favorable prospects"10 for psychotherapy in spite of continuing attacks from Nazi ideologues and psychiatrists. Even the founding of the institute in 1936 resulted from a combination of Goring's own efforts to mobilize Adlerians, Jungians, and various independents and the desire of the Ministry of the Interior to close down the "Jewish" Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. The solution was to give to Goring and his entourage the old Freudian institute along with its non-Jewish members. State authority and power were of course not absent from these transactions, but organizational initiative from outside the government, particularly when it stemmed from patriotic and solidly bourgeois experts, often received the regime's sanction at the expense of those within the Nazi party who called for radical and violent overthrow of traditional elites and institutions. In general, below the bloody arenas of Hitler's grosse Politik, there was a signal lack of unified direction from the regime with regard to specific reforms or programs; far more typical was the building of satrapies and the clash of interest groups.11 This process of "incomplete" revolution provided opportunities for certain old and new groups to advance their interests, creating a significant degree of functional unity among experts in service to the regime in place of Nazi rhetoric about Volksgemeinschqft (people's community). 12 The Third Reich offered a chance for some professions to advance their status, such as doctors who resented the corporate system of sickness funds under the national health insurance program and sought to change their status from that of a trade to that of a profession.13 The Nazis also appeared to offer the possibility for the "reprofessionalization" of such professions as teachers and lawyers, who had been disadvantaged during the Weimar Republic. However, the long-term trend under National Socialism was one of "deprofessionalization" through the deterioration of educational standards, the perversion of professional ethics, and the assertion, however chaotic, of ideological and governmental control. 14 Had the Nazis won their war, it is likely that such a trend would have intensified, although some countervailing pragmatism might have protected technical professions.
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The psychotherapists without Goring (who was born in 1879) certainly would have shared this fate. The protection afforded by the Goring name and its bearer's relatively unassertive nature and modest intellectual gifts, along with the sterility of any concept of a "German" psychotherapy and the Nazis' shortterm pragmatism, allowed for a significant degree of theoretical and practical autonomy for psychotherapists. Nevertheless, they compromised professional ethics for personal and professional gain, beginning with the exclusion of Jewish colleagues and patients between 1933 and 1938. Some psychotherapists continued to treat Jewish patients and train Jewish students; for example, on December 11, 1939 Goring issued a directive complaining about this violation and reminding institute members that such activity was illegal.15 Individual psychotherapists could protect patients from the Nazis, and psychotherapy offered in general a relatively humane option to a deadly Nazified psychiatry, but at the other extreme existed the possible betrayal of patients who expressed disloyal or defeatist sentiments. This constituted a violation of that confidentiality that, while not unqualified in a lawful society, is the indispensable basis for trust in a psychotherapeutic relationship. A former member of the institute remembers one such case involving Goring's reporting of a patient to the authorities, although Goring was apparently unable to implement within his institute a 1942 Hitler decree suspending medical confidentiality in cases of "national security." Most of the specific actions and inactions along these lines were based on mixtures of fear, prudence, indifference, and some degrees of professional and personal integrity and pride. Though allegedly protecting some mental patients from the Nazis, Goring was not willing to endanger his position or his institute by supporting two colleagues' protests against the "euthanasia" program.16 Aside from such abuses and the more general problem of the exploitation of professional knowledge and expertise by evil regimes, the ethical dimension inherent in professional work is especially crucial in the very practice of medical psychology. This situation was even more pronounced under a regime that made murderous distinctions between health and illness, usefulness and uselessness, and loyalty and disloyalty.17 Psychotherapists, to the extent that they were utilized by the Nazi regime, were engaged in a curative task but one that also met the regime's need and desire to exercise control over its people. Such exploitation by the Nazis of both therapist and patient aggravated an inherent ambiguity in the practice of psychotherapy, especially as organized under the model of practitioner control. On the one hand, psychotherapists "are committed to the absolute priority of the interests of the individual patient."18 On the other hand, however, there is no profession in which the relationship between practitioner and client is more subject to the insinuation or imposition of social norms and values on the part of both the therapist and political, social, and economic "third parties." The more successful the individual treatment, the greater the concession and contribution to collective entities and aims. In Nazi Germany, the communitarian ethos of a Romantic intellectual tradition among the psychotherapists, along with a general tendency toward political conservatism and anti-Semitism, combined with the more universal trend
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within the discipline toward socially useful and professionally promotional adjustive therapy to produce a means of social control congruent with explicit Nazi aims and the implicit dynamics of an industrial society. The psychotherapists at the Goring Institute repeatedly claimed that psychotherapy could quickly and inexpensively return people to health, to work, and to military service. In 1943, the institute signed an agreement with an association of private health insurance carriers for white-collar employees, which in its implementation guidelines contained the following stipulation: "The admission of patients is to be handled with the greatest caution. Only socially and biologically valuable patients with positive prospects for a successful cure over the short term may be treated."19 It is difficult to determine the precise proportion of racist rhetoric to racist conviction in this statement. What is clear, however, is the convergence of professional, financial, and political interests in the speedy dispatch of psychological disorders. Thus, to speak of the "Nazification" of disciplines and professions is not to describe a simple and direct process of dictatorial control and imposition of doctrine but rather an exploitation of systems, characteristics, and trends. There were two levels on which the means toward the Nazi exploitation of medicine in general rested. First, the Nazis "had recognized and correctly assessed the special political and social importance of physicians in their statesupporting, ideology-promoting role, as well as in their many-sided functions of social control, especially distinct with regard to the German system of social security."20 The Nazis, moreover, drew upon a long history in Germany of the "medicalization" of social problems and potentials21 and of Social Darwinism in viewing society generally in racist terms of health and illness. At the same time, on the level of the medical profession itself, structural and institutional conditions produced a convergence with National Socialism. Thus, the violation of "professional" and moral standards by physicians, psychologists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts22 under Hitler cannot be understood only in terms of individual moral dereliction but rather also as a function of structures and processes. In addition to the materialistic, technical, and nonphilosophical nature of modern medicine, doctors are "a social group under the greatest possible pressure to emphasize the useful." 23 Such an emphasis on the useful is magnified by the social role that doctors have as servants of not just individual patients but also of functional groupings of the population that are "represented" by agencies of the state, military, and the economy. Moreover, almost no nonmedical therapists were in private practice in Germany; most were employed outside the Goring Institute in the public or private sector, while the war brought most physicians out of their practices into the military. Although the provision of medical care is in itself good and is enhanced in various ways (e.g., education, research, standards) by professional associations and supported financially and served organizationally by state and private agencies, the cumulative effect of such bureaucratization can be to dimmish or even lose altogether the importance of the individual patient's interests, to entangle the lines of society's interests with those of professional and governmental oligarchies, and to modify the application and supervision of praxis.
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In publicly distinguishing "German" psychotherapy from "Jewish" psychoanalysis after 1933, the leadership of the newly renamed German General Medical Society for Psychotherapy was, among other things, responding to Nazified psychiatrists' attempts to destroy the new organization.24 On October 7, 1933, Goring wrote to colleague Walter Cimbal that "we must not allow ourselves to be taken in tow by the old ossified psychiatrists."25 Cimbal replied on October 19, expressing the fear that the new regime's desire for centralization and unification of professional groups for service to the state might result in the dissolution of the psychotherapists' society and its incorporation into the German Association for Psychiatry under the prominent Nazified psychiatrist Ernst Riidin.26 Ernst Kretschmer, former president of the General Medical Society, had proposed such a union to Goring in a letter dated October 6.27 Kretschmer had resigned as president earlier in the year. Though an anti-Nazi, he believed that psychotherapy must remain under the control of psychiatrists and not become an autonomous discipline or profession. In 1935, the psychotherapists rejected a similar proposal that their society join the new German Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists, an organization that was dominated by old-school psychiatrists.28 In subsequent discussions, they declared their willingness only to become an autonomous part of an informal umbrella organization and to participate in joint congresses for the purpose of sharing knowledge.29 This organizational struggle continued into the war years when the position of the psychotherapists had been enhanced by the founding of the institute and its funding since 1939 by the German Labor Front and the Luftwaffe. At a meeting on May 10, 1941, chaired by Herbert Linden of the Ministry of the Interior, Goring and Riidin assumed opposing positions, Goring arguing that psychotherapy was related to all medical disciplines, especially internal medicine and pediatrics, and Rudin asserting that psychotherapy was a matter for psychiatrists.30 Such a confrontation illustrates the realities of professional conflict in the field of medicine behind the Nazi facade of national and professional unity. This conflict had an influence on an ongoing debate among the psychotherapists. Most physicians felt that psychotherapy should be practiced only by doctors since medical training was necessary to distinguish somatic from psychological complaints. Though a physician himself, Freud had been a leading advocate among those who feared that medical monopolization of the treatment of mental disorders would lead to a functional and technical narrowing of the field from a means of humane insight to that of a mechanical "cure." In 1933, the statutes of the German General Medical Society were revised to allow special membership for nonmedical psychotherapists, and the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy trained lay therapists and accorded them status as regular members of the institute. Indeed, by 1941 nonmedical candidates and members outnumbered physicians at the institute. Goring himself was among those who believed psychotherapists should have medical training, but he was compelled to cultivate nonmedical practitioners on
