The German Bourgeoisie, Essays On The Social History of The German Middle Class From The Late Eighteenth To The Early Twentieth Century Edited - David Blackbourn, Richard J. Evans
The German Bourgeoisie, Essays On The Social History of The German Middle Class From The Late Eighteenth To The Early Twentieth Century Edited - David Blackbourn, Richard J. Evans
The German Bourgeoisie, Essays On The Social History of The German Middle Class From The Late Eighteenth To The Early Twentieth Century Edited - David Blackbourn, Richard J. Evans
Edited by
Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.
Edited by
David Blackbourn and
Richard}. Evans
First published in hardback 1991
First published in paperback 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This collection © 1991, 1993 Routledge;
individual chapters © 1991, 1993 contributors
Phototypeset in 1O/12pt Palatino by Intype, London
Printed in Great Britain by
T J Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, induding photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
The German bourgeoisie: essays on the social history of the
German middle dass from the late eighteenth to the early
twentieth century.
I. Germany. Social structure, his tory
1. Blackbourn, David II. Evans, Richard J.
305.0943
Library 01 Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The German bourgeoisie: essays on the social his tory of the German
middle dass from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century
/ edited by David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans.
p. cm.
I. Middle dasses-Germany-History-19th century. 2. Middle
dasses-Germany-History-20th century. I. Blackbourn, David.
11. Evans, Richard J.
HT690.G3G45 1991
305.5'5'0943-dc20 90-35016
ISBN 0-415-09358-9
To the students of Birkbeck College
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List 01 tables IX
Notes on contributors X
Preface XIV
Abbreviations XIX
vii
CONTENTS
7 Bourgeois values, doctors, and the state: the
professionalization of medicine in Germany 1848-1933 198
Paul Weindling
8 Localism and the German bourgeoisie: the 'Heimat'
movement in the Rhenish Palatinate before 1914 224
Celia Applegate
9 Bourgeois honour: middle-class duellists in Germany
from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century 255
Ute Frevert
10 Liberalism, Europe, and the bourgeoisie 1860-1914 293
Geoff Eley
11 The middle classes and National Socialism 318
Thomas Childers
Index 338
viii
Tables
IX
Contributors
Celia Applegate was born in New York State in 1959 and studied
at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1981, and
Stanford University, California, where she received her Ph.D. in
1987. She has taught at Smith College, Massachusetts, and is
currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Roch-
ester, in New York State. Her study of German localism, A Nation
01 Provincials: The German Idea 01 Heimat, will shortly be published
by the University of California Press. She is now pursuing the
theme of German identity through an examination of the role of
music in German national life.
Xll1
Preface
period of eight years. Its last meeting took place in 1986, and this
is therefore the final publication to which it has given rise. Thanks
are due to the University of East Anglia for providing support
facilities and for financing the last five meetings in the series, and
to all the participants for providing the stimulus for keeping it
going so long, and far helping by their contributions to the dis-
cussion to shape many of the ideas which have gone into the
making of this book. We are also grateful to the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation for its continuing support over the years,
and in particular far providing the time in which much of the
preparation for this book could be undertaken. Marie Mactavish
has earned oUf thanks by typing some of the contributions. Finally,
we owe a wider debt of gratitude to the students of Birkbeck
College, University of London, which now provides both of us
with a congenial and stimulating academic horne.
David Blackbourn
Richard J. Evans
London and Stanford
November 1989
xviii
Abbreviations
XIX
This page intentionally left blank
1
I
The German bourgeoisie has not been very weIl treated by his-
torians. This has been partly a question of simple neglect. The
Bürgertum has been edipsed by groups such as the landowning
Junkers and their allies when it comes to studies of the German
ruling dass or 'power elite'. At the same time, social historians
have usually been more indined to devote attention to the peasan-
try and working dass than to members of the business and pro-
fessional middle dasses. A primary focus on the lives and experi-
ences of the lower dasses has also been characteristic of the
mounting volume of work in recent years on the 'history of every-
day life' (Alltagsgeschichte ). Where attention has been paid to the
bourgeoisie and its role in modern German history, there has often
been slighting treatment in a second sense. It is the failures and
sins of omission of the bourgeoisie that have so often attracted
attention. It has been variously depicted as a supine dass, genu-
ftecting to the authoritarian state, aping the social values and
manners of the aristocracy, lacking in civic spirit and political
engagement. Much of the celebrated Sonderweg thesis, concerning
the alleged long-term misdevelopment of German society and pol i-
tics and its contribution to the eventual success of National Social-
ism, has res ted heavily on aseries of propositions about bourgeois
weakness, timidity, and abdication of political responsibility.l
In the last decade there have been many signs that arieher and
more differentiated picture of the German bourgeoisie is starting
to emerge. There has been an increasing number of detailed inves-
tigations of particular occupational groups, wh ether businessmen,
professionals, or academics. 2 There have also been studies that
1
DA VID BLACKBOURN
cast new light on the material position, the social networks, and
the political activities of local bourgeois elites. 3 New work in fields
such as the family and the his tory of illness and medicine has
similarly helped to give us a greater appreciation of bourgeois
Germany.4 Works dealing with nineteenth-century Germany now
refer to a 'bourgeois world' or a 'bourgeois epoch' with a natural-
ness that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.'; There
has been, finaIly, a new interest in sustained comparative investi-
gation of the German bourgeoisie with its counterparts in a variety
of other countries. 6 This welcome development promises more
fruitful results than the tendency, widespread for so long, to judge
the German bourgeoisie against an idealized Anglo-Saxon yard-
stick - and find it wanting. The present introduction looks at some
of these valuable new departures, as weIl as the more important
established literature on the subject. It attempts to place the chap-
ters that follow in a larger context, by providing a general account
of the development of the German bourgeoisie from the end of the
eighteenth century to the 1930s. It examines the changing size
and boundaries of the bourgeoisie, and its economic and social
importance. There is discussion of internal divisions, but also of
the forces and values that united the bourgeoisie, not least in
relation to other classes. Consideration is given, finaIly, to the
controversial issue of bourgeois politics, the varied forms it
assumed, and the alleged shortcomings it displayed.
11
At the end ofthe eighteenth century two principal bourgeois group-
ings were identified by contemporaries. The first were the Stadt-
bürger, members of the urban middle class who enjoyed citizenship
rights and associated privileges, and who corresponded broadly to
the sense conveyed by the antiquated English expression 'bur-
ghers'.7 This was a group that included merchants and business-
men, but also independent master craftsmen. The second group
was what the historian Friedrich Meinecke in a classic account
dubbed the Weltbürgertum, or cosmopolitan bourgeoisie. B Defined
above all by education, it was these officials and academics who
provided a large part of the membership of the burgeoning
(although still socially restrictive) reading clubs and lodges in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It was in this milieu
that the Enlightenment had its principal supporters in the last
2
THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
years of the Holy Roman Empire, among this group of the edu-
cated also that the idea of the German nation took shape as a
cultural aspiration at a time when 'Germany' remained politically
fragmented and divided economically into countless local and
regional markets. 9 Members of the first middle-class group
remained largely limited in their geographical and social horizons,
and it was burghers of this sort who acquired the label Spiesser, or
philistines, from aristocratic or more cosmopolitan contemporar-
ies. 1O The exception was perhaps to be found in important commer-
cial cities like Cologne and Hamburg, where wealthy and self-
confident merchants with national and even international connec-
tions set the tone. It was also in cities of this sort that businessmen
- especially merchants - mingled with academics and officials in
the new associations of the period. 11 Mostly, however, membership
of the latter was domina ted by those whose occupations were
defined by education or state service, rather than relationship to
production or the market.
These early patterns left their traces on the subsequent develop-
ment of the German bourgeoisie. We see this in the persistent
localist orientation of the middle classes, discussed in Celia Apple-
gate's contribution to this collection, and in the divisions that
continued to exist between the 'makers' and the 'thinkers'. It is
sometimes also claimed - although this is more hazardous territory
- that portents of a future German bourgeois weakness were appar-
ent in these years, namely its fateful other-worldliness. 12 The
German bourgeoisie at the end of the eighteenth century was, we
are told, overshadowed by its English counterpart when it came
to manufacturing and business, while at the same time it made
far fewer political demands than its French equivalent. The result,
in the seductive words of one historian, is that England had an
industrial revolution, France a political revolution - and Germany
a reading revolution. 13 There is a good deal here with which one
might quarrel, not least the assumptions that are made about the
pattern of historical development in contemporary England and
France. It is also perfectly possible to see the 'reading revolution'
in Germany as a factor of enormous importance with positive
implications for the future role of the bourgeoisie. It was, after all,
a symbol of the way in wh ich one particular part of the bourgeoisie
was growing in size and self-consciousness through the incipient
process of state-building. Education and cultivation were also to
form a central part of bourgeois claims to socia! leadership.
3
DA VID BLACKBOURN
decades before the First World War there was also a very rapid
growth in the tertiary sector, in business es such as banking, ship-
ping, and insurance, as weH as large-scale retailing. 25
The result was the emergence of a diverse and powerful eco-
nomic bourgeoisie. It included the clans of textile entrepreneurs
in Westphalia, the Upper Rhine and Central Germany, great iron
and steel magnates such as Stumm on the Saar and Krupp in
the Ruhr, as weH as prominent pioneers of the second industrial
revolution such as Emil Rathenau, of the electrical company AEG,
and the Württemberg entrepreneur Robert Bosch. But the dyna-
mism of economic development created new opportunities for
investment and profit in every area of life. Men made their fortunes
from the putting-out system (especiaHy in the clothing and furni-
ture business es ), from the property and construction booms in the
latter half of the nineteenth century, from department stores -
even from the sugar industry, one of the most capital-intensive
in Germany. As Dolores Augustine shows (chapter 2), German
industrialization threw up a business elite of the very wealthy, as
it did in England and France. 26 But perhaps the most important
point about the economic bourgeoisie as a whole in Germany,
compared with those countries, was the relative speed of its em erg-
ence as a social and economic force, which was linked to the
explosive character of German industrialization. This, in turn,
probably increased the homogeneity of the German economic bour-
geoisie by minimizing the divisions between old-established and
newcomer firmsY It almost certainly helps to explain the resource-
fulness and lack of sentimentality with which German businesses
organized themselves, particularly under the impact of the
recession in the 1870s, in matters such as price-fixing and carte1s,
and in forming interest organizations on a branch and sectional
basis. 28
III
The groups we have been considering made up the German prop-
ertied and educated bourgeoisie (Besitz- und Bildungsbürgertum).
Whether or not we include those whose claim to inclusion is less
clear-cut - members of marginal professions such as pharmacists
or veterinary surgeons, or the managerial and technical staff who
grew in importance in German companies from the end of the
nineteenth century - it is p1ain that the German bourgeoisie was
7
DA VID BLACKBOURN
were too busy manufacturing to have the time for such things. 34
Ludwig Beutin was probably right, in fact, when he argued that
in these years a belief in material and moral progress was one of
the things that actually united the propertied and educated middle
classes. 35 But within the middle classes as a whole there was
always a degree of ambivalence about some aspects of material
advancement, for most of the things which the bourgeoisie liked
to think of as monuments to its own energy and culture had
another, darker side to them. We see this clearly in attitudes
towards the growing towns and cities, where pride in material and
cultural achievements was offset by fears about hygiene, crime,
and dass conflict. 36
It is in fact here, in the realm of cultural and social identity in
the broadest sense, that the Besitz- und Bildungsbürgertum was prob-
ably most united. This bourgeois identity included a widely shared
belief in hard work, competition, achievement (Leistung), and the
rewards and recognition that should flow from these; in rationality
and the rule of law, in the taming of nature, and in the import an ce
of living life by rules. Correct table manners, sartorial codes, the
emphasis placed on deanliness and hygiene, and the importance
attached to timetables (whether in the school or on the railway)
all provide instances of the way in which these bourgeois values
operated at the level of everyday life. 37 To this roster of beliefs
(they were, of course, perceived as virtues) one should certainly
add a powerful shared idea of 'independence', which res ted on
economic security, the possession of sufficient time and money to
plan ahead, and certain minimum standards of education and
literacy. A general respect for literary, artistic, and musical culture
- for the idea of it, at any rate - was also a common denominator,
although it was probably stronger among the educated than the
propertied middle class. The connoisseurs and patrons of the arts
described by Dolores Augustine in her essay were very much a
minority among businessmen. At the same time, the suspicion of
Bohemians and the avant-garde that was almost universal in the
propertied middle dass was also widely shared by their university-
educated counterparts in public service and the professions.
The great exception to this impressive cultural unity was caused
by the religious division of the German bourgeoisie. I t is often
argued, for example, that a commitment tü secularization and
secular culture was a unifying belief among the middle classes.
And so it was, for the most part - among the Protestant majority
9
DA VID BLACKBOURN
(and among middle-dass Jews). But this did not hold true of the
self-consciously Catholic middle dass. It was small in proportion
to the overall Catholic share of the population, but its separate
cultural life was one measure of the larger denominational divide
in German society. For middle-dass Catholics not only formed
their own musical and literary societies; they tended to read differ-
ent authors, to prefer different historians, even to travel (that great
badge of bourgeois status) to different places. The denominational
divide had effects in virtually every sphere of life, and assumed
great importance when it ca me to an issue such as education. 38
Even this division in the ranks of the bourgeoisie was not absol-
ute. The denominational rift was probably widest during the
middle decades of the nineteenth century, culminating in the
mutual bitterness of the church-state dispute of the 1870s known as
the Kulturkampf39 In subsequent decades, as middle-dass Catholics
placed themselves in the forefront of Catholic efforts to break out
of their 'ghetto', and the proportion of Catholics in business, the
professions, and official posts rose, the gap that separated Catholic
lawyers and merchants from their non-Catholic counterparts grew
narrower. 40 And important as fundamental disagreements about
education and secularization were, they were offset by a much
greater degree of consensus over everyday concerns of the kind
discussed above, whether the belief in the rule of law and the
sanctity of property, or the imperatives of hard work, respect-
ability, and correct manners.
One of the institutions over which no basic disagreement existed
between the Protestant and Catholic middle dasses, which indeed
epitomized many shared bourgeois values, was the family. The
bourgeois family rested, in the first place, on the separation of the
workplace from the horne, and on the possession of sufficient
material resources for servants to be employed to run the house-
hold. The family thus became a sphere of private, domestic com-
pensation for the hard-working and 'public' male, while his wife
devoted herself to the cultivation of domesticity and the passing
on of correct cultural values and norms to the next generation.
The family was the institution which displayed the wealth and
cultural capital of the bourgeois, provided the means through
which dynastic ambitions were realized, and offered to the male
a haven from the rigours of business or professional life. 41 The
subordinate place of women (and children) within the bourgeois
family was therefore built in to its structure and functioning, even
10
THE GERM AN BOURGEOISIE
if we should not neglect the fact that the material and cultural
resources of women from bourgeois backgrounds were important
in enabling them to take the first steps towards their own public
emancipation towards the end of the nineteenth century.42
The bourgeois family was also one of the key institutions that
provided a model through which the German bourgeoisie was able
to generalize its oudook and values within the larger society. We
should not be tempted to exaggerate this. The great majority of
lower-dass families lacked the material resources and security, the
domestic servants, and the presence of a non-working mother
which were characteristic of the bourgeois family. It was precisely
those features which provided the basis for cultural activities,
reftection, and extended play with children in the bourgeois family,
and their absence set real limits on the extent to which it could
serve as a model to imitate, even for those who wished to. Among
the peasantry, outworkers, and the more insecure and unskilled
parts of the working dass there was litde imitation of bourgeois
family norms, certainly before the First World War. The major
impact was on the pattern of family life among the lower middle
dass and skilled working dass, although even he re we should
beware of attributing to them any wholesale 'embourgeoisement'.43
At same time, the German bourgeoisie offered its own insti-
tutions and values as a larger model in other ways. Through the
works celebrations and outings referred to by Karin Kaudelka-
Hanisch, by presenting the factory as a 'family', and by emphasiz-
ing the need for hard work, self-improvement, and respectability,
the economic bourgeoisie presented its own business es as models.
In the educated middle dass, public officials daimed to represent
a general social interest. They present( 1 the values that were
embodied, for example, in schools or in hygiene regulations, as a
means by which the allegedly short-sighted, selfish, or sectional
attitudes of lower social dass es could be countered, and those
dasses themselves 'civilized'. Similar views can be found among the
increasingly self-confident bourgeois professionals of nineteenth-
century Germany, most obviously perhaps among the doctors. 44
One of the most important institutions through which bourgeois
views of the world were expressed and propagated was the volun-
tary association, or Verein. The number of voluntary associations
grew rapidly in Germany from the end of the nineteenth century,
prompting contemporaries to talk of the 'mania' for associations. 45
They were 'bourgeois' in a two-fold sense: first, because they were
11
DA VID BLACKBOURN
the railway engine would be the hearse that conveyed the nobility
to the graveyard; popular bourgeois novelists such as Spielhagen
and Gutzkow had gloating references in their novels to outmoded
aristocrats wearing out their horses in the vain attempt to outrace
the iron steed, and of aristocratic ladies having to come to terms
with the tribulations of the public railway carriage. 50 Even the
plain living and unpretentious domestic interiors of the middle
dass in the Biedermeier period in the first half of the nineteenth
century were worn almost as a badge of virtue and contras ted
with aristocratic extravagance.
Anti-aristocratic sentiment certainly did not disappear after the
middle of the century as one defining characteristic of bourgeois
identity. Over large swathes of Imperial Germany, members of
the middle dasses whose self-image was that of industrious and
respectable men were happy to believe themselves superior to the
Prussian Junkers. But there were, on the other hand, dear signs
that after mid-century, and certainly from the 1870s, bourgeois
antagonism towards the aristocracy was becoming more muted.
The language recorded in contemporary political encydopaedias
and dictionaries shows that Bürger and bürgerlich were no longer
defined so often vis-a-vis the old social elite. 51 Heavy industrialists
and landowners made common cause against the consumer in their
support for the protective tariffs that were reintroduced in 1878-9,
in the so-called 'marriage of iron and rye'. 52 Conspicuous consump-
tion and luxury, scorned in the Biedermeier years, became evident
in wealthier bourgeois households. Some of the most successful
and wealthiest bourgeois acquired the prefix 'von' in front of their
names or purchased country estates.
It was customary until a few years ago to refer to these phenom-
ena as a form of 'feudalization' of the German bourgeoisie, as
indications that an important part of the bourgeoisie had given
up its own values and begun to ape those of the aristocracy.53
Such arguments are nowadays advanced with a good deal more
caution. Even where such an intermingling of grand bourgeoisie
and aristocracy took place, it is not dear that it entailed the
casting-off of bourgeois identity. There is, moreover, a growing
body of evidence that undermines basic assumptions of the feudal-
ization thesis. In her contribution to this volume, Dolores Augus-
tine demonstrates that the very wealthiest businessmen of Wilhel-
mine Germany had broken off from the middle dasses, but without
assimilating to the aristocracy. Karin Kaudelka-Hanisch shows
13
DAVID BLACKBOURN
sign of the actual separating out of the dasses. 56 But two important
qualifications should be entered here. The first is that the more
substantial and seeure petty-bourgeois households became a dassie
case of bourgeois social inftuence - the master craftsman or drap er
aspiring to the piano in the drawing room, played upon occasion-
ally by a non-working daughter. This relations hip found a parallel
in the milieu of dubs and local associations: if bourgeois nota bl es
- middling and senior officials, grammar-school teachers, doctors,
lawyers, or merchants - took leading roles, it was commonly the
case that a publican, pharmacist, or reputable tradesman would
fill the post of secretary.57 Something of this pattern also holds
true for parts (by no means all) of the growing white-collar lower
middle dass of private sector office workers (Angestellte) and minor
state employees. A dear social gulf separated them from the es tab-
lished bourgeoisie, yet the attraction of a bourgeois style of life for
some white-collar workers was evident, even if the limitation of
family size pioneered in these new lower-middle-dass strata in
order to better their condition represented an abnegation of the
family dynasticism displayed by the Bürgertum proper, and
described in Richard Evans' contribution. 58
It is over the questions of the family and social mobility that
the other qualification should be made to the general argument
ab out the separation between the bourgeoisie and the lower middle
dass, both old and new. Für if it is true, on the one hand, that
the opportunities for small businessmen to enter the ranks of the
economic bourgeoisie were diminishing in the course üf the ni ne-
teenth century, there was a partly compensatory pattern at work
when it came to the access of the sons of the old and new lower
middle dass to the educated middle dass. For striking numbers
of craftsmen, small tradesmen, and shopkeepers saw their male
offspring advance via dassical grammar school and university edu-
cation into the ranks of officialdom or the free professions. Charac-
teristically, this occurred over two generations, as the first gener-
ation moved up into lower official posts or the minor professions,
and was able to 'place' its children into the bourgeoisie proper.
For all the powerful dynamics of so-called self-recruitment among
the educated middle dass, the statistics on the social origin of
entrants into these occupations leave no doubt that they also
sustained themselves by regularly replenishing their ranks with the
sons of the lower middle dass. Evidence suggests dose paralleis
15
DA VID BLACKBOURN
here with France, and probably also with other parts of Continen-
tal Europe. 59
It was against the urban lower dass, however, that the German
bourgeoisie defined itself most dearly. During the early decades
of the nineteenth century and in the revolutionary upheavals of
1848-9, this embraced a variety of groups: journeymen and imp-
overished small masters, day labourers, and the 'mob'. When
bourgeois philanthropic associations concerned themselves in the
1840s with what they called the 'proletariat', and expressed fear
of the threat it posed to the social order, it was to such groups
that the term was applied. 60 The heady economic boom of the
1850s and 1860s then witnessed the emergence of an industrial
working dass, a process of dass formation that took on increasingly
dear contours' in later decades under the impact of economic
concentration, together with altered residential patterns and new
recreational forms in the growing towns. 61 This urban working
dass, in both its 'respectable' and 'unrespectable' manifestations,
provided a negative reference point for members of the propertied
and educated middle dasses in a number of important respects.
For the economic bourgeoisie, the advent of a dass-conscious
proletariat was perceived as achallenge to the rights of capital.
The response varied. In industries such as printing and the skilled
building trades, and in smaller concerns in many branches, there
was often acceptance of trade unions and the arbitration of dis-
putes; in heavy industrial branches - iron, steel, engineering -
reactions were much more uncompromising, and the employers'
repertoire induded the repressive stick of bans on non-company
unions, blacklisting, and intimidation, as well as the paternalist
carrot of company housing and welfare schemes. This heavy-
handed response on the part of industrial barons like Stumm and
Krupp, the desire to be Herr im Hause or 'lord of the manor' in
their own mines and factories, has often been seen as further
evidence of a feudal mentality. The existence of 'pre-industrial'
values among entrepreneurs in this group cannot be dismissed out
of hand. But as Dick Geary shows (chapter 5), and as other
historians have recently suggested, the responses in question had
obvious roots in the strategic power such employers wielded in the
labour market and their capacity to develop 'modern' me ans of
control over the workforce. 62
Open dass conflict of this sort had an impact beyond the group
of industrialists directly concerned. A bourgeois ideal of mid-
16
THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
century had been the growth of dass harmony on the basis of the
bourgeois virtues of hard work, independence, and respectability.
The initiatives that came from the politically liberal segment of
the bourgeoisie, its dominant orientation in the middle third of
the century, to encourage workers' co-operatives and educational
associations, were an expression of such hopes. The working-dass
rejection of bourgeois tutelage, al ready evident by the l860s, and
the sharpening of dass antagonism that became apparent, under-
mined bourgeois faith in social harmony.63 These developments
did not end bourgeois rhetoric about the worker advancing hirns elf
materially and socially through merit and industry; nor did they
stop references to the need for co-operation between the dasses.
But within the different sections of the bourgeoisie the formation
of the working dass and the evidence of dass conflict produced a
variety of negative reactions that induded regret, disenchantment,
and fear.
The working-dass challenge constituted the most obvious sign,
although by no means the only one, that the bourgeois ideal of a
harmonious society of citizens was being called into question. And
just as this challenge took political form, in the spectacular growth
of the Social Democratic Party from the end of the nineteenth
century, so it left its mark on the politics of the bourgeoisie. This
has gene rally been considered by historians under two main heads.
The first is the much-debated question of bourgeois liberalism and
its weakness; the second is the no less controversial issue of the
unhealthy attitudes supposedly harboured by the German bour-
geoisie towards the powerful state and the strong leader. The two
are naturally interrelated, but it may be helpful to ex amine them
in turn.
IV
Liberalism is associated historically with the bourgeoisie, and in
modern German history both are associated with political failure.
Before we turn to the question of failure, it is worth considering
for a moment the coupling together of 'bourgeois' and 'liberalism'.
Should they be so inextricably linked?64 In at least two important
respects the answer might seem to be no. If we look at the political
affiliations of members of the German bourgeoisie, it is dear that
liberalism never enjoyed anything like monopoly support. Even at
the liberal high-point of the l860s and l870s, many bourgeois
17
DA VID BLACKBOURN
v
A composite picture of the German bourgeoisie in 1914 would
have to indude at least the following features. Politieally it was
disunited and removed from decision-making, but it had many
reasons for satisfaetion. It was a growing and gene rally buoyant
dass, increasingly wea1thy, and aware of what it believed was due
to its achievements - its contribution to Germany's rapid economic
advanee, to the renown of German scholarship and culture, to
25
DAVID BLACKBOURN
NOTES
1 David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities 01 German Histmy:
Bourgeois Sociery and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford,
1984). For discussion of the argument advanced there, see also Rich-
ard J. Evans, Rethinking German History (London, 1987), ch. 3; Robert
G. Moeller, 'The Kaiserreich recast? Continuity and change in
modern German historiography', Journal 01 Sofial History, 17 (1985),
30
THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
655-83; Jürgen Kocka, 'Der "deutsche Sonderweg" in der Diskus-
sion', German Studies Review, 5 (1982), 365-79; and 'German history
before Hitler. The debate about the German "Sonderweg" " Journal
of Contempora~y History, 23 (1988), 3-16.
2 For businessmen, see Jürgen Kocka, Unternehmer in der deutschen Indus-
trialisierung (Göttingen, 1975); Toni Pierenkemper, Die wesifälischen
Schwerindustriellen 1852-1913 (Göttingen, 1979); J effry Diefendorf,
Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland, 1789-1834 (Princeton, 1980).
See also the older works by Friedrich Zunkel, Der rheinisch-westfdlische
Unternehmer 1834-1879 (Cologne, 1962), and Hartmut Kaelble, Berliner
Unternehmer während der frühen Industrialisierung (Berlin, 1972), and the
further references in the contributions to the present volume by
Dolores Augustine, Karin Kaudelka-Hanisch, and Dick Geary. On
the professions, see Klaus Vondung (ed.), Das wilhelminische Bildungs-
bürgertum (Göttingen, 1976); Werner Conze and Jürgen Kocka (eds),
Bildungsbürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, Teil I: Bildungsbürgertum und Pro-
fessionalisierung in internationalen Vergleichen (Stuttgart, 1985); Hannes
Siegrist (ed.), Bürgerliche Berufe. Zur Sozialgeschichte der freien und akadem-
ischen Berufe im internationalen Vergleich (Göttingen, 1988); Geoffrey
Cocks and Konrad H. Jarausch (eds), German Professions, 1800-1950
(New York, 1988); Konrad H. Jarausch, The Unfree Professions: German
Lawyers, Teachers and Engineers between Democracy and National Socialism
(Oxford, 1989); Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins
1890-1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969); F. Ostler, Die deutschen Rechtsan-
wälte 1871-1971 (Essen, 1971); Claudia Huerkamp, Der Aufstieg der
deutschen Ärzte im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1985); Michael Kater,
'Professionalization and socialization of physicians in WilheImine and
Weimar Germany',Journal ofContemporary History, 20 (1985), 677-701;
C.M. Gispen, 'Selbstverständnis und Professionalisierung deutscher
Ingenieure', Technikgeschichte, 50 (1983), 34-61.
3 See Gert Zang, Provinzialisierung einer Region. Zur Entstehung der bürgerli-
chen Gesellschaft in der Provinz (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1978); Rudy
Koshar, Social Lije, Local Politics and Nazism: Bourgeois Marburg, 1880
to 1935 (Chapel Hill, 1986); Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg.
Society and Politics in the Cholera Years (Oxford, 1987).
4 On the family, see Heidi Rosenbaum, Formen der Familie (Frankfurt-
on-Main, 1982); Peter Gay, The Tender Passion '(New York, 1986);
Reinhard Sieder, Sozialgeschichte der Familie (Frankfurt-on-Main,
1987); Karin Hausen, Frauen suchen ihre Geschichte (Munich, 1983);
Ute Frevert (ed.), Bürgerinnen und Bürger. Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19.
Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1988); Dirk Blasius, Ehescheidung in Deutschland
1794-1945 (Göttingen, 1987). On illness and medicine, see Klaus
Dorner, Bürger und Irre. Zur Sozialgeschichte und Wissenschaflssoziologie
der Psychiatrie (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1969); Ute Frevert, Krankheit als
politisches Problem (Göttingen, 1984); Gerd Göckenjan, Kurieren und
Staat machen. Gesundheit und Medizin in der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt-
on-Main, 1985); Evans, Death in Hamburg.
5 See, for example, Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1800-1866.
31
DA VID BLACKBOURN
Bürgerwelt und starker Staat (Munich, 1983); cr. the introductory
remarks to Siegrist (ed.), Bürgerliche Berufe, 42.
