bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Living Legacy: Hajo Holborn as a Teacher of Power and Responsibility
Authors: Snell John L.
Published: December 2008

Theodore S. Hamerow provided the driving force within the Conference Group for Central European History for the creation of this journal. Both he and the editor became historians under the sensitive supervision of Hajo Holborn, as did many others who read Central European History. Less directly, Holborn taught other colleagues who never registered for a course at Yale; any roster of these would start with his fellow students in Germany in the 1920's and include all of us who ever met the man. It seems imperative, therefore, that the formative influence Holborn exerted as a teacher not be overlooked in this number of Central European History, least of all in a reviewessay on the Festschrift presented him in 1967; for—directly or indirectly—he taught all twenty-four contributors. Twelve can loosely be described as Holborn's colleagues. The remaining dozen studied with Holborn (I include his daughter). Taken together, they comprise a remarkable array of talent. Holborn himself might well have memorialized these friends in the lines from Addison that he once quoted on the relationship between Prince Eugene and Marlborough: “To souls like these in mutual friendship joined / Heaven dares intrust the cause of human kind.”
The Ruhrlade, Secret Cabinet of Heavy Industry in the Weimar Republic
Authors: Turner Henry Ashby
Published: December 2008

On the evening of January 9, 1928, twelve of the most prominent men of German heavy industry, attired in tuxedos, gathered at the Villa Hügel, the Krupp family's grandiose palace outside Essen, for the first meeting of the most mystery-shrouded industrial organization of the Weimar Republic: the Ruhrlade. The man responsible for its formation was Paul Reusch, managing director since 1908 of the coal, steel, and manufacturing combine Gutehoffnungshütte, and a respected figure in German industrial circles. After the First World War and the revolution, Reusch had been instrumental in organizing the Essener Montagsgesellschaft, an informal group of Ruhr industrialists which met in Essen once a month to consider matters of common interest. At the outset, the membership of the Montagsgesellschaft was small, but its admissions policy was liberal, so that within a few years it numbered forty-five. This proved too large a body for the conduct of confidential affairs, and after the group's meetings had been interrupted by the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, Reusch and its other leaders decided not to revive it. Reusch continued, however, to feel a need for an informal, compact organization of the leading men of German heavy industry. In the fall of 1927 he drafted a charter for such a group, using as his model the statute of a small, highly selective prewar organization of Magdeburg industrialists, the Lade, whose name, the German word for chest or similar repository, apparently signified a commitment to secrecy.
Georg Gottfried Gervinus: The Tribulations of a Liberal Federalist
Authors: Wagner Jonathan F.
Published: December 2008

In the final years of his life, the Heidelberg historian and political journalist Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805–71) was an unpopular figure in Germany. During the 1860's, the formerly prominent intellectual and revered partriot lost the respect of the German nation. His refusal to applaud the newly created German Empire and his denunciations of Bismarck's policies made him the object of scorn or pity to many of his contemporaries. Some thought the Gervinus of the 1860's had simply been “overtaken by events.” Others considered his opposition to Bismarck's unification proof of personal pettiness or political irresponsibility. Still others used Gervinus's failure to accept the glorious new age as cause to denounce everything he had done both before and after Bismarck as the work of a “writer without style, a savant without method, a thinker without depth, a politician without foresight, and a man without charm or personality.”The
The Perils of Eighteenth-Century Peacemaking: Austria and the Treaty of Belgrade, 1739
Authors: Roider Karl A.
Published: December 2008

The Treaty of Belgrade, concluded in 1739, ended over fifty years of Austrian expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. From the siege of Vienna in 1683 to the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718, the Austrians enjoyed almost absolute supremacy on the battlefield and at the peace table, forcing the Turks deep into the Balkan peninsula and adding to the Habsburg possessions such cities as Buda, Pest, Timişoara, Cluj, Debrecen, and finally Belgrade, guardian of the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers and bastion of Austrian might in southeastern Europe. Given these successes and the apparent decline of the Ottoman state, in the 1720's and 1730's Austria appeared capable of establishing its hegemony over most of the remaining Turkish possessions in Europe.
Challenging Political Culture in Postwar Austria: Veterans' Associations, Identity, and the Problem of Contemporary History
Authors: Berg Matthew Paul
Published: December 2008

This observation, registered by Marianne Enigl and Herbert Lackner, points to an incontestable and compelling feature of contemporary Austrian political culture: during the 1980s and 1990s, the first meaningful steps toward an AustrianVergangenheitsbewältigungdeveloped out of a discussion of Austrians' military service during the Nazi era and its highly problematic association with wartime atrocities and genocide. Exploration of this important theme had been avoided throughout the period of the Second Republic by a carefully cultivated expression of public memory. The inherent tension between the internationally sanctioned notion of Austrian victimization during the Nazi years and the pride of many Austrian veterans in having performed their soldierly duties (Wehrpflichterfüllung) had been a taboo subject.
A Church in a Hostile State: The Unity of Czech Brethren
Authors: Odložilík Otakar
Published: December 2008