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political grounds. In a letter dated May 28, 1938 to Franz Wirz, who was the Nazi party's chief administrator for university affairs, Goring argued that there were not enough doctors to fulfill psychotherapy's contribution to the Nazi campaign for Vblksgesundheit (health of the people).31 The training of nonmedical therapists by the Goring Institute, including supplementary training for (mostly female) nonacademics in the traditionally female "nurturing" spheres of pedagogy and social welfare, allowed the psychotherapists to increase their numbers and expand their competence and control over all organizational and practical aspects of the field of medical psychology. This was in order to demonstrate their usefulness to the regime, to industry, and to the military as well as to assert themselves professionally against the rival psychiatrists. Designated by the Goring Institute as "attending psychologists," nonmedical psychotherapists were recognized in 1939 by the Ministry of the Interior as medical assistants who would work under the supervision of a doctor.32 Even though this compromise left these practitioners, like psychotherapists in general, short of formal state recognition as a profession (the requisite regulations were supposed to be worked out after the war), the nonmedical therapists thus avoided inclusion under the 1939 Health Practitioners Law with its professionally damaging association with the medically suspect proponents of "natural health." The Goring Institute was also involved with the successful effort by university psychologists to win state certification for their discipline. In 1941, the Ministry of Education approved guidelines for a state examination and awarding of a diploma in psychology. Though opposed vigorously by psychiatrists within the government, the psychologists had the support of industry and the military, which were demanding experts in various fields of applied psychology.33 For its part, the Goring Institute did not require a degree in psychology for those entering training as attending psychologists, but it did have a preference for such a degree. Thirty years later in both German republics, academic psychologists would emerge as strong competitors to the type of "depth psychologists" trained at the Goring Institute; this was a consequence of overlapping expertise in a highly professionalized society and of the demand for economical "behavioral therapy." These institutional developments served and were served by the trend in psychotherapy toward adjustive therapy—a trend that also reflected and reinforced certain conditions of the social and economic environment of a modern industrial system. Especially as doctors became increasingly interested in psychotherapeutic methods, there was a tendency among its advocates to encourage more short-term, less sophisticated, and less expensive means of treating psychological disorders. Such methods would, it was argued, allow for a wider and more flexible use of psychotherapy by medical specialists, general practitioners, and lay therapists in the fields of social work, education, religion, business, and industry. They would also ease the way for the inclusion of psychotherapeutic treatment in public and private health insurance schemes and in general provide for the integration of psychotherapy into state, society, and economy. Altruism also played a part in this process as, for example, among the "social Freudians" who wished to extend the benefits of sophisticated,
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rigorous, and expensive psychoanalytic therapy to the broader social task of alleviating everyday neurotic complaints and promoting healthy, happy, and productive adjustment to family, work, and leisure. This trend also reflected the multiplication of theories and practices and their influence and origins in various allied disciplines in an increasingly crowded field of professional expertise along the boundaries between health and illness. These intellectual and medical resources would be significantly exploited by the major Western industrial nations during and after the Second World War.34 It might seem at first glance that the brutality inherent in the Nazi belief system would rule out any indulgence of the "sick" or the "neurotic." It was indeed the case that any lack of enthusiasm or effectiveness could lead to a deadly branding as a traitor, a parasite, a malingerer, an asocial, an antisocial, or a psychopath. However, given their belief in "Aryan" superiority, their totalitarian tendency toward "care and control," and the presence of professional experts from the Goring Institute, the Nazis also sought the option of psychological repair for racial comrades engaged in the common struggle for national survival. Intellectual dissidence had to be eliminated by murder or expulsion to protect the community from contamination with undesirable ideas;35 however, psychological disorder could be labeled as involuntary, preventable, and curable. The Goring Institute's lucrative relationship with the German Labor Front was founded on this conviction, and even late in the war the Nazis accompanied threats against shirkers with calls for the psychological cultivation of the will to work.36 This insistence on productivity and the application of various means to cultivate it produced a surprising reliance on the virtues of individual achievement and competition.37 Psychotherapists could be expected to play a role in managing the stress arising from such an environment; even though the Nazis made much of the virtues of prevention through healthful volkisch living, the pace of life, service, and sacrifice—especially during the war—made exploitation of individual performance the order of the day under Hitler. For example, despite much debate among medical experts including psychotherapists over their effectiveness and effects, the use of stimulants such as caffeine and amphetamines was extensive, especially in the Luftwaffe. 38 This same exploitation of human resources for the state lay behind the extensive use of applied psychology in the selection and training of military officers and specialists. The racism of the Nazis added some complementary appreciation of the virtues of the soldierly character of a warrior people. But the war's turn from Blitzkrieg to Materialschlacht, or war of attrition, and the belated Nazi mobilization of the German economy for total war brought an end to almost all institutionalized psychology in the armed forces. In 1942, the Psychological Section of the Reich Ministry of War was dissolved along with the psychological testing stations in the army and air force. Apart from the view that such things were now a luxury in a time of necessity, there had always been tension between the psychologists and officers as a result of the army's traditional emphasis on battlefield operations and the leadership of men and cultivation of character by unit commanders.39 In the Luftwaffe disagreements
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between psychologists and the High Command over particular cases as well as the desperate need for pilots helped lead to the jettisoning of psychologists in that branch of the service.40 Nazi racism, in its biological certainties, was fundamentally impatient with the niceties and ambiguities of academic psychologists. This racism thus also contributed to the decline of psychology in the armed forces. The "racial quality" of Germans was quantified on the basis of the belief in their inherently superior character.41 Propaganda and terror would bolster martial spirit in an environment of demand rather than professionally supervised incentive. Unlike the psychologists, psychotherapists did not suffer such a reversal of fortunes during the war. The turning of the war's tide against Germany increased the need for medical capacities both on the home front and in the field. Whereas the Ministry of the Interior requested on June 21, 1943 that the Goring Institute stop accepting women for training as attending psychologists so that they could be spared for more important work as youth leaders and operating room nurses,42 attending psychologists in general, as "members of a health profession," were exempt from war work.43 The psychotherapists nonetheless endured some setbacks. The psychotherapists in the Luftwaffe with medical training were transferred to service as regular physicians to meet the immediate crisis of the spiraling numbers of casualties. Furthermore, as the situation grew ever more desperate for Nazi Germany, the military laid greater stress on material projects with the potential for meeting pressing needs. For example, medical research projects recommended for funding by the Reich Research Council in 1944 included one from Matthias Heinrich Goring on personality development and psychotherapeutic training. However, this proposal and others like it were designated as less urgent than research into the physiology of high-altitude flying and the causes of crashes through pilot error, though more important than more "volkisch" studies on mother's milk, medicinal soils, and the psychology of eastern European peoples.44 However, as the war lengthened and intensified and German forces had to endure mounting defeats and losses with the accompanying pressure and strain on the troops, the incidence of mental disorder began to increase. The psychiatric services of the Wehrmacht medical corps were forced to meet this crisis. Ironically, the psychotherapists' lack of an official institutional status within the military helped them preserve greater influence than the psychologists after 1942. The Goring Institute was an autonomous entity under special protection and maintained a significant if subordinate influence in the medical service of Hermann Goring's Luftwaffe. Its transformation into a generously funded "Reich Institute" in 1944 was also a function of the Goring family tie: The original institute had received financial support from the Reich Research Council ever since the latter had come under the direction of Hermann Goring in 1942.45 Although, as in the First World War, the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic methods boosted the professional fortunes of the psychotherapists,46 the history of their operations in the German military during the Second World War is primarily one of continued professional conflict with their archrivals, the
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psychiatrists. This conflict did not revolve so much around the psychiatrists' complete rejection of psychotherapeutic methods, since there was a wide range of views on technique among psychiatrists, as around the issues of how they should be applied and by whom. The psychiatrists were compelled by their new competitors and the possible recurrence of the psychological casualties experienced in the First World War to declare their exclusive knowledge of the uses and limits of psychotherapy.47 The psychiatrists had a strong position in the Wehrmacht medical services, particularly in the army, and jealously guarded it, especially when the problem of "war neuroses" brought with it a strengthened challenge from the psychotherapists under Goring. The first line of defense for the psychiatrists was to minimize the problem. There was significant evidence of an ebb and flow in the statistics, depending on the intensity of the fighting,48 but at what level rested on how various complaints were diagnosed and what level of "psychogenic disorders," as they came to be called, was regarded as critical.49 However, army internists suspected the growing number of chronic stomach disorders included a large percentage of psychosomatic cases. In July 1943, the first of a number of "stomach battalions" was established to deal with this problem not only by means of medication and diet but also by "education" to duty and efficiency (Leistungsfdhigkeit) as well as referral to psychiatrists.50 As for therapy, the psychiatrists claimed great success for the new electroshock treatment; Friedrich Panse of the reserve hospital at Ensen, near Cologne, was the leading exponent of this practice.51 The clash between psychiatrists and psychotherapists of course was not confined to scientific debate, but had significant institutional dimensions as well. In a letter to the Army Medical Service Command dated October 25, 1944, psychiatrist Max de Crinis, who was a rabid Nazi and relentless critic of the psychotherapists, stressed the importance of maintaining "scientific control in the army" of mental cases requiring therapy.52 Although his concern about the danger of such men being released from civilian hospitals if discharged from the Wehrmacht was frequently expressed among psychiatrists, de Crinis's emphasis on the army as a bastion of scientific reason also embodied his oft-expressed concern over the competition offered psychiatry by the dilettantish psychotherapists under Goring. De Crinis's colleague at the Academy for Military Medicine, Otto Wuth, had noted two years earlier that unlike in the First World War the Nazi party leadership offered an avenue for appeal to "nondoctors" for cases of "war neurotics."53 Wuth, who like de Crinis constantly voiced his displeasure at the work and influence of the Goring Institute, was clearly anxious about the leverage the psychotherapists enjoyed within the Nazi leadership and in civilian society as a whole. For Wuth, the party was a place in which psychotherapists could impress nonmedical people who were unable to understand the scientific complexities of psychiatry and who often resented the traditional elites of the university system. In addition, Wuth could only distrust the party's general desire to control matters and probably suspected that on the issue of war neurotics it would often prefer to hear the therapeutic optimism of the psychotherapists.