6 See Conze and Kocka (eds), Bildungsbürgertum; Siegrist (ed.), Bürger-
liche Benife; Frevert (ed.), Bürgerinnen; J ürgen Kocka (ed.), Bürger und
Bürgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1987); and, especially,
J ürgen Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im euro-
päischen Vergleich, 3 vols (Munich, 1988). Four of these five volumes
(the Conze and Kocka collection is the exception) derive from a
major research project on the European bourgeoisie, led by Jürgen
Kocka at the Centre far Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), U niversity
of Bielefeld. For an account of the project see Jahrbuch der historischen
Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Berichtung~jahr 1986 (Munich,
1987). 36-40.
7 Manfred RiedeI, 'Bürger, Staatsbürger, Bürgertum', in Otto Brunner
et al. (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, I (Stuttgart, 1972), 672-725,
remains the best introduction to the history of the concept of Bürger-
tum. See also Mack Walker, German Home Towns (Ithaca, New York,
1971).
8 Meinecke's Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat first appeared in Germany
in 1907. An English translation, Cosmopolitanism and the National State,
was published by Princeton University Press in 1970.
9 Hans Gerth, Bürgerliche Intelligenz um 1800 (Göttingen, 1976); Rudolf
Vierhaus (ed.), Deutsche patriotische und gemeinnützige Gesellschaften
(Munich, 1980); Otto Dann (ed.), Lesegesellschaften und bürgerliche
Emanzipation (Munieh, 1981); Franklin Kopitzsch, Grundzüge einer Ges-
chichte der Aufklärung in Norddeutschland (Hamburg, 1984); Richard van
Dülmen, Die Gesellschaft der Aufklärer. Zur bürgerlichen Emanzipation und
aufklärerischen Kultur in Deutschland (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1986).
10 Cf. the excellent compilation edited by Gerd Stein, Philister - Klein-
bürger - Spiesser (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1985).
11 Far studies of the urban elite in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, see note 9 above. See also Rainer Koch, Grundlagen bürgerli-
cher Herrschaft. Verfassungs- und sozialgeschichtliche Studien zur bürgerlichen
Gesellschaft in Franlifurt am Main (1612-1866) (Wiesbaden, 1983);
Evans, Death in Hamburg; Lothar Gall, 'Die Stadt der bürgerlichen
Gesellschaft - das Beispiel Mannheim' , in Forschungen zur Stadtge-
schichte. Drei Vorträge (Opladen, 1986); Jürgen Reulecke, 'Städtisches
Bürgertum in der deutschen Frühindustrialisierung', in M. Glettler
et al. (eds), Zentrale Städte und ihr Umland (St Katharinen, 1985),
296-311.
12 See Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation (Stuttgart, 1959), and
Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany (London, 1961) - both works
that refer in subtitles to the problematic bourgeois mentality; Dolf
Sternberger, Ich wünschte ein Bürger zu sein (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1967).
Judicious observations on this problem can be found in Rudolf Vier-
haus, 'Der Aufstieg des Bürgertums vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis
1848/49', in Kocka (ed.), Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit, 67-8; and in Ute
Frevert, ' "Tatenarm und Gedankenvoll"? Bürgertum in Deutschland
32
THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
1807-1820', in Helmut Berding et al., (eds), Deutschland und Frankreich
im Zeitalter der Revolution (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1989).
13 Rolf Engelsing, Zur Sozialgeschichte deutscher Mittel- und Unterschichten
(Göttingen, 1973), and in more developed form in Engelsing, Der
Bürger als Leser (Stuttgart, 1974), esp. 256-67. More generally, for
the cultural his tory of the German bourgeoisie in this period, see the
works cited in note 9; also Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.), Bürger und Bürger-
lichkeit im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Heidelberg, 1981); W. Ruppert,
Bürgerlicher Wandel. Studien zur Herausbildung einer nationalen deutschen
Kultur im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1981).
14 See Berding (ed.), Deutschland und Frankreich; T.C.W. Blanning, The
French Revolution in Germany (Cambridge, 1983).
15 See, generally, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 1
(Munich, 1987), 347ff.; Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, 11 ff. On the
reform era and state-building, see Reinhard Koselleck, Preussen zwi-
schen Reform und Revolution (Stuttgart, 1967); Barbara Vogel (ed.),
Preussische Reformen 1807-1820 (Königstein, 1980); Helmut Berding
and Hans-Peter Ullmann (eds), Deutschland zwischen Revolution und
Restauration (Düsseldorf, 1981).
16 On the rule of law and legal accountability, see Michael John, 'The
Peculiarities of the German State: Bourgeois Law and Society in the
Imperial Era,' Past and Present, 119 (1988), 105-31; and Kocka (ed.),
Bürgertum, I; 340-405 (the contributions by Dieter Grimm and Regina
Ogorek). On the importance of legal studies in the training of
officials, see W. Bleek, Von der Kameralausbildung zum Juristenprivileg.
Studium, Prüfung und Ausbildung der hö'heren Beamten des allgemeinen Verwal-
tungsdienstes in Deutschland im 18 u. 19 Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1972).
17 See, most recently, Charles McClelland, State, Society, and University
in Germany 1700-1914 (Cambridge, 1980); Konrad H. Jarausch,
Students, Society and Politics in Imperial GermaTl)' (Princeton, 1982), as
weH as the works in note 2 that deal with the educated middle dass.
18 For a variety of perspectives on the character of the Prussian bureau-
cracy, see Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The
Prussian Experience, 1660-1815 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958); Koselleck,
Zwischen Reform und Revolution; John R. Gillis, The Prussian Bureaucracy
in Crisis 1840-1860 (Stanford, 1971); D. Wegemann, Die leitenden staatli-
chen Verwaltungsbeamten der Provinz Wesifalen 1815-1918 (Münster, 1969),
T. Süle, Preussische Bürokratietradition. Zur Entwicklung von Verwaltung
und Beamtenschaft in Deutschland 1871-1918 (Göttingen, 1988).
19 A good introduction to the growth of the interventionist state is
provided by Heinrich August Winkler (ed.), Organisierter Kapitalismus
(Göttingen, 1974).
20 The literature on this 'revolution from above' is very large. The
argument can be found both in works that address the alleged long-
term misdevelopment of Germany, such as Ralf Dahrendorf, Society
and Democracy in GermaTl)' (London, 1968), and dassic works on Ger-
many's state-Ied economic development, such as Gustav Stolper, The
German Economy, 1870-1940 (London, 1940). The importance of state
bureaucracy in Germany is discussed in a comparative context and
33
DAVID BLACKBOURN
with great sensitivity by Jürgen Kocka, in Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum 1:
70-5.
21 See Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, 241-50.
22 Siegrist (ed.), Bürgerliche Berufe, 30.
23 Manfred Späth, 'Der Ingenieur als Bürger. Frankreich, Deutschland
und Russland im Vergleich', in Siegrist (ed.), Bürgerliche Berufe,
84-105; Peter Lundgreen, 'Wissen und Bürgertum. Skizze eines histo-
rischen Vergleichs zwischen Preussen/Deutschland, Frankreich,
England und den USA, 18.-20. Jahrhundert', ibid., 106-26; Huerk-
amp, Aufstieg; Hannes Siegrist, 'Die Rechtsanwälte und das Bürger-
tum in Deutschland, die Schweiz und Italien im 19. Jahrhundert',
in Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum, 2: 92-123.
24 Wolfram Fischer, 'Die Rolle des Kleingewerbes im wirtschaftlichen
Wachstumsprozess in Deutschland 1850-1914', in F. Lütge (ed.),
Wirtschaftliche und so::.iale Probleme der gewerblichen Entwicklung im 15.-16.
und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1968), 136; F.-W. Henning, 'Industriali-
sierung und dörfliche Einkommensmöglichkeiten', in H. Kellenbenz
(ed. ) , Agrarisches Nebengewerbe und Formen der Reagrarisierung im
Spätmittelalter und 19./20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1975), 159.
25 Useful introductions to the pattern of German industria1ization are:
Knut Borchardt, 'Germany 1700-1917', in Carlo M.Cipolla (ed.),
The Fontana Economic History of Europe, 4/1: The Emergence of Industrial
Societies (G1asgow, 1973), 76-160; Martin Kitchen, The Political Econ-
omy ofGmnany 1815-1914 (London, 1978); Helmut Böhme, An Introduc-
tion to the Social and Economic History of Germany (London, 1978).
26 W.D. Rubinstein, Men of Property. The Very Wealthy in Britain since the
Industrial Revolution (London, 1981); Adeline Daumard, La Bourgeoisie
parisienne de 1815 a 1848 (Paris, 1963), and Les Bourgeois et la bourgeoisie
en France depuis 1815 (Paris, 1987); Youssef Cassis, 'Wirtschaftselite
und Bürgertum. England, Frankreich und Deutschland um 1900', in
Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum, 2: 9-34.
27 Jürgen Kocka, 'Bürgertum und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19.
Jahrhundert. Europäische Entwicklungen und deutsche Eigenarten',
in Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum, 1, 11-78, here 58-9; Patrick Fridenson,
'Herrschaft im Wirtschaftsunternehmen. Deutschland und Frankreich
1880-1914', in Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum, 2: 65-9.
28 The importance of the 1870s as a watershed is brought out in the
pioneering work of Hans Rosenberg, Grosse Depression und Bismarck::.eit
(Berlin, 1967). On cartels, see F. B1aich, Kartell- und Monopolpolitik
im Kaiserlichen Deutschland (Düsse1dorf, 1973). On interest groups,
see Hartrnut Kaelb1e, Industrielle Interessenpolitik in der Wilhelminischen
Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1967); Wolfram Fischer, 'Staatsverwaltung und
Interessenverbände im Deutschen Reich 1871-1914', in Fischer, Wirt-
schaft und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung (Göttingen, 1972),
194-213; HJ. Varain (ed.), Die Interessenverbände in Deutschland
(Cologne, 1973).
29 On the different sectiona1 groupings within industry, see Kaelb1e,
Industrielle Interessenpolitik; Siegfried Mie1ke, Der Hansa-Bund fur Ge-
werbe, Handel und Industrie 1909-1914 (Göttingen, 1976); Hans-Peter
34
THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
Ullmann, Der Bund der Industriellen (Göttingen, 1976); Dirk Stegmann,
Die Erben Bismarcks. Parteien und Verbände in der Spätphase des Jj!ilhelminis-
chen Deutschlands (Cologne, 1970).
30 However, these differences were relative rather than absolute. Siegrist
(Bürgerliche Berufe, 25-7, 32) notes the professionals' preoccupation
with the supply of and demand for their services in the market. See
also Claudia Huerkamp and Reinhard Spree, 'Arbeitsmarktstrategien
der deutschen Ärzteschaft im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert.
Zur Entwicklung des Marktes rur professionelle ärztliche Dienstleis-
tungen', in Toni Pierenkemper and Richard Tilly (eds), Historische
Arbeitsmarktforschung (Göttingen, 1982), 77-116. The differences in
education and training were perhaps more clear-cut. A good regional
study of the completely different educational paths followed by future
businessmen and by those who went on to the university and then
into government service or the professions is Rainer S. Elkar, Junges
Deutschland in polemischem Zeitalter. Das schleswig-holsteinische Bildungs-
bürgertum in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Düsseldof, 1979). See
also Evans, Death in Hamburg, 4, 18-20, 37, 103-4, 560.
31 On business marriages see, in addition to Chapters 3 and 4 in this
volume, H. Henning, 'Soziale Verflechtungen der Unternehmer in
Westfalen 1860-1914', Zeitschrift fir Untemehmensgeschichte, 23 (1978),
1-30. A compelling picture of educated middle-class clans emerges
from the discussion of the Baumgartens, Mommsens, and Webers in
Wolfgang. J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics 189(J.....1920
(Chicago, 1984).
32 See also Mann's classic celebration of 'inwardness', Refiections 0] a
Nonpolitical Man (New York, 1983), originally published in 1918 as
Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen; Fritz Stern, 'The political conse-
quences of the unpolitical German', in Stern, The Failure 0] Illiberalism
(New York, 1972), 3-25.
33 Fritz Stern, The Politics 0] Gultural Despair (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1961); Ringer, Mandarins; Klaus Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Gro55-
stadtjeindschajt (Meisenheim, 1970).
34 See, for example, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railwqy Joumey
(Oxford, 1980); also, more generally, Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiari-
lies, 185-8; James J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Gentury
(Chicago, 1978), 28.
35 Ludwig Beutin, 'Das Bürgertum als Gesellschaftsstand im 19.
Jahrhundert', Gesammelte Schriften zur Wirschajts- und Sozialgeschichte,
ed. Hermann Kellenbenz (Cologne and Graz, 1963), 292-4.
36 Bergmann, Agrarromantik; Evans, Death in Hamburg 78-108, 346-72;
Evans, Rethinking, ch. 8; Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, 215-16;
Andrew Lees, Gities Perceived (N ew York, 1985).
37 Kocka, 'Bürgertum', in Kocka, Bürgertum, 1:27-33; Wolfgang Kas-
chuba, 'Deutsche Bürgerlichkeit nach 1800. Kultur als symbolische
Praxis', in ibid., 3:9-44; Kocka (ed.), Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit, 21-63,
121-48 (contributions by Kocka, Bausinger, and Nipperdey); Evans,
Death in Hamburg, 351-3.
38 This is one of the subjects most neglected in the three volumes of
35
DA VID BLACKBOURN
Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum (although see Gabriel Motzkin, 'Säkulari-
sierung, Bürgertum and Intellektuelle in Frankreich und Deutschland
während des 19. Jahrhunderts', 3:141-71). The neglect, however,
reftects the general paucity of research. Jonathan Sperber's excellent
Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, 1984), has
some valuable points, although the bourgeoisie is not central to his
concems, and I have tried to talk about the Catholic bourgeoisie in
Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History (London, 1987),
chs 7 and 9. In the absence of a work on Germany which places the
faith of the Catholic bourgeoisie in its full sodal context - as Bonnie
Smith very successfully does in Ladies 01 the Leisure Class. The
Bourgeoisies 01 Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1981)
- the best way into that world is probably via a sensitive biography
such as Winfried Becker, Georg von Hertling 1843-1919, I, Jugend und
Selbstjindung zwischen Romantik und Kulturkampf (Mainz, 1981).
39 On the Kulturkampj, see Sperber, Popular Catholicism, eh. 5; Black-
boum, Populists and Patricians, eh. 7; and Central European History 19:
1 (March, 1986), a special issue on the Kulturkampf
40 David Blackboum, Class, Religion and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Ger-
many (London and New Haven, 1980), esp. eh. 1; Wilfried Loth,
Katholiken im Kaiserreich (Düsseldorf, 1984).
41 See Karin Hausen, ' "eine Ulme rur das schwanke Efeu". Ehepaare
im Bildungsbürgertum. Ideale und Wirklichkeit im späten 18. und
19. Jahrhundert', in Frevert (ed.), Bürgerinnen, pp. 85-117; Rosen-
baum, Formen der Familie; Sied er, Sozialgeschichte der Familie; l'.1ichael
Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, From Patriarchy to Partnership (Cam-
bridge, 1985); U te Gerhard, Verhältnisse und Verhinderungen. Frauenarbeit.
Familie und Rechte der Frauen im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt-on-Main,
1978).
42 See Frevert (ed.), Bürgerinnen; Frevert, Frauen-Geschichte; Kocka, 'Bürg-
ertum', in Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum, 1:44-6. On the movement for
women's emandpation, see Richard J. Evans, The Feminist Movement
in Germany 1894-1933 (London, 1976). See also Chapter 4.
43 This is one of the central arguments in Rosenbaum, Formen der Fami-
lie. On the limits of embourgeoisement, see Hermann Bausinger,
'Verbürgerlichung - Folgen eines Interpretaments', in Günter Wieg-
elmann (ed.), Kultureller Wandel im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1973),
24-49; Wiegelmann, 'Bürgerlichkeit und Kultur', in Kocka (ed.),
Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit, 121-41. On the ambivalent feelings of the
pretty bourgeoisie towards the bourgeois family model, see Black-
boum, Populists and Patricians. eh. 5.
44 On doctors, see Paul Weindling's essay in this volume; Ute Frevert,
'''Fürsorgliche Belagerung". Hygienebewegung und Arbeiterfrauen
im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert', Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 11 (1980),
420-46; Frevert, 'Professional medicine and the working classes in
Imperial Germany', Journal 01 Contemporary History, 20 (1985), 637-58;
Evans, Death in Hamburg, 467-8, 517-22. For a French-German com-
parison, see Allan MitchelI, 'Bürgerlicher Liberalismus und Volks-
36
THE GERM AN BOURGEOISIE
(eds), Deutschland in der Weltpolitik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Düssel-
dorf, 1973), 205-19.
100 Hans Mommsen gives an outstanding account of the way in which
bourgeois movements such as the Wandervögel and the Dürerbund
voiced this perceived threat to 'national cultural values'. See
Mommsen, 'Die Auflösung des Bürgertums seit dem späten 19.
Jahrhundert', in Kocka (ed.), Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit, 288-315, here
esp. 198-99.
101 Historians have long - and rightly - emphasized bourgeois alarm
about the labour movement. Anti-Catholic sentiment has recently
received the attention it deserves. The venomous anti-Catholicism
and violent hostility to the Centre Party among radical nationalists
has been brought out by Eley, Reshaping, and Chickering, We Men.
The broader contours of bourgeois anti-Catholicism are discussed in
Blackbourn, Populists and Patricians, chs 7, 9.
102 Works on the experience of war and revolution tend to concentrate,
understandably, on the urban working dass, the petty bourgeoisie,
the peasantry, and rural labourers, rather than on the middle dasses.
That is true of Jürgen Kocka's Facing Total War. German Society
1914-1918 (Leamington Spa, 1984), although it remains an indispens-
able work. A valuable work that covers the bourgeoisie and the
revolution is a collection of essays on Bavaria: Karl Bosl (ed.), Bayern
im Umbruch (Munich, 1969). On the stab-in-the-back legend, see
Anneliese Thimme, Flucht in den Mythos. Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei
und die Niederlage von 1918 (Göttingen, 1969).
103 Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe. Stabili::;ation in France,
Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War 1 (Princeton, 1975).
104 The most detailed modern study on the economics of the inflation is
Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, Die deutsche Inflation 1914-1923. Ursachen und
Folgen in internationaler Perspektive (Berlin and New York, 1980). See
also Gerald D. Feldman et al. (eds), Die deutsche Inflation. Eine Zwischen-
bilan:::lThe German Inflation Reconsidered: A Preliminary Baltznce (Berlin
and New York. 1982). A good case study is Andreas Kunz, Civil
Servants and the Politics 0] Inflation in Germany, 1914-1924 (Berlin, 1986).
105 See Michael H. Kater, 'The work student: a socio-economic phenom-
enon of early Weimar Germany', Journal 0] Contemporary History 10
(1975),71-94; Konrad H.Jarausch, 'The crisis ofGerman professions
1918-1933', Journal 0] Contemporary History 20 (1985), 379-98; Ringer,
Decline 0] the German Mandarins, 63-4; Mommsen, Beamtentum, 197.
106 These grievances emerge from studies of individual occupational
groups, such as those cited in the previous note. They can also be
seen vividly in works that concentrate on particular localities. See,
for example, Koshar, Social LiJe, ch. 4; and William S. Allen's dassic,
The Na::;i Sei::;ure 0] Power. The Experience 0] a Single German Town
1930-1935 (Chicago, 1965), pt 1.
107 Representative of the enormous literature on these subjects are: Larry
E. Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution 0] the Weimar Party System
1918-1933 (Chapel Hili, 1988); and more briefly, Jones ' "The Dying
Middle". Weimar Germany and the fragmentation of bourgeois poli-
43
DA VID BLACKBOURN
45
2
Arriving in the upper class: the
wealthy business elite of Wilhelmine
Germany
Dolores L. Augustine
11
The Wilhelmine era marks aperiod of major change in the residen-
ti al patterns of the business elite. For much of the nineteenth
century, a businessman's living quarters and his offices or factories
were often located in elose proximity to one another or even in
the same building, thus allowing the constant supervision of
employees. With the growing bureaucratization of business enter-
prises and the resulting weakening of patriarchal structures, man-
agement took over the function of direct supervision, thus allowing
the owner of the company or head of the corporation to live
elsewhere. Secondly, the increasing level of noise, filth, and stench
that accompanied the growth of plant capacity made life next to
the factories unbearable. General levels of pollution were also
rising in the inner cities. 7 A third factor involved was the difference
in outlook between the generation of the company founders and
the generations of the sons and grandsons. The generation that
built up the company was in many cases not used to middle-elass
comfort, and, after the years of struggle, could view with pride
the smoke billowing out of the smoke-stacks. The next generations
had a greater sense of economic security, and were not content to
make do. This transition could take place within one generation,
as in the case of the heavy industrialist August Thyssen, a banker's
son who built up an industrial empire and moved to the country
in 1903. 8 Accounts of moving to the outskirts of town are legion
in autobiographies and biographies of members of the economic
elite, peaking around the turn of the century.9 This trend was
channelled in some cities by property developers, who opened up
suburban 'colonies', where the wealthy bought tracts of land and
built, at first, summer homes. With the extension of train and
tram lines out into the suburbs, the wealthy began to build
imposing homes they could live in all year round.
Berlin had the largest suburbs of any dty on the Continent.
The wealthy business elite of Berlin was heavily concentrated in
Grunewald. 1O City life none the less did not lose its appeal for this
49
DOLORES L. AUGUSTINE
III
To und erstand the social world of wealthy Wilhelmine business-
men, it is important to ask who they associated with, how they
conducted their social lives, and how they presented themselves
to the world. Here, two regions - Berlin and the Western Prussian
provinces of thc Rhineland and Westphalia - will serve as contrast-
ing examples. Entrepeneurs from these two major economic centres
each made up roughly a quarter of the 502 wealthiest businessmen
in the Yearbook 01 Millionaires. 32 The feudalization thesis rests in
large part on evidence from Berlin and Rhineland-W estphalia,
making these two regions especially interesting for our purposes. 33
The two groups represent very different sections of the wealthy
business elite. Whereas Jews predominated among business
millionaires in Berlin,34 their numbers were hardly significant in the
Rhine Province and Westphalia, where Protestants constituted 68
per cent of the wealthiest businessmen, and Catholics 22 per cent. 35
Almost half of the wealthiest Berlin businessmen were bankers, 18
per cent were merchants, and a third industrialists. By contrast,
bankers and merchants made up only 14 per cent and 3 per cent
of the wealthiest businessmen of Rhineland-Westphalia. Among
the wealthy industrialists of this region, heavy industry played the
greatest role, making up a third of the group, followed by textiles,
dothing, and leather with a total of 17 per cent. Quantification is
not possible as far as social life goes. The major sources here are
autobiographies and biographies of wealthy businessmen. 36
On the whole, wealthy Berlin businessmen associated mostly
with other businessmen. The banker Carl Fürstenberg wrote an
autobiography which contains lengthy passages on his social life.
At his horne, a focal point of Berlin society, the Berlin business
56
ARRIVING IN THE UPPER CLASS
Two other very wealthy Berlin Jews, Paul Schwabach and Fritz
von Friedländer-Fuld, socialized with some of the politically best-
informed aristocrats in the capital - ministers, state secretaries,
ambassadors. 54 The information they picked up doubtlessly helped
them to keep an eye on events at horne and abroad that could
have a major impact on their business ventures. To gain accept-
ance, they had to refrain from voicing opinions unpopular in these
circles. 'The Friedländer salon, which took pains to avoid appear-
ing to be a political salon, was a neutral territory where very
different influential figures met.'55 It seems doubtful, however, that
Schwabach and Friedländer-Fuld sacrificed deep-felt political
beliefs to the God of social ambition. Both were far from being
radical: the former was conservative, the latter leaned more
towards the National Liberal Party. If anything, this contact with
persons in powerful positions gave them a chance to influence
policy-making direcdy. Paul Schwabach passed on information
concerning French and British foreign policy to the Foreign Office,
and was entrusted with small diplomatie missions. 56 On one
occasion, negotiations between the Foreign Office and the French
Ambassador were conducted on Friedländer-Fuld's estate. Milly
von Friedländer-Fuld (Fritz's wife) put the Foreign Office in con-
tact with friends and relatives of hers abroadY
Admittedly, social ambitions were at work here as weIl. Among
the guests of the Friedländer-Fulds were also officers and the scions
of the great Silesian landowning families - nobles whose friendship
hardly could have furthered business interests. Lady Susan Town-
ley recounts Milly von Friedländer-Fuld's unfulfilled social aspir-
ations:
But she could not force the portals of Berlin society, not even
though she added a covered tennis-court and a riding-school
to the already numerous amenities of her beautiful house on
the Pariser Platz. She climbed and climbed, but when lIeft
Berlin she had not succeeded in reaching the top, although
to accomplish her end she had recourse to all sorts of expedi-
ents.
She is reported to have finally conquered the pinnacle of Berlin
society on the eve of the First World War. 58
We know all too litde about the content of some relationships
between Jewish millionaires and 'Junkers' in Berlin. Eduard Arn-
hold socialized with ambassadors, ministers, other high officials,
60
ARRIVING IN THE UPPER CLASS
the poet and officer Fritz von Unruh, the daughter of painter Max
Liebermann, several actors, feminist writer Hedwig Dohm, and
the wife ofwriter Thomas Mann. At the stag dinners of the banker
Weisbach, bankers mingled with high officials, men of learning,
and artists. Publisher Samuel Fischer's strong ties with the most
outstanding intellectual and literary circles of Berlin were a pro-
fessional necessityY
AEG founder Emil Rathenau grew up in an haut-bourgeois Jewish
milieu in Berlin which was characterized by 'elegance', 'an active
social life', and 'learning'. Rathenau turned his back on this world,
and from the l880s, when he was building up his empire, hardly
found time for activities outside of his work. The theatre (aside
from light entertainment), literature, art, and music meant nothing
to hirn. He was rather unsociable. His wife Mathilde (nee Nach-
mann), born into the same segment of Jewish society as her hus-
band, was herself interested in art and music, and her husband's
spartan mentality caused her great suffering. Her granddaughter
went so far as to write that Mathilde Rathenau went through 'all
the stages of embitterment, loneliness and desperation'.68 Her son
Walther returned so to speak to the world of his grandparents,
but then outgrew it, becoming a unique figure in Wilhelmine
society, a businessman-philosopher who, though he did not con-
vert, occupied a position of great distinction at court, in business
circles, and among intellectuals. It would be futile to attempt a
complete catalogue even of his best-known, so numerous were
they. In this connection Maximilian Harden, critical intellectual
and journalist, should be mentioned, because it was Rathenau
who brought Harden together with businessmen such as Garl
Fürstenberg, banker Fritz Andreae, Felix and Lili Deutsch, Herm-
ann Rosenberg, heavy industrialists Emil Kirdorf and Hugo Stin-
nes, and Albert Ballin. 69
Turning to non-Jewish businessmen, Garl von der Heydt was
also interested in cultural life. An art collector, he received artists,
men of learning, and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann
Sudermann, the sculptor Georg Kolbe, and the museum director
Wilhe1m von Bode in his horne, and his balls included interludes
for short recitals or literary recitations. 'And yet these interests
were far from giving our house its characteristic stamp,' he admit-
ted. The banker Fritz Andreae, married to Walther Rathenau's
sister, was a patron of the arts and scholarship.
An exception to this pattern is the (non-Jewish) Deutsche Bank
63
DOLORES 1. AUGUSTINE
was discovered who they had before them; suddenly all the
employees became polite and the best rooms were available. 90
IV
The second business centre to be discussed here is the Rhine
Province and Westphalia. Parallels might be drawn between the
Krupps and Carl Fürstenberg as far as connections with the aris-
tocracy are concerned. As munitions manufacturers, the Krupps
were heavily dependent on state contracts. Accordingly, guests at
the Villa Hügel induded generals, admirals, high officials, and
German and foreign diplomats, as weIl as lawyers, engineers, com-
pany directors, and other businessmen. Members of the high aris-
tocracy of the Rhineland were often invited to balls, but usually
dedined. After F. A. Krupp's death, his wife Margarete, daughter
of General von Ende, favoured officers over engineers. 94 The
Krupps' social life was untypical, however. Only an occasional
civil servant or major is mentioned as a friend or guest of other
heavy industrialists of this region. There was litde contact with
the nobility. Munitions industrialist Heinrich Ehrhardt is unusual
in this respect, since he received frequent visits from the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg Gotha. On the whole, however, Ehrhardt devoted
much less time and energy to public relations than did the Krupps.
As a result the latter got government backing for their attempts
to win foreign markets, while Ehrhardt did not. 95 Sodal bonds
among businessmen were all-important in the western provinces.
Paul Reusch's personal correspondence and guest list show that
the overwhelming majority of his friends and acquaintances were
businessmen. Peter Klöckner, August Thyssen, Emil Kirdorf, arid
Bruno Schulz-Briesen also associated mainly with businesmen.
Thyssen and Reusch's guests also induded an occasional engineer
or other middle- to high-ranking employee in private industry.
Social contacts with the non-business middle dass or bourgeois
upper dass played a minor role here. 96 While old business families
of the Rhineland, such as the vom Raths, belonged to the patrician
upper dass, new business families were often exduded from these
select cirdes, at least initially. The Jewish banker Louis Levy, for
example, converted to Catholicism and adopted the surname of
his father-in-Iaw, who was Catholic (Hagen). The latter, a mer-
chant and manufacturer, tried without much success to introduce
Levy/Hagen into the high sodety of Cologne. This may have
69
DOLORES L. AUGUSTINE
v
As a sector of the business elite became part of the Wilhelmine
upper dass, a relatively superficial process of assimilation took
place. More significantly, a new upper-dass bourgeois mentality
emerged, as the dass that had turned Germany into the most
economically dynamic nation in Europe daimed its place in the
German ruling dass. This reorientation has been discussed in
relation to various aspects of material and social life. With the
move to exdusive suburbs, contact between the factory owner and
his workers (or between the banker or merchant and his office
workers) was lost, contributing to the dedine of patriarchal struc-
tures in business. Businessmen were also increasingly able to insu-
late themselves from the working dass. The social segregation
taking place here - part of a more general process of segregation
in German big cities - contributed to the cohesion of the bourgeois
upper dass, and of the wealthy business elite in particular, which
showed a marked tendency to duster in particular residential
areas. A very high standard had established itself in the nineteenth
century with regard to the wealthy businessman's home. The
wealthy business elite of the Wilhelmine era lived almost univers-
ally in mansions or apartments as large as mansions. Along with
landed estates and summer homes, the villa was part of an elite
lifestyle that dearly distinguished this dass from the middle dass.