The church to which this paper is devoted was the Unity of Czech Brethren, Unitas Fratrum; the state in which it was founded, in 1457, and existed for some hundred and seventy years, was the kingdom of Bohemia.
BeyondKinder, Küche, Kirche:Weimar Women at Work
Authors: Bridenthal Renate
Published: December 2008

It is a commonplace that the National Socialist assumption of power in Germany in 1933 was to a large extent made possible by a clever manipulation of irrational fears provoked by the economic, social, and political tensions of the time. More than once since the Frankfurt School's famous study on authority and the family it has been suggested that the authoritarianism of the German family contributed to the susceptibility of the population to the siren call of the leadership principle and that threats to the traditional structure of society, especially the family, made people fearful and desperate enough to see a savior in Hitler. Certainly his call for women to return to hearth and home found a responsive audience.The Kinder, Küche, Kircheissue in Nazi propaganda implied that women were deserting their homes, their children, and their morality, challenging men's authority by asserting their independence and by flooding the labor market to such an extent that honestFamilienväterfound themselves without “work or bread,” to use the compassionate terms of the otherwise dispassionate 1933 census. Carl Gustav Jung, in his pamphletDie Frau in Europa, was only one of the more distinguished spokesmen for the widely held view that women's emancipation was responsible for endangering not only the institution of marriage but also the whole spiritual balance between the masculine and feminine principles.
Domestic Constraints on West German Ostpolitik: The Role of the Expellee Organizations in the Adenauer Era
Authors: Ahonen Pertti
Published: December 2008

TheOstpolitik of the early Federal Republic presents a puzzle: why did West Germany—a country that consistently denounced the brutal Eastern policies of the Third Reich and sought to present itself as a new, peace-loving entity—refuse to normalize its relations with most East European countries until the early 1970s? The existing literature has explained Bonn's behavior primarily with reference to foreign policy calculations, such as the need to isolate the GDR and its satellite allies and to avoid granting unilateral concessions to the Soviet bloc. Although such Staatsräson considerations were very significant for the Federal Republic's policymakers, they do not tell the whole story. Movement on Eastern policy was also significantly hindered by domestic factors, the most important of which was the influence of the Vertriebenenverbände—the pressure organizations purporting to represent the millions of Germans expelled from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II. The role of these organizations has typically received passing reference in general studies of Ostpolitik, but the specialized literature on the topic has remained weak.
The Communist Movement in the German Revolution, 1918–1919: A Problem of Historical Typology?
Authors: Bassler Gerhard P.
Published: December 2008

The emergence and general acceptance of polycentrism in the communist world since the late 1950's has brought the difficulty of defining communism in either ideological, organizational, or programmatic terms out into the open. That difficulty had always existed but had been concealed since the early 1920's largely by the impact of the successful Bolshevik Revolution and by the subsequent bolshevization and Soviet domination of most non-Russian communist groups and movements through the Comintern and the Cominform. The Western cold-war theory of the monolithic nature of a Moscow-centered and -controlled expansion of world communism has perpetuated a widespread identification of communism as such with bolshevism.
A Reply to Gerald Feldman
Authors: Abraham David
Published: December 2008

For more than a year and a half Gerald Feldman has waged an unrelenting campaign against my work and character. By his own declaration, the object of this campaign has been to deny me employment as a professional historian, and to establish within the historical profession that my work is a fraud, and that I am a liar. Hitherto Professor Feldman has used private correspondence, countless phone calls, irregularly circulated “open” letters, and lapel-grabbing confrontations with interested (and some not so interested) colleagues to advance these ends. After much of that, he has availed himself of the services of a scholarly journal. I am pleased with his decision to do so, and grateful to this journal's editor for the opportunity given me to respond. But there is no escaping history. And to understand the present exchange, some history is required.
A Pioneer in the Historical Sciences: Hans Rosenberg 1904–1988
Authors: Winkler Heinrich August
Published: December 2008

Hans Rosenberg, who died in Freiburg on 26 June 1988, was not only a critical historian, he was above all a self-critical one. Looking back upon his life during his last years, he always saw first what he had set out to do but had not accomplished, or what, in his judgment, had turned out less well than he would have wished. At most he granted that he had exercised a certain influence upon many historians of the next generation. “Not everything has been futile”: that was the most positive statement he allowed himself to make about his work.
The Socialism of German Socialists
Authors: Du Bois W. E. B.
Published: December 2008