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The very debate over the word "neurosis" also displayed the professional struggle going on between psychiatrists and psychotherapists in the military. On June 30, 1944, the head of the Wehrmacht Health Services issued a directive outlining the various terms to be used in place of "neurosis"; terms like "war neurotic," "war trembler," and "warhysteric" were to be avoided at all costs.54 With some justification, it was claimed that the term neurosis was vague and overused, but for psychiatrists it was equally true that its use was associated with, and gave credence to, a psychodynamic view of the mind to which a physicalist psychiatry was opposed. For many psychiatrists and Nazis, moreover, the word recalled the vexing problems of the last war and smacked of medical indulgence of cowardly malingerers. Many psychiatrists of the old school, encouraged by Nazi racial theory, divided those cases not diagnosable or treatable by psychiatric methods into true "psychopaths," or those hereditarily defective, and malingerers, those consciously feigning illness to shirk duty. For psychiatrists in general, neurosis could fall into either category. Because of the strong psychiatric establishment in the army, the psychotherapists were unable to achieve any position or influence there. The situation was different in the Luftwaffe, where the Goring name "sufficed to open doors."55 Both Goring and Schultz were medical officers in the air force reserve and led a successful effort to establish a psychotherapeutic capacity within the youngest branch of the armed forces. Luftwaffe medical officers regularly received training at the Goring Institute for service with psychotherapeutic aid stations throughout occupied Europe.56 The Luftwaffe regarded itself as a select Nazi force and attracted men from the elite of German society among whom, under the peculiar mental strains of combat flying, were often manifested the neurotic conditions linked with the "sensibilities" of the highly educated and the socially favored. In 1944, the Luftwaffe established a special reserve antiaircraft battery in Dortmund for those members of the air force suffering from psychogenic disorders.57 The reaction of army psychiatrists was predictably harsh. De Crinis commented on December 4, 1944 to the army's medical inspector that psychotherapeutic methods, whatever their past successes, consumed too much time and expense given the practical demands of the war.58 In spite of their promotion of short-term methods dedicated to swift readjustment and enhanced productivity, psychotherapists were vulnerable on this score, especially amid the hysteria generated among the Nazis by the worsening war situation. Within the Luftwaffe itself, psychoanalysis had been discarded as being too timeconsuming and demanding on the patient, while air force psychiatrists and neurologists reportedly tended to avoid "the therapeutically and administratively troublesome category of psychoneurosis."59 However, the institutionalized influence of psychotherapy persisted in the Luftwaffe, as was evident in the Wehrmacht's confrontation with the important social and medical issue of homosexuality. The Nazi regime had expanded the laws against homosexual activity, sending thousands of homosexuals to their deaths in concentration camps. But many more homosexuals avoided such persecution since, unlike most Jews or Communists, they were not usually
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easily identifiable.60 Furthermore, even though by 1942 the SS had declared the death penalty for homosexual activity among its members and the party and Nazi youth groups had from the beginning expelled overt homosexuals from their ranks,61 the Nazis were constrained by the pervasiveness of homosexual behavior in the populace, especially among adolescents, to seek medical assistance in dealing with the problem. Their aims were pragmatic in the sense that they wished to exploit as many socially and sexually productive individuals as possible; they were ideological insofar as the Nazis strove to use the power of biology to overwhelm perversions supposedly brought on by a decadent and materialistic civilization. Crude and sadistic experiments in the camps were one result. These aims also drew upon the Nazis desire to exert technical control over all aspects of life, as well as the deep psychological need of many Nazis to assert, out of "their own personal agony of armor-plated self-discipline,"62 a masculine identity against everything internally and externally that was soft or feminine. Not surprisingly, psychiatrists and psychotherapists differed on the cause and treatment of what both agreed was a serious disorder. The psychotherapists also saw in homosexuality another chance to prove the worth of their discipline and strengthen their claim to professional status. They argued that the great majority of homosexual cases had psychological origins and could therefore be treated and cured. By 1939, the Goring Institute claimed five hundred such cures.63 The psychiatrists, by contrast, asserted that homosexuals suffered from a hereditary disorder and advocated punishments for repeat offenders ranging from imprisonment to castration to death. Beginning in 1942, the Wehrmacht grappled with the problem of homosexuality and in so doing engaged contending institutional and professional forces in the fields of criminology, medical psychology, and forensic medicine. In 1942, in the case of an officer convicted of homosexual activity, Hitler decreed that since he had been judged to have a hereditarily defective disposition, he must be punished and not be permitted—as he had requested in his appeal for leniency to the Fuhrer—to rehabilitate himself in combat. This decision was passed down from Hitler's headquarters as a precedent, but one that left unanswered a number of important questions. As a result, the Armed Forces High Command sought the views of the Ministry of Justice, the Gestapo, the Criminal Police, and the army psychiatrists. There were a variety of opinions, making it clear that a unified policy would have to be negotiated. The Ministry of Justice, the Gestapo, and the psychiatrists essentially agreed that adult homosexuals were suffering from an incurable hereditary defect, but that homosexual incidents among adolescents might often be the result of pubertal difficulties and/or seduction by a "true" adult homosexual. The psychiatrists warned against discharging homosexuals from the armed forces because this might encourage simulation among "normal" soldiers wishing to escape the front. Only the Criminal Police distinguished between hereditary and environmental homosexual disorders. They pointed out that many homosexuals released from preventive detention into the Wehrmacht had not subsequently engaged in homosexual conduct. In any case, there was not enough room in the
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concentration camps, so the armed forces, the Criminal Police argued, would have to construct their own detention facilities. Since, in the view of the Criminal Police, not all homosexuals were incurable, there was hope that treatment could help solve the problem. This approach arose from the working relationship between the Criminal Police and the Goring Institute through the psychotherapists' attempts, out of the offices of the Reich Air Ministry, "to reintegrate such people into the racial community."64 The psychotherapists and psychiatrists subsequently confronted each other directly over this issue, resulting in the army and the air force ultimately having different policies on homosexuality. On May 19, 1943, Field Marshal Keitel, chief of the Armed Forces High Command, issued guidelines on punishment (including death) for homosexual activity. There were three categories of perpetrators: those congenitally afflicted or suffering from an untreatable drive, onetime offenders (particularly victims of seduction), and those in whom a hereditary disposition was uncertain.65 On June 7, 1944, the Luftwaffe health service published its own directive. This fourteen-page document emphasized that not every man who committed a homosexual act was a homosexual, that most homosexuals did not manifest a hereditary disposition (Hang) but rather a desire (Trieb) acquired in life, and that a majority of the latter (and some of the former) could be cured with psychotherapy.66 The battle lines had been drawn. On December 9, 1944, de Crinis expressed his unconditional opposition to the Luftwaffe guidelines in a letter to the Army Medical Service Command.67 That the army stood by the 1943 policy was evidenced by the conclusions of a commission studying the use of expert medical opinions in the implementation of those guidelines on December 15, 1944. Furthermore, the culpable fact of the membership in this group of the psychoanalyst Felix Boehm, who was a member of the Goring Institute, also underlined the limits of the psychotherapists' influence.68 By 1944, as we have seen, the Goring Institute had technically become an official state institution. This status was of course short lived. The Reich Institute building in Berlin was destroyed by the Russians in April 1945 after a clash with SS men hiding there;69 Goring was taken prisoner and died that summer. Survivors from the institute, however, set about reestablishing psychotherapeutic services in the rubble of Berlin, with encouragement from the occupation authorities concerned about the ongoing disruption of peoples' lives. The years of applying short-term therapy in the Goring Institute's outpatient clinic and the training of lay and medical psychotherapists provided the practical basis for the resumption of work in the immediate postwar period.70 As early as 1946, two former Freudian members of the Goring Institute had established an outpatient clinic under the supervision and with the support of the state health authority in Berlin.71 By 1949, with the founding of the West and East German states, individuals and groups who had been associated with the Goring Institute had joined (and competed) with those few colleagues who had returned from exile to lay the organizational basis for the further development of psychotherapy's professional position. Problems remained, however, because the number of psychotherapists
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remained small and they still faced opposition from within the university medical faculties and the state bureaucracy. Even though training at the Goring Institute was recognized, no comparable institution developed to take its place. (Neither postwar regime was to regard the Reich Institute as a precedent for state institutionalization of psychotherapy; in the case of the Federal Republic, the reason was that the Reich Research Council had, as an offshoot of the German Research Society, been created by administrative decree and not by law.) Psychotherapists would only gradually win university positions and only much later would psychotherapy be covered by state health insurance systems. The field continued to be rent by divisions. For two years after the war, groups in Berlin and Munich fought over the right to be the legal successor to the Reich Institute and thus to the considerable funds taken by the institute's comptroller to Bavaria for safekeeping in February 1945.72 In the Federal Republic psychoanalysts regained the autonomy lost in 1936, but split into two groups in 1951. These divisions were symptomatic of the lack of theoretical consensus and, especially in the democratic environment of the Federal Republic, would persist as a major impediment to the full professionalization of psychotherapy. As early as June 1945, the Goring Institute was even being declared by some to be a liability because of its opportunistic training of attending psychologists; as always, the issue of lay versus medical training was acute.73 Because of these unresolved difficulties remaining from the Nazi years, the Goring Institute, while providing for a continuity of professional development for psychotherapy in Germany, was to mark not only the extremity of the discipline's politicization but also the apex of its professional autonomy. Ill
What is the significance of the history of psychotherapy in Germany between 1928 and 1949? First, this history contributes to a growing body of knowledge about professional life in modern Germany and about the social, political, and economic dynamics of the educated middle class (Bildungsburgertum). It does this by revealing the institutional structures and processes that were responding to the demand for technical expertise by the complex industrial society that Germany had become by the twentieth century—often (as was most evident under the Nazis) at the expense of the interests of clients and of higher morality. More specifically, the ultimately incomplete professionalizing project of psychotherapists in Germany typified the importance of the state in German professional life. But in this case, as in others, the state has been an entity the recognition from which was an indispensable part of the goal for a professional group organizing from below and, in this case, in conflict with a part of the medical establishment within the university system, the state bureaucracy, and the military. The result in the postwar era has been a mix of practitioner dominance that is typical of free-market Western systems and, particularly in the German Democratic Republic, a German tradition of socialized medicine. Second, this history reveals much about the structure of government and
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society under the Nazis, a system that was much more riven with discontinuities than earlier studies of the aims and actions of its leaders had led us to believe. These discontinuities in the structure of National Socialism in power, however, allowed for social and economic continuities with developments before 1933 and after 1945, thus lodging the Nazi years more firmly into the course of modern German history. There was in general after 1933 a distinct carry-over of social and economic conditions and trends along a scale of oppression, opportunity, collaboration, and contribution. These continuities were not merely structural or process based, but reflected dynamic and dialectical conditions that resulted in displacements in one way or another in the constellation of forces involved. An excellent relevant example is the success of doctors in achieving recognition by the state as a profession in 1935, which was an occurrence that marked not only the assertion of Nazi control over the medical profession but also the physicians' triumph as a result of the Nazi destruction of socialist and working-class control over the health insurance system. The professional hegemony thereby won by the doctors over their patients continued, though not without challenge, especially in the Federal Republic, after the war.74 Whereas some prominent older psychotherapists with Nazi ties were kept from the professional mainstream after 1945, the developments in psychotherapy in both postwar German states coursed from domestic continuities rather than foreign influences. Such lines of continuity are unlike those "peculiar" to a Germany dominated by preindustrial elites. A more recent functional view of modern German history as well as some critical explorations in "the history of the everyday" have uncovered the degrees of influence of modern professional elites in an increasingly industrial and technological social environment. Old elites, as Michael Geyer has shown in the case of the officer corps, were reforming their practices along modern professional lines in response to the institutional and technical demands of the modern era. By the twentieth century, the German landscape had been largely transformed into a modern industrial society, although one still bearing some marked traces of specifically German preindustrial ideals, institutions, and influences. In recent times, the German's head has often been crowned by a spiked helmet, but, like the German officer in Jean Renoir's 1937 film Grand Illusion, his body was held erect not only by Prussian rigor but also by braces of steel. The history of the Goring Institute also offers insight into the dynamics of German society as a whole under National Socialism, which is a phenomenon that has been often and necessarily ignored in the historical literature out of concern for the broad, characteristic extremes composed of Nazi victimizers and their victims. This was a social environment in which "the overwhelming majority of ... citizens . . . were ready to complain but willing to comply . . . , maintaining a clear sense of their own interests and a profound indifference to the suffering of others."75 Nazi policy toward this great mass of Volksgenossen was driven by anxiety as well as by arrogance, recognizing that "carrots were needed as well as sticks" to ensure at least the "passive loyalty" required for the privations occasioned by
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rearmament and war.76 As a result, Nazi social policy displayed not only the ideological fanaticism applied most gruesomely against "racial enemies" but also a pragmatism, however muddled by organizational chaos and individual incompetence, arising from their mastery of a modern industrial society that they desperately as well as callously wished to exploit and not from a fantasized "racial community" that they wished to create. The Nazi emphasis on productivity—so beneficial to the professionally ambitious and opportunistic psychotherapists—also created an environment of competitive individualism that was at odds with reactionary Nazi rhetoric about the comradely Volksgemeinschaft. This not only advantaged educated elites but had the effect of subverting opposition throughout society, leaving workers, for example, with vague feelings of cultivated nationalism, self-interest, and a certain resentment over sacrifices, shortages, and, finally, the sufferings brought on by the war.77 Since class and occupational identity and interest alone do not suffice to explain the motives of individuals, the complex political motives of human beings within specific cultural and historical contexts78 describe the limits of the type of structural and institutional history we have pursued here. As much as psychotherapists were motivated by professional aims, each was also a member of a social environment that was filled with the less tangible but no less significant percolations of culture, tradition, and personal experience. Such individual combinations of traits are more historically significant the higher one goes in the social and political hierarchy, especially in the Third Reich, the black core of which can only be grasped through an understanding of the brutal fantasies of individuals with the power to act on them.79 But to explain how such people came to power, to comprehend the historical ramifications of their rule under the various and complex conditions set by their time and place, and to locate the aspects of their regime in the contexts of German, Western, and human history is the task of an approach that takes into serious account what Max Weber in 1903 saw being constructed; namely, an "iron cage" of institutions. Notes Support for the research contained in this essay came from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Historical Association, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and Albion College. 1. MA 116/15. Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, Munich. 2. Geoffrey Cocks, Psychotherapy in the ThirdReich: The Goring Institute (New York, 1985). 3. Hannah S. Decker, Freud in Germany: Revolution and Reaction in Science, 18931907 (New York, 1977). 4. Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), p. 63.
