Contested city
Subtitle: municipal politics and the rise of Nazism in Altona, 1917-1937
By: Anthony McElligott.
Series: Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 334
Subjects: National socialism -- Germany -- Hamburg.; Political parties -- Germany -- Hamburg.; Municipal government -- Germany -- Hamburg.; Hamburg-Altona (Hamburg, Germany) -- Politics and government.; Hamburg (Germany) -- Politics and government.
Description: In the wake of the First World War, many Germans saw the future of their nation as contingent on a vision of municipal progress. In this well-researched study, Anthony McElligott uses local politics as an analytical tool to decipher the bigger picture of the fare of the Weimar Republic.

Focusing on the industrial city of Altona, McElligott locates his discussion of the contradictions of the Weimar "local state" along two axes - first, persistent financial, policy, and political conflict between the central and the local state and, second, the conflicts within the Weimar local state between the displaced and resentful middle classes and the newly enfranchised working class.

McElligott probes beneath the level of formal party conflicts to reconstruct the "politics of everyday life" at the street level. This study will be of wide interest to historians and political scientists.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-320) and index.
Table of contents: title: List of illustrations; title: List of tables; title: Acknowledgments; title: Map of Altona and North Germany; title: Introduction; title: "Rowdies" in Altona's Rathaus: politics and conflicts, 1917-1933; title: Clash of cultures: slum life and welfare, 1918-1932; title: "Save us from Altona!": the battle against incorporation, 1924-1927; title: Economic struggles: the local state and business interests, 1924-1932; title: Street politics in the crisis, 1930-1933; title: "Under the sign of the swastika!" The divided Volksgemeinschaft, 1933-1937; title: Conclusion: local state, central state, and contested state; title: Epilogue: Brauer's return.