Typically, these houses and their grounds made use of elements
of aristocratic style. This was an architecture of legitimation (vis-
a-vis social peers), as well as an architecture of domination. The
businessman's villa, and especially his summer homes, were also
luxuries meant to be enjoyed. The landed estate also served as
legitimation and luxury, in addition to representing a diversifi-
cation of investment. The purchase even of East Elbian estates
was not normally indicative of real feudalization, for it did not
draw businessmen or their sons away from the business world in
significant numbers or bring about the adoption of Junker values.
A great deal of money was spent in business cirdes in the
73
DOLORES L. AUGUSTINE
NOTES
This chapter summarizes parts of a larger project which is to be submitted
as a doctoral dissertation at the Free University of Berlin. Research for
this article was supported in part by a grant from the International
Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Infor-
mation Agency. None of these organizations is responsible for the views
expressed.
86
3
The titled businessman: Prussian
Commercial Councillors in the
Rhineland and Westphalia during
the nineteenth century
Karin Kaudelka-H anisch
I
Research on the sodal his tory of the Prussian-German bourgeoisie
has been strongly influenced by the 'feudalization' thesis. After the
failure of the 1848-9 revolution, and the achievement of German
unification by military means under Prussian auspices, the bour-
geoisie - so the argument runs - was prompted to give up its
opposition al role and form an alliance with the old pre-industrial
elites in state and society. It was pushed in the same direction by
its fears of a working dass that was growing in size and import-
anee. Nineteenth-eentury German society was thus markedly less
'bourgeois' than its counterparts in western Europe, a view that
has been fundamental to arguments about a German Sonderweg. It
is argued that this 'feudalization', to which the eeonomic bour-
geoisie was partieularly subjeet, found expression in a number of
ways: in the shift from modestly bourgeois styles of life to conspieu-
ous eonsumption, in intermarriage, inereasing soeial eontaets, and
other forms of intermingling with the rural aristocracy, and in a
growing bourgeois fondness for titles, orders, and other badges of
feudality.
Werner Sombart was one of the first eontemporary observers to
suggest that the eeonomic bourgeoisie indined towards 'feudal'
values and patterns of behaviour. In his words,
the bourgeois who have become rieh try to forget their origins
as soon as possible, and to rise into the landed aristocracy or
at least into the ranks of feudal estate owners. The capitalist
enterprise, on which the wealth of the family was originally
87
KARIN KAUDELKA-HANISCH
11
Before presenting the results of this research, a word is necessary
on the origin of the title Commercial Councillor and the means
by which the honour was obtained. Under the form of Prussian
administration that existed up to the early nineteenth century,
Commercial Councillors exercised a quasi-bureaucratic role within
the state councils of commerce (Kommerzkollegien). They were
appointed onto these bodies to sit alongside civil servants and
give their expert advice on economic questions. But the growing
separation of state and civil society brought changes. In the econ-
omically liberal climate of the early nineteenth century, the state
no longer sought to incorporate businessmen within its own
91
KARIN KAUDELKA-HANISCH
III
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, applications for the
titles of Councillor or Privy Councillor of Commerce were made
on behalf of 673 merchants and manufacturers in the Prussian
province of Westphalia and the Düsseldorf district of the Rhine
Province. Of these, 256 came from Westphalia, 417 from the dis-
trict of Düsseldorf. The number of applications rose from around
1890, and still more steeply after the turn of the century, so that
there were as many applications in the years 1900~18 as there had
been in the whole of the previous sixty years. 36
In our sampie, the earliest grants of the Commercial Councillor
title were made to three businessmen from Elberfeld in 1834, Joh.
Adolf Carnap, August von der Heydt, and Wilhelm Kaspar
95
KARIN KAUDELKA-HANISCH
Table 3.1 Applications for tides 'Commercial Councillor' and 'Pri"y
Commercial Councillor' in Rhineland-Westphalia, 1830-1918
1830-9 7
1840-9 37
1850-9 34
1860-9 57
1870-9 74
1880-9 74
1890-9 107
1900-9 229
1910-18 170
(N = 673)
as a father, and a further third (33.8 per cent) came from commer-
ci al families. Other social backgrounds were relatively uncommon:
6.4 per cent had their origins in the free professions, 4.5 per cent
had official backgrounds, only 0.6 per cent came from craftsmen's
families. Compared to the social origins of businessmen as a whole,
the high degree of social self-recruitment among title-holders is
striking. This applied to 88.6 per cent of the Commercial Council-
lors, against a general figure of between two-thirds and three-
quarters. The difference can be seen in individual branches. In
heavy industry, 80.7 per cent of Councillors came from business
backgrounds, compared with the figure of 53.1 per cent given by
Pierenkemper for all heavy industrialists. 38 The difference is there,
if less strikingly, even in the unusually homogeneous group of
Westphalian textile industrialists. Over the period 1880-1913, 85
per cent of all entrepreneurs in this branch came from merchant,
merchant-capitalist, or manufacturing families;39 Commercial
Councillors in textiles exceed even this, with a figure of 90.9 per
cent. Although time-spans and geographical boundaries do not
coincide exactly in these comparisons, it is safe to assurne that the
degree of self-recruitment among titled businessmen was greater
than it was among their untitled peers. Commercial Councillors
had an even more homogeneous social background than the eco-
nomic bourgeoisie as a whole.
What does our sampie reveal about the choice of occupation
and marriage partner among the sons and daughters of the entre-
preneurial elite? The business history literature habitually emphas-
izes that members of the economic bourgeoisie tended to relinquish
entrepreneurial activity as soon as possible and live as rentiers. The
lack of quantitative research to support this proposition has
al ready been mentioned. The evidence from the present enquiry
certainly points in the opposite direction. In the 174 cases about
which we have information, the overwhelming majority of Council-
lors' sons became industrialists, while industrialists and merchants
constituted the most favoured group among which daughters
sought marriage partners.
The broader occupational range of daughters' marriage partners,
compared with the occupations of sons, is unsurprising. Whom
daughters married was of secondary importance from the point of
view of keeping up the business. The needs of the firm nevertheless
put pressure on both sons and daughters. Male children seldom
had a truly free choice of what they did in life, especially an only
97
KARIN KAUDELKA-HANISCH
Table 3.2 Occupation of sons and marriage partners of daughters of
Commercial Councillors, Rhineland-Westphalia 1830-1918 (%)
Sons Sons-in-law
Industrialists 66.7 31.6
Free Professionals 13.3 21.0
Officers 6.7 12.3
Landowners 6.7 7.0
Officials 3.3 19.3
Merchants 3.3 8.8
(N = 174)
son and heir who was gifted. They were 'destined for the business'
and in the event of a conftict had to subordinate their own ideas
to its interests. 4o Take the case of Wi1helm Endemann of Bochum,
whose father owned a brewery and was also an agricultura1ist,
pub1ican, and baker. Under press ure from his father, he gave up
plans to study theo1ogy and went into the fami1y business in 1825
at the age of 16. 41 As a historian has recently observed, handing
on the business to one's own sons represented 'one of the central
entrepreneurial strategies of the large bourgeoisie in the nineteenth
century',<2 At the same time, the marriage of a daughter also
frequently formed part of a larger dynastie design. Businessmen
looked for equality of social and financial standing in the families
into which their daughters marriedY The importance of forging
good business connections was uppermost, and efforts were often
made to marry daughters into manufacturing circles in the same
locality and engaged in the same branch of production. 44
What of the distribution of titles by industrial sector? Table 3.3,
shows textile industria1ists very clearly in first place, foBowed by
heavy industrialists, and those concerned with food production
and commerce. Three-quarters of all Commercial Councillors came
from these four sectors, with other branches poorly represented.
Over time, mining and heavy industry showed the most marked
improvement in their share. Mining entrepreneurs showed a steady
rise from 2.7 per cent of aB Councillor titles before 1850 to 4.5
per cent in 1850-70, 5.5 per cent in 1870·-90, and 7.6 per cent
after 1890; the share of heavy industrialists nearly tripled from the
period before 1850 to the years 1870-90, from 7.7 to 21.1 per cent,
then rose again to 23.8 per cent after 1890. The foodstuffs and
luxury foods sector showed a modest increase from 7.7 per
98
THE TITLED BUSINESSMAN
Table 3.3 Distribution of Commercial Councillors by sector,
Rhineland-Westphalia, 1830-1918 (%)
Textiles 32.4
Heavy Industry 21.3
Foodstuffs 11.6
Commerce 9.6
Mining 6.6
Banking 6.5
Chemieals 4.5
PaperiPrinting 4.1
Stone/Quarrying 1.5
Leather 0.8
Transport 0.6
Electrical 0.2
Insurance 0.2
Other 0.3
cent before 1850 to 12.5 per cent in 1870-90, before falling back
slightly to 11.8 per cent after 1890. The share of both the textile
and banking sectors reached a high point in the decades preceding
German unification and declined thereafter, the former from 43.9
per cent in 1850-70 to 28.1 per cent after 1890, the latter from
15.1 per cent to 5.8 per cent between the same dates. The share
taken by those involved in commerce more than halved (from 17.9
to 7.6 per cent) between the period before 1850 and the years
1850-70, fell again slightly to 7 per cent in 1870-90, then rose to
9.9 per cent after 1890. Before the turn of the century the textile
sector very plainly had the largest share of those who became
Commercial Councillors and retained its leading position through
to 1918. In the period before 1850, commerce and then banking
were in second p1ace. In the two decades before unification bank-
ing moved clearly into second place ahead of commerce (this was
the era when the great banking houses were founded),45 with heavy
industry in third place, and the food sector in fourth. The last two
each moved up a p1ace in the period 1870-90, a position they
retained in subsequent years while banking was relegated to a
10wlier pI ace in the league tab1e.
Commercia1 Councillors in Westpha1ia and the Düsseldorf dis-
trict were generally to be found in fewer than 1 per cent of the
firms in a given sec tor. 46 Mining was the exception, especially in
Rhenish districts. In the Arnsberg district 1.8 per cent of all mine
owners bore the title; in the Düsse1dorf district the figure was as
99
KARIN KAUDELKA-HANISCH
Number Percentage
Under 5,000 2 0.6
5-10,000 1 0.3
10-20,000 4 1.2
20-50,000 38 11.6
50-100,000 72 21.9
100-200,000 93 28.3
200-500,000 91 27.7
500,000-1,000,000 22 6.7
1-2,000,000 6 1.8
(N = 329)
Number Percentage
100-200,000 2 0.6
200-500,000 17 5.3
500,000-1 ,000,000 45 14.1
1~~2,000,000 114 35.7
2-5,000,000 105 33.2
5-10,000,000 23 7.2
10-20,000,000 10 3.1
Over 20,000,000 2 0.6
(N = 318)
Number Percentage
National Liberal 99 55.3
Conservative 45 25.1
Free Conservativf 16 8.9
Centre 13 7.3
Liberal 4 2.2
Left Liberal 2 1.1
(N = 179)
IV
Commercial Councillor was evidently a most acceptable and popu-
lar title to possess, and businessmen applied for it with notable
103
KARIN KAUDELKA-HANISCH
the tide 'Prussian Royal Tides are For Sale', Uli Schanz referred
to newspaper advertisements which offered to proeure tides. 62
Other critics talked of a going rate for the Commercial Councillor
title ofbetween 30,000 and 60,000 Marks. 63 A 'fuH price-list' is even
supposed to have existed, in which the Commercial Councillor title
cost 30,000 Marks, with lesser titles going down to 7500 Marks
and no payment in advance required. 64 It may be that some
disappointed aspirants, failing in their efforts to acquire the title
through the normal means, were driven to this expediency by
thwarted ambition. 65 But those who had come by their tides
honesdy were inevitably troubled by the 'humiliating
awareness ... that what they had achieved by ability could have
been more easily acquired with hard cash'.66 The alleged abuse
was bitterly satirized by one writer in the following words: 'Every
wife should give her husband a tide ... for Christmas. So buy
now, ladies and gentlemen, and don't delay!'67
This contemporary debate, which was mainly critical in tone,
suggests a powerful longing among the bourgeoisie for recognition
in the form of tides and orders. The craving for tides was already
being described in 1846 as an 'epidemie' (Titelseuche) that was
particularly widespread in Germany.68 With the growth in the
number of titles conferred around the end of the century, such
criticism became more common. 69 In fact, the relevant files give a
revealing glimpse into the expectations of those who sought the
Councillor title. Applicants frequently refer to its acquisition as an
'ardent desire' , a 'particular source of gratification', and 'a matter
of great consequence'; the conferment of the title was 'eagerly
awaited' as bringing 'great happiness'. As a contemporary wrote,
'for some worthy (bieder) Germans the longing for the title Com-
mercial Councillor and even more for the title of Privy Councillor,
causes sleepless nights'. 70 There were those who argued, from the
perspective of the bourgeois ethos of achievement (Leistungsethos)
that the title had been granted to too many who were unworthy
of it: the inflation of the title had caused it to degenerate into a
negative honour, something that was purely decorative once
mediocrity had become the criterion. 71 The title was also devalued
in the eyes of some because non-experts determined who should
receive it, while from an austerely democratic standpoint it was
meaningless because conferred by authority.72
These contemporary criticisms of the longing for tides, whether
made directly or expressed in the fiction of the period, 73
105
KARIN KAUDELKA-HANISCH
v
The Commercial Councillor tide and the circumstances in which
it was gran ted belong to the larger social his tory of the German
economic bourgeoisie, or 'aristocracy of money'. The subject also
provides an ideal me ans of observing the relationship between
state, aristocracy, and a bourgeoisie whose social position appeared
not to match the economic power it had achieved in the course of
a rapid process of industrialization. The business elite in particular
clearly attached a high value to social acceptance and public
appreciation of achievements it believed to be of general social
benefit. The Prussian state offered an exceHent means by which
such public recognition could be expressed, in the form of a tide
106
THE TITLED BUSINESSMAN
NOTES
This chapter has been trans la ted by David Blackbourn.
114
4
I
If there was any single institution that was central to the cultural
life and value systems of the nineteenth-century German bour-
geoisie, it was - the majority of historians seem agreed - the
family. In previous centuries, the dynasticism of the Central Euro-
pean feudal aristocracy had led to marriage alliances being pressed
into the service of the aggrandizement of landed property and the
acquisition of political infiuence. Intrafamilial feuds and rivalries
had been commonplace. The family had in many ways been a
public institution, set in conscious opposition to the operation of
private emotion and personal passion. l In the bourgeois nineteenth
century, the family became the focal point of the emerging private
sphere. Social commentators began to regard it as a central insti-
tution of civil society, even perhaps its fundamental, constitutive
element. In the bourgeois world, it came to provide the intimacy
and warmth, the emotional centre of life, the purpose for which
men fought and strove for success in the competitive arena of
industry and enterprise outside. 2
Yet, as Karin Hausen has remarked, the growing fiood of publi-
cations on the nineteenth-century German bourgeoisie has been
accompanied by hardly more than a trickle of studies of the bour-
geois family; the family continues to be regarded as an epiphenom-
enon of bourgeois society.3 Thus while there are studies of the
peasant family and the working-class family,4 of maidservants and
bluestockings, of feminist pioneers and women's emancipation,s of
children,6 and the old/ there is no German equivalent of the
monographs such as Bonnie Smith's Ladies 01 the Leisure Class, on
bourgeois women in nineteenth-century France, or Catherine Hall
115
RICHARD J. EVANS
and Leonore Davidoff's Family Fortunes, on the role of family and
gen der in the English middle dass from 1780 to 1850, which have
been published in Britain and America in the past few years. 8
Such studies as have been carried out on the bourgeois family
in nineteenth-century Germany have tended to stress two major,
widely accepted arguments. The first of these is that the import-
an ce of the family in public life dedined with the growth of the
competitive individualism that formed at least the theoretical basis
for the economic and political activities of the bourgeoisie. 9 Corre-
spondingly, it is usually argued, such cohesiveness as the bourgeois
world achieved in these respects was gained above aB through the
free combination of individuals - overwhelmingly men - in the
voluntary associations that sprang up all over Germany in the
period from the l830s onwards: the celebrated Vereine, about wh ich
so much has been written by historians. 10 Even the family business,
it is often suggested, was important in Germany only in the early
stages of industrialization, and became less significant later on
because of the rapid pace of German economic growth and the
very large scale of the business enterprises which emerged in its
course. ll The second generally accepted belief about the bourgeois
family in nineteenth-century Germany is that its importance and
functions were dosely bound up with the 'separation of spheres'
between men and women, between the masculine world of work
and the feminine world of the horne. The emergence of the family
as a fundamental institution of bourgeois society rested on the
increasing restriction of women to the private sphere. Their
enforced subordination was a fundamental constituent part of
bourgeois society.12
These arguments have been complicated by the fact that it has
also been widely believed that substantial parts of the German
bourgeoisie did not really lead a bourgeois lifestyle at all. In
particular, it has frequently been assumed that the upper middle
dass or grand bourgeoisie did not properly exist as a discrete
group on its own, or form part of a broader German middle dass.
On the contrary, many historians have daimed that it was to all
intents and purposes absorbed into a new social elite, where it
shared power - in a strictly subordinate capacity - with the estab-
lished aristocracy, accepting aristocratic standards, values, and
beliefs rather than aligning itself with the bourgeoisie proper. 13 But
a growing quantity of detailed historical research has demonstrated
that this was not the case. As Dolores L. Augustine has shown,
116
FAMILY AND CLASS IN HAMBURG
11
Like so many of Hamburg's leading families in the nineteenth
century, the Amsincks were of foreign origin. They da ted back to
Willem Amsinck, a Dutch merchant who settled in Hamburg in
1576. The family's fortunes fluctuated a good deal during the next
two centuries; and those descendants of the senior branch of the
Amsincks of this period who remained in Hamburg lived in the
nineteenth century in relatively modest drcumstances, as engin-
eers, booksellers, and small-time publishers. The fortunes of the
successfill younger branch of the family were founded by Wilhelm
Amsinck (1752-1831), a lawyer, who conduded an advantageous
marriage with Elizabeth Schuback, granddaughter of Burgomaster
Nicolaus Schuback. Throughout the nineteenth century, the law
was the one bourgeois profession which was accepted in the dty
as being equal in standing with the merchant community. Com-
merdal law was a vital part of merchant enterprise, and the
operations of the law of contract, salvage, insurance, liability, and
119
RICHARD]. EVANS
III
The economic functions of such family links were just as important
as the political ones. To begin with, there was the family firm. In
the Amsincks' case, this went by the name of Johannes Schuback
& Sons. Johannes I inherited it in 1837 through his mother, the
last surviving member of the Schuback family. As part of the
settlement, Johannes made over aseparate inheritance from
Martin Garlieb Sillern, who had been a partner in the firm and
was married to the widow of the last of the male Schubacks,
to the Sillem family. The company was principally involved in
shipowning, which was beginning to boom as Hamburg became
the chief port of entry into Central Europe for the products of the
British industrial revolution and a centre of growing import an ce
for trade with the newly liberated South American states. Johannes
I laid down the basis for the firm's fortunes in a classically patriar-
chal manner. He carried on working until his death at the age of
88, in 1879, and is said to have banned smoking, gas lighting, and
beards from his office. In 1849 he made his sons Wilhelm 111 and
Heinrich I, aged 28 and 25 respectively, partners in the firm.
There was also a branch of the company in New York, where
Johannes I's fourth son Erdwin was sent to set up business. Freed
of family supervision, Erdwin, who seems to have been the nearest
thing the Amsincks ever came to having a black sheep in the
family fold, engaged in reckless speculation, and his more sober
young brother Gustav was sent out to join hirn. While Gustav
married an American and enjoyed a successful career on the boards
of several banks in London, Hamburg, and New York, Erdwin
was obliged to give up the business in 1874 to his brother and
subsequently to his nephew by marriage, August Lattmann.
Erdwin returned to Europe and lived quietly as an art collector
in Hamburg until his death in 1897.
Subsequent partnerships in the firm of Johannes Schuback &
Sons went to Wilhe1m III's sons Johannes 111 in 1891, Wilhelm
V in 1895, Carl in 1898, and Werner in 1908. Their cousin Hein-
rich 11, son of Heinrich I, also became a partner in 1887, but he
was one of the less business-minded of the family, and spent most
of his energies on racehorse owning. Nor was he one of the luckier
Amsincks; his father-in-law Senator Octavio Schröder went mad,
and he hirnself died of typhoid at the age of 29. The family also
acquired an interest in the trading house of Willink, through the
124
FAMILY AND CLASS IN HAMBURG
IV
Alongside the slowly mutating public functions of the family in the
Hamburg grand bourgeoisie, there also developed a more intimate,
private sphere, within the horne. Although it has sometimes been
argued that this was the sphere in which the women of the bour-
geoisie came into their own,31 the fact is that male authority ruled
supreme here too. It res ted in the first place on the customary
disparity in ages between husband and wife. Hintze's genealogy
of the Amsincks reveals the family to have been broadly typical
of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie in this respect. The case of
Wilhe1m III Amsinck, it is true, was probably somewhat extreme.
Born in 1821, he did not marry until he was 36 years of age. His
first wife, Emily Willink, was just 17, and she died in childbirth
a year later. As we have seen, Wilhelm III went on to marry his
first wife's younger sister Laetitia Willink. At the time of Emily's
death, Laetitia was only 13 years old, so Wilhe1m was obliged to
wait until she was 18 before taking her as his second wife. The
age gap between the couple was thus no less than twenty-four
years. By the time Laetitia had reached the age of 35, . she had
given birth to eleven children. When the youngest of them came
into the world, his father was al ready in his sixties.
A similar, only slightly less dramatic ex am pIe was that of
Erdwin Amsinck, who failed in business in New York; his wife
Antonie Lattmann was a good twenty-two years younger than he
was. But the male Amsincks generally tended to marry late.
Wilhe1m III's sons, for example, all married when they were about
30; his uncle Heinrich married in his mid-thirties; and his cousin
Caesar when he was 38. The basic reason for such tardiness was
that, like virtually all the scions of the Hamburg mercantile grand
bourgeoisie, the young male Amsincks were usually first appren-
ticed to a non-family merchant house in Hamburg for a while,
127
RICHARD J. EVANS
then sent to represent the family business overseas, In London,
New York, or even further afield, often for a number of years.
This was thought to provide them with aH that was needed to
understand the mechanics and principles of large-scale maritime
trading. By the time they returned to Hamburg, they were usuaHy
already in their mid-to-late twenties. Even then it might be some
time before they obtained a partnership in the family firm. Without
a secure financial position such as this would offer , marriage and
the establishment of an independent household were unthinkable,
given the costs of buying or renting a suitably furnished and
situated house, employing servants, bringing up and educating
children, keeping a horse and carriage, and so on. A characteristic
sequence of events could be observed in the case of Werner
Amsinck, born in 1880, who spent his early twenties abroad,
became a partner in the Schuback firm in 1908, and married the
foHowing year. Similarly, his brother Carl, born in 1872, married
in 1902, five years after he had obtained his partnership. The
exception, on ce again, was the energetic Martin Garlieb I, whose
wife, Susanne Gossler, was only four years younger than he was.
He married when he was 26, without having become a partner in
the family firm, and this may weH have contributed to his decision
to set up in business on his own in the year of his wedding.
The women of the Amsinck family, by contrast, tended to marry
young. Typica1 examples were Ida Amsinck, born in 1860, married
at the age of21, Elisabeth, born in 1876, married at 24, or Emily,
born in 1858, married at 19. Here the family strategy was to marry
the daughters off early in order to reduce the burden on the family
purse. The customary disparity in age between spouses, a weH
documented feature of the bourgeois family in the nineteenth cen-
tury, almost certainly implied a substantial degree of patriarchal
power on the part of the older and more experienced husband. 32
Although day-to-day dealings with the servants were usuaBy the
wife's business, for example, it was generaBy the husband who had
the last word on matters of discipline and hiring and dismissa1. 33 It
was the husband who acted as final authority on financial matters,
including the household budget; and the law, above aB after the
introduction of the new Civil Code in 1900, gave hirn extensive
powers over the management of the couple's life and the upbring-
ing of the children, and explicitly accorded hirn the power of
decision in aB matters affecting married life. 34 Women were able
to undertake some public activities in the field of charity and
128
FAMIL Y AND CLASS IN HAMBURG
v
In the general sociallife of the nineteenth-century Hamburg grand
bourgeoisie, the family was only one of a number of factors. Many
other informal social institutions played a vital role in cementing
this social group together and giving it a cohesive sociopolitical
ideology. The great and wealthy merchants frequently threw din-
ner-parties for inftuential citizens, but these were strictly men-only
affairs, where up to thirty gentlemen - Senators, officials, clergy-
men, lawyers, merchants, and politicians - would be present, with-
out a woman in sight. 38 Similarly, at lunchtime, the city elite,
including members of the Senate, congregated at the Exchange
(Börse), where equally important informal business would be done.
The Lawyers' Club and the Doctors' Club and similar institutions
catered for the professions,39 while the great merchant and banking
houses ensured that the professionals would not become too inde-
pendent by retaining Senatorial management of health services
and providing lay judges - among whom a number of the Amsinck
family could be counted - on the Commercial Court. fO
The social ties that bound the Hamburg grand bourgeoisie
together were pulled tighter by the inftuence of neighbourhood.
129
RICHARD J. EVANS
Early in the nineteenth century, the wealthy families lived within
the city walls, cheek-by-jowl with the poorer classes, although even
at this period, they gave preference to certain streets. It was
common for the family horne to be located in the same building as
the warehouse and office, though the invisible lines of demarcation
between the different parts of the building were very clearY As
the city expanded in the second half of the century, however, the
rich moved out into vast new villas constructed in the districts of
Harvestehude and Rotherbaum, alongside the Alster lake, just
outside the old city walls, away from the river, while offices and
warehouses moved into more spacious accommodation in the
newer parts of the harbour, which could take larger ships than
those which formerly made their way into the old city boundaries.
By 1897, the majority of the serving Senators lived in Harveste-
hude, and the district also contained the houses of members of the
Amsinck, Gossler, Westphal, Sieveking, Merck, Godeffroy, Burch-
ard, Mönckeberg, Ruperti, and Petersen families. 42 This substan-
tially increased the distance between the elite and the rest of the
population, and indeed memoirs of those who grew up in elite
households in the late nineteenth century make it clear that the
children of the grand bourgeoisie hardly ever ventured into the
city centre or other areas where they might encounter the offspring
of the massesY The concentration of this social class into a single,
relatively small area - still more, the custom of owning summer
houses further out in the countryside, and passing the time on
summer weekends or during the summer holiday in aseries of
mutual visits 44 - added a further influence to the web of informal
social ti es that bound the grand bourgeoisie together.
The values and beliefs which these social networks fostered
were bourgeois in their very essence. Hard work was seen as the
foundation of success; and not even the closest family ti es were
enough to excuse laziness, failure, or dilettantism. If nothing else,
the training of the young scions of the grand bourgeoisie, as junior
clerks in non-family offices, then as representatives of the family
firm abroad, with a partnership on offer only to those who proved
their competence or their willingness to contribute to the family
fortune, was enough to school them in the bourgeois virtues of
efficiency, industriousness, and self-relianceY A touch of osten-
tation might be allowed in the construction and ornamentation of
a new villa, but the open display of wealth was frowned on as
vulgar, so that while nouveaux riches were sometimes admitted into
130
F AMIL Y AND CLASS IN HAMBURG
the charmed social circles of the grand bourgeoisie, they were sure
to be cold-shouldered if they failed to conform to the traditional
reticence and modesty of the Hamburg mercantile elite. 46 Even the
possession of a title of nobility was looked on with suspicionY
Virtually everything was subordinated to the interests of busi-
ness, even, as we have seen, social occasions such as dinners. Free
trade was a dogma which no one dared to question; and although
the great merchant houses were favourably inclined towards Ham-
burg's entry into the German Customs Union which took place in
1888, their enthusiasm was based not least on the concession
wrung from Bismarck of a large free port covering the greater part
of the. harbour; political parties which favoured high tariffs, such
as the Anti-Semites, never won much support in the city, although
anti-Semitic sentiment continued to exist in organizations such as
the Commercial Clerks' Union, which had its headquarters in
Hamburg. In national political terms the mercantile elite was
overwhelmingly liberal, and within the city it set great store on
minimizing the intervention of the state in economy and society,
so that there was not only no university, but also no professional
civil service and until 1871 no state school system in the city. The
medical profession was under continual pressure from the elite not
to undertake preventative measures against diseases such as chol-
era or smallpox which might cost the state money or damage trade
through quarantines. 48 If trade flourished, it was argued, then
every other form of business and enterprise within the city would
ftourish toO. 49
In this way, as well as through a vast range of voluntary bodies
ranging from parish councils to poor relief committees, the grand
bourgeoisie sought to ally itself with other social groups among
the middle and lower-middle classes in the city, from doctors
and schoolteachers to shopkeepers and master-artisans. After 1860
indeed the Senate was forced to share power with an elected
Citizens' Assembly in which these other groups - above all, the
property-owners, those who earned a substantial part of their living
by renting out apartments - were powerfully represented. Despite
the enormous hierarchy of wealth within this coalition of dominant
groups, ranging from millionaires like the Amsincks down to arti-
sans earning no more than 2-3,000 Marks a year, and des pi te the
social gulf that separated its constituent parts, it none the less
worked together in the management of the city's affairs, as far as
possible reconciling confticting interests as it went along. Defined
131
RICHARD J. EVANS
in political terms as Hamburg's citizens, those in possession of
voting rights for the city elections, they numbered some 23,000
men and their families at the beginning of the 1890s and about
44,000 men and their families a decade later, or in other words
about 75,000 peop1e out of a population of 600,000 in 1890 and
145,000 out of a population of 750,000 at the turn of the century.50
The rest of the population, encompassing the lower levels of the
petty bourgeoisie and the mass of the working dass, were not
admitted to political rights; indeed, they were seen as a threat, to
be countered increasingly by police repression and the operation
of a variety of measures of propaganda and indoctrination. It was
the contrast with these disfranchised masses, even more, the fear
of urban unrest and the revolutionary rhetoric of the Social Demo-
crats, for whom the majority of Hamburg's Reichstag electors,
endowed with the benefit of universal manhood suffrage, voted,
that arrayed the city's propertied dasses, from the master-artisan
to the millionaire, together in defence of their own position.