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5. Eric J. Leed, No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (London, 1979), pp. 63-92. 6. Ernst Klee, "Euthanasie" im NS-Staat: Die "Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens" (Frankfurt, 1985). 7. Regine Lockot, Erinnern undDurcharbeiten: Zur Geschichte derPsychoanalyse und Psychotherapie imNationalsozialismus (Frankfurt, 1985); Karen Brecht et al., "Hier geht das Leben auf eine sehr merkwiirdige Weise weiter . . .": Zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Deutschland (Hamburg, 1985). 8. Karl-Heinz Roth, "Leistungsmedizin: Das Beispiel Pervitin," in Arzte im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Fridolf Kudlien (Cologne, 1985), p. 173. 9. Heinrich Goitsch, "Heilwege fiir die erkrankte Seele," Das Reich, Aug. 20, 1944, p. 8. 10. Fritz Kunkel to M. H. Goring, Aug. 9, 1933, Kl. Erw. 762/2. Bundesarchiv, Coblenz. 11. Peter Hiittenberger, "Nationalsozialistische Polykratie," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2 (1976): 419-42. 12. Konrad H. Jarausch, "The Crisis of German Professions, 1918-1933," Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 394. 13. Michael H. Kater, "Professionalization and Socialization of Physicians in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany." Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 677702. 14. KonradH. Jarausch, "The Perils of Professionalism: Lawyers, Teachers, and Engineers in Nazi Germany," German Studies Review 9 (1986): 107-37. 15. Kl. Erw. 762/4. 16. Frederic Wertham, A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence (New York, 1966), pp. 178-79; Klaus Dorner, "Nationalsozialismus und Lebensvernichtung," Vierteljahreshefte fiirZeitgeschichte 15 (1967): 143; Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York, 1986), pp. 83, 85-87, 91. 17. Michael H. Kater, "Medizin und Mediziner im Dritten Reich: Eine Bestandsaufnahme,"//wtomcfeZetoc/ir(/f 244 (1987): 350-51. 18. Louise S. Horowitz, "Whose Interests Should the Psychotherapist Represent?" in Science and Psychotherapy, ed. Raphael Stern etal. (New York, 1977), p. 161. 19. Matthias H. Goring, "Ausfuhrungsbestimmungen," Jan. 1, 1943; Kl. Erw. 762/4. 20. Stefan Kirchberger, "Public Health Policy in Germany, 1945-1949: Continuity and a New Beginning," in Political Values and Health Care: The German Experience, ed. Donald W. Light and Alexander Sculler (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), pp. 186-87. 21. Ute Frevert, "Professional Medicine and the Working Classes in Imperial Germany," Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 637-58. 22. Volker Friedrich, "Psychoanalyse im Nationalsozialismus: Vom Widerspruch zur Gleichschaltung," Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse 20 (1987): 207-33. 23. Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution (New York, 1978), p. 49. 24. See Karl Hannemann, "Seelenheilkunde undpolitische Fuhrung," Volkischer Beobachter (South German ed.), Oct. 2, 1938, p. 12; M. H. Goring, "Deutsche Seelenheilkunde," ibid. (Berlin ed.), Dec. 3, 1938, p. 5; Herbert Gold, "Audi die ersten Kindheitseinflusse bestimmen die Lebensgestaltung," ibid. (Berlin ed.), May 14, 1939, p. 5; and Goring to Otto Curtius, Oct. 11, 1938; Kl. Erw. 762/2. 25. Kl. Erw. 762/2. 26. Ibid. Such concern over the threat to their autonomy represented by the
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psychiatrists also underlay the psychotherapists' reluctance in 1943 to have their institute affiliated with the medical faculty of the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. See Goring to Sergius Breuer, October 2, 1943; Captured German Documents/Reichsforschungsrat, reel 107, folder 12850; Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. 27. Kl. Erw. 762/2. 28. Microcopy T1021, roll 11, frame 459. National Archives, Washington, D.C. 29. "Tatigkeitsbericht 1935/36," ZentralblattfurPsychotherapie 10 (1937): 5. 30. "Protokoll der Sitzung mit der Psychiatrischen Gesellschaft unter Vorsitz von Ministerialrat Linden am 10.5.41," pp. 1, 2, 4; Kl. Erw. 762/2. See also Friedrich Mauz to Bernhard Rust, Sept. 27, 1937, Reichserziehungsministerium 2954; Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam. 31. Kl. Erw. 762/3. 32. Werner Achelis, "Rundschreiben," Aug. 7, 1939; Kl. Erw. 762/4. 33. Ulfried Geuter, Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologic im Nationalsozialismus [1984], 2nd ed. (Frankfurt, 1988). 34. Geoffrey Cocks, "Continuites et developpement de la psychanalyse et de la psychotherapie en Allemagne depuis 1939," Revue Internationale d'Histoire de la Psychanalyse 1 (1988): 51-70. 35. Alan Beyerchen, "Anti-Intellectualism and the Cultural Decapitation of Germany Under the Nazis," in The Muses Flee Hitler: Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, 1930-1945, ed. Jarrell C.Jackson and CarlaM. Borden (Washington, D.C., 1983), pp. 39-40. 36. Adolf Friedrich, "Der Rhythmus der betrieblichen Entwicklung," Volkischer Beobachter, April 7, 1944, p. 6. 37. Detlev J. K. Peukert, InsideNazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, andRacism in Everyday Life, trans. Richard Deveson (New Haven, Conn., 1987), p. 95. 38. Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, "Leistungssteigernde Mittel bei der Luftwaffe," Aug. 31, 1944; H 20/345. Bundesarchiv-Militararchiv, Freiburg (hereafter abbreviated as BA-MA). 39. Martin van Creveld, Fighting Power: German and U. S. Army Performance, 19391945 (Westport, Conn., 1982), pp. 132-36. 40. D. Russell Davis, German Applied Psychology, B.I.O.S. Trip No. 2084 (London, no date), pp. 5-6. 41. Georg Lilienthal, Der "Lebensborn e. V." Ein Instrument nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 93, 95. 42. Kl. Erw. 762/6. On the failure of the regime to effect the wartime mobilization of women, see Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987), pp. 196-97, 394-98. 43. Matthias H. Goring, "Rundschreiben," March 27, 1943; Kl. Erw. 762/4. 44. Werner Osenberg, "Recherche Nr. 31," June 4, 1945; FD 545/46, Box S243, Speer Collection. Imperial War Museum, London. 45. Cocks, Psychotherapy, pp. 168-71. See also the letter from the dean of the medical faculty in Berlin complaining about the funding of the Goring Institute, Sept. 16, 1943; Captured German Documents/Reichsforschungsrat. 46. Leo Alexander, Neuropathology and Neuropsychiatry, Including ElectroEncephalography, in Wartime Germany (Washington, D.C., no date), p. 13. 47. Max de Crinis, Militararztliche Akademie, Oct. 26, 1944; H 20/464. BA-MA.
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48. "Beratende Psychiater beim Heeres-Sanitatsinspekteur, Auszugsweise," no date; H 20/464. BA-MA. 49. Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Chef des Sanitatswesens, Aug. 24, 1944; H 20/835. BA-MA. See also microcopy T78, roll 183, frame 3999; National Archives. 50. Bericht fiber die 4. Arbeitstagung der Beratenden Arzte vom 16. bis 18. Mai 1944 im SS-Lazarett Hohenlychen (no publisher, no date), pp. 206-10. 51. Friedrich Panse, "Auszugsweise Abschrift," March 15, 1944; H 20/464. BA-MA. 52. H 20/464. BA-MA. 53. Otto Wuth to Hans Btirger-Prinz, April 24, 1942; H 20/464. BA-MA. 54. 4. Arbeitstagung, p. 276. 55. Walter Brautigam, "Ruckblick auf das Jahr 1942: Betrachtungen eines psychoanalytischen Ausbildungskandidaten des Berliner Institutes der Kriegsjahre," Psyche 38 (1984): 907. 56. See the questionnaire of Hans Suchner, Nov. 6, 1942; Kl. Erw. 762/6. Goring went to Paris in 1943 on Luftwaffe business; see "Les conferences de 1'Institut allemand," Oeuvre, Nov. 19, 1943; PC 5, reel 102; Wiener Library, London; and Cocks, Psychotherapy, p. 221. 57. "Anweisung fur Truppenarzte Einzelordnungen Nr. 11," Dec. 6, 1944, p. 4; RL 4 11/304. BA-MA. 58. H 20/464. BA-MA. 59. Alexander, Neuropathology and Neuropsychiatry, p. 30. 60. Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (New York, 1986), p. 52. 61. Reichskartei-Warnkartei. Berlin Document Center. 62. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany, p. 169. 63. Johannes Heinrich Schultz, "Anweisung fur Truppenarzte iiber Erkennung und Behandlung von abnormen seelischen Reaktionen (Neurosen)," no date, p. 18; RW 2/251. BA-MA. 64. "VortragsvermerkfiirHerrnFeldmarschall," Aug. 12, 1942, p. 2; H 20/479. BA-MA. 65. H 20/474. BA-MA. 66. Ibid. 67. H 20/479. BA-MA. The copy of the Luftwaffe directive in H 20/474 had been received by the consulting army psychiatrists on November 11, 1944 and is heavily marked by marginalia, mostly agitated exclamation points and question marks. 68. H 20/474. BA-MA. Cf. Franz Seidler, Prostitution, Homosexualitat, Selbstverstummelung: Probleme der deutschen Sanitatsfiihrung, 1939—1945 (Neckargemiind, 1977), pp. 213-21, which by ignoring the institutionalized disagreements between Wehrmacht psychotherapists and psychiatrists leaves the apologetic impression that by 1944 there was agreement on the less brutal Luftwaffe guidelines regarding homosexuality. Seidler also fails to mention the 1944 commission report on the army policy. 69. Harald Schultz-Hencke, "Zweiter protokollarischer Bericht," June 1, 1945, p. 2;K1. Erw. 762/7. 70. "Bemerkungen zum Brief Wiegmann an Kemper vom 12.8.1945," Aug. 17, 1945; Kl. Erw. 762/7. 71. Ludwig J. Pongratz, ed.,Psychotherapie inSelbstdarstellungen (Bern, 1973), pp. 296-302.
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72. Johannes Grunert, "Zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse inMiinchen," Psyche 38 (1984): 873-75. 73. HaraldSchultz-Hencke, "VierterprotokollarischerBericht," June 12, 1945, pp. 3-5; Kl. Erw. 762/7. 74. Stephan Liebfried and Florian Tennstedt, "Health-Insurance Policy and Berufsverbote in the Nazi Takeover," in Light and Sculler, Political Values, pp. 127-84. This hegemony has confronted institutional and popular challenge, however: Geoffrey Cocks, "Psychiatry, Society, and the State in Nazi Germany," paper presented at Miami (Ohio) University, Feb. 24, 1989. 75. James J. Sheehan, "National Socialism and German Society: Reflections on Recent Research," Theory and Society 13 (1984): 865, 867. 76. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany, pp. 31, 188. 77. Ibid., pp. 108, 113, 117. 78. Sheehan, "National Socialism and German Society," pp. 858, 860. 79. Peter Loewenberg, "The Kristallnacht as a Public Degradation Ritual," Leo BaeckInstitute Yearbook 32 (1987): 319.