When one hears that the vote of the socialistic party of Germany rose from 312,000 in 1881 to 1,725,000 at the last election of the Reichstag, the question naturally arises, What is the true significance of this? How far have the economic theories of Socialism really penetrated the masses of Germany? Such questions are apart from the more usual inquiries as to the scientific soundness of the official manifestoes of this party, or the personal aims of Bebel, Liebknecht or von Vollmar. Nevertheless, the inquiry into the real economics beliefs of the nearly two million German voters usually classed as “socialists,” is certainly of deep interest to the sociologist and statesman.
Elementary Education, Schools, and the Demands of Everyday Life: Northwest Germany in 1800
Authors: Hofmeister Andrea , Prass Reiner , Winnige Norbert
Published: December 2008

Inthis essay we are presenting results from the research project, “Literacy, School Visitation, and Written Culture in Northwest Germany from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” The essay begins with a discussion of research problems and methodological procedures and then moves on to discuss the results of our inquiries by region. The conclusion is in the form of a comparative synthesis which also indicates the future direction of our research.
Codes of Comradeship: Class, Leadership, and Tradition in Munich Social Democracy
Authors: Harsch Donna
Published: December 2008

InJuly 1923, the Munich chapter of the Social Democratic Security Troop (Sicherheitsabteilung, hereafter Socialist SA) staged aFestspielin a suburban woods. The skit’s sylvan setting belied its combative leitmotif, echo of a wider German environment racked by occupation of the Ruhr, hyperinflation, unemployment, and threatening ultraright organizations. The drama aimed to convince its Social Democratic audience to join or support the Security Troop. In the opening scene, a “leader of the SPD” lamented proletarian disunity. As he resolved to quit politics, the “goddess of freedom” materialized and urged him to keep up the fight. To demonstrate that the masses were on the move against reaction, she pointed to a sky blanketed with flags born by members of the Security Troop.1Four male mortals stepped forward: a former Independent Socialist, a Young Socialist, a Communist, and a “lumpenproletarian.” The Socialist exhorted the Communist to join the SPD but, instead, he lambasted its bureaucratic bosses and called for a council republic. Suddenly, the lumpen’s passivity aroused the group’s distrust. Unmasking him as a Nazi, they chased him offstage. As the Social Democrats went off to a meeting, the wife of the SPD leader told of her sacrifices for a husband and son who devoted themselves to the party. Yet she proclaimed her willingness to suffer “for the sake of proletarian freedom.” The men returned, disgusted that Nazis had busted up their conclave.
The Knights and the Problems of Political Organizing in Sixteenth-Century Germany
Authors: Legates Marlene Jahss
Published: December 2008

The tribute given to Saul Alinsky on his death in 1972 indicates the attention paid in our age to the problems of community organizing. Most citizen groups formed in response to such threats as urban renewal, danger to the environment, or mandatory busing face problems of factionalism, inefficiency, lack of money, and even conflicting loyalties of their members, unless they have the direction of someone like Alinsky, who earned his reputation as a professional organizer. The alternative is to found a group imbued with an ideology which can be characterized as radical (“as a kind of mental and moral discipline”) and an organization which consequently reflects this discipline. The existence of such political organizations, “specially designated and organized bands of men [who] might play a creative part in the political world,” of individuals motivated to join forces “with any man who might help them without regard to the older bonds of family and neighborhood” have a historical origin: they were the contribution of the religious wars in sixteenth-century Europe. The Calvinists were the ancestors of the Bolsheviks.
On Scholarship and Polemics: A Reply to Professor McGrath
Authors: Rothman Stanley , Isenberg Phillip
Published: December 2008

Rather than direct himself to a serious discussion of the important substantive issues involved, Professor McGrath chose to reply to our interpretation of some of Freud's motives with a series of angry assertions. We are disappointed, but we still have a few comments on his response.
The Development of the National Socialist Party in Thuringia, 1924–1930
Authors: Tracey Donald R.
Published: December 2008

The failure of Hitler's 1923 Putsch relegated the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) to the periphery of German politics until the end of the decade, but these years of relative obscurity were nevertheless of crucial importance for the party. The reshaping of the NSDAP which took place during this period enabled Hitler to take advantage of the general crisis of the early thirties in a fashion that would have been impossible earlier, for in the interim a new and far more effective political instrument had been created. In large measure this was the result of little-publicized organizational work and political struggle, much of it at state and local levels.
Prussia's Last Fling: The Annexation of Hanover, Hesse, Frankfurt, and Nassau, June 15 - October 8, 1866
Authors: Schmitt Hans A.
Published: December 2008

On October 6, 1866, in Hanover and on October 8 in Kassel, Wiesbaden, and Frankfurt am Main, civil and military ceremonies completed the Prussian annexations of the Kingdom of Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse-Kassel, the Duchy of Nassau, and the Free City of Frankfurt. Together with the subsequent incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein on January 12, 1867, this augmentation of King William I's realm transferred more than five million German subjects and twenty-eight thousand square miles to Prussia and closed the physical gap between the east and central German main body of the kingdom and its prosperous Westphalian and Rhenish districts. For the first time a Hohenzollern subject could travel from the Russian border at Memel to the old Carolingian capital of Aachen on the Belgian frontier without setting foot on the territory of another German state.
The Commercial Treaty between Germany and Serbia of 1904
Authors: Lorscheider Horst M.
Published: December 2008