In this process, the grand bourgeois families came gradually to
acquire a symbolic significance. Despite all the criticisms that had
been levelled at them for their egoism and their neglect of the
interests of the majority in the cause of mercanti1e profit, they
represented ideals of continuity and stabi1ity which the Socia1
Democrats, coming to power in the city in the 1918 revolution,
found it on1y too tempting to emp10y. Although they had an
absolute majority in the 1919 election in the city, the Social Demo-
crats nevertheless decided to share power with the bourgeois par-
ties, and to install a member of one of the old grand bourgeois
families in office as First Burgomaster. A similar policy was fol-
lowed by the Nazis, who gave the - now purely symbolic - office
of Second Burgomaster from 1933 to 1945 to Wi1helm Amsinck
Burchard-Motz. Even the British, when they occupied the city in
1945, pursued the same 1ine, appointing as First Burgomaster the
brother of the last liberal Burgomaster in the Weimar Repub1ic. 51
The grand bourgeois family in Hamburg thus retained its public
significance surprisingly late into the twentieth century. It was far
more than an institution belonging merely to the private sphere.
Indeed, the bourgeois dynasticism of nineteenth-century Hamburg,
1ike its counterpart in nineteenth-century France,52 was a re1ative1y
new historica1 phenomenon. Many of the 1eading fami1ies, 1ike the
Amsincks, rose to prominence during the Napo1eonic period. Their
immense wea1th was not least a product of the economic growth
132
FAMILY AND CLASS IN HAMBURG
NOTES
I am grateful to David Blackbourn for his comments on an earlier draft
of this Chapter.
136
FAMILY AND CLASS IN HAMBURG
21 Eckart Klessmann, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg (Hamburg, 1981);
Werner Jochmann and Hans-Dieter Loose (eds), Hamburg. Geschichte
der Stadt Hamburg und ihrer Bewohner, 2 vols, (Hamburg, 1982-8); Hans-
Wilhelm Eekardt, Privilegien und Parlament. Die Auseinandersetzungen um
das allgemeine und gleiche Wahlrecht in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1980).
22 Otto Hintze, Die Niederländische und Hamburgische Familie Amsinck, 3
(Hamburg, 1932).
23 See Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg. Society and Politics in the Cholera
Years 1830-1910 (Oxford, 1987), eh. 1, esp. pp. 12-27, for a further
description.
24 ibid., 34-5, 560-1; Renate Hauschild-Thiessen, Bürgerstolz und Kaiser-
treue. Hamburg und das Deutsche Reich von 1871 (Hamburg, 1979),97-106.
25 Olga Amsinck, daughter of Johannes I, married the judge and some-
time Senator Friedrieh Seiveking; Emily Amsinck, daughter of
Wilhelm III, married the lawyer and later Burgomaster Johann Hein-
rich Burchard; her brother Wilhe1m V married the daughter of Dr
Oskar Gossler, lawyer and President of the Maritime Office (Seeamt);
Amanda Amsinck, daughter of Heinrich I, married state prosecutor
Dr Wilhelm Danze!; Caesar Amsinck, himse!f a lawyer, married a
judge's daughter. See also Evans, Death in Hamburg, 18-21.
26 For a comparable example from the 1880s, see the accompanying
genealogieal table to Hildegard von Marchtaler, Aus Alt-Hamburger
Senatorenhäusem. Familienschicksale im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg,
1958). The twenty-four Senators were reduced in number to eighteen
by the constitutional reform of 1860 (cf. Eekardt, Privilegien).
27 Cf. the note of pride with which Carl August Schröder, Aus Hamburgs
Blütezeit (Hamburg, 1921), 98-9, recalled that on his formal introduc-
tion into the Senate in 1899, Burgomaster Mönckberg alluded in his
speech of welcome to the fact that their common great-grandfather
had been elected to the Senate exactly a hundred years previously.
28 For a brief summary, see Evans, Death in Hamburg, 28-32, and more
generally, Volker Plage mann (ed.), Industriekultur in Hamburg. Des Deuts-
chen Reiches Tor zur Welt (Munich, 1984).
29 Cf. Lamar Cecil, Albert Ballin. Business and Politics in Imperial Germany
1888-1918 (Princeton, 1971).
30 Rudolf Martin, Jahrbuch des VermiJgens und Einkommens der Millionäre in
den drei Hansestädten (Berlin, 1912).
31 Marina Cattaruzza, 'Das "Hamburgische Modell" der Beziehung
zwischen Arbeit und Kapital. Organisationsprozesse und Konfliktver-
halten auf den Werften 1890-1914', in Arno Herzig et al. (eds), Arbeiter
in Hamburg. Unterschichten, Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in Hamburg seit
dem ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 1983), 247-60; Michael
Grüttner, Arbeitswelt an der Wasserkante. Sozialgeschichte der Hamburger
Hafenarbeiter 1886-1914 (Göttingen, 1984), 22-5; Klaus Saul,
, "Verteidigung der bürgerlichen Ordnung" oder Ausgleich der Inte-
ressen? Arbeitgeberpolitik in Hamburg-Altona 1896 bis 1914', in
Herzig et al. (eds), Arbeiter in Hamburg, 261-82.
32 Cf. Hausen, , "eine Ulme" " in Frevert (ed.), Bürgerinnen, 92-8.
33 For an illuminating study of family life in the Swiss grand bourgeoisie
137
RICHARD J. EVANS
around the turn of the century, with many German paralleIs, see Ursi
Blosser and Franziska Gerster, Tiichter der guten Gesellschaft, Frauenrolle
und Mädchenerziehung im schweizerischen Grossbürgertum um 1900 (Zürich,
1985).
34 Marianne Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (Tübingen,
1907).
35 See, for example, the extensive and detailed account of philanthropie
activities in the cholera epidemie of 1892 in L. von Halle et al.,
Die Cholera in Hamburg in ihren Ursachen und Wirkungen Eine ökonomisch-
medicinische Untersuchung (Hamburg, 1895); or the Jahresberichte des
Armenpflegevereins zu Harvestehude (copies in Staats archiv Hamburg) .
36 On the absence of a Protestant tradition of female philanthropy in
Germany, see Catherine M. Prelinger, 'The Nineteenth-century
deaconessate in Germany: the efficacy of a family model', in Ruth-
Ellen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes (eds), German Women in the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. A Social and Literary History (Blooming-
ton, Indiana, 1986), 215-29, esp 226.
37 See Frevert, Frauen-Geschichte, 112-20, and Richard J. Evans, The Fem-
inist Movement in Germany 1894--1933 (London, 1976), 74--5, for changing
attitudes towards women in the public sphere.
38 Staats archiv Hamburg, Familienarchiv Buehl, 2c: Lebenserinnerungen
des Stadtrates Dr Adolf Buehl, p. 55.
39 Führer durch Hamburg zum IlI. Allgemeinen Deutschen Journalisten- und Sch-
riftstellertage 1894 (Hamburg, 1894), 48, far a description of sodal life
at the Exchange; see also J. Michael Geschichte des Ärztlichen Vereins und
seiner Mitglieder (Hamburg, 1896), and the numerous stories of sodal
and professional life among lawyers in Carl August Schräder, Aus
Hamburgs Blütezeit (Hamburg, 1921).
40 For health services, see Evans, Death in Hamburg, 208-11, 221-5, 530-1.
Members of the Amsinck family serving as lay judges on the Commer-
dal court are listed in Hintze, Familie Amsinck, 3.
41 Percy Ernst Schramm, Hamburg, Deutschland und die Welt (Munieh,
1943),348. Schramm's writings, which include his own family his tory,
Neun Generationen (Gättingen, 1964), are a valuable source for the
his tory of the Hamburg grand bourgeoisie.
42 Evans, Death in Hamburg, 53-4.
43 See the childhood memo ries of Heinrich Merck, in Staatsarchiv Ham-
burg, Familienarchiv Merck, 11 9 Konv. 4a, Heft II-Ill.
44 C.K.G. Behrmann, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1904), 268-9
45 J ulius von Eckardt, Lebenserinnerungen (Leipzig, 1910), 1: 204--5.
46 Buehl, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Familienarchiv Buehl 2c, provides
illuminating examples of this.
47 Renate Hauschild-Thiessen, Bürgerstolz und Kaisertreue (Hamburg,
1979), 98.
48 Evans, Death in Hamburg, 9, 26-7, 37, 253, 277-9, 310.
49 Renate Hauschild-Thiessen, 150 Jahre Grundeigentürmer- Verein in Hamburg
von 1832 e. V (Hamburg, 1982), 75-6, quoting Senator Heinrich GefIken
(1847).
50 Eckardt, Privilegien, for a full account of the voting system.
138
FAMILY AND CLASS IN HAMBURG
51 Evans, Death in Hamburg, 557.
52 For the famous 'two hundred families' popu1ar1y supposed to have
run nineteenth-eentury Franee, see Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-1945,
1: Ambition, Love and Politics (Oxford, 1973), 12-13.
53 Frank1in Kopitzseh, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der Aufklärung in Nord-
deutschland (Hamburg, 1984).
54 Evans, Death in Hamburg, 176-82.
55 Cf. the contribution to this vo1ume by Ute Frevert, 255-92.
56 For a usefu1 diseussion of how loea1 conditions eou1d affeet marriage
patterns, in this ease among the Jewish grand bourgeoisie, see Mosse,
German-Jewish Economic Elite, 181-3.
57 ibid.; also GaB, Bürgertum.
139
5
11
Historians have normally identified two aspects of employer
paternalism in Germany: on the one hand a ca ring attitude
towards employees, characterized by various company welfare
schemes, and on the other an authoritarian stance which
demanded obedience from the labour force and refused to counten-
ance any concessions to their workers which interfered with mana-
gerial prerogatives in the factory. I t is certainly true that a host
of company welfare schemes were developed in Germany before
1914. The BASF factory at Ludwigshafen created sickness and
accident insurance schemes for its labour force. The same company
set up a savings bank for its workers, as did Krupp in Essen and
several firms in the Augsburg textile industry. Schools to teach
wives and daughters domestic science, convalescent hornes, librar-
ies, cheap company stores, all these institutions were established
by engineering and chemical firms for their labourers and their
families. Most famously of all, the larger firms often built housing
for their employees, as in the case of Krupp in Essen, where the
company owned no fewer than 1,045 dwellings by 1906. In general
the standard of this accommodation was high er and the rents
lower than in the private sector. 6
Several different factors help to explain this development. Some-
times religious, ethical, and social-reformist motives played apart;
or at least, so the employers claimed. 7 However, a closer exami-
nation of the central operation of company welfare schemes sug-
gests other and more important motives were at work. In the first
place such schemes and/or the occupation of a company dwelling
were often targeted not at the workforce in general but only at
certain valued groups: members of the so-called 'yellow' (i.e. com-
pany) unions, workers with a long history of service to the firm,
141
DICK GEARY
of the Ruhr. But many German employers went much further than
simply requesting 'loyalty'. They demanded the right to absolute
control over their workers within th€ factory, and sometimes even
outside it, and refused to recognize or have dealings with trade
unions. Even the ofTer by state authorities to arbitrate in major
industrial disputes was rejected by industrialists, at least initially.13
This refusal to negotiate with workers or their representatives was
perhaps most marked in those industries which at the same time
introduced the most extensive company welfare schemes (iron,
steel, chemicals) and finds elegant expression in the relative
absence of collective wage agreements in Germany before the First
World War. There were scarcely any such agreements in mining
and chemicals; and in 1913 only about 16 per cent of the Reich's
labour force was covered by them. 14
In their desire to maintain exclusive control, German industrial-
ists had recourse to a vast armoury of weapons to keep out both
trade union organizers and political 'agitators'. Some paid bonuses
to workers who informed on their colleagues who joined unions.
Textile manufacturers in Augsburg, Bochum coal-owners and the
employers of the Ludwigshafen chemical industry compiled exten-
sive blacklists of 'trouble-makers.' Mass firings of strikers and
trade unionists were common; whilst Krupp and Stumm agreed
not to hire but also to dismiss any employee who read Sodal
Democratic literature, attended SPD meetings, or even frequented
pubs used by Social Democrats. 15
In addition to the formal proscription of union and party mem-
bership German employers developed increasingly sophisticated
methods of combating strikes and independent unions, and some-
times establishing their own labour exchanges directly to control
recruitment and keep out unionists and Social Democrats. Strikes
were increasingly countered by lock-outs, which in turn enjoyed
more success than did the strikes they were meant to counter. 16
The ability of Imperial industrialists to mount such successful
campaigns against working-class militancy was a direct conse-
quence of the increasing concentration of capital and the growth
of employers' federations, especially in the wake of the great 1903
strike and lock-out in the Crimmitschau textile industry; and
although the two national and trans-sectoral federations were argu-
ably not very efTective, the same cannot be said of the regional
and single-sector organizations of German employers, which over-
took the unions in both numerical strength (i.e. fewer workers
143
DICK GEARY
nuities, for little in the way of company welfare existed before the
1870s; and in fact it was often a second generation of factory owners,
or even and equally often the new group of salaried managers who
initiated welfare schemes. 20 Furthermore, as we have seen, those
schemes and in particu1ar the construction of company housing
can be explained in terms of market rationality: the need to attract
and retain employees in a situation of acute labour shortage, high
labour turnover, and the absence of private or municipal accommo-
dation for newly arrived workers. 21 What any of this has to do
with 'feudal' or 'pre-industrial' continuities is hard to see.
In particular, the greatest extension of formal company welfare
provisions and yellow unions came after 1904 and simultaneously
with repressive measures: increasing resort to the lock-out, work
registration schemes, etc. It thus came relatively late in the day
and its timing is of the utmost importance: it came after and in
direct response to the enormous threat pösed by increased indus-
trial militancy between 1903 and 1906, increased trade union
power and Social Democratic electoral success. Employer
'paternalism' was thus a response to the facts of life of a modern
industrial society confronted with modern labour protest in the
shape of strikes and working-class participation in industrial and
political organizations. Equally, the fact that the distribution of
employer paternalism varied enormously from one sector to ano-
ther further suggests that the behaviour of German industrialists
was determined more by market rational factors than by pre-
industrial prejudices. 22
It is p1atitudinous to say that the large-scale welfare schemes of
BASF, Siemens, and Krupp were not copied by the overwhelming
majority of smaller concerns, which simply could not afford themY
There is also considerable evidence that the smaller firms in the
German electrical industry were far more prepared to conclude
deals with strikers and trade unions than were AEG and Siemens.
In fact the his tory of industrial relations in the Second Reich
reveals huge sectoral variations. Of the 1,400,000 workers covered
by collective wage agreements in 1913, two-thirds were in firms
employing under 20 men. Such agreements were concentrated in
printing and the skilled building trades. There were fewer in metal-
work and textiles and virtually none in mining. 24 The reasons for
this differential behaviour on the part of employers becomes clear
if we compare specific industries. Printing was the leading industry
in developing processes of collective bargaining: by 1911, 90 per
145
DICK GEARY
III
The French patronat before the First W orld War was in general no
more prepared to recognize trade unions as partners in the process
of collective bargaining than its German counterpart was; and
French employers also sought to preserve their control in the 1890s
by the creation of company unions. Mining companies created
relief and pension funds to secure loyalty, but at the same time
used lower supervisory staff as a police/informer network. Foreign
labour was regularly imported to break strikes; and on occasion
gunmen were hired to intimidate pickets. This authoritarianism,
as in the German case, was also accompanied by 'paternalism',
the provision of company housing, pension schemes, works can-
teens, or clinics, as at Decazeville and Le Creusot. In fact the
Schneider concern in the latter town provides a classic case of
both company welfare provision on the one hand and the demand
for absolute obedience on the part of its workers on the other,
possessing an extraordinary network of surveillance over its
employees and dismissing immediately anyone suspected of trade
union agitation. 29 The industrial bosses of the New World, where
to talk of 'feudal' or 'pre-industrial' continuities makes little sense,
were no more conciliatory. In the United States after the turn of
the century employers drew up blacklists, created employment
exchanges, established 'counter-unions', and brought in colonies
of strike-breakers. In Pittsburgh that great paternaiist Andrew
Carnegie even employed a private army to keep the unions out of
his factories; with the result that twelve people were killed in a
private war to maintain employer dominance. 30
Even in Britain, the only state to possess something of a system
of industrial relations before 1914, factory-owners and managers
responded to the growth of industrial militancy and the 'new
unionism' in the late 1880s and 1890s with lock-outs, blacklists,
private employment exchanges, and strike-breaking organizations.
147
DICK GEARY
IV
Most of the studies of business in the Weimar Republic, though
by no means all, have been preoccupied with the question of the
relationship between industrialists and the rise of Nazism. It is
not the intention here to delve into the details of this often heated
and tortuous debate, though one can, with certain reservations,
accept the findings of the American historian Henry Ashby Turner:
few industrialists actually joined the party, those that gave money
to the Nazi Party did so in general for instrumental reasons (a
kind of political ins uran ce) rather than as a result of ideological
commitment, more business money flowed into the coffers of the
traditional 'bourgeois' parties (the People's Party or DVP, and the
Nationalists or DNVP), and big business did not playamajor
role in Hitler's becoming Chancellor in early 1933. 45 This chapter
is more concerned with the relations hip between industrialists and
the system of industrial relations that developed in the Weimar
Republic, a more specific question and one more amenable to
genera1ization than are reflections on the political stance of
emp10yers in party terms; for in those terms big business was
notab1y divided. A few industrialists, most famous1y Fritz Thyssen,
did become Nazis, but others, such as Gustav Krupp von Bohlen
und Halbach, Pau1 Silverberg, and Albert Vögler belonged to the
German People's Party, whilst Klöckner supported the Catholic
Centre Party, at least in 1928. Thereafter party allegiances shifted,
whilst other members of that informal grouping of Ruhr industria1-
ists, the Ruhrlade, remained unaffi1iated. As Gerald D. Feldman
has pointed out, during the abortive Kapp putsch of 1920, when
reactionary Freikorps tried to overthrow the new republic, big busi-
ness as a whole did not desert Weimar but was in the main
apathetic or confused on the question of its surviva1. 46
It is thus clearly improper to generalize about the party-political
stance of industry. At the same time, however, business in general
152
THE INDUSTRIAL BOURGEOISIE AND LABOUR RELATIONS
In a sense they could thus afford welfare taxation and high er wage
settlements in a way that heavy industry, already experiencing
difficulties in the mid-1920s, could not. This was especially so as
wage costs were only a relatively small fraction of total costs in
the highly capital-intensive and dynamic sectors such as electricals
and chemicals, in the latter case in fact only 15 per cent. The
dependence of these two sectors on export markets also explains
their opposition to tariffs and relative reasonableness on the ques-
tion of reparations. 59
The attitudes of the leaders of coal, iron, and steel were in
general rather different. They not only succeeded in maintaining
a cartellized system of inflexible price-fixing but also advocated
protection against foreign imports. They played a leading role in
opposing Silverberg's 1926 call for co-operation with labour; they
sabotaged attempts to revive the ZentralarbeitsgemeinschaJt in 1930;
they were influential in the collapse of parliamentary government
in the same year through pressure on the German People's Party
not to reach agreement with its Social Democratic coalition partner
on the issue of unemployment benefits; they broke with Brüning
on the grounds that mandatory arbitration, statutory wages legis-
lation, and a fixed working day had not been abolished; and they
mobilized support against the Young Plan's proposed solution to
the reparations issue. 60
Just as the attitudes of the more dynamic and export-oriented
industries towards labour and the Weimar Republic can be explai-
ned by rational economic calculation, so can the intransigent
stance of heavy industry. Some firms in iron, steel, and co al were
experiencing considerable problems by the mid-1920s. Even in the
best years of the twenties companies were working weil below
capacity. For example, German steelworks produced at around 50
per cent capacity in 1925, 77 per cent in the peak year of 1927
and 55 per cent in 1930. Such under-utilization, in the wake of
both restricted demand and the rationalization measures of 1924-6,
squeezed profits (in 1927 only 4 per cent in mining, even lower
in iron and steel) and proved fatal in the Depression. 61 In these
circumstances companies in this sector were less prepared and less
able to buy industrial peace than Siemens or IG Farben. They
were also unusually sensitive to increased costs, either as a result
of taxation or wage settlements. Wage levels were crucial in an
industry like mining, where wage costs constituted over a half of
total cos ts. 62
156
THE INDUSTRIAL BOURGEOISIE AND LABOUR RELATIONS
NOTES
1 Knut Borchardt, 'The Industrial Revolution in Germany', in Carlo
M. Cipolla (ed.), The Fontana Economic History 0] Europe (London, 1971),
4( 1), 157.
2 Geoff Eley, 'Capitalism and the WilheImine state', Historical Journal,
21 (1978), 74l.
3 Hans-Ulrich Wehler, 'Deutscher Sonderweg,' Merkur (1981), 48l.
4 Quoted in G. A. Ritter and J. Kocka (eds), Deutsche Sozialgeschichte, 2
(Munich, 1974), 77.
5 These developments are discussed in Volker Berghahn, Der Tirpitz-
Plan (Düsseldorf, 1971); Harmut Kaelble, Industrielle Interessenpolitik in
der Wilhelminischen Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1967); Siegfried Mielke, Der
Hansa-Bund (Göttingen, 1976); Hans-Jürgen Puhle, Agrarische Interessen-
politik und preussischer Konservatismus im wilhelminischen Reich (Hanover,
1966); Dirk Stegmann, Die Erben Bismarcks (Cologne, 1970); Hans-
Peter Ullman, Der Bund der Industriellen (Göttingen, 1976); Hans-Ulrich
Wehler, Das deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1918 (Göttingen, 1973).
6 Alan Milward and S. B. Saul, The Development 0] the Economies 0]
Continental Europe (London, 1977),29,37 and 50; Ilse Fischer 'Maurer-
und Textilarbeiterstreiks in Augsburg', in K. Tenfelde and H. Volk-
mann (eds), Streik (Munich, 1981), 71; David F. Crew, Town in the
Ruhr (New York, 1979), 148 and 153-4; James Wickham, 'The work-
ing-class movement in Frankfurt am Main during the Weimar Repub-
lic' (PhD., University of Sussex, 1979), 65-6; Georg Eibert, Unter-
nehmerpolitik Nürnberger Maschinenbauer (Stu ttgart, 1979), 94; Willy
Breunig, Soziale Verhältnisse der Arbeiterschaft in LudwigshaJen (Ludwigs-
hafen, 1976),70 and 130; Lawrence Schofer, The Formation 0] a Moderrn
Labor Force (Berkeley, 1975), 9.
7 Jürgen Kocka Unternehmer in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Göttingen,
1975), 79; Schofer, Formation, 91.
8 Crew, Town in the Ruhr, 154; Jürgen Kocka, 'Vorindustrielle Faktoren
in der deutschen Industrialisierung', in Michael Stürmer (ed.), Das
kaiserliche Deutschland (Düsseldorf, 1970), 271; J ürgen Kocka, Unter-
nehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenscha]t am Beispiel Siemens (Stuttgart,
1969), 25, 101 f., and 107-8; Heilwig Schomerus, Die Arbeiter der
Maschinen]abrik Esslingen (Stuttgart, 1977), 201.
9 Wickham, 'Working-class movement', 63.
158
THE INDUSTRIAL BOURGEOISIE AND LABOUR RELATIONS
10 Stephen Hickey, 'The shaping of the German labour movement', in
Richard J. Evans (ed.), Sociery and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany
(London, 1978),225-6; Crew, Town in the Ruhr, 151; Wickham, 'Work-
ing-class movement', 65; Schofer, Formation, 93-4; Ilse Costas, 'Arbeits-
kämpfe in der Berliner Elektroindustrie', in Tenfelde and Volkmann
(eds), Streik, 101; Horst Steffens, 'Arbeiterwohnverhältnisse', in ibid.,
127-8.
11 Breunig, Soziale Verhältnisse, 133-4.
12 Crew, Town in the Ruhr, 150; Stegmann, Erben Bismarcks, 269; Hans
Jaeger, Unternehmer in der deutschen Politik (Bonn, 1967), 270-1.
13 Kocka, Unternehmer, 85; Lothar Machtan, 'Im Vertrauen auf unsere
gerechte Sache,' in Tenfelde and Volkmann (eds), Streik, 54. The
strikes in the Ruhr mines of 1889 and 1905 and in the Hamburg docks
in 1896/7 saw such refusals to accept government attempts to arbitrate.
14 Hans-Peter Ullmann, Tarifverträge und Tarifpolitik (Frankfurt-on-Main,
1977),97; Klaus Schänhoven, 'Arbeitskonflikte', in Tenfelde and Volk-
mann (eds), Streik, 183.
15 Crew, Town in the Ruhr, 146; Fischer, 'Maurer-', 76; Breunig, Soziale
Verhältnisse, 395: Klaus Tenfelde, Sozialgeschichte der Bergarbeiterschaft an
der Ruhr (Bonn, 1977), 527-8: Costas, 'Arbeitskämpfe' , 102; Hans
Rosenberg, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit (Berlin, 1967), 206 and
226; Klaus Mattheier, Die Gelben (Düsseldorf, 1973), 30-1.
16 Michael Grüttner, 'Mobilität und Konfliktverhalten', in Tenfelde and
Volkmann (eds), Streik, 155; Breunig, Soziale Verhältnisse, 389; Dieter
Groh, 'Intensification of work and industrial conflict in Germany',
Politics and Sociery, 8 (1978), 374 and 380; Schänhoven, 'Arbeitskon-
flikte', 184.
17 Hans-Peter Ullmann, 'Unternehmerschaft, Arbeitgeberverbände und
Streikbewegung', in Tenfelde and Volkmann (eds), Streik, 198; Dieter
Groh, Negative Integration und Revolutionärer Attentismus (Frankfurt-on-
Main, 1973), 105; Schänhoven, 'Arbeitskonflikte', 184.
18 Mattheier, Die Gelben, 15; Hickey, 'Shaping', 217-18 and 230; Crew,
Town in the Ruhr, 148; Schofer, Formation, 157.
19 Ullmann, 'Unternehmerschaft', 200; J. Barrington Moore, Injustice
(New York, 1978),260-1; Mattheier, Die Gelben, 132-8; Breunig, Sozi-
ale Verhältnisse, 450; Costas, 'Arbeitskämpfe' , 10 lf.
20 Kocka, 'Vorindustrielle Faktoren', 277; Kocka, Unternehmer, 79-80 and
118; Breunig, Soziale Verhältnisse, 82; Eibert, Unternehmerpolitik, 285.
21 Crew, Town in the Ruhr, 148; Eibert, Unternehmerpolitik, 97-9; Kocka,
Unternehmer, 130. Siemens introduced pension schemes for white-collar
employees at precisely the point in time that they began to organize
and agitate.
22 Mattheier, Die Gelben, 65-71.
23 Ullmann, 'Unternehmerschaft', 200.
24 Costas, 'Arbeitskämpfe', 97; Ullmann, Tarifverträge, 23, 34 and 97-8;
Groh, 'Intensification', 366 and 369.
25 Ullmann, Tarifverträge, 49, 56 and 163f. Schänhoven, 'Arbeitskonflikte' ,
181.
26 Ullmann, Tarifverträge, 56 and 81-4.
159
DICK GEARY
27 Schänhoven, 'Arbeitskonflikte', 181 and 197; Frank B. Tipton, Regional
Variations in the Economic Development 0] Germany (Middleton, 1976), 126.
28 Breunig, Soziale Verhältnisse, 425; Ullmann, Tarifverträge, 85 and 90.
29 Peter N. Stearns, Lives 0] Labour (London, 1975); Mattheier, Die Gelben,
48; Roger Magraw, 'Socialism, syndicalism and French labour', in
Dick Geary (ed.), Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe before 1914
(London, 1989), 63 and 69; Michelle Perrot, Workers on Strike (London,
1987), 252-6.
30 Mattheier, Die Gelben, 42-6.
31 ibid., 42-3; Keith Burgess, The Origins 0] British Industrial Relations
(London, 1975), viii, 30, 59-60, 65, 112-13 and 187.
32 Eley, 'Capitalism', 746.
33 Frank Wilkinson, 'Collective bargaining in the steel industry', in Asa
Briggs and John Savile (eds), Essays in Labour History 1918-1939
(London, 1977), 102; Stearns, Lives 0] Labour, 165 and 180-1; H. A.
Clegg, A History 0] British Trade Unions, I (London, 1964), 362-3;
Burgess, Origins, vii and 310-11.
34 Quoted in David Kynaston, King Labour (London, 1976), 152.
35 Burgess, Origins, 38-9 and 155; Dick Geary, 'Socialism and the
German labour movement', in Geary (ed.), Labour, 102.
36 Burgess, Origins, 306.
37 ibid., 311; Wickham, 'Working-class movement', 60-1.