Index
Abel, Karl, 89 Abitur (high school graduation), 16 and business, 215, 218, 226 and chemists, 127-28 and engineers, 106, 113 and officer candidates, 202 for women, 90, 274 Academization, 13, 16 in industrial chemistry, 124-25, 128, 129 Adickes, Franz, 217 ADLiV (Allgemeiner deutscher Lehrerinnen Verein), 92, 94-95 Aims of professions. See Professional aims Akademiker (university graduate), 18, 165, 167 Akademische Berufe, 165, 171 Akademische Berufsstande, 11, 14. See also Profession(s), German Akademische Bildung, 165. See also Bildung Albisetti, James, 275 Alienation and Bildungsliberalismus, 41 specialization as, 30 Allgemeiner deutscher Lehrerinnen Verein (ADLiV), 92, 94-95 Alliance of Berlin Architects, 151 Amt (office) appeal of, 34 moral duality of, 29-30 Anglo-American view of professions, 10, 28-29 autonomy stressed in, 309 bias from, 164—65 and German civil service, 166, 167 and German lawyers, 47, 252 and medicine, 77, 81, 165 and professional hierarchy, 137 and state role, 12, 47, 214-15 Antimodernism and Hellenism, 27, 40 neohumanistic, 29 Anti-Semitism (Germany) and attorneys' social background, 60 and Nazi claims, 7 and professionals, 19, 20
and psychiatry under Nazis, 309, 311, 312, 314 and psychology under Nazis, 296, 297 Anwaltskammern (lawyer chambers, bar associations), 46, 54, 58-59, 254, 266n.9 Anwaltszwang (attorney monopoly), 254, 256, 257, 262 Architects (Germany), 143-44 associations for, 148 and Baumeister, 5, 144 vs. contractors, 151, 152 development of occupational structure for, 144-45 licensing of, 150-54 professional struggles of, 149-50 supply of, 148-49 and technical education, 145-48 Architects' Society of Berlin (Architektenverein zu Berlin), 147-48 Aristocracy, and officer corps, 185-91, 202 Armenpflege (poor relief), 234 Arzteordnung, 78 Association of German Business School Graduates, 219, 224-25 Association of German Economists, 225 Association for Mercantile Instruction/Education, 216,218 Associations, professional. See Professional associations; specific organizations Ast, Friedrich, 28 Attorneys (lawyers) (Germany), 46—47 admission of, 50, 52-53, 54, 56 and bar associations, 46, 54, 58-59, 259 building departments administered by, 149-50 as business-association advisors, 223, 224 in civil service, 48, 51, 55, 169, 171, 173 and clients, 49, 54, 60 conflicts among, 5, 252, 253, 254 ethical code and integrity for, 50, 58, 59-60 and Imperial Justice Laws, 253 income of, 51, 54 and Lawyer Code, 46, 47, 52, 54, 253-54. See also Rechtsanwaltsordnung
329
330
Index
Attorneys, continued market for services of, 52, 53, 54-56, 60, 61, 63 and Nazis, 12,62,282 numbers of, 56-58, 255-56 professionalization of, 4, 46—47, 49, 50, 62— 64, 252, 263 simultaneous admission of, 53, 254-64. See also Simultaneous admission of lawyers social backgrounds of, 60-61 status and function of, 47-52, 54, 55, 60 training of, 50, 53 and women, 17, 275, 279, 280, 282 Ausbildung (practical training) and classical studies, 4 and higher education, 14 Ausschuss zur Wahrung der gemeinsamen Interessen des Chemikerstandes (AWgIC, Committee for the Protection of the Common Interests of the Chemical Profession), 128 Authority model of professionalization, 302 Autonomy. See Professional autonomy BaCI (Bund angestellter Chemiker und Ingenieure, League of Employed Chemists and Engineers), 137-38 Bamberger (district court lawyer), 256-57 Baubeamte, 144, 152 Baumeister (master builders), 5, 144, 144-45 Baumer, Gertrud, 236, 241, 284 Bavarian Volksschullehrerinnen. See Volksschullehrerinnen BDA (Bund deutscher Architekten, Federation of German Architects), 151, 152, 153, 154 Beamte (civil servants), 167, 168, 170, 171, 179 social workers as, 246 Becker, Wilhelm, 217 Berechtigungswesen (entitlement system), 5 Berlepsch, Hans von, 107 Berlin Academy of Building (Berliner BauAkademie), 145 Berlin agreement, 80 Beruf (calling, vocation), 10-11. See also Freie Berufe Akademische Berufe, 165, 171 and Larson on professions, 168 and officer selection, 187 social work as, 236 teaching as, 91 Spranger on, 9 Berufsbeamtentum (professional civil service), 5, 166, 167, 174, 178 Berufsethos (professional ethos), for social work, 240 Berufskonstruktion thesis, 12, 136 Berufsstand, 10-11 military, 191, 201 Berufsstandespolitik, \ \ Berufsverband deutscher Psychologen (BDP, Association of German Professional Psychologists), 299-300
Beuth, Peter, 106 Bieberbach, Ludwig, 297 Bildung (cultivation) and classical studies, 4 engineering educators' envy of, 119 form higher education, 14 and neohumanism, 18, 31 and officer corps, 202 philosophy as guardian of, 292 and scholarship over wealth, 41 specialization erodes, 18 voluntary commitment to duty from, 33 Bildungsburgertum (educated middle class), 6, 17, 20. See also Middle class and attorneys, 4 and classical studies, 27 cultural malaise among, 19 and integrity vs. accommodation, 34 and investigation of professionalization, 10, 252 Lersch and values of, 299 and professionalization theory, 20 and psychology laboratories, 291 and psychotherapy, 322 Bildungsliberalismus (educational liberalism), 41 Binet, Alfred, 292 Bismarck, Otto von "blood and iron" reference of, 3 and engineering education, 107 Bledstein, Burton, 165 Blomberg, Werner von, 198 Boeckh, August, 39 Boehm, Felix, 321 Bondy, Curt, 299 Bottinger, Henry T., 126 Bourgeois hegemony, and professionalization, 6. See also Middle class Branca, Patricia, 272 Brentano, Franz, 290 Brentano, Lujo, 220 BtiB. See Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten Buhler, Karl, 295 Bund angestellter Chemiker und Ingenieure (BaCI, League of Employed Chemists and Engineers), 137-38 Bund der Berufsorganisationen des sozialen Dienstes, 246 Bundeswehr, 184, 201, 202-4 Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten (BtiB, League of Technical and Industrial Officials), 112, 124, 128, 129 and BaCI, 138 and DATSCH, 116, 117 and employment contract, 130-31 industrialists' allegations on, 114 and salaries, 132 vs. VDC, 133-35 and VDDI, 133, 114 Bureaucracy. See Civil service
Index Burger (citizen) vs. Mensch (human being), 29, 30, 32-33 Business administration, 213 Business education (Germany), 213-15 entrance requirements for, 218 history of, 215-23 objections to, 219-21 and practical economists, 223—24 and professionalization, 223, 224-28 social background of students in, 219, 220 (table) subject matter of, 221-22 Calling. See Beruf Calvert, Monte, 104 Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 30 Capitalism and professional ideology, 166 and professionalization, 6, 165 Capitalist industrialism, and architecture, 143, 144. See also Industrialization Caring professions, and women, 271 Carr-Saunders, A. M., 164 Celibacy rule for female teachers (Eheverbot), 93-94, 96 Central European professions. See Profession(s), German Chambers of commerce, 223 Charity reform movement, 233, 234—35, 237 and Social Democratic critique, 234, 242 Chemists (Germany), 5 and academization, 124-24, 128, 129 and BtiB vs. VDC models, 133-35 education of, 125, 127, 128 employment contract for, 130-32 income of, 132 numbers of, 129 overcrowding among, 12 professionalization of, 123, 124, 128, 135-37 proletarianization of, 123-24, 129-30, 131, 132-33, 134 status of, 124, 126, 128, 130, 135, 136 and technicians, 125, 128, 130, 132, 135 and VDC, 123-24, 125, 126-28, 129, 130, 132, 133-37, 138 Cimbal, Walter, 314 Civil service, as profession, 163-66 Civil service (bureaucracies), German, 166-68 and Anglo-American professionalism, 166, 167 associations of, 171, 172, 174 and attorneys, 48, 51, 55, 169, 171, 173 career structure of, 169 as model profession, 165 and Nazi regime, 174, 175-78, 281 and neohumanistic education, 32 numbers in, 170 officer corps compared with, 188, 197 post-Second World War, 178-79 social background of, 169-70 training for, 169
331
unity vs. interest-grouping in, 170-71 during Weimar period, 171-75 Class (Germany). See also Proletarianization in professional cohesion, 113 and VDC vs. BtiB, 135 Class tensions (Germany) and charity reform, 234 and chemist associations' debates, 134 among engineers, 113 foreman schools as reducing, 107-8 and Lehrer hostility toward Lehrerinnen, 94 and social work associations, 242 Classical studies (Altertumswissenschaft), 4, 27 and Bildungsburgertum, 17 Hellenism, 27-28, 40-41. See also Hellenism and neohumanism, 18, 28. See also Neohumanism skepticism toward, 39-40 spread of, 39 and threat from state, 35 and Wolfs seminar, 28, 31, 33 Clausewitz, Carl von, 205 Clients, 12-13, 14 and attorneys, 49, 54, 60 choices for, 19 of doctors, 70-71, 73 Closure strategy, 16, 62 Cognitive authority model of professionalization, 302 Cohen, Hermann, 292 Cohn, Gustav, 220 "Cologne model," 108, 111 Commercial science (Handelswissenschaft), 221 Competition clause (Karenz), 131-32, 133, 134 Corporatism, See also Neocorporate professionalization and DBB, 174 of old regime, 29, 30 in traditional society, 15 and "twilight of sovereignty," 117 "Crisis" in the professions, 277 "Crisis of psychology," 295 Cultivated middle classes. See Bildungsburgertum Cultivation. See Bildung Culture neutrality, and professions-intellectual life relation, 20 Culture of professionalism, 165, 166 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 16 DATSCH (Deutscher Ausschuss fur Technisches Schulwesen, German Committee on Technical Education), 116-17 DAV. See Deutscher Anwaltverein DBB (Deutscher Beamtenbund), 174 DCG. See Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft De Crinis, Max, 318, 319, 321 Defeudalization, and attorneys, 55 Delbruck, Clemens von, 111 Dentists, rise of, 19
332
Index