On November 28, 1904, a new commercial treaty was signed between Germany and Serbia. Though limited in economic impact, the treaty carried political implications which greatly magnify its historical importance. For both signatories this treaty proved consequential to their respective relations with Austria-Hungary. Indeed, for Serbia it became one of the bases from which to carry on the struggle for the fulfillment of her national ambitions. But while its final importance is political, and emphatically so, the treaty can scarcely be understood without an appreciation of the economic motivation behind it. It will not do to dismiss the treaty as merely another manifestation of German expansionism; money, not empire, seems to have lured Germany into this rockiest part of the Balkans. The Serbo-German commercial treaty, therefore, must be studied against the background of two rivalries, separate both in membership and in kind— one the rivalry, mainly political and national, between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, and the other the commercial rivalry between Germany and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. In the pages that follow an attempt will be made to pursue the second aspect in some detail; the first can here only be summarized.
Rathenau, Russia, and Rapallo
Authors: Himmer Robert
Published: December 2008

The Treaty of Rapallo, concluded between Soviet Russia and the Weimar Republic on April 16, 1922, has been interpreted by Western historians as a logical result of the process of the reestablishment of the close economic ties which Germany and Russia had shared before the First World War. “A long tradition built on a solid foundation of common interest,” writes Edward Hallett Carr, “favoured the rapid development of commercial relations. … Links so strong and so profitable to both parties were not easily broken.” Strengthened by the limitations imposed on German exports by the Allies after the war, this natural tendency “impelled the whole of German industry to face east.” The revival of a substantial commerce between the two countries was forestalled, however, by the Allied blockade, until it was lifted in January 1920, and by German hopes for the collapse of the Soviet regime and fears of Bolshevism. These last two obstacles, it is claimed, disappeared in early 1921, at the same time that the introduction of the New Economic Policy in Russia was stimulating even greater German interest in the restoration of trade with her. “During the rest of 1921 there took place a steady thickening of the Russo-German link. … At first this took a predominantly economic form,” in which “rapid strides” were made. Opening up “the Russian market became a major preoccupation of German policy” in the latter half of that year. Thus economic goals were an important reason —one historian calls them “the real inducement”—for the Rapallo Treaty.
Two Unpublished Manuscripts by Karl Marx
Authors: Levine Norman
Published: December 2008

In the past forty-three years Marxologists were compelled to absorb two new manuscripts of extraordinary significance. Although prepared in Moscow by D. Rjazanov, the Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe was issued in Berlin in 1932 and contained the first publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts In 1939 and 1941 respectively, single volumes of a limited two-volume edition of the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie were published by the Foreign Language Publishers in Moscow. Generally, this edition went unnoticed until a single-volume publication of the Grundrisse was issued by Dietz Verlag of Berlin 1953. and shortly thereafter the Grundrisse became a manuscript of enormous importance to Marxist theory. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and the Grundrisse caused a revolution in the interpretation of Marxism. The Marx of the Second International, of Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, the Marx of Bolshevism, of Lenin and Stalin and “Diamat,” was completely revised. In essence, the publication of these new sources commenced forty-three years of extensive revision and intensive contention which still continue. This was not surprising, because the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and the Grundrisse proved to be major repositories of Marxist philosophy: they revealed for the first time the full amplitude of Marxist humanism.
On German Social Democracy and General Schleicher 1932–33
Authors: Breitman Richard
Published: December 2008

Many historians have taken an interest in the last few months of the Weimar Republic. The relationship between the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the General Confederation of Labor (ADGB) has become a subject of particular attention, as scholars sought a way in which working-class organizations might have stopped the Nazi movement before Hitler became chancellor. Some scholars have written about a bitter feud between socialist party and union officials that weakened the left's resistance to Nazism. Others have described in tones of condemnation secret agreements supposedly concluded by union leaders behind the backs of union members, and without the approval of the SPD leaders. However, two articles published recently have undermined the main pieces of evidence for the latter version—protocols of two meetings in the second half of 1932 attended by top union officials and figures in the government. The incriminating documents are shown to have been forged. These two new articles also contain genuine evidence regarding union attitudes and conduct toward General Schleicher. Yet the SPD had its own contacts with the general, a fact that scholars have not emphasized sufficiently.
Metternich, the Powers, and the 1831 Italian Crisis
Authors: Reinerman Alan J.
Published: December 2008