38 Burgess, Origins, 188 and 209.
39 Clegg, History, 362-3; Burgess, Origins, vii and 310-11.
40 Gordon Phillips, 'The British labour movement before 1914', in Geary
(ed.), Labour, 39.
41 Klaus Saul, 'Zwischen Repression und Integration', in Tenfelde and
Volkmann (eds), Streik, 209-36; Tenfelde, Bergarbeiterschajt, 523-5.
42 Rosenberg, Grosse Depression, 226; Hedwig Wachenheim, Geschichte der
deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (Cologne, 1967), 577; Ullmann, 'Unter-
nehmerschaft' , 203-7.
43 Mattheier, Die Gelben, 77-9 and 88-9.
44 Breunig, Soziale Verhältnisse, 134-5 and 177.
45 For a discussion of Turner's work and that of his critics, see Dick
Geary, 'The industrial elite and the Nazis', in Peter D. Stachura
(ed.), The Nazi Machtergreifung (London, 1983), 85-100. For the most
comprehensive and recent statement of Turner's position see Henry
Ashby Turner, Big Business and the Rise 0] Nazism (London, 1986).
46 H.A. Turner, 'Big busineiis and the rise ofHitler', in American Historical
Review, 75 (1969), 57; Hans H. Biegert, 'Gewerkschaftspolitik in der
Phase des Kapp-Lüttwitz-Putsches', in Hans Mommsen et al. (eds),
Industrielles System and Politische Entwicklung in der Weimarer Republik (Düs-
seldorf, 1974), 198; Gerald D. Feldman, 'Big business and the Kapp
Putsch', in Gentral European History, 4 (1971), 99-130.
47 On industry during the war see Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry
and Labor (Princeton, 1966).
48 The most detailed account of labour and welfare legislation appears
in Ludwig Preller, SoZialpolitik in der Weimarer Republik (reprinted Düs-
seldorf, 1978). See also Hans-Hermann Hartwich, Arbeitsmarkt, Verbände
160
THE INDUSTRIAL BOURGEOISIE AND LABOUR RELATIONS
und Staat (Berlin, 1967) and Otto Kahn-Freund, Labour Law and PoliticJ
in the Weimar Republic (Oxford, 1981).
49 David Abraham, The Collapse 01 the Weimar Republic, 2nd edn, (New
York, 1986), especially ch. 3.
50 ibid., 27.
51 Gerald D. Feldman, Iron and Steel in the German Iriflation (Princeton,
1977), ch. 3.
52 Quotations from Michael Schneider, Unternehmer und Demokratie (Bonn,
1975), 37f and 42.
53 Feldman, Iron and Steel, 319-45.
54 This picture of Silverberg as opportunist is central to Reinhard Neebe,
Grossindustrie, Staat, NSDAP (Göttingen, 1981). For scepticism about
the 1926 speech see Schneider, Unternehmer, 55-9; and Bernd Weisbrod,
Schwerindustrie in der Krise (Wuppertal, 1978), 246-72.
55 This is the central thesis of Schneider.
56 Schneider, Unternehmer, 106; David Abraham, The Collapse 01 the Weimar
Republic, Ist edn (Princeton, 1981), 135-6.
57 Dirk Stegmann, 'Zum Verhältnis von Grossindustrie und National-
sozialismus', Archiv jzir Sozialgeschichte, 13 (1973), 409.
58 Weisbrod, Schwerindustrie, 492-3; Abraham, Collapse, Ist edn, 86-89,
171-2, and 216-18.
59 So the following report: Reichsverband der deutschen Industrie, Be-
steuerung, Ertrag und Arbeitslohn im Jahre 1927 (Berlin, 1929).
60 Weisbrod, Schwerindustrie, 256f.; Abraham, Collapse, Ist edn, 47-8.
61 See note 59. Also Weisbrod, Schwerindustrie, 48-50.
62 ibid., also note 59 above.
63 Quoted in Abraham, Collapse, Ist edn, 263.
64 Schneider, Unternehmer, 156-7.
65 ibid., 82-3.
161
6
I
The development of the nineteenth-century German legal pro-
fession is a curiously under-researched subject. In contrast to other
professional groups such as doctors, lawyers have not as yet been
the subject of a modern full-length social-historical analysis.! Com-
ments on the legal profession have often been subsumed into gen-
eral accounts of the educated middle c1asses (Bildungsbürgertum), in
which emphasis tends to be placed on processes of professional
specialization and self-definition, but there are few detailed studies.
Recent work on the nineteenth-century educated middle c1asses
reftects this general neglect, tending to consider the social functions
of legal ideology without really attempting to study the legal pro-
fession as such. 2 A partial exception to this general omission from
the literature is provided by Hansjoachim Henning's study of the
Bildungsbürgertum in Prussia's western provinces after 1860, a work
wh ich emphasizes the high sodal status, increasing sodal exc1usiv-
ity, and genuine commitment to their vocation of the educated
professionals in the area. 3 Otherwise, apart from a few important
sodological studies,4 the overwhelming majority of relevant works
have been written by lawyers.
Much of this research is extremely valuable, but its provenance
has certain consequences. Of these, perhaps the most important
is the tendency to consider lawyers as a distinct, self-consdous
status group, detached from the broader concerns of Germany's
middle c1asses and interested mainly in rather narrowly defined
professional issues, such as the reduction in the direct role of the
162
BETWEEN ESTATE AND PROFESSION
existence for most members of the profession and that this almost
certainly blunted demands for (even) more favourable treatment.
Above all, it would seem that the objective wealth and status of
the legal profession were such as to weaken the demand for further
measures to restrict access to the profession. Until the end of the
century, the obstades to entry into the legal profession were so
considerable that the majority of lawyers seem to have accepted
that ostensibly open access 7 should be maintained. For this reason,
lawyers on the whole managed to secure most of the perquisites
of a valued, high-status profession, without being able (or perhaps
needing) to develop the assertive lobbying approach to professional
questions which was often found in other sections of the bour-
geoisie.
For these reasons, it will be argued, lawyers both developed
many of the general characteristics of the German bourgeoisie and
occupied a very special, atypical place within it. As with other
sections of the educated middle dass, they continued to emphasize
possession of educational qualifications as a basic source of status
and vigorously rejected alternative criteria for entry, such as birth
or wealth. Behind this approach, however, lay the frequently
observed dissolution of bourgeois unity as professional specializ-
ation became the order of the day, with lawyers participating fully
in 'the inner fragmentation of the educated middle dasses'.8 The
most re cent work on the middle-dass professions suggests, how-
ever, that specialized qualifications may have strengthened rather
than weakened the bourgeoisie as a social formation 9 - an issue
to which this chapter will return. On the other hand, the lawyers'
position within the educated middle dasses was arguably peculiar
in ways which were related to the type of service provided by the
legal profession and to the specific structure of the legal system in
Germany.
11
These introductory reflections point to the need to consider at the
outset two dosely related aspects of recruitment to the legal pro-
fession - the state and the developing system of legal training in
the universities. These are both subjects which have spawned a
substantial literature and the main outlines, if not all the details,
of the relevant nineteenth-century developments are now dear.
Legal training came to be the basic feature of the educational
164
BETWEEN ESTATE AND PROFESSION
than in the other states, relative to the size of its population. The
combined effects of the restricted numbers of judges and practising
lawyers, and the lack of alternative opportunities outside state
service tended to keep large numbers of people in unpaid posts
for lengthy periods of time. The Prussian state's periodic attempts
to scare people away from studying the law with stories of intense
competition for posts and probable indigence in the medium-term
future do not sugg~st that the bureaucracy saw poor employment
prospects for lawyers as a permanent, concerted strategy of politi-
cal control. Nevertheless, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that
the use of growing amounts of unpaid labour in the courts under-
mined the much-vaunted independence of the judiciary, for exam-
pIe in the l850s. Similar cri ticisms of the poli tical effects of the
state's employment practices were to be heard in the l890s. 20
Different state policies with regard to access to the legal pro-
fession were of fundamental importance in determining the shape
and aspirations of the profession in the nineteenth century. In
1857, the average ratio of lawyers to the population in Germany
as a whole was 1:7,000, but this concealed enormous regional
variations. In the kingdom of Saxony, the ratio was 1: 1,900, rising
as high as 1:350 in the city of Leipzig. Bavaria, east of the Rhine,
on the other hand, had a ratio of 1:13,000, with the figure falling
to 1:21 ,000 in the Bavarian Palatinate. Württemberg, another state
with very liberal rules governing access, had a ratio in 1867 of
1:5,330, while in Prussia the ratio fell from 1: 10,000 to 1: 12,000
between 1850 and 1879, having fallen from 1:2,000 in the preceding
fifty years. 21 In practice, Frankfurt, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Würt-
temberg, Baden, Hanover, and the Hanseatic towns had some
version of free access to the profession for qualified males through-
out the nineteenth century (though differences in the local laws
continued). On the other hand, the number of lawyers admitted
to practise was kept tight not only in Prussia but in Bavaria as
weIl, until the principle of freedom of access was introduced by
national legislation in 1878. 22
III
Regional variations on this scale, coupled with the ubiquitous
dominance of state policy-making in determining recruitment pat-
terns to the bureaucracy and judiciary gave the development of
the legal profession in Germany a distinct pattern. As has recently
168
BETWEEN ESTATE AND PROFESSION
IV
The problematic aspects of the notion of professional independence
lay first in the variety of separate issues which were subsumed
within it, and second in the way it tended to leave unclear the
relations hip between lawyers' status aspirations and their economic
interests. Independence involved the quite separate questions of
the state's disciplinary and supervisory powers, the conditions of
access to the profession and matters such as the lawyer's freedom
to determine the level of fees for his services. These issues were
frequently conflated in the Vormärz period between 1815 and 1848,
but this was less and less possible afterwards. In the l850s Han-
over, Baden, and a number of other states introduced chambers
of lawyers, while Prussia extended the institution of the 'council
of honour' (Ehrenrat).40 The fact that the courts often retained
certain disciplinary controls does not alter the fact that this was
a significant move away from the Vormärz approach to controlling
lawyers. Moreover, these developments occurred quite indepen-
dently of the degree to which a given state was liberal, Baden and
Hanover in many respects occupying opposite ends of this particu-
lar spectrum. Prussian lawyers went on demanding more extensive
rights to control their own activities, but this gradually ceased to
be the main concern. After 1848, many states including Prussia
came to concentrate on other means of controlling their lawyers,
including restrictive and politically motivated appointment prac-
tices, refusal to grant leave from state service for political activity,
intrusions into the independence of the judiciary, and so on. This
change in tactics meant that the question of removing the state's
right to limit access to the profession was almost inevitably raised.
It was increasingly unclear how the legal profession could achieve
independence while the state controlled the career prospects of
individuals in this way. Moreover, the long queues of unpaid
assessors in the Prussian judiciary by the end of the l850s exerted
a quite separate pressure in the same direction. Opening up the
possibility of practising law was one obvious way of improving the
prospects of this expanding group.41
These changes had to be confronted by the lawyers but they
were ill-equipped to do so in a uni ted and effective fashion. Quite
apart from the effects of the territorial divisions of Germany on the
profession, the self-image lawyers had inherited from the Vormärz
inhibited a clear response to change. As has often been noted, the
174
BETWEEN ESTATE AND PROFESSION
v
The outcome of these discussions was Reich legislation in the form
of the Rechtsanwaltsordnung of 1878, which decreed that anybody
who had undergone the practical training period and passed the
examinations required to enter the state judiciary might practise
law. A further Reich law (the Gebührenordnung of 1879) fixed
lawyers' fees at a level which raised rates in Prussia, but lowered
them in most other areas of the Reich. The government's approach
to both measures was motivated by an apparent des ire to mediate
between sharply divergent views concerning the legal profession.
The secretary of the Reich Justice Office, Heinrich von Friedberg,
explained to the Reichstag that the Rechtsanwaltsordnung sought to
find a compromise between the notions that the legal profession
was a 'free academic profession' and that it was 'almost like a
public office'. Policy on fees was dictated by the desire to avoid
the twin dangers of making legal costs too expensive and holding
them down so far 'that the legal profession's economic position
would be endangered and thus would become a threat to the
administration of justice and perhaps for the life of the state as a
whole'. Friedberg exploited the lawyers' own rhetoric by praising
178
BETWEEN ESTATE AND PROFESSION
those who were willing to place the general interests of the adminis-
tration of justice above their pecuniary interests. However, such
praise was small comfort to those whose livelihood was
threatened. 57 The immediate consequence of liberalization was as
the opponents of the measure had feared, especially in the larger
towns. The total number of lawyers in Prussia grew by 40 per
cent between 1880 and 1895, an increase which was heavily con-
centrated in towns such as Berlin, where the decade after liberaliz-
ation saw the number of practising lawyers grow nearly fourfold.
On the other hand, 44 per cent of local courts (overwhelmingly
in remote rural areas in the east) had no lawyer resident in their
area as late as 1895, a situation which liberalization of access had
partly been designed to remedy.58. A similar development took
place in the Reich as a whole, where the number of appointed
lawyers grew from 4,091 in 1880 to 12,297 in 1913. Whereas in
1880 there had been 1 lawyer for every 11,000 inhabitants of
Germany, that ratio had fallen to 1:5,280 on the eve of the First
World War, with the most rapid changes taking place after the
turn of the century.59
In the current state of research, it is difficult to gain an accurate
picture of the effects that this expansion had on the economic
fortunes of the legal profession. One author estimates average
earnings in 1907 at just under 5,000 Marks. Four years later,
lawyers' earnings from civil cases varied from 3,300 to 6,600
Marks, according to the level of court at which they practised. 50
In terms of erude averages, this placed 1awyers seeurely within
the range of salaries earned by the groups to whieh they most
liked to compare themselves. In 1894, the starting salary of judges
in an Amtsgericht in Prussia was 2,850 Marks, that of a Regierungsrat
in the administrative civil service 4,800 Marks. Twenty years after
the final state examination, the administrative civil servant could
expeet to earn 6,000 Marks, the judge 4,800 Marks. 51 The available
research leaves no doubt that there were eonsiderable ineome
differences between individual lawyers, as was the case with the
other educated professions. But there are serious grounds for scep-
ticism about the frequent claims that a substantial proletariat of
lawyers developed in the larger towns, especially where liberal
conditions of access had prevailed before 1878. Recent research on
Frankfurt and Saxony suggests that lawyers were in general better
off than doctors. In Saxony, for ex am pIe, over three-quarters of
the legal profession had a taxable ineome of over 4,800 Marks in
179
MICHAEL JOHN
184
BETWEEN ESTATE AND PROFESSION
VI
This prompts some concluding reflections about the general
position of the legal profession in German society. The problem
of reconciling different aspects of status - public esteern, market
power, control of conditions of work, and so on - is one that most
modern professions have had to face. In many respects, they have
sought to defend a guild-like position against social developments
involving the destruction of the restraints on trade characteristic
of the pre-modern Ständestaat. In most modern societies, the
interests of the professional 'guild' have been more or less success-
fully welded to those of the public through formalized entry
requirements based on the pos session of education and successful
examination results. Germany, with its characteristic belief in the
pos session of Bildung as the major source of status, was an exagger-
ated manifestation of a common tendency. From the early nine-
teenth century, the ideal of Bildung had a vitallegitimizing function
in that it concealed recruitment practices which involved a high
degree of social exclusivity behind an ideology which stressed uni-
versal access. Bildung was something which was in principle obtain-
able by everybody, though the social organization of the means of
its acquisition through education precluded this in practice. By
the late nineteenth century, these universalist claims were under
attack from a number of directions. More and more commentators
were complaining of the way in which students in law faculties,
more than any other group of students, frittered away their time
at university, relied on crammers to pass their examinations, and
in general scarcely paid lip service to the ideal of Bildung. Much
of this discussion centred on the failings of the legally trained
bureaucrats, but it applied to lawyers and judges as welJ.B°
This did not, however, do anything to weaken the lawyers'
commitment to a rhetoric of public service over private interest.
If anything, the reverse may have been the case, as lawyers desper-
ately tried to inject meaning into a professional self-image inherited
from the early nineteenth century. Much of this was, however,
pure rhetoric and it is probable that lawyers on the whole shared
the rising standards of living enjoyed by the other free professions
around the turn of the century.81 As elsewhere, lawyers were
extremely sensitive to suggestions that they were exploiting the
public for private gain. Such hallmarks of capitalist business prac-
ti ce as the advertising of services, the selling of legal practices,
185
MICHAEL JOHN
NOTES
1 There is no study of the legal profession equivalent to Claudia Huerk-
amp's Der Aufstieg der Ärzte im 19. Jahrhundert. Vom gelehrten Stand zum
professionellen Experten: das Beispiel Preussens (Göttingen, 1985).
2 See G. Dilcher, 'Das Gesellschaftsbild der Rechtswissenschaft und die
soziale Frage', in K. Vondung (ed.), Das wilhelminische Bildungsbürger-
tum. Zur Sozialgeschichte seiner Ideen (Göttingen, 1976), 53-66; W. Conze
190
BETWEEN EST ATE AND PROFESSION
and J. Kocka (eds), Bildungsbürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, I (Stuttgart,
1985). In the latter volume a projected chapter on lawyers by Gerhard
Dilcher was withheld for future publication, but there is a certain
amount of material relating to German lawyers in H. Siegrist, 'Geb-
remste Professionalisierung - Das Beispiel der Schweizer Rechts-
anwaltschaft im Vergleich zu Frankreich und Deutschland im 19. und
frühen 20. Jahrhundert', 301-1, especially 308-13. See also D. Grimm,
'Bürgerlichkeit im Recht', in J. Kocka (ed.), Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit
im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1987), 149-88.
3 H. Henning, Das westdeutsche Bildungsbürgertum in der Epoche der
Hochindustrialisierung 1860-1914. Soziales Verhalten und soziale Strukturen,
Pt. 1, Das Bildungsbürgertum in den preussischen Westprovinzen (Wiesbaden,
1972), pt. 2, ch. 2.
4 D. Rueschemeyer, Lawyers and Their Sociery. A Comparative Study of the
Legal Professions in Germany and the United States (Cambridge, Mass,
1973); W. Kaupen, Die Hüter von Recht und Ordnung. Die soziale Herkunft,
Erziehung and Ausbildung der deutschen Juristen (Neuwied/Berlin, 1969).
5 Major works of this sort include A. Weissler's indispensable Geschichte
der Rechtsanwaltschaft (Leipzig, 1905); E. Döhring, Geschichte der deutschen
Rechtspflege seit 1500 (Berlin, 1953); H. Huffmann, Kampf um die freie
Advokatur (Essen, 1967); F. Ostler, Die deutschen Rechtsanwälte 1871-1971
(Essen, 1971); L. Müller, Die Freiheit der Advokatur. Ihre geschichtliche
Entwicklung in Deutschland während der Neuzeit und ihre rechtliche Bedeutung
in der Bundesrepublik (Diss. Würzburg, 1972); T. Kolbeck,Juristenschwem-
men. Untersuchungen über den juristischen Arbeitsmarkt im 19. und 20. Jahrhun-
dert (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1978).
6 Conze and Kocka, 'Einleitung', in Bildungsbürgertum, 23.
7 I.e. for all those who had finished the training and passed the exami-
nations required of a career judge.
8 J. Kocka, 'Bürgertum und Bürgerlichkeit als Problem der deutschen
Geschichte vom späten 18. zum frühen 20. Jahrhundert', in Kocka
(ed.), Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit, 34-7.
9 See H. Siegrist, 'Bürgerliche Berufe. Die Professionen und das Bürger-
turn', in Siegrist (ed.), Bürgerliche Berufe. Zur Sozialgeschichte der freien
und akademischen Berufe im internationalen Vergleich (Göttingen, 1988),
11-48. This collection contains a short study of judges by Hubert
Rottleuthner, 'Die gebrochene Bürgerlichkeit einer Scheinprofession.
Zur Situation der deutschen Richterschaft zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhun-
derts', 145-73, but no essay devoted to practising lawyers.
10 The essential sources for this necessarily rather compressed treatment
of an important subject are C. von Delbrück, Die Ausbildung f11r den
höheren Verwaltungsdienst in Preussen (Jena, 1917), esp. 6-17; C,J. Fried-
rich, 'The continental tradition of training administrators in law and
jurisprudence', Journal of Modem Histmy, II (1939), 129-48; W. Bleek,
Von der Kameralausbildung zum Juristenprivileg : Studium, Prüfung und Ausbil-
dung der höheren Beamten des allgemeinen Verwaltungsdienstes im 18. und 19.
Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1972).
II See Silberschlag, 'Die Ministerial-Verftigung vom 5. Dezember 1864
über das erste juristische Examen', Preussische Anwalts-Zeitung, 22 J une
191
MICHAEL JOHN
1865, 385-91; Delbrück, Ausbildung, 14; R. von Gneist, Freie Advocatur.
Die erste Forderung aller Justizreform in Preussen (Berlin, 1867), 32.
12 For a good account of the content of law courses in different universit-
ies, see W. Siemann, Die Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 1848149 zwischen
demokratischem Liberalismus und konservativer Reform (Frankfurt-on-Main,
1976), 38-54.
13 See Bleek, Kameralausbildung, 52-4; J.R. Gillis, The Prussian Bureaucracy
in Crisis 1840-1860. Origins of an Administrative Ethos (Stanford, 1971),
50-3; and the interesting remarks in U .K. Preuss, 'Bildung and Bürok-
ratie. Sozialhistorische Bedingungen in der ersten Hälfte des 19.
Jahrhunderts', Der Staat, 14 (1975), 371-96, esp. 381-6.
14 As is argued by Preuss, 'Bildung and Bürokratie', 383-4.
15 See Kolbeck, Juristenschwemmen, 37-42, 74-5; Gillis, Prussian Bureaucracy,
39-43, 233-4; R. Koselleck, Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution
(Stuttgart, 1967), 438-9; J. Conrad, The German Universities for the last
Fifty Years (Glasgow, 1885), 138-40; Conrad, 'Allgemeine Statistik der
deutschen Universitäten', in W. Lexis (ed.), Die Deutschen Universitäten,
1 (Berlin, 1893), 120-2.
16 K. Jarausch, Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton,
1982), 46.
17 See the contrasting estimates of Koselleck, Preussen, 438; Kolbeck,
Juristenschwemmen, 33; Conrad, German Universities, 138. An overview of
the estimated numbers is provided in Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsge-
schichte, 2 (Munich, 1987), 305-6.
18 Kolbeck, Juristenschwemmen, 34-6; Gneist, Freie Advocatur, 18; for Lexis's
calculations, see Jarausch, Students, 55-6. The number of practising
lawyers overtook the number of judges for the first time at the end of
the first decade of the twentieth century; see Rottleuthner, 'Die gebro-
chene Bürgerlichkeit einer Scheinprofession', 154.
19 Gillis, Prussian Bureaucracy, 63.
20 Kolbeck, Juristenschwemmen, 52-3, 68-73, 87-8; Gneist, Freie Advocatur,
66; Döhring, Rechtspflege, 154; C. Kade, 'Der preussische Juristenstand',
Preussische Jahrbücher, 75 (1894), 234.
21 K. Brater, 'Advokatur', in J.C. Bluntschli and K. Brater (eds), Deuts-
ches Staats-Wörterbuch, 1 (Stuttgart/Leipzig, 1857), 76; Döhring, Rechts-
pflege, 154; Ostler, Rechtsanwälte, 60; Kolbeck, Juristenschwemmen, 34-5.
22 Details of regional variations in the law are contained in Weissler,
Rechtsanwaltschaft, 424-39, 522-41 and in Siegrist, 'Gebremste Pro-
fessionalisierung', 308. In 1879, Bavaria with a population of just over
5 million had 372 practising lawyers; Munich, with a population of
230,0000, had 30: Ostler, Rechtsanwälte, 60. On average, the Prussian
state appointed 39 practising lawyers annually between 1836 and the
1840s, see Gillis, Prussian Bureaucracy, 41, 234.
23 C.E. McClelland, 'Zur Professionalisierung der akademischen Berufe
in Deutschland', in Conze and Kocka (eds), Bildungsbürgertum, 235-9;
Kocka, 'Bürgertum und Bürgerlichkeit als Problem der deutschen
Geschichte vom späten 18. zum frühen 20. Jahrhundert', 36.
24 On this, see M. John, Politics and the Law in Late Nineteenth-Century
Germany (Oxford, 1989), 36-8 and the sources cited there.
192
BETWEEN EST ATE AND PROFESSION
25 E.g. P. Hinschius, 'Advokatur und Anwaltschaft', in F. Holtzendorff
(ed.), Encyclopädie der Rechtswissenschaft in systematischer und alphabetischer
Bearbeitung. Zweiter Theit. Rechtslexicon, 1 (Leipzig, 1870), 27; H.C. Hof-
mann, 'Ueber die nächsten Bedürfnisse des deutschen Advocaten-
standes', Archivjür die civilistische Praxis, 27 (1844),249; and the sources
cited in L. O'Boyle, 'The democratic left in Germany, 1848', Journal
of Modem History, 33 (1961), 378.
26 See Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 430.
27 Gneist, Freie Advocatur, 55.
28 See, for example, the effect of the Prussian and Bavarian ministries'
ban on their lawyers' participation in the projected Mainz congress
of practising lawyers in 1844: Weissler, Rechtsanwaltschaft, 509-14;
Preussische Gerichts-Zeitung, 10 Feb. 1861, 77-8. Local associations of
practising lawyers were banned in Waldeck in 1839 and Rostock in
1844; Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 503.
29 See [anon.] 'Advocatencorporationen', F.A. Brockhaus, Allgemeine deut-
sche Real-Encyclopädie jür die gebildeten Stände. Conversations-Lexikon, 10th
edn (Leipzig, 1851), 1:155; Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 518-21, 547-61;
Preussische Anwalts-Zeitung, 5 Nov. 1863, 353; [anon.] 'Die Advocatur
in Preussen', Preussische Jahrbücher, 14 (1864), 426; see also the impor-
tant general comments in McClelland, 'Professionalisierung', 242-3.
30 Hofmann, 'Ueber die nächsten Bedürfnisse', 243-4, 249, 250-1; Gneist,
Freie Advocatur, 55-60.
31 See the humorous account of these perceived differences in status in
K. Buchner, Ein deutscher Advokat. Schilderungen aus der Zeit und aus dem
Leben (Darmstadt, 1844), 4-11; cf. L.E. Lee, The Politics of Harmony,
Civil Service, Liberalism, and Social Reform in Baden, 1800-1850 (Cranbury,
Nj, 1980), 207; Gagern to H. von Gagern, 27 Sept. 1847, in P.
Wentzcke and W. Klötzer (eds), Deutscher Liberalismus im Vormärz.
Heinrich von Gagern. Briefe und Reden 1815-1848 (Göttingen/Berlin/Frank-
furt-on-Main, 1959), 400.
32 Huerkamp, Aufstieg der Ärzte, 244.
33 K.J.A. Mittermaier, 'Die künftige Stellung des Advokatenstandes',
Archiv fur die civitistische Praxis, 15 (1832), 148; cf. the comments of the
Silesian Anwaltskammer in relation to the 10ss of official status after the
1878 Rechtsanwaltsordnung, quoted in Ostler, Rechtsanwälte, 18.
34 Weissler, Rechtsanwaltschajt, 548; Wilmowski, 'Rechts-Anwalt. Beam-
ten-Qualität. Disciplinar-Gewalt', Preussische Anwalts-Zeitung, 6 Feb.
1862, 47.
35 This was clear in the famous Soest meeting of Rhenish and Westphal-
ian jurists in 1843; see Gillis, Prussian Bureaucracy, 69-70.
36 J. Brunk to H. von Gagern, quoted in W. Schubert, 'Der Code Civil
und die Personenrechtsentwürfe des Grossherzogtums Hessen-
Darmstadt von 1842 bis 1847', Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung jür Rechtsge-
schichte. Germanistische Abteilung, 88 (1971), 171.
37 D. Blasius, 'Der Kampf um die Geschworenengerichte im Vormärz',
in H.-U. Wehler (ed.), Sozialgeschichte Heute. Festschriftfur Hans Rosenberg
zum 70. Geburtstag (Göttingen, 1974), 150.
38 See Mittermaier, 'Die künftige Stellung des Advokatenstandes', 148;
193
MICHAEL JOHN
for Gagern, see his important draft letter to H. C. Hofmann, written
in the autumn of 1845, in Wentzcke and Klötzer (eds), Deutscher
Liberalismus, 294-304; Buchner, Ein deutscher Advokat, 90. See also the
comments in Lee, Politics 01 Harmony, 206 and O'Boyle, 'The demo-
cratic left in Germany', 378-9.
39 See, for example, L. Krieger, The German !dea 01 Freedom. History 01 a
Political Tradition (Chicago, 1957), 300-1.
40 In fact, the Ehrenrat was conceived in the 1840s as preferable to
granting more extensive disciplinary powers to lawyers. Nevertheless,
it was introduced in 1847 in more liberal a form than the lawyers had
demanded: Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 371-7.
41 Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 543-7, 573; Hinschius, 'Advokatur und
Anwaltschaft', 28; Brater, 'Advokatur', 57; Gneist, Freie Advocatur,
26-7, 44-54.
42 See Bleek, Kameralausbildung, 26-9; R. M. Berdahl, The Politics 01 the
Prussian Nobility. The Development 01 a Conservative !deology, 1770-1848
(Princeton, 1988), 230.
43 Mittermaier, 'Die künftige Stellung des Advokatenstandes', 138.
44 M. Hachenburg, Lebenserinnerungen eines Rechtsanwalts und Briefe aus der
Emigration, J. Schadt (ed.) (Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne/Mainz, 1978: Ist
edn, 1927), 57, 60-2; Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 612-13.