Deprofessionalization civil servants' fears of in Weimar period, 175 of engineers, 105 of lawyers, 253 in Nazi Germany, 6, 7, 12, 15, 19, 311 Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (DCG, German Chemical Society), 123, 124, 126, 128 Deutsche Gesellschaft fur angewandte Chemie (DGaC, German Society for Applied Chemistry, later Verein Deutscher Chemiker), 123, 125-26 becomes VDC, 126. See also Verein Deutscher Chemiker Deutscher Anwaltverein (DAV) (Society of German Attorneys), 12, 53, 59, 61-62, 253, 265n.2 and sumultaneous-admission controversy, 252, 253, 256, 258-64 Deutscher Ausschuss fur Technisches Schulwesen (DATSCH, German Committee on Technical Education), 116-17 Deutscher Beamtenbund (DBB), 174 Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, 174 Deutscher Juristentag, 12 Deutscher Verband/Verein der Sozialbeamtinnen, 240, 241 Deutscher Volkswirtshaftlicher Verband (Association of German Economists), 223, 224 DGaC. See Deutsche Gesellschaft fur angewandte Chemie Dilthey, Wilhelm, 291, 294 Diplom, 16 and business education, 5, 214, 224, 226 and chemists, 125, 127 and engineers, 5, 112, 127 in psychology, 298, 299, 300, 301 Diplomprufungsordnung (DPO), 297-98 Division of Labor. See Specialization Doctors (Germany) and demand for medical care, 70, 71, 73-77 and free market, 4-5 honor courts for, 59, 71, 77, 78, 80 and medical chambers, 78, 80 and Nazis, 78, 82, 281, 323 private practice of, 70-71, 72, 74-75, 81 professionalization of, 66-67, 72, 78, 80 professional associations for, 66-67, 71, 76, 77-80 and psychotherapy, 314 society vs. individual served by, 313 specialization by, 68, 69, 71-72 and trade ordinances of 1869, 77-78 training of, 67-70 workers as patients of, 72-73 Donhoff, Fritz, 110, 117 Doppelverdiener, 279-80 Duisberg, Carl, 126, 128, 130, 131-32, 134, 136 Duker, Heinrich, 299 Ebbinghaus, Hermann, 290 Eben-Servaes, IIse, 281
Economist, practical, 223-24 Education (Germany). See also Training and academization strategy, 16 in Bavaria, 87-88. See also Volksschullehrerinnen for civil service, 169 and German professionalization, 14, 16 hierarchy in, 86, 94, 98 and neohumanism, 32 and professionalization theory, 19 specialization in, 18 technical, 106-11, 115-16, 117, 119, 121n.l9, 145-48, 150 and women, 274 Education, business. See Business education Eheverbot (celibacy rule), 93-94, 96 Ehrenberg, Richard, 216, 222 Einjahriges (one-year volunteer exemption), 107, 218 Eley, Geoff, 6 Engineers (German), 5. See also Technical Employees Akademiker status sought by, 18 and American engineers, 104 and business education, 221-22 chemists' status contrasted with, 126 education of, 105-11, 114, 115-16, 117, 119, 121n. l9, 146-48 fragmentation among, 104—5, 113, 118 income of, 111 and industrialists, 113, 114, 115, 118 military analogy to, 118-19 organizations for, 105, 112-18, 135, 137 oversupply of, 106, 111-12 and peculiarities of German history, 118-19 proletarianization of, 105, 108, 113, 129 Enlightenment and Hellenism, 28, 37 and "military science," 189 and pedagogy, 30 Ethics and attorneys, 50, 58, 59-60 for civil servants, 169 and doctors, 71, 78 for the educated Burger, 30 and honor courts, 15. See also Honor court for industrial chemists, 136-37 and lawyers' fee-splitting, 255 professional associations' codes of, 16 professional practice distinguished by, 143, 163 vs. professions' self-interest, 19, 20 and psychologists under Nazis, 298 and psychotherapy under Nazis, 312 and social work altruism, 240 Expertise. See Profession(s) Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 290 Federation of German Women' s Associations, 236-37 Fee schedules (Gebuhrenordnung), 13
Index Feiertagsschule (Sunday and holiday school), 88 Feminism (German), 97, 236-37 and education, 86 Nazis against, 281, 284 and social work, 233-34, 235, 237, 239 and women in professions, 86, 276, 280 Feudalism, in officer corps, 194-95 Fischer, Emil, 128 Fischer, Eugen, 297 Fischer, Ferdinand, 126 Foreman school (Werkmeister Schule, later lower machine-building school), 107, 109-10, 111, 117 Fortbildungsschule (vocational school), 92, 93 Foucault, Michel, 74 Frauenberuf (feminine calling), social work as, 233, 236 Freie Advokatur, 4 Freie Berufe (free professions), 11, 165 legal practice as, 54 and medicine or law, 303 and women, 271 Frick, Wilhelm, 281 Functionalist sociology, and professionalization, 9-10 Gebuhrenordnung (fee schedule), 13 Gedike, Friedrich, 35 Gelehrtenstand (learned profession), 29 Genelli (Prussian building official), 147 General German Women's Association, 235 General Medical Society for Psychotherapy, 308, 309, 314 Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (GVG, Court Constitution Law), 253 German history, militarism and industrialism in, 3 "German problem," 6 Gerstl, Joel, 104 Gesellschaftsstand (societal estate), Prussian military as, 187, 201 Gestalt theory, 294, 299 Geuter, Ulfried, 298-99 Geyer, Michael, 323 Giest, Fritz, 294 Gleichschaltung (coordination), 154, 281, 296, 311 Gneist, Rudolf, 50, 53 Goals of professions. See Professional aims Goring, Hermann, 308, 317 Goring, Matthias Heinrich, 6, 308, 309, 311, 312, 314, 314-15, 317, 319, 321 Goring Institute (German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy), 308, 310, 311, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323 Gothein, Eberhard, 217, 222 Gotte, Alfons, 109-10, 116, 117 Gottschaldt, Kurt, 297 Grammatik, 36, 37 Grashof, Hans, 146
333
Great Britain, and chemists' union, 138 Greece, study of. See Hellenism Gymnasium (classical secondary school), 32, 33, 38 and business education, 218 for girls, 90 instructors in, 86 psychology in, 291 and technical education, 146, 150 Haas, Ludwig, 172 Handelshochschulen (commercial colleges), 5, 228n.9. See also Business education Handelswissenschaft (commercial science), 221 Hartmann, Hermann, 77 Hartmannbund (Leipziger Verband), 5, 77, 79-80 Hausfrau (housewife), and Hohere Tochterschulen, 274 Haushaltungskunst (home economics), 91 Hayashima, Akira, 220 Health insurance, 13, 72-73, 74-77, 78, 79-80, 81-82 and doctors under Nazi regime, 311 and psychology, 301 and psychotherapeutic treatment, 310, 315, 322 Hegel, G. W. F., on civil servants, 168, 197 Hellenism, 27-28. See also Classical studies antimodernism of, 40 bureaucratic discipline learned from, 33, 39 and career advancement, 31-32 detachment of, 41 and history, 37-38 and Humboldt, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37 and integrity vs. accommodation, 34 paradoxes of, 38-39 vs. pedagogy, 37, 38 and political ideologies, 40 and professional credibility, 35, 36-37, 41 and specialization, 27-28, 34, 39, 40 and state, 40 translucence in, 36 uniqueness vs. universality in, 33, 35-36 Henning, Hans, 295 Herf, Jeffrey, 116 Heyne, Christian Gottlob, 33 Higher Machine-Building School (HMBS), 107, 108, 110-11, 117 Hintze, Otto, 167, 191 Historiography of the professions, 4, 10 History and Hellenism, 37-38. See also Classical studies; Hellenism and military science, 190 women vs. men in, 270 Hohere Gewerbeschule (advanced commercial school), 146 Hohere Tochterschulen, 90, 274 Holistic psychology, 294, 299 Homosexuality, and psychotherapy under Nazis, 319-21
334
Index
Honor codes, 16 military, 187 Honor court (Ehrengerichtshof, EGH), 59, 71, 77, 78, 80 Horizontality principle, 263-64 Humanism, and philosophy vs. natural science, 292, 294. See also Neohumanism Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37 Huntington, Samuel P., 184 Husserl, Edmund, 291 Identity. See Personal identity Ideology, of femininity, 233, 236. See also Professional ideology Imperial Justice Laws (1877-79), 253 Industrial chemists. See Chemists Industrialization and architecture, 143, 144, 145, 153 and business education, 214 and German development, 323 and professionalization models, 28-29 of warfare, 193, 323 Insurance, health. See Health insurance "Intelligence quotient," 292 Me, Martin, 300 Italian Lawyer Code (1874), 63 Jacobs, Friedrich, 28, 33, 40-41 Jaensch, Erich Rudolf, 292, 296-97, 298 Janowitz, Morris, 184, 198, 205 Jarausch, Konrad, 171, 252-53 Jastrow, Ignaz, 217, 222, 224 Jews, discrimination against. See Anti-Semitism Junger, Ernst, 196, 205 Juristiche Wochenschrifi, 53-54, 256, 257 Justizrat (judicial councillor), 13, 59 Kammer (self-government chamber), 14-15, 144. See also Anwaltskammern Karenz provision, 131-32, 133, 134 Kater, Michael, 274, 279 Kathedersozialisten (Socialists of the Chair), 216 Keitel, Wilhelm, 198, 321 Kerschensteiner, Georg, 95 Kindergartnerin (female kindergarten teacher), and social work, 242 Klages, Ludwig, 294, 298 Knoblauch, Eduard, 145 Kocka, Jurgen, 11, 298 Koffka, Kurt, 294 Kohler, Wolfgang, 294, 296 Konferenz der deutschen sozialen Frauenschulen, 238, 239 Kraepelin, Emil, 292 Krause, Max, 111, 115, 116 Kretschmer, Ernst, 314 Krimke, Siegfried, 258 Kritik (textual criticism), 36, 37 Kroh, Oswald, 297, 298, 299 Krueger, Felix, 296, 297
Kulturkrise (crisis of culture), 18 Kulturstaat, and Hellenism, 40 Kurierzwang (medical assistance requirement), 77, 78, 81 Lange, Friedrich Albert, 292 Lange, Helene, 91-92, 274 Larson, Magali Sarfatti, 164, 166, 170, 252, 253 Laube (Oberlehrer), 94, 95 Lawyers. See Attorneys Lawyer Code. See Rechtsanwaltsordnung Lahner (Munich School Commissioner), 89 Lehrerbildungsanstalt (teacher-training institute for men), 88, 89-90 Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt (teacher-training institute for women), 88-89, 90-91 Lehrerinnenvereine (female teachers' associations), 86-87, 91-93, 97 Leipziger Verband (Hartmannbund), 5, 77 , 79-80 Lersch, Philipp, 297, 298, 299 Liberal Education, cultivation and. See Bildung Liberalism, educational, 41 Liberalism, professional advent of, 15 and attorneys, 4 of DAV, 61, 62 and Weimar Republic, 7 Licensing of architects, 150-54 examinations for, 13 Liebig, Justus, 291 Linden, Herbert, 314 List, Friedrich, 62 Litigation, against architectural competition, 153-54 Localization of legal practice, 53 Loeper-Housselle, Marie, 92, 93, 93-94 Lowell, A. Lawrence, 213 Lower Machine-Building School (LMBS, foreman school), 107, 109-10, 111, 117 Ludwig I (king of Bavaria), 88-89 Luftwaffe, 314, 316, 317, 319, 321 Machine-Building School (MBS), 107, 110-11, 114, 115, 116 Madchenschulen (girls' schools), 87, 88, 90, 91, 95, 96 Maier, Charles, 117 "Mandarin" thesis, 6 Marbe, Karl, 292 Market. See Capitalism Market model of professionalization, 301-2 Market monopoly. See Monopoly Marxism, and professionalization debate, 10 Max Joseph (king of Bavaria), 87 Medicalization, 74, 81, 313 Medicine, women in, 17 Merton, Wilhelm, 217 Methodenstreit (conflict of methods) in business economics, 222 in psychology, 300