On February 10, 1831, word reached Vienna that revolution had broken out in central Italy, first in the Duchies of Modena and Parma, then in the Legations, the northern provinces of the Papal State. The news was shortly followed by appeals from the threatened Italian princes for Austrian military intervention, and for Metternich, there could be no doubt as to the proper reply: these revolts were not merely another blow at the tottering conservative order, already hard hit by the July Revolution and its aftermath, but a “question of life and death” for the Habsburg Empire itself. At the Congress of Vienna, Metternich had established Austrian predominance in Italy as a fundamental component of her international position, vital for her status as a great power. Revolution in central Italy, if allowed to go unchecked, would end that predominance, for it would surely spread throughout the peninsula, to create in the end a united and independent Italian state.
Toward the Psychological Drama of High Politics: The Case of Bismarck
Authors: Hughes Judith M.
Published: December 2008

There have been many programmatic appeals encouraging historians to reconstruct the emotional life of the past, to describe the major features of an inner landscape that has disappeared from view. Yet when emotion has been evoked, it has all too often figured as an unanalyzed residue, immune to closer scrutiny. Such has been particularly the case in the study of politics: the investigation of interpersonal relationships among the politically powerful has scarcely even been staked out. The present essay is an effort to take up this task; it is an exploratory venture into a hitherto neglected realm of political history—politics as psychological drama.
The New Nachkriegsgeschichte (1945–49): West Germans in Search of Their Historical Origins
Authors: Prowe Diethelm
Published: December 2008

A MOST significant development has been taking place in the field of German history in the last half dozen years or so. Although largely overshadowed, especially in this country, by such emotion-laden issues as the Fritz Fischer debate and the ever popular history of Nazism, it has been quietly changing the terrain of German history and touching the historical consciousness of West Germans in essential ways. It is the maturation of the postwar period from 1945 to 1949 into a significant and sophisticated area of historical inquiry. In a larger West German cultural-political context this has meant the reclaiming of a piece of German history long regarded as lost together with the war and assorted eastern territories.
The Economics and Politics of Welfare in the Third Reich
Authors: De Witt Thomas E. J.
Published: December 2008

The function and importance of welfare in the industrial state is usually inversely proportional to the degree of commitment to progressive social reform. The greater the concern of government with solving the problems of economic dislocation and endemic poverty, the less the need for welfare as an economic equalizer. Conversely, an unwillingness to redress the socioeconomic consequences of industrialization—by allocating an increasing share of the national income to social services—forces a heavy dependence on relief and related financial support systems, if only to avoid the political repercussions of poverty. Welfare policies therefore deserve closer attention as useful barometers of national priorities. An analysis of the economic and political implications of Nazi welfare will not shake the consensus that labor was low on the regime's list of priorities, but it will shed light on its handling of the sensitive issue of labor relations within a command economy. For a state attempting to achieve a political basis for an expansionist foreign policy, the implications of welfare posed a particular problem: how to reap the political benefits of progressive social services—which could justify the necessary labor regimentation—without a heavy commitment of public revenues; that is, how to shift the financial burden of an embattled welfare system not easily dismantled during the economic crisis of the thirties.
Peacetime Attrition in the Army of Frederick William I, 1713–1740
Authors: Fann Willerd R.
Published: December 2008

Often enough to make it worthy of attention, one encounters the assertion that the annual peacetime turnover of enlisted men in the eighteenth-century Prussian army amounted to 20 percent or more of the total. As put by Robert Ergang in his recently reprinted biography of Frederick William I: “The enlistment, it is true, was for life, not for a short period. Frederick William's soldier was a miles perpetuus. … Accordingly the number of those mustered out each year was not overwhelming. Nevertheless, the aged and sick who were dismissed each year amounted to about 20 percent of the standing army.” In addition, “the number of deserters … was large. … The total for the entire reign was 30,216, the lowest number in any one year being 401 in 1739.” The same figures can be found in Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army: “In no single year of this reign did fugitives from the army number fewer than 400, and the total number of desertions between 1713 and 1740 was 30,216. More important sources of attrition were age and sickness which led annually to the discharge of 20 per cent, of the effective force.”
Industrial Factionalism in Modern German History
Authors: Hayes Peter
Published: December 2008

At a time when the Republican party in America seems to have abandoned its brief hopes of proclaiming a new paradigm, it may seem apropos to observe that old ones die hard—and not only in public life. A case in point from the scholarly world is the subject of this essay: the persistent historiographical notion of industrial factionalism. Throughout this century, students of German political economy have tended to see the country's business world as divided between two groupings. One comprises the classic heavy industries of the first Industrial Revolution and the Ruhr: coal, iron, and steel. Supposedly oriented toward domestic markets, burdened with high labor costs, doomed to flattening gains in productivity and profits, and habituated to hierarchy within their plants and the nation, executives in this grouping have figured in the historical literature as consistently and intransigently united against free trade, labor unions, and parliamentary government—indeed, against modernization itself.
The German Peasant League and the Limits of Rural Liberalism in Wilhelmian Germany
Authors: Vascik George S.
Published: December 2008