45 Gneist, Freie Advocatur, 58.
46 Huerkamp, Aufstieg der Arzte, 254-61.
47 Gneist, Freie Advocatur, 61-2; Verhandlungen des Vierten Deutschen Juristenta-
ges, 2 (Berlin, 1864), 285-94, 297-9.
48 Gneist, Freie Advocatur, 98-100.
49 ibid., 60.
50 See, for example, the contrasting attitudes of Lebrecht (a lawyer from
Ulm) and Schwarze (a Saxon lawyer) in Verhandlungen des Vierten Deuts-
chen Juristentages, 2: 307-9 and Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 580.
51 Ostler, 17; Preussische Anwalts-Zeitung, 27 Dec. 1866, 817.
52 Preussische Anwalts-Zeitung, 30 Apr. 1863 and 6 Aug. 1863, 143-4, 255.
53 Lewald, 'Vorschlag zur Ausdehnung der Anwalts-Thätigkeit auf den
ganzen Bezirk des Appellationsgerichts', Preussische Anwalts-Zeitung, 2
Nov. 1865, 689-90.
54 Gneist, Freie Advocatur, 29.
55 Weissler, RechtsanwaltschaJt, 558-66.
56 This claim was made by Adolf Hoffmann in the first reading of the
Rechtsanwaltsordnung in the Reichstag: Stenographische Berichte über die
Verhandlungen des Reichstages (SBRT) , 12 Feb. 1878, 16.
57 For Friedberg's comments, see SBRT, 12 Feb. 1878, 12 and 18 Feb.
1879, 17-18.
58 These figures are taken from Kolbeck, Juristenschwemmen, 89; Ostler,
Rechtsanwälte, 60; Döhring, Rechtspflege, 154. Cf. Kurlbaum's comments
on shortages of lawyers in rural areas in East Elbia in 1876, SBRT,
13 May 1878, 1290.
59 These figures exclude those lawyers employed at the Reichsgericht in
Leipzig, a category which was excluded from the general liberalization
of 1878. The statistics are presented in Ostler, Rechtsanwälte, 60.
194
BETWEEN ESTATE AND PROFESSION
197
7
11
The German Absolutist states of the period leading up to the
1848 revolution constructed elaborate medical hierarchies in which
different orders of healers each received their own particular
assigned status or position. The academically educated doctors
(Är.cte) came above surgeons (Wundär.cte) who were in turn subdiv-
ided into various grades. Public health services were apart of the
Enlightenment heritage of a so-called medical police (mediänische
Poli.cei), which gave doctors a range of legal powers to detain and
segregate the siek, and to remove public nuisances. 12 How much
the hierarchy of practitioners actually conformed to the realities
of highly diverse types of healers in differing regional contexts is
an open question, but such arrangements do at least convey a
sense of the official view of how medical care was provided on an
authoritarian and paternalistic basis. Resentment of the hierarchy
as oppressive prompted the emergence of a medical reform move-
ment in the mid nineteenth century to demand freedom from state
control. In putting forward this demand, the movement found in
experimental biology an autonomous basis for a new science of
hygiene which, it argued, should replace the state medical policing
system.
Scientifically based professions such as medicine and engineering
offered career opportunities for the commercial and academically
educated bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century. Medicine had a
lower status than other traditional professions such as law or
administration, but ranked higher than engineering or journalism,
which absorbed graduates from philosophical faculties. The results
of an overcrowded medical profession were internal divisions and
a growing press ure to develop specializations. The traditional elite
of the medical profession - the select number of university pro-
fessors at prestige universities like Berlin - was recruited from the
higher echelons of the bourgeoisie from the 1890s onwards, indicat-
ing an increasing exdusiveness among the elite of the profession. 13
This was countered by the emergence of new organizations among
the mass of economically struggling medical practitioners. Most
prominent among these was the League to Defend the Economic
201
PAUL WEINDLING
poor and that the 'social question' should mainly lie within the
jurisdietion of the medieal profession. Thus the radiealism of the
journal was eireumseribed by its opposition to mass demoeraey and
soeialism. The journal outlined sehemes for the reform of poor law
medieal praetiee as weH as demands for increasing the inftuenee of
scientifically edueated experts in state affairs. In this view, scientific
and medical qualifieations were to renderpublie health administration
immune to political meddling by government ministers. Later
generations ofmedical reformers went on to demand that the minister
responsible for health matters should himself be a doctor. 16
Medical and health affairs in Prussia were in fact controlled
by the so-called Kultusministerium, the government ministry also
responsible for edueation and religion. This grouping together of
three rather different areas of competence was officially justified
in terms of eombating materialism and scientific empiricism by
linking medieine to Christian charity and faith, which were also
central elements in the educational curriculum. Thus the demands
for 'free and objective scienee' beeame a rallying cry for the rad-
icals during the 1848 revolutions against the exeessive intervention-
ism of ehureh and state. New sciences such as Virchow's cellular
pathology had dual seeularizing and political funetions. Virchow
demanded the abolition of advisory and eonsultative bodies, such
as the provincial medical colleges or the Prussian Scientific Advis-
ory Committee for Medical Affairs, which consisted largely of
university professors. Instead he advocated a Health Council
(Gesundheitsrat) as both a teehnical-advisory and administrative
authority in the medical field. This was to consist of members
elected by the medical profession. Not only was the profession
to establish representative eh ambers (Kammer), doctors also, in
Virchow's scheme, had to take a leading role in civic associations
of a more general kind. Virchow's activities in municipal public
health reform and in the left-liberal Progressive Party from 1856
onwards indicated the ability of scientifie qualifications to provide
political status and authority. Virchow was an active force in the
Berlin municipal assembly, campaigning for munieipal hospitals,
disinfection facilities, and improved sewers and water supply. The
premises of his civic activism were, in turn, scientifie: Virchow
viewed the state as a co-operative social organism, and he com-
pared the individual citizen to an individual cello Sociallife should,
therefore, be eonstructed aceording to natural laws and the scien-
tist should become a legislator. Whatever else their effects may
203
PAUL WEINDLING
have been, one thing such ideas certainly did was to legitimate
the increasing penetration of government by expert elites such as
the medical profession.
Although German professionalization was marked by a special
relations hip with the state, which had a monopoly on professional
qualifications, Virchow's strategy was to argue against state con-
trol, and for a free market in medical practice. Only the state-
sanctioned title of Arzt - the university-trained and qualified medi-
cal practitioner - was to be legally protected. The historian Clau-
dia Huerkamp has, to be sure, noted the 'democratic character'
of the medical reform movement, but its demand for larger num-
bers of poor law doctors and for the state funding of scientific
facilities indicated how the state was none the less expected to
step in to boost the medical professionY Virchow believed that
the superiority of scientific qualifications guaranteed the status of
the profession. The importance of academic titles in medicine -
Doktor, Privatdozent, and Professor - conferred both status and profit
by attracting large numbers of patients. In addition came the titles
of Sanitätsrat and Geheimer Medizinalrat which satisfied the appetite
of the educated middle dass for official status and prestige. This
contrasts with the training and professional career patterns in
Britain and the United States, where it has been forcefully argued
that scientific superiority was not necessary for professional success. 18
The unification of Germany left public health administration
divided between the administrations of the federated states and the
municipalities. The central Imperial state in Berlin also intervened,
however, through the Bismarckian introduction of sickness and
accident insurance and pension schemes. The state laid down
legislative guidelines for those groups of workers who were to be
compulsorily insured, and dictated the minimum contributions and
benefits. There was also a system of supervisory provincial and
state insurance offices. But it is important to recognize that the
sickness insurance funds (Krankenkassen) were - within the frame-
work of legislation and state supervision - autonomous organiza-
tions financed by and responsible to employers and workers rather
than to the state as such. Partly for this reason, doctors' representa-
tive organizations (Ärztekammer) were officially recognized by the
Prussian state in 1887. Although there had been such representa-
tive bodies in other states since their introduction in Baden in
1864, medical demands were now becoming more intense as the
doctors responded to the power of the sickness funds, which soon
204
BOURGEOIS VALUES, DOCTORS AND THE STATE
208
BOURGEOIS VALUES, DOCTORS AND THE STATE
III
In the course of the First World War, pressures grew for inereased
medieal representation on the Prussian seientific advisory eommit-
tee. The pharmaeeutical industry was also represented from 1918.
Further eommittees were established under the Weimar Republie,
including one for population poliey and racial hygiene that was
set up in 1919. In 1921 these various groups of medieal advisers
were reorganized with the founding of the Prussian Health Com-
mittee, which can be seen as a step towards Virehow's old idea
of anational health eommittee. This now amounted virtually to a
parliament of professionals, able to initiate and advise on legis-
lation and administrative procedures. Poliey formulation and
implementation involved, but did not depend on, parliamentary
representatives, and the role of elected doctors in the Prussian
Assembly in the shaping of medical legislation was also consider-
able.
Under the Weimar Republic, specialized offieials enjoyed greater
stability in office than other politically appointed civil servants
did. 30 Attempts by experts in social hygiene, such as Grotjahn, to
establish a unified ministry for public health, population poliey,
and social security were thwarted by deeentralizing and demoerat-
izing tendencies. Administrators took leading roles in eugenie
societies, and the state contributed substantially to welfare organiz-
ations, whieh provided career outlets for economically hard-pressed
middle-class professionals. 31 The Prussian medical official Otto
Krohne presided over the Prussian and German Racial Hygiene
Societies, for example. Despite the enhaneed role of the state in
medical edueation and welfare, the majority of the medieal pro-
fession resisted ealls for the socialization of medicine. While there
was a fear of Soviet-style 'polyclinies' and hospitals, the profession
209
PAUL WEINDLING
IV
In the years from 1870 to 1914, the number of doctors (including
both physicians and surgeons) increased even more rapidly than
the expanding population: in 1876 there were 13,728 doctors in
211
PAUL WEINDLING
v
U te Frevert, in her study of illness as a political problem in
nineteenth-century Germany, has recently reconstructed a public
discourse on health which had its beginnings in the enlightened
reforms of the late eighteenth century.58 This public discourse
reached a new pitch of intensity in Imperial Germany, which saw
an intense effort to popularize medical discoveries, and went some
way towards creating a scientifically literate bourgeoisie. There
was public adulation for scientifically based medical achievements,
such as Koch's discovery of the cause of cholera in 1884 or
Behring's serum therapy against diphtheria during the 1890s. 59
Even the radical sexual reformers of the Weimar Republic such
as Magnus Hirschfeld and Max Hodann based their demands für
the liberalization of restrictions on homosexuality, contraception,
and abortion on the tenets of evo1utionary bio10gy.60
Middle-class movements for the reform of alcohol abuse and
prostitution, for the propagation of infant and child welfare, and
for the prevention of tuberculosis, had ideas of positive health as
their principal rationale. Welfare organizations put increasing
weight on the argument that improved health was a precondition
of a fit army and an expanding nation. Such organizations as the
Reich League for the Prevention ofTuberculosis (founded in 1895),
the German League for Combating Venereal Disease (founded in
1902) and the Empress Victoria House for the Combating ofInfant
Mortality (founded in 1909) explicitly included imperialism as a
rationale for their activities. 61 The public support given by figures
such as the liberal imperialist Friedrich Naumann to these ins ti-
tutions was based on the principle that social reform was a means
of achieving a militarily strong and healthy nation. Naumann's
support for child allowances, for the bourgeois feminist movement,
and for improved housing such as that advocated by the German
disciples of William Morris, indicate how positive health shaped
a new type of bourgeois lifestyle. Garden cities, hygienic housing
218
BOURGEOIS VALUES, DOCTORS AND THE STATE
NOTES
1 See, for example, H.J. Varain (ed.) Interessenverbände in Deutschland
(Cologne, 1973).
2 See the classic study of G. Eley, Reshaping the German Right. Radical
Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven and London,
1980).
3 Eley, Reshaping, 122-3.
4 R. Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German. A Cultural Study 01 the
Pan-German League 1886-1914 (London, 1984), 102-21.
5 But, see S. Parlow, 'Über einige kolonialistische und annexionistische
Aspekte bei deutschen Ärzten von 1884 bis zum Ende des I. Weltkrie-
ges', Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Rostock, mathematisch-
naturwissenschaftliche Reihe, 15 (1964), 537-49.
6 Of the many works by F. Tennstedt, for example, Vom Proleten zum
Industriearbeiter (Cologne, 1985).
7 For the political implications of professional ethics see E. Seidler, 'Der
politische Standort des Arztes im Zweiten Kaiserreich', in G. Mann
and R. Winau (eds), Medizin, Naturwissenschaft, Technik und das Zweite
Kaiserreich (Göttingen, 1977), 87-101.
8 For the public discourse on health, see G. Göckenjan, Kurieren und
Staat machen. Gesundheit und Medizin in der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt-
on-Main, 1985); A Labisch and R. Spree (eds), Medizinische Deutungs-
macht im sozialen Wandel (Bonn, 1989). For medical societies, see E.
Graf, Das ärztliche Vereinswesen in Deutschland und der deutsche Ärztebund
(Leipzig, 1890). For medicine and liberal politics, see M. Hubenstorff,
'Sozialhygiene und industrielle Pathologie im späten Kaiserreich', in
R. Müller et al. (eds), Industrielle Pathologie in historischer Sicht (Bremen,
220
BOURGEOIS VALUES, DOCTORS AND THE STATE
1985), 22-107. Among the political parties only the health policies of
the SPD and KPD have received detailed attention: A. Labisch, 'Die
gesundheitspolitischen Vorstellungen der deutschen Sozialdemokratie
von ihrer Gründung bis zur Parteispaltung (1863-1917)', Archiv fir
Sozialgeschichte, 16 (1976), 325-70; 1. Winter, 'Geschichte der Gesun-
dheitspolitik der KPD in der Weimarer Republik', Zeitschriftfir ärztli-
che Fortbildung, 67 (1973), 455-72, 498-526.
9 C. Huerkamp, 'Die preussisch-deutsche Ärzteschaft als Teil des
Bildungsbürgertums', W. Conze and]. Kocka (eds), Bildungsbürgertum
im 19. Jahrhundert. Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in internationalen
Vergleichen (Stuttgart, 1985), 358-87. C. Huerkamp and R. Spree,
'Arbeitsmarktstrategien der deutschen Ärzteschaft im späten 19. und
frühen 20. Jahrhundert', in T. Pierenkemper and R. Tilly (eds), Histor-
ische Arbeitsmarktforschung (Göttingen, 1982).
10 A. Labisch, 'Doctors, workers and the scientific cosmology of the
industrial world. The soda! construction of health and of the "Homo
Hygienicus" " Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (1985), 599-615.
11 P.]. Weindling, 'Hygienepolitik als sozialintegrative Strategie im
späten Deutschen Kaiserreich', in A. Labisch and R. Spree (eds),
Medizinische Deutungsmacht im Sozialen Wandel des 19. und frühen 20.
Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1989), 37-55.
12 G. Rosen, 'The fa te of the concept of medical police 1780-1890', in
Rosen (ed.), From Medical Police to Social Medicine (New York, 1974),
142-58.
13 P.J. Weindling, 'Theories of the cell state in Imperial Germany', in
C. Webster (ed.), Biology, Medicine and Sociery 1840-1900 (Cambridge,
1981), 99-155.
14 R. Virchow, 'Das Medidnal-Ministerium', Die medicinische Reform, 3
(21 July 1848) and 4 (28 July 1848); E. Ackerknecht, Rudoif Virchow.
Doctor, Statesman and Anthropologist (Madison, 1953).
15 P.J. Weindling, 'Was social medicine revolutionary? Virchow on
famine and typhus in 1848', Bulletin of the Sociery of the Social History of
Medicine, 34 (1984), 13-18.
16 Die medicinische Reform. Eine Wochenschrift, erschienen vom 10. Juli 1848 bis
zum 29. Juni 1849 (Berlin, 1983).
17 Huerkamp, Aufstieg, 243.
18 M.S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism. A Sociological Anafysis (Berkeley,
1977), 20-1.
19 For local dimensions, see F. Tennstedt, 'Die Errichtung von Krankenk-
assen in deutschen Städten nach dem Gesetz betr. der Krankenversich-
erung der Arbeiter vom 15. Juni 1883', Zeitschrift fir Sodalreform, 29
(1983), 297-338.
20 A. Labisch and F. Tennstedt, Der Weg zum Gesetz über die Vereinheitli-
chung des Gesundheitswesens (Düsseldorf, 1985), 44.
21 ZStA Merseburg, Rep. 92 Nachlass Althoff, Nr. 314, Bd 2: Abtrennung
der Medizinalverwaltung.
22 Labisch and Tennstedt, Der Weg, 48.
23 25 Jahre preussische Medizinalverwaltung seit Erlass des Kreisarztgesetzes, 1901
bis 1926 (Berlin 1927).
221
PAUL WEINDLING
24 The source for Tables 7.1 and 7.2 is: R. Lüdicke, Die Preussischen
Kultusminister und ihre Beamten im ersten Jahrhundert des Ministeriums,
1817-1917 (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1918).
25 ZStA Merseburg, Rep. 76, VIII B, Nr. 30.
26 ZStA Merseburg, Rep. 76, VIII B, Nr. 38.
27 ZStA Merseburg, Rep. 92, Althoff AI, Nr. 263 Wissenschaftliche
Deputation.
28 H. Kaelble, Historical Research on Social Mobili~y (London, 1981), 67 far
the education sector.
29 ZStA Merseburg, Rep. 76, VIII B, Nr. 338 Medizinalbeamte.
30 W. Runge, Politik und Beamte im Parteienstaat (Stuttgart, 1968).
31 P.J. Weindling, 'Die Preussiche Medizinalverwaltung und die
"Rassenhygiene" " Zeitschrift fur Sozialreform, 30 (1984), 675-87.
32 R. Spree, 'Kurpfuscherei-Bekämpfung und ihre sozialen Funktionen
während des 19. und zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts', in Labisch und
Spree, Medizinische Deutungsmacht, 103-21.
33 GStA Dahlem Rep. 84a, Nr. 1240 Kurpfuscherei BI 20-22.
34 ZStA Merseburg, Rep. 76, VIII B, Nr. 1342. ZStA Potsdam, 15.01,
Nr. 26248.
35 GStA Dahlem Rep. 84a Nr. 1241 Kurpfuscherei 1910-33.
36 ZStA Merseburg, Rep. 76, VIII B, Nr. 48 BI 362.
37 P.]. Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unifi-
cation and Nazism (Cambridge, 1989).
38 H. Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society in England since 1880 (London,
1984), 80.
39 Huerkamp, Aufstieg, 151.
40 Far further documentation, see Weindling, Health, Race and German
Politics.
41 Huerkamp, Aufstieg, 210-11.
42 P. ]. Weindling, 'Medical practice in Imperial Germany. The case
book of Alfred Grotjahn', Bulletin of the Histo~y of Medicine, 61 (1987),
391--410.
43 A. Blaschko, 20 Ratschläge für junge Männer (Berlin n.d.).
44 Huerkamp, Aufstieg, 215.
45 B. Möller, Robert Koch (Hanover, 1950), 53-92.
46 H. Sohnrey, Wegweiser für ländliche Wohlfahrts- und Heimatpflege (Berlin,
1900).
47 C. Huerkamp, 'Ärzte und Patienten. Zum strukturellen Wandel der
Arzt-Patient Beziehung vom ausgehenden 18. bis zum frühen 20.
Jahrhundert', in Labisch and Spree (eds), Medizinische Deutungsmacht,
57-73.
48 For the activities of this society, see J1itteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft
;:ur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten, I (1902) and following volumes.
49 A. Blaschko, 20 Ratschläge fur junge Männer (Berlin n.d.).
50 U. Linse, 'Über den Prozess der Syphilisation - Körper und Sexualität
um 1900 aus ärztlicher Sicht', in A. Schuller and N. Heim (eds),
Vermessene Sexualität (Berlin, Heidelberg, 1987), 163-85.
51 For abortion and contraceptive techniques, see]. Woycke, Birth Control
zn Germany 1871-1933 (London, 1988).
222
BOURGEOIS VALUES, DOCTORS AND THE STATE
223
8
11
The 'Heimat' movement is usually taken to refer to a number of
nostalgie cultural organizations founded in the l890s. 5 The
'Heimat' art (Heimatkunst) movement of Adolf Bartels and Fried-
rich Lienhard purveyed a softened image of German rural life
through the medium of popular literature. More than tinged with
anti-Semitism, Bartels's 'Heimat' was a purely imaginary place,
essentially a Germany purged of Berlin and the urban culture it
represented. 6 Similarly, the League of 'Heimat' Protection (Bund
Heimatschut:::,), founded by the eccentric racist Ernst Rudorff, sought
to combat the corrupting influences of urban life on the German
people. Heinrich Sohnrey's German Association for Rural Welfare
and Cultivation of the 'Heimat' (Deutscher Verein für ländliche
Wohifahrts- und Heimatpflege) was ostensibly more rooted in real
social problems. But Sohnrey, like Bartels and Rudorff, was a
reactionary. The most he had to offer Germans under the rubric
of 'Heimat' ca re was areturn to paternalist structures of social
and economic organization.
Given such a collection of romanties, reactionaries and anti-
Semites, it is small wonder that historians have lumped all manifes-
tations of enthusiasm for 'Heimat' among the cultural roots of
National Socialism. 7 But beyond these particular organizations,
there was a different 'Heimat' movement with much less obvious
links to the eclectic ideology of Nazism. This other movement was
not anational phenomenon at all , but a regional, even a local
one. Its organizations rarely reached out beyond the borders of a
particular province, except to draw in natives (Landsmänner) who
had left their homeland. Its publications addressed a local
225
CELlA APPLEGATE
museums, they wrote its his tory, they eonstrueted paths and monu-
ments in its lands cape, they extolled its beauty, they made jokes
and wrote stories about its people, they revived its old eustoms
and styles, they eomposed anthems in its honour. But as a mark
of their sueeess, the politieal, eonfessional, and eultural ambiguity
of the Palatinate was by 1914 not an issue. Everyone talked at least
as though loeal identity - loeal distinetiveness - was something not
only real but obvious and important. They talked, in other words,
as though the Palatinate was and always had been a 'Heimat'. To
make loeal identity important to Germans in general was the chief
aeeomplishment of the 'Heimat' enthusiasts; how they expressed
its importanee is what we shall next eonsider.
III
The 'Heimat' aetivities of the Palatine bourgeoisie represented an
interpretation of German eulture in at least three of its fundamen-
tal aspeets. First, the 'Heimat' assoeiations embodied avision of
national unity as the gathering together of diversity, especially
loeal diversity. German national identity, whieh was the implieit
subject of mueh eontemplation on the Heimat, thus beeame an aet
of faith, an assertion of aetive belonging, rather than a eolleetion of
partieular traits. No less intrinsie to the individual, the national
identity of 'Heimat' imagining relied on eertain emotional orien-
tations - love of the land, endurance, piety, hard work. Second,
the 'Heimat' associations performed a drama of reeoneiliation
between the old and the new, tradition and modernity, eountryside
and city. They erased the eonflicts between these things; they
promoted a eompromise that was more than rhetorical. Third, the
'Heimat' associations preaehed a message of soeial harmony
among classes, eonfessions, political factions, and seetional
interests.
The national mission of 'Heimat' associations was in many ways
their first mission, out of wh ich grew their efforts to counteract
the destruetive, divisive eonsequenees of modernity. The founders
of the Historieal Assoeiation, for instanee, understood their aetivi-
ties as essentially patriotie: the Assoeiation's work was a eontri-
bution to the building of national eonseiousness. Its goal would
be to awaken a 'historical sensibility' in the Palatines through
knowledge of the 'narrow Heimat': 'the love of the Fatherland',
concluded one of its founders, 'is rooted in the love of Heimat'.32
233
CELlA APPLEGA TE
242
LOCALISM AND THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
IV
Finally, we must ask ourselves why the German bourgeoisie dis-
played such passionate concern for locality. To see this concern
as simply a form of nostalgic longing for times that are past and
places that are changed would be to reduce the phenomenon to
its most diched aspect. The vitality of the 'Heimat' idea among
the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie suggests that it must have been
connected to something more fundamental in bourgeois life than
indulgent retrospection, something more akin to identity or self-
consciousness. 62 In The Fall 01 Public Man, Richard Sennett pro-
posed adefinition of identity as the 'meeting point between who
a person wants to be and what the world allows hirn to be', the
'place in alandscape formed by the intersection of circumstance
and desire' .63 In the case of many bourgeois Germans, the 'Heimat'
was this 'place' . The degree of invention that one finds in cel-
ebrations of the past, the customs and the natural beauty of
'Heimat' makes sense only from such a perspective. Invention was
the way one brought about the 'intersection of circumstance and
desire'; invention made one's place of residence into an embodi-
ment of one's identity.
That localism, however refurbished, could have formed the sub-
stance of bourgeois identity raises the familiar question of whether
the German bourgeoisie was fit to take a leading role in the making
of a modern nation. The historian Immanuel Wallerstein has
recently pointed out that no bourgeoisie (not even the English)
lived up to its reputation as a ruthlessly individualistic, profit-
maximizing, modernizing, centralizing dass. 64 Modernization itself,
historians now recognize, was at the very least uneven in its trans-
formation ofsociety. We ought also then to adjust our expectations
of the bourgeoisie as the 'modernizing' dass. Persistent local
attachments, which represented at least a partial resistance to the
powerful modern state, may be more characteristic of bourgeois
people everywhere than we have been used to allow.
The German bourgeoisie's preoccupation with the idea of horne
was also far from a non-starter in the modernizing race. What
made their 'Heimat' so good a reflection of bourgeois identity was
the indusion of more than the locality in its meaning, as we have
seen. It expressed a sense of place that could be made as general
as the nation or as specific as the neighbourhood and a sense of
belonging that was equally flexible. As a result, it illuminates a
243
CELlA APPLEGA TE
248
LOCALISM AND THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
NOTES
1 The concept of 'keywords' originated with Raymond Williams, Gulture
and Society, 1780-1950 (New York, 1966), and Keywords, rev. edn
(Oxford, 1983).
2 A popu1ar account of the 'idea' of home is Wito1d Rybczynski's Home:
A Short History of an Idea (New York, 1986).
3 Whether for this reason or not, 'Heimat' does not appear in the
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: historisehs Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache
in Deutschland, Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck
(eds) (Stuttgart, 1972); it has, however, been the subject of some
1iterary-critica1 attention, including the re cent collection, edited by
H.W. Seliger, Der Begriff 'Heimat' in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur
(Munieh, 1987).
4 Wolfgang Schivelbusch discusses the loss of Benjamin's aura in places
in The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th
Gentury (Berkeley, 1986), 38-42.
5 See, for instance, Klaus Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Grossstadtfeind-
schaft (Meisenheim am Glan, 1970); Leonore Dieck, 'Die
Literargeschichtliche Stellung der Heimatkunst', phi!. diss. (Munieh,
1938); Martin Greiner, 'Heimatkunst', Reallexicon der deutschen Literatur-
geschichte, 1 (Berlin, 1958); Ina-Maria Greverus, Der Territoriale Mensch:
Ein literaturanthropologische Versuch zum Heimat-Phänomen (Frankfurt-on-
Main, 1972); and Erika Jenny, 'Die Heimatkunstbewegung', phi!. diss.
(Basel, 1934).
6 Greiner, 'Heimatkunst', 629-31.
7 See Bergmann, Agrarromantik; and Hermann Glaser, The Gultural Roots
of National Socialism [Spiesser-ldeologie] (London, 1978). A more recent
interpretation of the nineteenth-century 'Heimat' movement as essen-
tially reactionary is Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of
History as Film (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 163-6.
8 According to the charter of the Bund Heimatschutz, which was actually
little more than a 100se association of many independent local clubs,
its goal was to preserve 'the German "Heimat" in its' naturally and
historically developed diversity'. Cited in 'Der Deutsche Bund Heimat-
schutz und seine Landesvereine' , Der Deutsche Heimatschutz (Munich,
1930), 187.
9 For a more detailed account of this 'Heimat' movement, in the context
of a century of 10calist activism, see my forthcoming study A Nation
of Provincials: The German ldea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990); the 'Heimat'
writers of Schleswig-Holstein are the subject of Jörn Christiansen, 'Die
Heimat': Ana(yse einer regionalen Zeitschrift und ihres Umfeldes (Neumünster,
1980).
10 An excellent summary of the Palatinate's relations with Bavaria is
Kurt Baumann, 'Probleme der pfälzischen Geschichte im 19. Jahrhun-
dert', Mitteilungen des Historischen Vereins der Pfalz, 51 (1953); see also
Heiner Haan, Hauptstaat-Nebenstaat (Koblenz, 1977).
11 The exact figures in 1825 were 56.9 per cent Protestants, 39.8 per
cent Catholics, and 3.4 per cent Mennonites, Anabaptists, and Jews;
249
CELlA APPLEGA TE
by 1961, the percentages had shifted only slightly, with 2 per cent
more Gatholics. See Willi Alter, 'Die Bevölkerung der Pfalz', Pfalzatlas,
Textband (Speyer, 1963-81), 180, 190. The scattered distribution of
the confessions is shown in Wolfgang Eger, 'Die Konfessionsverteilung
im Jahre 1825', Pfalzatlas, 245-51.
12 On the militant Protestant tradition, see Glaus-Peter Glasen, The Palat-
inate in European History, 1559-1660 (Oxford, 1963).
13 W.H. Riehl, Die Pfälzer: Ein Rheinisches Volksbild, reprint edn (Neustadt/
Weinstrasse, 1973), 50.
14 See especiaIly Rudolf Schreiber, 'Grundlagen der Entstehung eines
Gemeinschaftsbewusstseins der Pfalzer im 19. Jahrhundert', in Die
Raumbeziehungen der Pfalz in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Bonn, 1954), 35-8.