Index Metternich, Klemens von, on attorneys, 50 Meumann, Ernst, 292 Mevissen, Gustav von, 215 Middle class. See also Bildungsburgertum and architecture, 145 corporate technical employees, 123 and employment for women, 279 and higher education (late 19th century), 273 identity of, and state office, 32 and legal practice, 49, 55, 59-60, 63 and officer corps, 186, 201 poor-guardians from, 234 professions and understanding of, 252 unmarried daughters of, 85 Military service. See also Officer corps as profession, 183-84, 185, 197, 204 women's social duty as parallel to, 234 Miquel, Hohannes von, 107, 109 Misogyny, 17 of Nazis, 6, 18, 278 Modernism, 18 "reactionary," 116 Modernization and historiography of professions, 4 officer-corps reforms as, 188 Moede, Walter, 293 Monopoly, 16 for architects, 150 for attorneys, 54, 169, 254, 257, 263 and institutionalization, 302 political attempts to break, 13 profession as, 11, 143, 144 professional autonomy as, 165 and professionalization debate, 10 and psychologists, 301-2 by social work profession, 240 Montgelas, Maximilian von, 87—88 Moral ambiguity am Amt, 29-30 of professionalism, 7—8 Morality. See Ethics Muller, Georg Elias, 290 Munsterberg, Hugo, 292 Mylius and Bluntschle (architectural firm), 153 Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), 201, 202-4 Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (NSLB), 96 Natural sciences, institutionalization of, 289 Nazi regime, 323, 323-24 and architecture, 154 and Bavaria's female techers, 96 and Bildungsburgertum, 17 and chemists, 138 and civil service, 174, 175-78, 281 and deprofessionalization, 6, 7, 12, 15, 19, 311 and doctors, 78, 82, 281, 323 experts' interest groups under, 311 Gleichschaltung (coordination) by, 154, 281, 296, 311 and legal profession, 62, 282
335
and officer corps, 199-202, 203 and professionalization, 6, 7, 10, 19 professionals as welcoming, 19 psychology under, 296-99, 315 psychotherapy under, 308-9, 310-23, 324 Reichskulturkammer of, 15 and women as professionals, 6, 17, 18, 277— 78, 279, 280-85, 317 Neocorporate professionalization, 15, 19 Neocorporatism, and social welfare, 248 Neohumanism, 4, 5, 18, 28 of Bildungsburgertum, 17 and Burger vs. Mensch, 29, 30, 32-33 vs. pedagogy, 30-31, 35 and specialization, 29, 30, 31 Neumann, Balthasar, 144 New Left, and women's issues, 271 Nobility, and officer corps, 185-91 NSLB (Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund), 96 Numerus clausus, 14, 16 for attorneys, 52, 255, 277 for psychologists, 300 for social work, 243 Oberrealschulen (higher modern secondary schools), 106 Obersekundareife (one-year volunteer certificate), 108 Officer corps (Germany), 5, 183-85, 323 as aristocratic, 185-91, 192, 202 and division among engineers, 118-19 and expansion of violence, 197—98, 203, 205-6 feudalization of, 194-95 and general staff, 189.-90, 193, 196, 197, 202 hierarchies in, 193-94, 196 identity of, 187, 192, 195, 201-3 in interwar years, 198-99 line vs. staff in 193, 196 and military/strategic science, 189-90, 194, 197, 200 and Nazis, 199-200, 203 in post-Second World War armies, 201-3 as profession, 190-91, 204-6 and psychologists, 297, 298, 299 qualities emphasized in: character and experience, 187-88; expertise as knowledge, 18788, 190, 191; leadership and group identity, 184 recruitment patterns of, 187, 189, 192, 194, 201 restructuring of (post-Napoleonic), 186-87 selection for, 295 in Wilhelmine society, 191-98 Ordinarius (full professor) and business education, 220 for medicine, 68 Ostler, Fritz, 263, 264 Overcrowding (German professions), 12, 15, 16, 17, 20 in architecture, 149
336
Index
Overcrowding (German Professions) continued among attorneys, 255-56, 258 in civil service, 170 among engineers, 106, 111-12 in medicine, 70 and Nazi solutions, 7 in social work, 245 Padagogik. See Pedagogy Panse, Friedrich, 318 Parenting, and Lehrer-Lehrerinnen conflict, 95 Parsons, Talcott, 72, 164, 213 Patronage, 12-13 and attorney-client relation, 49, 54 in doctor-patient relation, 70 Patronage system, and civil service, 173-74, 179 Peculiarity of German history, See Sonderweg Pedagogy (German), 35 vs. Hellenism, 37, 38 industrial materialism resulting from, 41 and natural maturation, 37-38 neohumanism against, 30-31, 35 repudiation of, 27, 28 and social work training, 238 Perrucci, Robert, 104 Personalabbau (personnel reduction), 174 Personal identity middle-class, 32 through profession, 9 Peters, Theodor, 108-9, 111, 116 Peters, Wilhelm, 294 Pfundtner, Hans, 176 Philology, 33. See also Classical Studies; Hellenism as guardian of subjectivity and Wissenschqft, 292 Physicians. See Doctors Politics (Germany) and academic unemployment, 20 and attorneys, 52 and Bildungsburgertum, 17 and Bildungsliberalismus, 41 and business education, 216 and chemists' associations, 133, 134 and civil servants, 173, 179 and engineering-education debates, 116 and engineers' organizations, 118 and Hellenism, 40 and history of psychology, 303 and monopoly-breaking, 13 and Nazi dismissal of civil servants, 284 and post-1848 education, 89 and professions, 18—19 and psychology faculties, 294, 296 and social work, 233, 237, 243, 245, 247, 248 Practical economists, 223-24 Praxisschock, 301 Preuss, Hugo, 172 Primareife, 106
Profession(s) approaches to examination of, 143 civil service as, 163-66 defining characteristics of, 72, 135, 143, 163, 168, 213, 223 elites as representatives of, 170 exclusive positions maintained in, 284 "free" vs. "caring," 271 as identity, 9 military as, 185, 197, 204 self-judging of, 166 "strong" and "weak," 303 Profession(s), German, 3, 7. See also Akademische Berufe vs. Anglo-American, 10, 12, 28-29, 165. See also Anglo-American view of professions definition of, 11 historiography of, 4 political involvement of, 18, 19 state support of, 32 women in, 270-85. See also under Women Professional aims (Germany). See also Ethics egoism and altruism, in 213 and German peculiarity, 6 in historiography of professions, 4 individual vs. social interests, 312-13 and interest of the profession, 240 Kocka on, 298 self-interest in, 19, 20 Professional associations (Germany), 15-16. See also specific organizations for architects, 148 for civil servants, 171, 172, 174 for doctors, 66-67, 71, 76, 77-80 for engineers, 105, 112-18, 133-35, 137-38 and ethics codes, 16 in Larson's analysis, 253 for lawyers, 12, 61-62, 259 for Lehrerinnen, 86-87, 91-93, 97 under Nazis, 281 for social workers, 238, 240-42, 243, 246 Professional autonomy (Germany) in Anglo-American model, 309 and architects, 150 of attorneys, 46, 252-53, 263 and chemists' organizations, 127, 136, 137 and civil servants as embodiments of sovereignty, 168 of doctors, 71, 81 of the military, 197, 198 of officer corps, 200, 203, 205 and professions-bureaucracy relation, 163, 164, 165 of psychologists under Nazis, 298 for psychotherapy, 309, 312, 322 social workers' loss of, 246 and state support, 32, 34-35 Professional cohesion, as status-class coincidence, 113 Professional consciousness, and chemists, 126, 128, 132, 135
Index Professional ethics. See Ethics Professional expertise aestheticism, vs. utility in, 32 and specialization, 34 Professional ideology (Germany) and attorneys, 61 civil-service ethic as, 169 Larson on, 166, 170 military science as, 189 of officer corps, 196 Professionalism characteristics of, 72 culture of, 165, 166 and ethics vs. self-interest, 20 amd military, 184, 185 moral ambiguity in, 7-8 service sector, 201,204 and specialization, 34 Professionalism, German change in, 6 classical studies in, 27-29 liberalism vs. income-oriented versions of, 62 and Nazis, 7 of officer corps, 197 Professionalism, liberal. See Liberalism, professional Professionalization approaches to examining, 301 vs. Berufskonstruktion, 136 debate over definition of, 143 full, 144 of health services in industrializing countries, 66, 80 Larson on, 164, 253 and military, 184, 185 social science debate on, 9-10 and social work, 246 terminology for, 10-11 Professionalization, Germany, 7-8, 11-12. See also specific professions vs. Anglo-American model, 28-29, 309-10 of architects, 153-55 of attorneys, 46-47, 49, 50, 62-64, 252-53, 263 beginnings of, 4—5 as Berufsstandespolitik, 11 and Bildungsburgertum, 17 and business education, 223, 224-28 of chemists, 123, 124, 128, 135-37 of civil service (current), 179 and clients, 12-13, 14 comparative examination of, 10, 11, 12, 20 competition and cooperation in, 15-16 contribution of, 19 cultural imprint of, 18 defensiveness in process of 150, 155 discourse of, as recent import, 167 of doctors, 66-67, 72, 78, 80 and education, 14, 16 of engineers, 105 and "German problem," 6
337
and Kammern, 14, 15 and "natural history," 180n. l4 and Nazis, 6, 7, 10, 19 of officer corps, 188, 190 phases of, 15 and psychology, 289-90, 298, 301-3 and social work, 244-45 and sociopolitical conditions, 232-33 and state, 13-14 strategies in, 16 and Volksschullehrerinnen, 97-98 and women, 17-18 Professionalization, neocorporate. See Neocorporate professionalization Professionalization theory, 19-20 and German evidence, 11 and legal practice, 54 Professional training. See Training Proletarianization (Germany) of attorneys, 277 of chemists and technical employees, 123-24, 129-30, 131, 132-33, 134 of engineers, 105, 108, 113, 129 and industrialists on BtiB, 114 Prozessagenten (trial agents), 254 Prussia and civil service, 168-69, 174. See also Civil service, as profession doctors in, 66-67. See also Doctors and German education, 87 Hollywood image of, 210n.43 officer corps of, 183, 185. See also Officer corps and social work, 238-40. See also Social work state and education in, 165 technical education in, 106-11, 115-17 Psychiatrists, under Nazis and diploma examination, 298 vs. psychotherapists, 310, 314, 317-19, 320 Psychology (German), 289-90 experimental vs. philosophical, 290-95 in Nazi period, 7, 296-99, 315, 317 post-Second World War, 299-301 and professionalization, 289-90, 298, 301-3 in Weimar period, 293-95 in Wilhelmian period, 290-93 Psychotechnics, 292, 293, 294, 295 Psychotherapy (Germany), 308, 322-23 adjustive therapy, 315-16 under Nazi regime, 6, 7, 308-9, 310-23, 324: and diploma examination, 298; and homosexuality, 319-21; and individual vs. societal interests, 312-13; vs. psychiatrists, 310, 314, 317-19, 320 post-Second World War, 321-22 Quasi-profession. See Semiprofession Reactionary modernism, 116 Realschule (modern secondary school), 145, 150, 218
338
Index