To what extent was liberalism a resurgent force in the last decade of the German Empire? Considerable debate has materialized around this question. After he became chair of the National Liberal caucus in the Reichstag, the Badenese attorney Ernst Bassermann gathered around himself a coterie of young reformers (the most notable of whom was Gustav Stresemann) who were eager to rejuvenate German liberalism. While opening themselves to alliances with social democracy and the working class, these self-consciously proud members of the business and educated middle classes vigorously asserted an aggressive liberal profile and busied themselves with the creation of new organizational structures to undergird a revivified liberal movement. We know a great deal about some of these political-organizational projects, most notably the Young Liberal movement and the Hansabund. Historians have, however, neglected the rural component of this revival—the German Peasant League (Deutscher Bauernbund, or DBB)—which Bassermann recognized as equally important to the National Liberal party's future as the Hansabund.
State-Building and Bureaucracy in Earlt-Nineteenth-Century Nassau
Authors: Anderson Barbara C.
Published: December 2008

Historians Max Braubach, Michael Doeberl, Erwin Hölzle, and Franz Schnabel developed in the interwar period a new understanding of the role of the “Third Germany,” in particular the south Germ an states of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, in the shaping of the new European order in the beginning of the nineteenth century: they viewed these governments as masters of statecraft and as liberal counterforces to conservative and nationalist Prussia. Recent scholars have continued to focus on the “Third Germany” but in a different vein. Contemporary writers Helmut Berding, Christof Dipper, and Elisabeth Fehrenbach, for example, examined the reforms in Rheinbund-Germany and concluded that everywhere liberal innovations remained stunted and incomplete. Furthermore, they no longer view the “Third Germany” as an antithesis to Prussia but, instead, perceive all of Vormärz-Germany as engulfed by an overly statist and antipluralistic mind-set.
Baden between Revolutions: State-Building and Citizenship, 1800–1848
Authors: Lee Loyd E.
Published: December 2008

Arising from the French revolutionary upheaval and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, nineteenth-century Baden, as a political and administrative structure joined to a social body, had few continuities with an earlier past. Though a Napoleonic progeny, its successful transition to modern statehood started as an act of dynastic and bureaucratic will, imposed upon a recalcitrant or disinterested population. Remarkably, the new creation struck roots within its inhabitants which are still evident today. Beyond doubt the Zähringen monarch and the grand duchy's officialdom were estranged from large segments of the population at midcentury, as the revolutionary events of 1848–49 show. Nonetheless, a sense of Badenese citizenship and patriotism had become widely institutionalized by 1848.
State-Building and Nation-Building in the “Third Germany”: Saxony after the Congress of Vienna
Authors: Flockerzie Lawrence J.
Published: December 2008

In a recent article on state-building in the “Third Germany” during the Rheinbund years, Hans Schmitt noted the “degrees of variation” that were to be found in the tempo, structure, and results of government reform programs among the German states. This variety stemmed not only from the uneven penetration of French influence, but also from the different historical conditions and levels of political development pertaining in each state. Schmitt concluded part of his analysis by pointing out that this variety which so characterized state-building between 1806 and 1813 continued after the fall of Napoleon and the unravelling of the Rheinbund. The multiplicity of state-building programs and agendas in Germany during the Restoration era confirms this assertion. For the monarchs of states such as Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and Nassau, the end of the French Imperium was an opportunity—under the new auspices of the German Confederation—to continue the integration of new territories and subjects via bureaucratic centralization and experimentation with constitutional models.
Peace through Coup d'État: The Foreign Contacts of the German Resistance 1933–1944
Authors: Hoffmann Peter
Published: December 2008

A history, both comprehensive and detailed, of the foreign contacts of the German Resistance does not yet exist. The subject is vast, and many sources are not yet accessible, notably those in the custody of intelligence agencies, and also those relating to contacts between the German Communist underground and foreign authorities or individuals. This paper will, firstly, consider some conditions and circumstances of foreign contacts sought and established by the German Resistance; secondly, survey some of those contacts; and, thirdly, attempt to draw some conclusions.
“A True Woman Can Take Care of Herself”: The Debate over Prostitution in Hanover, 1906
Authors: Reagin Nancy R.
Published: December 2008

During the late nineteenth century, prostitution became the subject of controversy and debate because of an enormous increase in the number of prostitutes who walked the streets of all large European cities, including Hanover. This growth was a byproduct of rapid urbanization and of the frequent economic contractions that characterized urban economies. Young women who were drawn to the cities often found only low-paid or seasonal work. They turned to prostitution when other work was unobtainable, or, occasionally, prostituted themselves in order to supplement low wages or to support themselves when they were between jobs. The creation of a large market in prostitution was noted by many observers, some of whom estimated the population of prostitutes to be in the tens of thousands.
Public Opinion and Foreign Policy in Wilhelmian Germany, 1897–1914
Authors: Mommsen Wolfgang J.
Published: December 2008