15 On French influences in the region, see Karl-Georg Faber, 'Die Rheini-
schen Institutionen', Hambacher Gespräche 1962 (Wiesbaden, 1964), pp.
20--40; and Elizabeth Fehrenbach, 'Die Einftihrung des französischen
Rechts in der Pfalz und in Baden', in F. L. Wagner (ed.), Strukturwandel
im Pfälzischen Raum vom Ancien Regime bis zum Vormärz (Speyer, 1982).
See also Max Spindler, 'Die Pfalz in ihrem Verhältnis zum bayerischen
Staat in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts', Festgabe fur seine
königliche Hoheit Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern (Munieh, 1953).
16 On Palatine radicalism, see Wolfgang Schieder, 'Der rheinpfalzische
Liberalismus von 1832 als politische Protestbewegung' , in Vom Staat
des Ancien Regime zum Modernen Parteienstaat: Festschriftfor Theodor Schieder
(Munieh, 1978), 169-95; and Veit Valentin, Das Hambacher Nationaljest
(Berlin, 1932).
17 On National Liberalism in the region, see Ernst Otto Bräunehe, Parte-
ien und Reichstagswahlen in der Rheinpfalz (Speyer, 1982); and Theodor
Schieder, Die kleindeutsche Partei in Bayern in den Kämpfen um die nationale
Einheit, 1863--1871 (Munieh, 1936).
18 A seemingly innocuous example of this effort to reorient local con-
sciousness was the renaming of the district in 1837 from 'Rheinkreis'
to 'Pfalz', the latter having a less rationalist and bureaucratic sound
to it, as weIl as evoking the prestige of the Electors Palatine. The
romantic and anti-revolutionary imaginings of Friedrich Blaul in
Träume und Schäume vom Rhein, first published in 1838, were also typical
of this trend. On the broader subject of Bavarian state-building, see
Werner K. Blessing, Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft (Göttingen,
1982).
19 Friedrich Mauer and Friedrich Stroh, Deutsche Wortgeschichte, II (Berlin
1959), 294; on its ancient roots, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches
Wiirterbuch, 4; 2 (Leipzig, 1877), 864-6.
20 This notion of local 're-imagining' owes much to Benedict Anderson's
Imagined Communities: Rejlections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(New York, 1983); on 'Heimat' literat ure, see Norbert Mecklenburg,
Erzählte Provinz (Königstein/Ts, 1986), Dieck, 'Heimatkunst', and
Jenny, 'Die Heimatkunstbewegung'; on 'Heimat' law, Mack Walker,
German Home Towns (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971), 296, and Garl von Rotteck
and Garl Welcker, Staatslexikon, 7 (Altona, 1839), 665; on 'Heimat'
250
LOCALISM AND THE GERMAN BOURGEOISIE
254
9
11
At first sight, of course, it may appear that the honour of the
bourgeoisie had nothing to do with the honour of the duellist.
Indeed, the duel has gene rally been regarded as an aristocratic
phenomenon, as the expression of a specifically noble concept of
honour, which reached its apogee in the eighteenth century. In
the bourgeois nineteenth century, by contrast, it is usually argued
that duelling experienced what was litde more than an artificially
stimulated Indian summer. The fact that middle-class men also
fought duels has been interpreted as a sign of their susceptibility
to 'atavistic "neo-feudalism" , and as a 'deviation from the natural
bent of bourgeois thinking and behaviour'.4
But this interpretation rests on a picture of the bourgeoisie that
is both idealized and one-dimensional. It does justice neither to
the image which they presented to society nor to the cultural
understanding they had of themselves. When historians contrast
the 'aristocratic' notion of honour, expressed in the duel, with
'bourgeois' notions of honour, they usually present the latter as
generalized, democratic, and opposed to the maintenance of status
barriers, as a form of citizen's honour which released the individual
from all ties of social hierarchy. Civil honour, it is usually argued,
only involved the obligations of the individual citizen at one
extreme and the collectivity of all citizens at the other,without
any intermediate groups in between. Such an interpretation can
call upon contemporary witnesses who defined bourgeois honour
unequivocally as the general honour of the citizens and denied
'specialized concepts of honour' any right to exist at all. Middle-
257
UTE FREVERT
III
Nevertheless, civil honour could not, either as the general honour
of the citizen or as professional honour, be precisely equated with
the honour of the middle class. Many middle-class men reserved
for particular occasions a special form of duelling honour which
involved radical claims for the individual and at the same time
was structured in an extremely status-bound and exclusive way.
The kinds of points of honour at issue can perhaps best be illus-
trated by abrief examination of some concrete incidents. 16 On 27
May 1861 a duel with pistols was fought between a senior legal
official in the city of Berlin, Karl Twesten, and the Chief of
the Prussian Military Cabinet, Major-General Edwin Baron von
261
UTE FREVERT
he had slapped the poet in the face. Heine immediately sent his
card. Despite the fact that he denied having been slapped in public
by Strauss, Heine none the less considered hirnself obliged to issue
achallenge because of the public attention which the affair was
attracting, above all in Germany. As he wrote to Strauss: 'I am
less concerned to receive satisfaction from you than to demonstrate
to my compatriots by my action that the offensive calumnies which
you are causing to appear in German newspapers are wholly
without foundation.' But the situation became even more delicate
when Strauss named three witnesses who, he said, had been pres-
ent at the incident. Heine's honour, as he reported to Campe, got
'into serious difficulties ... 1 have to admit that 1 was never so
depressed as on the day when 1 read that infamous claim.'23
Campe for his part gave full backing to his author's determi-
nation to counter such rumours as strongly as he could. 'You
cannot allow this kind of slander to go unanswered, not for any
reason! Better dead than dishonoured, the object of the world's
mockery!' Heine's friends and acquaintances were united in their
view that the injured party could only remove the stain of the
(real or imaginary) physical assault from his character through
fighting a duel. Were he to fail to demand satisfaction in this way,
he would brand hirnself definitivelyon the public mind as a
coward. This would be tantamount to pronouncing a sentence of
social death upon hirnself, for he would then become a kind of
social outlaw whom 'every lousy youth' could insult with
impunity.24 Moreover, when the lawyer Gabriel Riesser wrote in
a newspaper article that Heine had deserved his slap in the face
from Strauss, the writer Jakob Venedey, who was a friend of both
men (and later became a leading democrat in the revolutionary
Frankfurt Parliament in 1848) considered that a duel was unavoid-
able in this case as well. Riesser, he wrote, was 'a man of courage
and honour'. His attacks on Heine were thus more than a mere
attempt to make a name for hirnself. So Heine, argued Venedey,
was obliged to take up the gauntlet and 'make an end of the
affair by doing the honourable thing'. This time, however, Heine
declined, declaring that 'if you have dealt with the comet itself,
you don't need to bother with its tail'. Venedey was piqued and
disappointed. 'You may', he wrote to Heine, ' ... reconcile yourself
to this action; but 1 would just like to advise you as a friend, and
as a man who believes his sensibilities in matters of honour to be
as delicate as anybody's, not to make any more fuss about this
264
BOURGEOIS HONOUR: MIDDLE-CLASS DUELLISTS
271
UTE FREVERT
IV
There can be no doubt that duelling in the Early Modern period
was an almost exdusively aristocratic phenomenon. Equally dear
was the determination of the Absolutist (and Late Absolutist) state
to perpetuate its restriction to the exdusive confines of the military
and service nobility. Carl Gottlieb Svarez, the author of the Prus-
sian General Legal Code of 1794, spoke in his lectures before the
Crown Prince in 1791-2 only of 'officers and noblemen' when he
came to discuss the place of duelling in the law. 34 The code itself
reserved the offence of duelling explicitly for these two groups and
laid down that 'when persons who belong neither to the nobility
nor to the officer corps issue or accept achallenge to a duel, such
action shall be deemed to be attempted murder and be punishable
as such' .35 Thus, middle-dass men were unable by definition to
fight duels. Should they none the less attempt to do so, they were
treated as potential murderers. Such a stipulation was intended as
a deterrent. For although at the time of the Code's first drafting,
in 1784, by and large only aristocrats engaged in the practice of
duelling, and the 'citizenry' were regarded in any case as 'less
sensitive to insults', the legislator still thought it necessary to guard
against a possible growth of the practice in the latter by laying
down high penalties for them. 36 When it came to the Code's appli-
cation to concrete cases, the Berlin Supreme Court took the line
that bourgeois duellists were not to be judged under the para-
graphs relating to duelling but were to be punished differently
from noblemen or officers who were found guilty of the same
offence. Even in the late 1830s the most senior judges in Prussia
were still adhering to this principle, even if they found themselves
obliged to admit that 'opinions have changed on the matters of
honour and the capacity to give satisfaction'.37
A decade earlier the Bavarian judicial authorities had already
registered the fact that substantial sections of the middle dass had
effectively acquired the 'honour' necessary to take part in duels.
In 1826, King Ludwig I had promulgated a draft Law on Duelling
on the assumption that 'the belief that honour can only be upheld
by gaining satisfaction for oneself, that is, by an illegal act, is
current almost exclusively among the nobility, officers, higher civil
servants and those of a similar rank, and university students'. But
the legislative commission called upon to consider the draft felt it
272
BOURGEOIS HONOUR: MIDDLE-CLASS DUELL1STS
v
Many reserve officers had already made their acquaintance with
the rules of duelling even before enlisting as one-year volunteers,
particularly if they had been to university and belonged to a
student fraternity. Here too there existed throughout the nine-
teenth century and well into the twentieth a detailed code of
honour, modelled closely on its military counterpart. It differed
only in the fact that student duelling involved rapiers or, in more
serious cases, sabres, whereas in the armed forces the normal
choice of weapons, almost without exception, was pistols. All the
same, pistols were also used with increasing frequency among
students in the last third of the nineteenth century, not least in
order to assert the equal status of affairs of honour in these circles
with those fought out among the military.
Like the officer corps, whose members served together day by
day, messed together, and enjoyed a common social life largely
cut off from the rest of society, students too formed a social group
that was sharply demarcated from the outside world and bound
closely together by manifold social ties, by common age and social
status, and by a shared consciousness which distanced them clearly
from the 'philistine' environment outside the university. Most
277
UTE FREVERT
defend his honour with the requisite vigour. On the other hand, an
intentional insult, once offered, could not be withdrawn, and for
much the same reason, withdrawal would also amount to a derel-
iction of the duty to prove one's courage in public. Thus the only
students admired in the fraternities were those who had shown
themselves to be men by fighting aseries of duels. Since it takes
two to fight a duel, it was increasingly the practice for students
to arrange in advance a formal, instrumental exchange of insults
in order to gain this highly desirable status. This in turn ran
counter to the original real meaning of the duel - obtaining satis-
faction for a genuine insult to one's honour - and thus discredited
the institution itself.
From the l860s onwards, therefore, in order to prevent the
institution of the duel from losing its reputation altogether, the
fraternities began to arrange 'fixed duels' for their members. These
no longer possessed the character of 'affairs of honour' but fell
under the category of 'passages of arms'. Here courage had emanci-
pated itself completely from honour. As an active fraternity
member wrote in 1887, the point was now 'to train the student in
the strength of his own manliness through toughening and increas-
ing his personal courage'.55 Bravery, as experienced student duel-
lists reported, was measured principally in blood. If 'warm blood
was flowing down his body' and the student still awaited the next
blow with equanimity, 'personal courage and self-confidence were
strengthened' and would not desert him in 'difficult situations' in
later life. A physician in Jena who had attended nearly 500 student
duels reported seeing participants continue fighting with their skin
cut to ribbons and the ends of their noses chopped off. 'I have
observed,' he wrote, 'student duellists who did not yet seem to
have lost a great deal of blood suddenly fainting, and when they
were attended to, their boots were filled inch-high with blood.'56
The more blood that flowed, the greater was the demonstration of
courage. Students' honour had become completely identified with
the public staging of coolness and bravery, or, in the language
of the day, the 'superiority of manly determination over animal
cowardice'.57
Although student duels corresponded less and less to genuine
duels, they none the less continued to function in a certain sense
as a training-ground for them. A man who had absorbed the
combative atmosphere of the duelling fraternity in his student days
did not lose it after he had sat his finals. He continued as an 'old
280
BOURGEOIS HONOUR: MIDDLE-CLASS DUELLISTS
boy' to enjoy a elose relationship with his old fraternity and con-
tinued to feel himself bound by its code of honour. 58 As he grew
older, he may weB have lost the touchiness of youth, but he
retained the same basic views of manly honour and its satisfaction.
He had been and carried on being part of a society of honourable
men, which, as one of its members testified in 1936, 'revealed in
me, as in every other fraternity student, just as it did in every
officer in the armed forces, what the educated elasses at that time
held to be the personification of German honour', acquired through
'shared education in the same rank and the same fraternity' and
'shared German notions of honour'.59
These notions were shared, it might be added, not only by
officers (and reserve officers) in the armed forces, not only by
fraternity members, but also by the members of many other stud-
ent associations and organizations; and the 'educated elasses'
ineluded not only higher state officials, doctors, lawyers, university
professors, and schoolmasters, but also, with increasing frequency,
bankers, financiers, merchants, and industrialists as well. For as
businessmen became more liable to complete their education by
taking a degree, so they too were drawn in to the specific culture
of honour that existed among university students. Beyond this,
military service, and the opportunity it offered to obtain a com-
mission in the reserve, contributed further to the spread of this
culture among the male industrial bourgeoisie.
The concept of honour and its satisfaction may thus have lost
its aristocratic exelusivity in the course of the nineteenth century,
and gained a footing in the bourgeoisie, but the middle elass was
none the less very concerned to stop it spreading any further down
the social scale. The fact that the institutions which transmitted
it were not open to men from a petty-bourgeois or working-elass
background placed an almost insuperable barrier to its downward
diffusion. Should it come despite this to a duel between two men
who were not in pos session of the invisible certificates of honour
necessary to engage in this practice, then the judges before whom
such cases were gene rally brought, themselves fuBy paid-up mem-
bers of the honourable elasses from their university days onwards,
would see to it that those concerned were treated differently from
two fuBy honourable duellists. In 1870, for example, when two
waiters fought a pistol duel in Berlin, the court did not sentence
them to the customary period of honourable detention in a castle,
but sent them to prison instead, a 'dishonourable' institution.
281
UTE FREVERT
VI
Duelling and the honour it defended were thus the exdusive pre-
serve of a small group of men qualified by property and education
and the military and academic socialization that went with them.
In this 'honourable society' aristocracy and bourgeoisie were fused
together by shared values on points of honour. That this fusion
was achieved by a unilateral assimilation of the bourgeoisie to
aristocratic values, as critics of the 'feudalization' process, both
among contemporaries and historians, have maintained, must be
doubted in view of the way in which bourgeois writers on the
subject presented it. Middle-dass men did not merely ape alien
models of behaviour, nor were they compelled to do so through
institutions like the fraternities and the officer corps. Instead they
derived their own meanings from these models, meanings which
directly corresponded to the bourgeois cult of individuality rather
than being opposed to it.
For the construction of honour of a kind and degree that could
be satisfied in a du el offered the possibility of an appropriate
appreciation and defence of the autonomous, individual personality
in itself, beyond the inftuence of any pressures exerted by the
collectivity. There is abundant documentation of the demand to
be master of one's own honour and to tolerate no other judge of
the matter. 61 This reftected the need to give absolute priority to a
man's individuality and to defend it against all attempts to render
it captive to others. On the terrain of honour was reserved a 'last
refuge for the freedom of the individual';62 he re the regulatory
interests of the 'omnipotent state') which had al ready reached
much too far into the social existence of its citizens and imposed
painfullimitations on their freedom of action, could be successfully
282
BOURGEOIS HONOUR: MIDDLE-CLASS DUELLISTS
latent for some time, now erupted to shatter the cultural order of
the bourgeois world. The end of the bourgeois age was heralded
on all sides. With its passing, the end came too for one of its
legitimating icons, the 'autonomous personality', whose obituary
the historian Friedrich Meinecke penned in elegiac terms in his
memoirs. In its stead, wrote Meinecke, there had appeared the
personality of the 'instrumental human being', who had sunk to
the level of carrying out 'a mere function, without value of its own',
and had been taken over by 'impersonallife-forces'.7o Feelings such
as these had al ready unsettled the fin-de-siecle generation and found
their expression in various movements seeking to inaugurate new
lifestyles and new forms of culture. Indeed, the enthusiasm with
which men of the educated middle dass greeted the outbreak of
the First World War in 1914 owed not a litde to their longing for
'manly deeds' that would restore the individual to his old rights
and replace the anonymity and alienation of everyday life by 'the
great, the strong, the festive'. 71 And not a few such men saw the
war as a kind of duel writ large, in which honour could once again
be put to the test.
Such hopes were quickly dashed. Students who, inspired by
'blazing manly ardour', had volunteered for the front and were
still comparing the batde with their duels in the first days of the
war - 'strict self-discipline is part of it, the ability to stand there
in the duel and take it without batting an eyelid' - soon had to
confess the error of their perception. 'The whole way of fighting
is what repels one. To seek to fight and not to be able to defend
oneselfl The attack, which I had thought would be so beautiful',
wrote one, 'what is it, except a rush ac ross to the next cover from
this hail of vicious bullets!? And not to see the enemy who fires
them!'72 Such a situation indeed had nothing in common with the
dassic form of the duel. The First World War was not at all about
looking the enemy straight in the eye, squaring up to hirn in
person, or fighting hirn with the same weapons and at the same
risk, for honour and the assertion of manly courage rather than
victory or defeat. The experience of 1914-18 did not strengthen
men in their individuality. Instead, it caused them to experience
their final subjection to the dictates of technology and industrial
mass-production. Military defeat in 1918 and the subsequent emas-
culation of the German armed forces in the Weimar Republic
further undermined the legitimacy of duelling honour and helped
brand it as atavistic.
285
UTE FREVERT
NOTES
This chapter was translated by Richard J. Evans. A German version has
recently been published in the Historische Zeitschrift.
1 J. Eckstein, Die Ehre in Philosophie und Recht (Leipzig, 1889), 38, 73,
76.
288
BOURGEOIS HONOUR: MIDDLE-CLASS DUELLISTS
2 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen, 1972), 635, 722.
3 G. Simme!, So;;,iologie, 5th edn (Berlin, 1968), 403-6.
4 V.G. Kiernan, The Duel in European History. Honour and the Reign of
Aristocrary (Oxford, 1988), 271, 274; similarly, H.-U. Wehler, Das
Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1918 (Göttingen, 1973), 163; A.J. Mayer,
Adelsmacht und Bürgertum. Die Krise der europäischen Gesellschaft 1848-1914
(Munich, 1984), 109-10. For the counter-argument, based on a com-
parison between Britain and Germany, see U. Frevert, 'Bürgerlichkeit
und Ehre. Zur Geschichte des Duells in England und Deutschland',
in J. Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, 3 (Munich, 1988),
101-40.
5 Mittheilungen über die Verhandlungen des ordentlichen Landtags im Königreiche
Sachsen während des Jahres 1849. Zweite Kammer (Dresden, n.d.), 851,
864.
6 ibid., 880.
7 E. Bleich (ed.), Der Erste Vereinigte Landtag in Berlin 1847, part 2 (Berlin,
1847), 202-3.
8 M. Riede!, 'Bürger, Staatsbürger, Bürgertum', in O. Brunner et al.
(eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe I (Stuttgart, 1972), 672-725, esp
683-5.
9 Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preussischen Staaten von 1794. Textausgabe
(Frankfurt-on-Main, 1970), 690-1.
10 Quoted in R. Koselleck, Preussen ;;,wischen Reform und Revolution, 2nd edn
(Stuttgart, 1975), 103.
11 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 635.
12 P. Bourdieu, 'Klassenstellung und Klassenlage', in Bourdieu, Zur So;;,io-
logie der symbolischen Formen (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1974), 42-74, here 60.
13 Mittheilu.ngen über die Verhandlungen, 876.
14 On lawyers, see M. Rumpf, Anwalt und Anwaltstand (Leipzig, 1926),
and Die Entscheidungen des Ehrengerichtshojes für deutsche Rechtsanwälte,
several vols (Berlin, 1885 and later); on doctors: M. Gärtner, Staatliche
Ehrengerichte fur die Är;;,te (Breslau, 1896); Entscheidungen des Preussischen
Ehrengerichtshojes für Är;;,te, 2 vols (Berlin, 1908/11); C. Huerkamp, Der
Aufstieg der Är;;,te im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1985), 265-7.
15 J. Fischer, Zur Duellfrage (Karlsruhe, 1903), 21.
16 For a systematic and chronological study of the social and cultural
his tory of duelling in Germany since the late eighteenth century, see
the author's book Ehrenmänner. Das Duell in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft
(Munich, 1991).
17 Neue Preussische Zeitung, no. 123,30 May 1861; ibid., no. 126,2 June
1861.
18 Duell von Manteuffel-Twesten (Berlin, 1861), 14, 12, 10.
19 Neue Preussische Zeitung, no. 126, 2 June 1861; A. Kohut, Das Buch
berühmter Duelle (Berlin, 1888), 104.
20 H. Heine, Prosa 183~1840, Säkularausgabe, 9 (Berlin, 1979), 263-4.
21 Briefe an Heine 1837-1841, Säkularausgabe, 25 (Berlin, 1974), 27.
22 H. Heine, Briefe 1831-1841, Säkularausgabe, 21 (Berlin, 1970), 176,
199, also 226, 230, 236, 238; Heine, Prosa 183~1840, 275.
23 Heine, Briefe 1831-1841, 410, 422.
289
UTE FREVERT
292
10
I
It is hardly necessary to rehearse the conventional wisdom about
German liberalism. It was formed, most historians would agree,
by aseries of political defeats - in 1848, in the l860s, in 1878-9,
in countless smaller compromises, and in the disastrous denouement
of the Weimar Republic. Because of the dramatic circumstances
of 'revolution from above' in which Bismarck seized the initiative
from an impressively resurgent liberalism under novel circum-
stances of party-political mobilization, with the uni ted German
Empire as its result, the l860s, it is generally accepted, occupy a
pivotal place in this approach. This was a major political water-
shed, in which certain possibilities of constitutional development
were foreclosed and others entrenched. In the 'Constitutional Con-
flict' the Prussian liberals first pushed the monarchy against the
wall, but were then breathtakingly outmanoeuvred, as Bismarck
stole much of their programme and proceeded to unify Germany
in his own way. A majority of Prussian liberals made their peace
with Bismarck's four years ofunconstitutional government by pass-
ing the 1866 Indemnity Bill, and then reached an accommodation
within the framework of the small-German, semi-constitutional
Reich.
The poar political staying-power of the liberals in the l860s is
thought to have had long-range consequences. The absence of a
combative liberalism on the British model meant - on this reading
- that Germany failed to develop a parliamentary-democratic and
participatory political culture based on positive ideals of citizen-
ship, and in this sense the decisions of the l860s set the points for
the long-term future. These longer-range implications are
293
GEOFF ELEY
I t has been argued many times that the German bourgeoisie was
somehow lacking in political ambitions, and that its 'weakness and
lack of political maturity' provide the crucial explanation for the
liberals' failings. 8 Germany's missing liberalism - its 'mis-develop-
ment' - was at root the 'mis-development of the German bour-
geoisie', its persistent 'inability to develop an independent dass
consciousness' of its own. 9
There is a lot of conceptual slippage in making this equation.
Two categorical non-equivalents - the one political (liberalism),
the other social or economic (bourgeoisie) - come to be used
interchangeably, and the weakness of the one (liberal capitulation)
becomes causally attributed to deficiencies in the other (certain
peculiarities of dass formation, or the bourgeoisie's willingness to
compromise with the forces of the old social order). In the process,
the chances of a successful liberalism become linked to the dass
interests of a strong bourgeoisie in a directly instrumental or
expressive way: no (strong, dass conscious) bourgeoisie, no (suc-
cessful) liberalism. The formation of liberal traditions from other
kinds of influences is comparatively neglected. I have in mi nd here
the positive contributions of subordinate groups other than the
bourgeoisie, such as the peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, and working
dass, or the role of organized religion in the form of popular
Protestantism, or varieties of anti-dericalism. That liberalism was
a complex political growth, with a richly varied sociology, is often
fudged in the German discussion. Imperceptibly, liberalism
becomes elided with the dass consciousness of the bourgeoisie.
According to Winkler: 'Politicalliberalism emerged as the political
outlook of the rising bourgeoisie.'10
Finally, this negative judgement on German liberalism has to
imply some notion of what a successful or more authentie liberal-
ism would have been. In this sense, most writers proceed from a
particular reading of the British and American pasts. Liberalism
tends to be equated with parliamentary democracy and civil rights,
a conciliatory system of industrial relations (induding the legal
recognition of trade union rights and collective bargaining), and at
least the potential for a welfare state, so that German inadequacies
become teleologically conceived by reference to an exterior and
idealized model. The post-1945 'welfare-state mass democracies'
296
LIBERALISM, EUROPE, AND THE BOURGEOISIE
11
The contemporary meanings of 'liberalism' for an educated and
propertied European observer of the l860s are difficult to re cover,
given the disjunctions and transformations of the intervening hun-
dred or more years. There can be little doubt that the main
referent was British rather than French; the abstraction of clear
liberal principles from the French experiences was made more
difficult by the variegated radicalism of the revolutionary republi-
can tradition, which extended from classicalliberalism to Jacobin-
ism and related forms of popular democracy. What was taken
from the French experience, of course, was a general notion of
constitutionalism, but by the l830s even this was being mediated
by the British example of parliamentary reform and representative
government. But the basic principle of constitutional government
could be realized in a variety of ways, with stronger or weaker
forms of executive responsibility to parliament, and a greater or
lesser degree of popular access to the franchise, not to speak of
298
LIBERALISM, EURO PE, AND THE BOURGEOISIE
the form of protection for civil liberties under the law. Otherwise,
liberalism was defined as much by a type of social morality and
philosophical outlook as by a political programme with a highly
specific content. In this sense, liberalism involved a theory of the
sovereign individual, a particular tradition of thinking about
human nature as the constitutive basis for social relations and the
moraliife, with its dual foundations in a specific philosophical
tradition (the thought of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, sometimes
referred to as 'the political theory of possessive individualism') and
in the larger public discourse of rights and responsibilities (in
the upheavals of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and
Holland, eighteenth-century Whiggery, the Scottish and French
Enlightenments, the American and French Revolutions, and liberal
political economy). As Anthony Arblaster says, 'individualism' is
liberalism's 'metaphysical and ontological core',13
Classical liberalism reached a dimax of intellectual sophisti-
cation in the thought of John Stuart Mill and his famous tract On
Liberty (1859). The interesting thing about Mill is that he took
this dassical tradition furthest towards democracy - and then
stopped. The philosophical basis for representative government in
his thinking was the rational ideal of humans realizing their poten-
tial through active citizenship, with the enhancement of liberty
linked to the cultivation of reason, and the possibility of excellence
linked to the maintenance of individuality and social difference.
This easily lent itself to democratic forms of political address, and
Mill was unusually consistent in following this through, dedaring
his support for integrating the working dass into the political
system, strengthening popular participation in decision-making,
and extending the franchise to all women as well as men. 14 But
at the same time, he showed an elitist suspicion of the masses that
was far from just residual. He advocated plural voting that gave
extra weight to those with intelligence and talent, whose demo-
graphie distribution was deemed implicity to follow dass lines. In
practice, he thought, the best and wisest came from property and
privilege. 15 By comparison, the working dass was a 'mass of brutish
ignorance', whose untrammelled instincts could be not trusted.
Mill's statements are littered with references to 'the common herd'
or 'the uncultivated herd'. As he said: 'We dreaded the ignorance
and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass.'16
It is vital to grasp this limited quality of the liberal concept
of citizenship. Most nineteenth-century liberals bitterly resisted
299
GEOFF ELEY
III
Ifwe are to compare German and British liberalism more sensibly,
therefore, we have to change the terms in which the comparison
is usually assumed, for there is surprisingly little explicit compari-
son in the literature. 24 This requires both dethroning British liber-
alism from its privileged place in perceptions of later nineteenth-
century liberalism, and according greater recognition to what
German liberals positively achieved. It means both relativizing the
British, and normalizing or depathologizing the German case.
When dealing with the 1860s, it is easy to overlook the crucial
fact that it was only in the 1860s that the British Liberal Party
was actually formed. When the so-called capitulation of the
German liberals is bemoaned, their failure is implicitly measured
against an ideal of successfully realized liberalism that is thought
already to be in existence in Britain. It is true, of course, that,
between the Whig revival of the late l820s and the repeal of the
Corn Laws in 1846, certain recognizably liberal ideals came to
dominate the practice of government in Britain, concerning the
political economy of free trade, adefinite conception of the state-
society relationship, and a social morality of propertied individual-
ism. But it is also possible to make similar claims of Germany
after 1850, where, despite the failure ofthe 1848 revolution, govern-
ments proceeded to adopt economic and social policies that were
by and large liberal,25 Obviously, the power of the aristocratic
landed interest in Germany did not disappear overnight, but the
post-Peelian Conservative Party was also a powerful repository of
traditional aristocratic interests in that way; and the tendency of
recent British scholarship has been to stress the resilience of the
landowning aristocracy more generally in British society and
government during the nineteenth century. The point is that both
305
GEOFF ELEY
totally transformed. As Breuilly says, it was the fact that the first
stage of Germany's unification occurred through a North German
Confederation dominated by a narrowly restricted Prussian polity
that not only drove a wedge between the 'proletarian' and the
'bourgeois' democracy, but also divided North German from South
German liberals. This not only reduced the incentive for North
German liberals to pursue a more generous social definition of the
constitutional nation, but even rendered the latter nugatory. In
Britain, by contrast, the logic of the 1867 settlement pushed Glad-
stonian Liberals further into forms of popular accommodation. 31
After 1867-71, in fact, the countervailing political logics of the
respective national situations continued to differentiate the political
effectiveness of the two liberalisms. Thus, in Germany (as else-
where in Europe, apart from Britain) liberals faced a set of objec-
tive circumstances which structurally undermined their claim to a
classless and universalist representation of society's general
interest. For one thing, Germany was confessionally divided, and
the aggressive anti-Catholic confrontationism of the Kulturkampf -
which (again, no less than in Italy and France) was an essential
rather than an option al or contingent aspect of the liberal outlook
- ensured that a majority of German Catholics were practically
ruled out as a potential liberal constituency. Moreover, under the
duress of the depression of 1873-96, the structural indebtedness of
small-scale agriculture in many of the old liberal heartlands, the
transformation of the world market in agricultural produce, and
the accelerating transition into a mainly urban and industrial form
of society, it became harder and harder to hold small farmers,
handicraftsmen, and other categories of traditional property-
owners and tradesmen to a liberal political allegiance. Stressing
the virtues of economic progress, liberalism inevitably possessed a
diminishing appeal for the latter's perceived casualties. To a great
extent, of course, these two problems also coincided, because some
of the most recalcitrant bastions of popular Catholicism (the
regions ofTrier, Catholic Baden, southern Württemberg, and large
parts of Bavaria) were simultaneously the backward agrarian per-
iphery of the Empire. When the crisis of liberal popular support
arrived in the 1890s, it was agrarian and Mittelstand mobilization
that did the most damage.