Rechtsanwaltsordung (RAO, Lawyer Code) (1878), 46, 47, 52, 253-54 attorneys' views of, 54 and simultaneous admission, 254-55, 257, 263, 264. See also Simultaneous admission of lawyers Rechtskonsulenten (legal consultants), 254, 256, 257 Referendare (trainees), 57, 150 Referendariat, 50 Reichsarzteordnung (imperial medical code), 78 Reichskulturkammer, 15 Reichsversicherungsgesetz (imperial insurance law), 75, 79 Reichswehr, 198-99, 202 and psychology, 293, 297 Research, academic and classical studies, 27 professionalization of, 19 Rickert, Heinrich, 291 Riedler, Alois, 114, 115, 117 Rieffert, Johann Baptiste, 296 Roll (Oberlehrer), 95 Rose, Eduard, 258, 259 Rudin, Ernst, 314 Salomon, Alice, 236, 238, 241 Sander, Friedrich, 297, 299 Schiller, Friedrich, 28, 30, 31 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich von, 148 Schlieffen Plan, 194 Schlutter, Andreas, 144 Schmalenbach, Eugen, 222, 223 Scholtz-Klink, Gertrud, 281 School teachers, and neohumanist vision, 5 Schulenburg, Fritz-Dietlof von der, 176 Schultz, Johannes Heinrich, 308, 319 Sciences, institutionalization of, 289 Secret competition clause, 132 Semiprofession primary school teaching as, 17 social work as, 17, 246 Serfdom, in chemists' employment contracts, 131-32 Service sector professionalism, 201, 204 Siegrist, Hannes, 12, 252 Sigl, Louise, 92 Simultaneous admission of lawyers (Simultanzulassung), 53, 254—64 disunity over, 252, 253, 255, 261, 264 legislation makes mandatory, 256, 263, 264 and professionalization, 252-53, 263 Smith, Adam, 205 Social class. See Class Social work (Germany), 5, 232-33, 247-48 associations for, 238, 240-42, 243, 246 as bourgeois occupation, 233-34, 235-36, 240-41, 242, 245, 247 bureaucratized framework of, 246 and charity reform movement, 234-35 conflicts in: bourgeois vs. working class, 234,
243, 247; male vs. female role, 235, 23839; organizational, 237, 247, 248; professional associations vs. trade unions, 241-42; professionalization vs. bureaucratization, 246; volunteers vs. professionals, 240, 241 and feminism, 233-34, 235, 237, 239 by Lehrerinnen, 93 organizational restructuring of, 237-38 and politics vs. professionalism, 19 role and status of, 236, 237, 238-39, 241, 243 and Social Democrat challenge, 233, 242-43, 245, 248 training for, 232, 235-36, 238-40, 214, 242, 243, 244-45 and welfare organizations, 243-45, 247-48 women in, 5, 17, 233, 234-35, 236 Sociology, and professionalization, 9-10, 28 Sonderweg (peculiarity of German history), 6, 20 for attorneys, 63 and business education, 214, 226 and engineers, 118-19 Sovereignty, twilight of, 117 Soviet union, women professionals in, 272 Soziale Frauenschulen (female social work professional schools), 232, 235, 241, 243 Specialization (division of labor), 6, 18 by attorneys, 54, 56 and classical studies/Hellenism, 27-28, 34, 39, 40 by doctors, 68, 69, 71-72 inengineering education, 108 neohumanism against, 29, 30, 31 in officer corps, 192-93, 202 professional expertise as transcending, 34 in training, 12 Speer, Albert, 200 Spitzenverbande, 247, 248 Spranger, Eduard, 9, 295 Stand, (estate) 10-11, 167 of advocates, 61 Standesinteresse (interest of the profession), 240 Starr, Paul, 302 State and "natural history," 180n. l4 and professionalization theory, 164—65, 310 socialization of, 204 State, German and architecture, 144, 148, 149, 152-53, 154 and attorneys, 47, 50-52, 54, 55, 57, 58, 63. See also Attorneys bureaucratic vs. free-enterprise view of, 47 and business education, 216 and chemistry examination, 126-27 and civil service, 166-67, 168. See also Civil service, as profession and classical studies/Hellenism, 38 as educational system support, 32, 34 and engineers, 106 and Hellenism, 40 and medicine, 66, 74, 77, 81, 313 and officer corps, 189, 190-91, 194, 204
Index orthodoxy enforced by, 34-35 and professional development, 13-14 and professionalization theory, 19, 310 and professional life, 322 and psychology, 303 and social work, 237-38, 245, 248 Status of attorneys, 48-49, 51, 60 of chemists, 124, 126, 128, 130, 135, 136 and engineers, 18, 126 and professional cohesion, 113 of social workers, 236, 237, 238-39, 241 Stein, Baron vom, 51 Stern, William, 291-92, 292, 295 Stinchcombe, Arthur, 164 Stolzle, Hans, 257 Stuckart, Wilhelm, 176 Stuler, August, 147 Stumm-Halberg, Karl von, 215, 216 Stumpf, Carl, 290, 291 Sumper, Helene, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95 Surgeons, 67, 68, 73, 274. See also Doctors Sydow, Reinhold von, 107-8 Syndicus (legal advisor), 223 Taylor, Fredrick, 221-22 Teaching, primary school as nonprofessional, 86 women in, 17. See also Volksschullehrerinnen Teaching, secondary school as nonprofessional, 86 organizational membership in, 12 in Third Reich, 12 women in, 17 Technical employees. See also Chemists; Engineers models of collective action for, 133-35 proletarianization of, 129-30, 134 Technische Hochschulen, 14, 121n. l9, 146 and engineers, 5, 105, 106, 111, 112, 116, 119 Tentamen physicum (test of scientific background), 69 Theology, and self-creation of problems, 14 Theory of professionalization. See Professional ation theory Third Reich. See Nazi regime Thoemer, Paul, 152 Trade unionism. See Unionism Training. See also Ausbildung; Education of attorneys, 50, 53 for civil service, 169 of doctors, 67-70 and public administration, 4 for social work, 232, 235-36, 238-40, 241, 242, 243, 244-45 specialization of, 12 by universities, 29-30 for Volksschullehrerinnen, 88-90, 90-91 Trapp, Ernst Christian, 30, 35
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Treitschke, Heinrich von, on women's role, 85 Treuhandwesen (trusteeship), 222-23, 225 (table) Union of German Architects' and Engineers' Societies (Verband deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine, VDAIV), 148, 149 Unionism, 16 and BtiB, 112, 114, 124, 129, 133. See also Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten and chemists/engineers, 5, 137-38 and social work, 241—42 United States and attorneys, 50 business education in, 213, 226-27 engineering in, 104 and German psychology, 300 Universities (Germany) and academization of industrial chemistry, 124-25 bureaucratic training at, 29-30 and business education, 215, 220-21, 226-27 instructors of, 86 middle class enrolled in (late 19th century), 273 psychological institutes in (West Germany), 300 and public culture, 29 sciences in, 289. See also Psychology women in, 272, 274-75, 277, 279, 282 Urbanization, and architecture, 145 Utilitarian education. See Pedagogy Value-neutrality, of social work, 245, 245-46 Verband deutscher Architekten- und IngenieurVereine (VDAIV, Union of German Architects' and Engineers' Societies), 148, 149 Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure (VDDI, Association of German Certified Engineers), 112-16, 116, 117, 135 Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE, electrical engineers), 116 Verband der Laboratoriumsvorstande an Deutschen Hochschulen (VLDH, Association of Laboratory Directors at German Universities and Colleges), 127-28, 136 Verein Deutscher Amtsgerichtsanwalte (Association of German District Court Lawyers), 259, 260, 262-63 Verein Deutscher Chemiker (VDC, Association of German Chemists), 123-24, 125, 12628, 129, 130, 132, 133-35, 136, 137, 138 as previously DGaC, 126. See also Deutsche Gesellschaft fur angewandte Chemie Verein Deutscher Eisenhuttenleute (VDEH, metallurgical engineers), 116 Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI, Association of German Engineers), 105, 106, 108, 109110, 113, 115, 116, 117 Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten (VDMA), 116
340
Index
Verein deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner, 38 Verein katholischer deutscher Sozialbeamtinnen, 240 Verein fur Sozialpolitik, 223-24 Verein zur Wahrung der Interessen der chemischen Industrie Deutschlands (VWIcID), 124, 125, 126 VLDH (Verband der Laboratoriumsvorstande an Deutschen Hochschulen, Association of Laboratory Directors at German Universities and Colleges), 127-28, 136 Vocation, in pedagogical view, 35. See also Beruf Vocational associations, 15, 16 Vocational tradition, 184 Volkisch (radical right) conservatism, 296 Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), 200, 311, 324 Volksschullehrerinnen (female elementary school teachers), 85, 97-98 associations of, 86-87, 91-93, 97 and celibacy rule, 93-94, 96 current problems of, 96-97 and female image, 97, 98 and First World War, 95-96 Lehrers' hostility toward, 86, 94-95, 96, 97 under Nazis, 96 pay of, 92, 101-2n.33, 102n.40 professional goals of, 91-92, 92, 95 qualifications demanded of, 89 training institutes for, 88-89, 90-91 and Weimar Republic, 96 VWIcID (Verein zur Wahrung der Interessen der chemischen Industrie Deutschlands), 124, 125, 126 Wagner, Adolph, 220 Wanderversammlungen (traveling conventions), for architects, 148 Weber, Max on academic caste system, 221 on iron cage of institutions, 324 on professions, 163, 164 Wehler, H.-U., 6 Wehrmacht, 184, 201 and homosexuality, 320 psychologists in, 297, 298-99, 301 and psychotherapists, 317, 318, 319 Weimar Republic and architecture, 154 and Bavaria's female teachers, 96 and Bildungsburgertum, 17 and civil service, 171-75 crisis mentality of, 295 and cultural crisis, 18 and legal profession, 62 and officer corps, 198-99 professions in, 15 psychology in, 293—95
and social work, 244, 246, 248 and women professionals, 96, 272-73, 276, 277-78, 280 Weinbrenner, Friedrich, 148 Welcker, Gottlieb, 39 Wellek, Albert, 299 Wertheimer, Max, 294 Wharton, Joseph, 215 Whitley, Richard, 302 Wickenden, William and Wickenden Commission, 105-6 Wilson, P. A., 164 Windelband, Wilhelm, 295 Winkelschulen (corner schools), 87, 88 Wirz, Franz, 315 Wissenschaft (scholarship, science) and bureaucratic/academic realities, 32 and classical studies/Hellenism, 4, 28, 31, 36, 40. See also Classical studies; Hellenism disciplines introduced as, 289 and higher education, 14 neohumanism, 18 normative authority of, 35 philosophers as guardians of, 292 "pure," 41 and scientific standing, 301 and specialization, 6 Wolf, Friedrich August, 28, 31, 33, 33-34, 35, 36-38, 39 Wollner, Johann Christoph, 34-35 Women, German, 17-18 discrimination against, 20 educational opportunities for, 90 and feminists' arguments, 97 nineteenth-century employment opportunities for, 85-86 poor-relief administration denied to, 234-35 in professions, 270-71: and "condition of women" question, 271-72; and conflict-ofinterest groups, 272-73; and Nazis, 6, 17, 18, 277-78, 279, 280-85, 317; opposition to, 273-77, 278-80; prejudice against, 272, 275, 279; supply-and-demand considerations for, 273, 278; and Weimar period, 96, 27273, 276, 277-78, 280 and social work, 5, 17, 223, 234-35, 236. See also Social work and teaching, 5, 86-87, 281-82. See also Volksschullehrerinnen wife-and-mother image for, 97, 98 Women and history, 270 Work demands of, 9 Humboldt's vision of, 32 Workers' Welfare, 233, 243, 247 Wundarzte (surgeons), 67, 68, 73 Wundt, Wilhelm, 290, 291, 292, 292-93 Wuth, Otto, 318 Zentner, Friedrich von, 88