The age of high imperialism was also the age of the emergence of mass journalism. This heralded a steady widening of what might be called the “political nation,” that is, those groups who took an active interest in politics in contrast to the mass of the population still largely outside the political arena. Up to the 1890s politics tended to beHonoratiorenpolitik—confined to “notables” orHonoratioren, a term first applied by Max Weber around the turn of the century to describe the elites who had dominated the political power structure up to that time. Gradually “public opinion” ceased to be, in effect, the opinion of the educated classes, that is, theclasses dirigeantes. In Wilhelmian Germany the process of democratization had been successfully contained, if seen in terms of the constitutional system; the age of mass politics was still far away.
The Bismarckian Empire as a Federal State, 1866–1880: A Chronicle of Failure
Authors: Windell George G.
Published: December 2008

As the centennial of the Franco-Prussian War and the founding of the German Empire approaches, historians are likely to find renewed interest in the Bismarckian political edifice. It may be hoped that studies which result will examine the Empire from points of view different from those which have dominated most treatments during the last half century. However valuable some of these may have been, they have sought answers to questions other than those which properly should concern the profession in the future. Twentieth-century students of German history have lived and worked under the impact of two catastrophic world wars. They have understandably been mostly interested in exploring those aspects of German history which seemed to offer an explanation for Germany's role in bringing about those catastrophes. In recent years several scholars have begun to investigate the impact on German politics during the Bismarck era of various old and new socio-economic groupings as they responded to the sweeping changes which the nineteenth century brought to the German and the world economic structure. Their work has contributed new and valuable insights as well as opening the way to further research and controversy. What follows is still another effort to cast familiar ingredients into a new mold so that the product will be at once a closer approximation of the reality of the past and more meaningful to scholars of the present.
Medieval German Social History: Generalizations and Particularism
Authors: Freed John B.
Published: December 2008

EIKE von Repgow commented around 1225 in theSachsenspiegel: “Now do not be amazed that this book says so little about the law of the ministerials. It is in fact so diverse that no one can fully comprehend it. Under every bishop, every abbot, and every abbess the ministerials have a distinct law; therefore, I cannot describe it.” Eike identified here a fundamental problem in studying German social history: how does one generalize about diverse social institutions that were both a cause and a consequence of Germany's political fragmentation? How different things could be is illustrated by the structure of the estates in the eastern Alpine principalities. In the duchies of Austria and Styria the nobility was divided into two estates, the lords and the knights; but while there were about seventy or eighty families of lordly rank in Austria in 1280, there were so few lineages of lords in Styria—about twenty-five in 1300, of whom only ten survived by 1400—that they could not meet by themselves.
The Reformation and the Restoration of Civic Authority in Heilbronn, 1525–32
Authors: Sea Thomas F.
Published: December 2008

TheCouncils of many Imperial Free Cities struggled throughout the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries to establish their position as “Obrigkeit,” enjoying the same kind of recognized authority as that exercised by the other petty political rulers within the Empire. The struggle resulted in increasingly authoritarian trends in city government, as some Councils sought to extend their control over more and more aspects of citizens' lives in an effort to win the respect of other ruling groups. Although sporadic violence marked the growing polarization between governed and governing which developed from such efforts, city Councils still justified their actions on the basis of benefit to the community—a community which included both Council and citizenry. This unitary concept of the urban community was subjected to further severe strains by the introduction of the ideas of Luther and Zwingli into the cities.
Five Theses on German Everyday Life after World War II
Authors: Enssle Manfred J.
Published: December 2008

To order an untidy past, historians identify and interpret significant pivots in the development of nations. One such pivot in the fractured history of twentieth-century Germany was the period between 1945 and 1949. In these brief postwar years, a remarkable “mutation” of German politics and society began under Allied tutelage. In this interregnum between Hitler and Adenauer, a war-devastated West Germany started on the path “from shadow to substance.” As the Bonn Republic endured, historians started to trace its origins back to certain political and economic structures first erected in the postwar years. Increasingly, they emphasized postwar Weichenstellungen, or turning points, which influenced later events. By the 1980s, this structuralist view strongly suggested that contemporaries of the years 1945–1949 had actually lived through the Vorgeschichte, or prehistory, of the Federal Republic, and of affluence.
The Political Calculus of Capital: Banking and the Business Class in Prussia, 1848–1856
Authors: Brophy James M.
Published: December 2008

The emergence of commercial investment banks after the revolution of 1848 was an institutional breakthrough for modern capitalism and one of the central factors in the accelerated development of the Industrial Revolution in Germany between 1848 and 1871. The accumulation and mobilization of capital in concentrated and accessible forms was indispensable for underking such large-scale projects as railroads, coal mines, and iron works. Long-term promotional loans that enabled entrepreneurs to start up new business became a self-evident necessity in the growth of modern business. As one bank director noted, “capital, more than water, steam, or electricity, put the machines into motion.”
Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Deconstruction: Notes for Historians
Authors: Caplan Jane
Published: December 2008

Thecentral purpose of this essay is to clarify some of the terms in literary criticism that are being employed in current historiographical debates, and to comment on some of their possible implications for German history. As interdisciplinary theoretical debates proliferate beyond their immediate sources, contested positions often come to be built on misleading, heavily derived, or partisan versions of the concepts and practices drawn from the other side. Once battle has beenjoined, the issue of more exacting definitions and distinctions may go by the board. On the other hand, my modest attempt to provide a glossary for others' arguments may mask a more presumptuous claim to both the knowledge and the distance needed to set a tangled record straight. But although I want to suggest which insights might be valuable to historians, and which may be more problematic or unhelpful, I cannot pretend to adjudicate between currently competing theories of knowledge-production. For the German context, that undertaking would require at least some discussion of late nineteenth-century idealist historiography, and of the debate about modernization and modernity that can be traced through Marx, Weber, and Habermas. This will have to await another occasion.
Playing the Cerebral Savage: Notes on Writing German History before the Linguistic Turn
Authors: Koshar Rudy J.
Published: December 2008

I want to begin by suggesting that to speak of a linguistic turn in the writing of modern German history is premature. It may be true that intellectual history on both sides of the Atlantic has taken “the” linguistic turn, in the sense that, more than ever before, much current research involves “a focused concern on the ways meaning is constituted in and through language.” The formal properties, degree of sophistication, and utility for historians of these studies vary greatly. They encompass by now almost classical poststructuralist perspectives, methodologically more conservative discussions of cultural representation, and the influential works of Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock. Yet history writing on twentieth-century Germany, considered broadly, stands very much before rather than after a linguistic turn, if there will be a turn at all. Scholars of modern German cultural, social, or political history who engage current debates on language and rhetoric in truly innovative ways are the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, considerations of a linguistic turn in modern German history take place at a time when some historians criticize poststructuralist thought more forcefully than ever before.4 This makes for an interesting confluence of tensions, especially when one considers that disciplines such as literary criticism and anthropology have turned anew to the study of history.
Contemporary Literary Theory: From Deconstruction Back to History
Authors: Jelavich Peter
Published: December 2008

Variousattempts have been made to bring to the attention of a wider historical audience the debates that have taken place among intellectual historians over the past decade. Such summaries may soon be in need of some updating. Insofar as many of these discussions have been inspired by developments among our colleagues in departments of literature, it is worth noting that those scholars likewise have engaged in heated exchanges. Since those debates seem to have resulted in a triumph of “history,” we may be looking forward to new modes of argument among intellectual and cultural historians as well. This essay will attempt to present a summary of the issues within poststructuralism that induced this turn to a “new historicism” in departments of literature, and it will conclude by offering some suggestions about the ways in which this tendency might be useful to the study of the German past.
The Gendering of the Postwar Agricultural Labor Shortage in Saxony, 1918–1925
Authors: Jones Elizabeth Bright
Published: December 2008

In March 1922, with spring planting imminent, the Agricultural Chamber of the Saxon Freestate surveyed 790 local agricultural associations, seeking information on the character and dimensions of the rural labor shortage. 640 reports were returned within six weeks, signaling Saxon farmers' desperation to be heard. According to their estimates, Saxon agriculture lacked a minimum of 7,834 men and 11,164 women, or just under 19,000 workers. Despite the substantial number of men needed, farmers overwhelmingly bemoaned the lack of young, single women willing and able to work in Saxon agriculture, and warned of dire consequences for both agricultural producers and the general public if the crisis were not resolved. Indeed, small and medium-sized Saxon farmers' testimonies about the postwar labor shortage linked agriculture's potential for recovery to the preservation of prewar gender divisions of labor, and drew an absolute correlation between the postwar shortage of women's labor and the impending ruin of family farms.
Anti-Jewish Politics in Early Modern Germany: The Uprising in Worms, 1613–17
Authors: Friedrichs Christopher R.
Published: December 2008

On Easter Monday, 1615—the seventh day of Passover in 5375 by the Jewish calender — the entire Jewish community of the German city of Worms was sent into exile. But the banishment of the Jews, which followed almost two years of anti-Jewish agitation by the citizens of Worms, was far from permanent.Eight months later, by order of commissioners appointed by the Holy Roman Emperor, the Jews of Worms were permitted to return. They remained in the city for another three centuries, until the final eradication of the Jewish community of Worms in 1942.