In Britain, by contrast, neither the Gladstonian nor the post-
Gladstonian Liberal Party had to deal with those problems, for
the simple reason that the peasantry and traditional petty bour-
308
LIBERALISM, EURO PE, AND THE BOURGEOISIE
IV
It we are to take German liberalism seriously, the liberal politics
of the unification decades should not only be freed from the grid-
like and anachronistic comparison with a model of British liberal
democracy which is itself historically misconceived, it should also
be uncoupled from the determinist and reductionist assumption
that the fate of liberalism was causally dependent on the 'strength'
312
LIBERALISM, EUROPE, AND THE BOURGEOISIE
NOTES
1 Leonard Krieger, The German Idea 01 Freedom (Boston, 1957), 458.
2 Heinrich August Winkler, 'Bürgerliche Emanzipation und nationale
Einigung: Zur Entstehung des Nationalliberalismus in Preussen', in
Winkler, Liberalismus und Antiliberalismus. Studien zur politischen Sozialges-
chichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1979), 35.
3 Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1918 (Leamington Spa,
1985), 21.
4 Theodor Schieder, Staat und Gesellschaft im Wandel unserer Zeit (Munich,
1958); Thomas Nipperdey, Die Organisation der deutschen Parteien vor 1918
(Düsseldorf, 1961); Lothar Gall, Der Liberalismus als regierende Partei.
Das Grossherzogtum Baden zwischen Restauration und ReichsgTÜndung (Wies-
baden, 1968), and 'Liberalismus und bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Zu
Charakter und Entwicklung der bürgerlichen Bewegung in Deutsch-
land', Historische Zeitschrift, 220 (1975), 324-56; Hans Rosenberg, Grosse
313
GEOFF ELEY
Depression und Bismarckzeit (Berlin, 1967); Dirk Stegmann, Die Erben
Bismarcks (Co10gne, 1970); Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber und die
deutsche Politik 1890-1920 (Tübingen, 1959).
5 One exception to this has been the work of Rauh, but the form and
tone of his contribution have not been especially constructive, while
the simple 'parliamentarization' thesis remains unpersuasive. See
Manfred Rauh, Fiideralismus und Parlamentarismus im wilhelminischen Reich
(Düsseldorf, 1972), and Die Parlamentarisierung des Deutschen Reiches
(Düsseldorf, 1977). For a more interesting contribution, see the late
Stanley Suval's Electoral Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Chapel Hill,
1985); and for a general discussion, David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley,
The Peculiarities 0] German History. Bourgeois Sociery and Politics in Nineteenth
Century Germany (Oxford, 1984).
6 Wehler, German Empire, 31.
7 ibid.' Winkler, 'Zum Dilemma des deutschen Liberalismus im 19.
Jahrhundert', in Liberalismus und Antiliberalismus, 20.
8 Gerhard A. Ritter (ed:), Historisches Lesebuch 1871-1914 (Frankfurt-on-
Main 1967), 'Einleitung', 12.
9 Dirk Stegmann, 'Zwischen Repression und Manipulation: Konserv-
ative Machteliten und Arbeiter- und Angestelltenbewegung
1910-1918', Archiv fur Sozialgeschichte, 12 (1972), 351. The second
phrase comes from Werner Sombart, Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im 19.
Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1909), 508.
10 Winkler, 'Liberalismus: Zur historischen Bedeutung eines politischen
Begriffs', in Liberalismus und Antiliberalismus, 15. Jürgen Kocka, 'Bürger
und Arbeiter. Brennpunkte und Ergebnisse der Diskussion', in Kocka
(ed.), Arbeiter und Bürger im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1986), esp. 335-9.
11 See, e.g., Hans- Ulrich Wehler, Krisenherde des Kaiserreichs (Göttingen,
1970), 131. For the locus classicus of such an ideal-typification of the
German experience in comparative social science, of course, see Bar-
rington Moore Jr, Social Origins 0] Dictatorship and Democracy
(Harmondsworth, 1966).
12 Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, 164.
13 Anthony Arblaster, The Rise and Decline 0] Western Liberalism (London,
1984), 15. See also C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory 0] Possessive
Individualism (Oxford, 1962); and for arecent general discussion, Nich-
olas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill, Bryan S. Turner, Sovereign Individuals
0] Capitalism (London, 1986).
14 The role of government in this view was to protect the bases of
individual liberty and to maintain the public sphere as a political
arena for the pursuit of individual interests. See Mill's classic state-
ment of the liberal principles of government as he saw them, in On
Liberry, Gertrude Himmelfarb (ed.) (Harmondsworth, 1974), esp. 68f.:
'the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over
any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent
harm to others . . . Over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign.' Here, it goes without saying, the sovereign
individual is still gendered.
15 This was linked to the idea that legislation should originate in the
314
LIBERALISM, EUROPE, AND THE BOURGEOISIE
projects and counsels of experts and the talented few, which would
then go for approval to parliament, rather than issuing directly from
the elected assembly itself. Government by democracy, untempered
by the directive initiative of intellectuals, was a redpe (in Mill's view)
for mediocrity. The role of the democratically elected assembly was
'not to make the laws, but to see that they are made by the right
persons, and to be the organ of the nation for giving or withholding
its ratification of them'. For Mill 'rational democracy' was 'not that
the people themselves govern, but that they have securiry for good
government ... the best government (need it be said?) must be the
government of the wisest, and these must always be a few. The people
ought to be the masters, but they are masters who must employ
servants more skilful than themselves ... '. See JH. Burns, '].S. Mill
and democracy, 1829-61', in JB. Schneewind (ed.), Mill (London,
1969), 315; Geraint L. Williams (ed.), John Stuart Mill on Politics and
Sociery (London, 1976), 182.
16 Quoted from Arblaster, Rise and Decline, 280, 279.
17 ibid., 273.
18 Guido de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (Boston, 1959),
379.
19 The most authoritative estimate (Blewett) puts the enfranchised popu-
lation at around 59 per cent of adult males in 1911. Moreover, Mat-
thew, McKibbin, and Kay have shown that the franchise was dispro-
portionately low in the boroughs as against the counties, sinking to
lower than 57 per cent in 32.6 per cent of all borough seats (70 in
all, of which 34 were in London, including figures as low as 20.6 per
cent in Whitechapel and 35.7 per cent in Tower Hamlets). See Neal
Blewett, 'The franchise in the United Kingdom, 1885-1918', Past and
Present, 32 (Dec. 1965),27-56; H.C.G. Matthew, R.I. McKibbin, JA.
Kay, 'The franchise factor in the rise of the Labour Party', English
Historical Review 91 (1976), 723-52.
20 ibid., 737: 'the growth of the Labour Party before 1914 was limited
not by "natural" social and political restrictions, but by an artificial
one: a franchise and registration system that excluded the greater part
of its likely support'.
21 By far the most illuminating re cent discussion of German liberalism
from this cultural point of view, to my mind, is the collection of papers
edited by Gert Zang on the Konstanz region, Provinzialisierung einer
Region (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1978). An excellent study from another
perspective is Jonathan Sperber, Popular Gatholicism in Nineteenth-Gentury
Germany (Princeton, 1984). Also stimulating, though ultimately per-
verse (arguing that political Catholicism was the realliberalism of late
nineteenth-century Germany), is the work of Margaret L. Anderson.
See her Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford, 1981), and 'The
Kulturkampf and the course of German history' , Gentral European History,
19:1 (1986), 82-115.
22 E.g. Zang (ed.), Provinzialisierung; Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalismus und
Demokratie in Württemberg zwischen Revolution und Reichsgründung (Düssel-
dorf, 1974); Wolfgang Schmierer, Von der Arbeiterbildung zur Arbeiter-
315
GEOFF ELEY
politik. Die Anfange der Arbeiterbewegung in Württemberg 1862/63-1878 (Han-
over, 1970); David Blackbourn, Class, Religion and Local Politics in
Wilhelmine Germany. The Centre Parry in Württemberg before 1914 (New
Haven and London, 1980).
23 For a brilliant exploration of this question on the maturity of Gladston-
ian Liberalism, see Stephen Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Organizations in
Crisis (London, 1976). There are a number of fruitful theoretical start-
ing-points for approaching the German experience in this way, includ-
ing Schieder's Staat und Gesellschaft, Habermas's conception of the
public sphere, and Gramsci's reflections on the Risorgimento, on the
role of intellectuals in social movements, and on the concepts of
hegemony and civil society. See Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der
Öffentlichkeit (Neuwied, 1962); and Antonio Gramsci, Selections ]rom the
Prison Notebooks (London, 1971).
24 See the following exceptions: John Breuilly, 'Liberalismus oder Sozial-
demokratie? Ein Vergleich der britischen und deutschen politischen
Arbeiterbewegung zwischen 1850 und 1875', in Jürgen Kocka (ed.),
Europäische Arbeiterbewegungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1983),
129-66; Karl Rohe, 'The British imperialist intelligentsia and the
Kaiserreich', in Paul Kennedy and A. J. Nicholls (eds), Nationalist and
Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany before 1914 (London, 1981),
130-42; Paul Kennedy, The Rise 0] the Anglo-German Antagonism,
1860-1914 (London, 1980); Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Britain and Germany
1800 to 1914. Two Developmental Paths Towards Industrial Sociery (London,
1986). The German Historical Institute under Wolfgang Mommsen
played a vital role in stimulating the beginnings of serious British-
German comparison, partly via the framework of its conferences, partly
via its sponsored research. A number of the monographs produced by
fellows of the GHI have been implicitly comparative, including Peter
Alter, Wissenschaft, Staat, Mäzene. Anfonge moderner Wissenschaftspolitik in
Grossbritannien 1850-1920 (Stuttgart, 1982); Wolfgang Mock, Imperiale
Herrschaft und nationale Interessen. 'Constructive Imperialism' oder Freihandel
in Grossbritannien vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1982); Ulrich Weng-
enroth, Unternehmensstrategien und technischer Fortschritt. Die deutsche und
britische Stahlindustrie 1865-1895 (Göttingen and Zurich, 1986).
25 This point is made especially forcefully and compellingly by Eric
Hobsbawm, The Age 0] Capital 1848-1875 (London, 1975).
26 Vincent, Formation, Penguin edn (Harmondsworth, 1972), 19.
27 ibid., 289.
28 Aside from Vincent's general and pioneering account, see the collection
edited by Patricia Hollis, Pressure ]rom Without (London, 1974), which
provides a good introduction to the associational world of British
liberalism in the mid nineteenth century, and Eileen and Stephen Yeo
(eds), Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590-1914 (Brighton, 1981),
which opens a window on its relationship to popular culture. See
also the essays on 'Animals and the state', 'Religion and recreation',
'Traditions of respectability', and 'Philanthropy and the Victorians',
in Brian Harrison, Peaceable Kingdom. Stabiliry and Change in Modem
Britain (Oxford, 1982), 82-259, which remain fundamental to this
316
LIBERALISM, EURO PE, AND THE BOURGEOISIE
subject. Monographs on particular associations and places may be
cited indefinitely: Stephen Yeo's Religion and Voluntary Associations in
Crisis (on Reading) is the most unruly, but also the most interesting.
And for an excellent view of the whole Gladstonian show in motion,
see Paul McHugh, Prostitution and Victorian Social Reform (London,
1980).
29 Gustav Mayer, 'Die Trennung der proletarischen von der bürgerlichen
Demokratie in Deutschland, 1863-1870', in Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.),
Radikalismus, Sozialismus und bürgerliche Demokratie, (Frankfurt-on-Main
1969, orig. pub. 1912), 108-78.
30 In a real sense the functional equivalent in Germany of populist
religion in Britain (Le. Non-Conformity) is political Catholicism. See
esp. Blackbourn, Class, Religion and Local Politics, and Anderson, 'The
Kulturkampf. For the argument concerning artisans/craftsmen, see John
Breuilly's various essays: 'Arbeiteraristokratie in Grossbritannien und
Deutschland', in Ulrich Engelhardt (ed.), Handwerker in der Industriali-
sierung (Stuttgart, 1984), 497-527; 'Artisan economy, artisan politics,
artisan ideology: the artisan contribution to the nineteenth-century
European labour movement', in Clive Emsley andJames Walvin (eds),
Artisans, Peasants and Proletarians, 1760-1860 (London, 1985), 187-225;
and 'Liberalismus oder Sozialdemokratie?'. There is a helpful sum-
mary in Mommsen, Britain and Germany 1800 to 1914, l4ff. As always
on such matters, the discussion is heavily indebted to the essays of
Eric Hobsbawm. See most recently, Worlds of Labour. Further Studies in
the History 01 Labour (London, 1984).
31 See Breuilly, 'Liberalismus oder Sozialdemokratie?'
32 Rohe, 'British imperialist intelligentsia', 141.
33 The main protagonists in this British discussion have been Peter F.
Clarke and Kenneth O. Morgan. For the former, see his original
Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971), and the more
general 'The Progressive movement in England', in Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 24 (1974), 159-81, together with the
more recent Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978). Morgan's
ideas are best approached through his many reviews in the Times
Literary Supplement over the last fifteen years, esp. 'The Liberal regener-
ation', TLS, 22 Aug. 1975, and subsequent correspondence. For a
useful introduction to the terms of the controversy, see Alun Howkins,
'Edwardian Liberalism and industrial unrest', in History Workshop Jour-
nal, 4 (1977), 143-62.
317
11
319
THOMAS CHILDERS
11
Although historians and many contemporary analysts were quick
to label the NSDAP a lower-middle-class phenomenon, the Nazis
themselves vigorously denied this interpretation. From its very
inception in Munich in 1919 the NSDAP insisted that it was not
a class-based party at aH but a genuine people's party or Volkspartei
that transcended the traditional lines of sodal, religious, and
regional cleavage around which the German party system had
developed during the last half of the nineteenth century. Friends
and foes alike were certainly perplexed about the proper locus of
the NSDAP within the Weimar party system, and if one looks at
the day-to-day efforts of the party to mobilize political support at
the grassroots level, it is easy to understand something of that
confusion. According to the weH established practices of German
political culture, parties made litde effort to cross sodal boundaries
in mobilizing electoral support, seeking instead to define for them-
selves a clear position along the tradition al lines of class, religious,
and/or regional cleavage. From the conservative DNVP to the left-
liberal DDP, the bourgeois parties rarely sought to recruit support
from the blue-collar working class. Although each of the major
Weimar parties claimed to be a Volkspartei, speaking for the entire
nation, the traditional bourgeois parties concentrated their mobiliz-
ation efforts almost exclusively on elements of the middle-class
electorate. In their appeals to the middle-class voters these parties
were determined above all else to establish their credentials as
stalwart defenders of middle-class interests and values against the
threat of the Marxist left. Similarly, the Sodal Democrats (SPD)
and Communists (KPD) competed fiercely for the blue-coHar elec-
torate but made litde effort to draw support from the politicaHy
and sodally fractious bourgeoisie. Only the Catholic Centre party
(Zentrum), whose appeal was based on religious confession, sought
to straddle the great sodal divide of German politics, but almost
exclusively within the Catholic community.3
From its very first appearance on the electoral landscape, how-
ever, the NSDAP refused to foHow in these weH-worn grooves of
German political culture. Like virtuaHy all the other Weimar par-
ties, the NSDAP announced to a sceptical public that it was a
genuine people's movement committed to the ideal of a classless
people's community (Volksgemeinschaft). There was litde that was
striking about this claim or the rhetoric in which it was cloaked.
320
THE MIDDLE CLASSES AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
III
The Nazi electora1 surge between 1928 and 1930, when the party's
vote jumped from 2.6 per cent to 18 per cent, is often described
in the literature as stunning or sudden, a product of midd1e-dass
radica1ization in response to the economic traumas of the Great
Depression. But the spectacu1ar Nazi breakthrough of the
Depression era was possib1e on1y after a profound disruption of
traditiona1 bourgeois electoral 10yaIties first signalled during the
inflation and stabilization crises of 1923-4. The politica1 impact of
these interrelated crises, in which wide sections of the midd1e dass
feIt victimized, was registered not, however, in a sustained surge
of radical political behaviour within the midd1e dass but rather
in an ominous transformation of middle-dass electoral loyalties
between 1920 and 1928. That transformation was vividly reflected
in the sudden emergence and surprisingly strong showing of a
swarm of sing1e-issue, special-interest, and regional parties in the
woefully mislabelled 'Golden Twenties.'18
Between the e1ections to the national assemb1y in 1919 and the
last pre-Depression Reichstag election in 1928, midd1e-dass politi-
cal loyalties underwent a profound transformation that would seri-
ous1y undermine the stability of the Weimar party system weIl
before the onset of the Depression. During this period the major
bourgeois parties, each of which had served prominently in at least
one of the unpopular cabinets of these years, suffered a steady
haemorrhage of electoral support to a bewildering array of middle-
dass specia1-interest or regional parties. Parties such as the Christian-
National Peasants' Party, the Reich Party of the German Mittel-
stand (Wirtschaftspartei) , the Christian-Social People's Service, and
the Tenants' Party, were but a few of the dozen or so bourgeois
alternative parties that crowded onto the already congested terrain
of middle-dass politica1 culture between 1920 and 1928. These
parties appealed exdusively to specific occupational, economic, or
regional groups within the middle dass, and have traditionally
been dismissed as symptoms of narrow, myopic 'interest politics'
within a badly fractured middle dass. Yet whi1e these parties
spoke to quite specific sets of interests within the midd1e dass,
they were far more than reflections of a growing interest-group
324
THE MIDDLE CLASSES AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
alternative parties did not fade during the ensuing years of relative
economic recovery and political tranquillity. Indeed, the elections
of 1928, usually viewed as the high-water-mark of Weimar's
illusory stability, saw these alternative bourgeois parties claim over
14 per cent of the electorate. That total exceeded the combined
vote of the two liberal parties and virtually equalled the conserva-
tive showing. Since these parties recruited their support exclusively
from different groups within the bourgeoisie, their strong perform-
ance suggests that on the eve of the Great Depression roughly a
third of the middle-class electorate had already abandoned their
traditional liberal and conservative choices. Two years before the
NSDAP would make its dramatic breakthrough into the middle-
class electorate, the traditional bourgeois parties had proved
unable to contain middle-class protest. Bourgeois voters were not
yet completely radicalized, not yet ready for a party such as the
NSDAP, but in scornfully turning their backs on both the tra-
ditional liberal and conservative options of middle-class politics,
they displayed a growing affinity for the social and political protest
which the Nazis would articulate so effectively in the following
period of economic crisis. 22
As the economic situation deteriorated after 1928, the National
Socialists would march from the fringes of German political con-
sciousness to aseries of spectacular electoral victories that would
transform the NSDAP into Germany's largest political party and
carry Hitler to the very threshold of power. During this steep
ascent the NSDAP simply devoured the constituencies of the bour-
geois parties. Although the Nazis would benefit after 1930 from a
sharp increase in turnout and, as FaIter's analysis has demon-
strated, would win some defectors from the SPD, the parties of
bourgeois centre and right watched helplessly as their middle-class
supporters defected in massive numbers to the NSDAP.23 In the
Reichstag elections of July 1932, as the Nazis captured roughly 38
per cent of the national vote, the liberal parties together managed
to win only 2 per cent, while the conservative figures had plummet-
ted to 5.9 per cent. The totals of the middle-class alternative
parties remained relatively high in 1930, buoyed by the fragmen-
tation of the DNVP and the establishment of a spate of new
conservative splinter parties. But by the summer of 1932 these
parties could attract a mere 3 per cent of the vote. Between
1928 and 1932, the NSDAP had virtually consumed its stumbling
326
THE MIDDLE CLASSES AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
appeals of all the bourgeois parties. Even those parties with litde
sympathy for the corporatist economic and political ideas implied
by such terminology found the idiom of Berufsstand irresistible when
addressing middle-class audiences. For the liberals, in particular,
the prevalence of such corporatist imagery in bourgeois political
discourse proved problematic. The conservatives, the middle-class
interest-group parties, and ultimately the Nazis, too, were, to vary-
ing degrees, comfortable with this corporatist or ständisch idiom,
calling for the establishment of a corporate state or Ständestaat and
couching their attacks on the Weimar 'system' in such language.
But its use forced the liberals to operate within a linguistic termin-
ology that was at the very least inconsistent with the content of
their social and political vision. As the DDP complained in 1930,
'We are in danger of seeing the idea of the people (Volksgedanke)
overwhelmed by the idea of occupation (Berujsgedanke).' German
political culture, the Democrats complained, was 'unsurpassed in
the organization of the occupational estate or economic stratum
(berufsständischen oder wirtschaftlichen Schicht) but pathetic in ... fit-
ting the self into a conception of the general welfare.'28
Appealing to specific occupational or economic groups was axio-
matic in the political culture of the Weimar Republic; indeed, the
various bourgeois parties considered it an operational necessity.
Yet, this strategy also presented a growing dilemma for the tra-
ditionalliberal and conservative parties seeking to mobilize support
across the different occupational and regional interests of the soci-
ally heterogeneous middle class, a dilemma greatly exacerbated by
the emergence of the special interest parties. By 1928 both liberals
and conservatives alike were finding it increasingly difficult to
formulate a credible political language that would permit them to
address both the sectarian interests of shopkeepers, white-collar
employees, peasants, and civil servants, and, at the same time,
forge a broadly based middle-class coalition. The arrival of the
Great Depression only aggravated this problem.
The Nazis, on the other hand, were ideally positioned to benefit
both from the mounting anger and anxiety of wide segments of
the bourgeoisie and the berufsständisch language of middle-class
special interest. Unlike the major bourgeois parties of the centre
and right, the NSDAP had never been burdened with government
responsibility and had, therefore, never been forced to make hard
policy decisions that might satisfy one group while disappointing
others. Nor, of course, was it tainted with the failures of Weimar,
329
THOMAS CHILDERS
IV
In July 1932, the NSDAP, employing its revolutionary cateh-all
strategy, beeame the largest political party in Germany, eonstruet-
ing a eonstitueney of extraordinary social breadth. The party
seemed to stand on the brink of power. Yet, less than six months
later, it suffered a serious eleetoral setbaek, when in the first week
of November its share of the national vote dropped signifieantly
for the first time in a major eampaign sinee the party had begun
its dramatic surge forward in 1929. Even more distressing for the
Nazi strategists, the party's losses in the last Reichstag eleetion of
1932 marked the beginning of a trend; in regional elections later
in November and Deeember, the NSDAP's vote continued to slide
precipi tously. 34
In a top-seeret analysis of the eleetion, based on loeal reports
from Nazi operatives from all over the eountry, Goebbels's propa-
ganda staff conc1uded that the party had reaehed the limits of its
332
THE MIDDLE CLASSES AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
Goebbels had realized that the Nazis had only a narrow window
of opportunity in the context of free parliamentary elections, and
by the end of the year that window seemed to be rapidly closing. 36
After years of apparently inexorable growth, the National Socialist
constituency was clearly unravelling. Nazi strategists had no sol-
ution for halting that disintegration. 'On the basis of numerous
contacts with our supporters', the top secret report grimly con-
cluded, 'we are of the opinion that little can be salvaged by way
of propaganda ... New paths must be taken. Nothing more is to
be done with words, placards and leaflets.' Above all, 'it must not
come to another election. The results could not be imagined.'37
As a catch-all party of protest, the NSDAP had reached the
limits of its electoral popularity. The November elections of 1932
would prove to be the final genuinely free elections of the Weimar
era, and in that contest two out of every three German voters had
chosen parties other than the NSDAP. These votes cannot, of
course, be interpreted simply as expressions of anti-Nazi sentiment,
but they do at the very least underscore just how fragile and
contingent Nazi electoral success actually was. In the gloomy after-
math of those elections, Nazi propaganda leaders believed that
only a Nazi assumption of power could rekindle the party's crum-
bling appeal, and in late 1932 that prospect seemed to be rapidly
receding. It is, therefore, a particularly monstrous irony that, at
just the moment when the NSDAP's electoral constituency had
begun to dissolve, Adolf Hitler would be appointed chancellor on
30 January 1933. The Nazi assumption of power would, therefore,
come not at the crest of rising popular appeal, but as a result of
a palace intrigue of conservative forces who myopically and tragi-
cally believed that the appeal of National Socialism could be safely
harnessed for their own reactionary politics.
NOTES
1 For contemporary statements of the lower-middle-class thesis see
Harold D. Lasswell, 'The psychology of Hitlerism,' Political Quarterly,
4 (1933), 373-84, and Svend Ranulf, Moral Indignation and Middle Class
Psychology: A Sociological Study (Copenhagen, 1938). Far more nuanced
formulations of these classic views are found in Kar! Dietrich Bracher,
Die Deutsche Diktatur. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus
(Co10gne, 1969), 166-7; and Seymour Martin Lipset, 'Fascism - Left-
Right, and Centre' , in Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases oj Politics
(Garden City, 1960), 127-79.
334
THE MIDDLE CLASSES AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
337
Index
338
INDEX
Blasehko, Alfred 215 families/connections 49, 69-70, 73,
Blasius, Dirk 172-3 74, 124-7, 134; omen 59-60, 69,
Bode, Wilhe1m von 63 89-90, 104, 273; see also identity;
Boelcke, Willi 70 industrialists; merehants; patriarchal
Bohlen, J. F. 125
Bohlen, Thelka 125
Bäninger, Arnold 72, 74 Campe, Julius 263, 264, 265
capital 16, 102: and labour 144, 149
Bonn 120
Borehardt, Knut 52, 140 capitalism/capitalist(s) 28-9, 51, 126,
140,321; bourgeoisie 47; competitive
Borchert, Ernst 265-6
126, 321; corporate 126, 321;
Boseh, Car! 155
economy 310; and lawyers 185-6;
Boseh, Robert 7
and liberalism 297, 302; values 74
bourgeois: ambitions 228-9; attitudes 8,
Carnap, Johannes Adolf 95
9; economie aetivities 213;
cartels 7, 140
nationalism 217, 228-9, 235; political
Catholic: bourgeoisie 10, 21;
parties 319, 320, 323, 324-6, 331-2;
businessmen/elite 56, 101, 102;
unity 164; see also identity; language;
Centre Party 18,21,26,95, 152, 153,
Iiberal(s)/Iiberalism; mentality;
157, 183, 310, 311, 320; Church 19,
NSDAP; Sonderweg; tradition;
21, 303
unification; values; women
Catholicism 95, 309, 317n; anti- 19, 21,
bourgeoisie, German 1,25-6,27,30,46, 43n, 308; see also Kulturkampf
218; compared to other countries xvi, censorship/seerecy 172, 173
2, 118, 295-6; defined xiv; and Central Europe 124, 125, 302
'Heimat' 225, 230, 235, 243; honour chambers of commerce 92, 93, 109n
and duelling 257,271,281,282; and Chartier, Roger 331
labour relations 140-61; and legal Chartism 304
profession 164, 189; and Iiberalism Childers, Thomas 29
294, 295-6, 297, 303, 308; and children of bourgeoisie 10, 88, 97-8
medical profession 199, 208, 214; citizenship 244, 247-8, 293, 299-300; see
social position, changes in 14-15, also franchise
106,287,303,308; see also aristocracy; city/eities 50, 54, 246
Britain; children; education; family; civic: affairs 189; society 310; spirit 23,
feudalism; industrial; middle dass; 24; see also honour
state; workers; working classes civil: code 188; initiative 302; liberties
Bracher, Kar! Dietrich 321 299; rights 296-7; servants 164,
Brandts, Franz 95 165-8, 171,322-3; service 179, 186-7;
Bremen 118 see also bureaucracy, officials
Breuilly, John 307, 308 collective wage agreements/bargaining
Britain xvi, 3, 107, 147-8, 168, 200, 204, 145-6, 147, 153, 155, 157,296;
216, 300-1, 303; bourgeoisie in 87, Britain 148, 149, 150
88, 244, 330; legal profession in 169, Cologne 3, 30, 51, 53, 59,91, 104
182, 190, 196n Colsman, Adalbert 101
Broszat, Martin 30 Commercial Councillors, Prussian
Brüning, Heinrich 155, 156 87-114
Bücher, Hermann 155 Communist Party (KPD) 320, 321, 323
Buchner, Kar! 173 Conrad, Johannes 166, 181
Bülow, Bernhard von 61, 210, 211, 310 conservatism 18, 19,21,28
Burchard family 130 conservative: ethic 141; intrigue and
Burchard, Hermann 121 Nazism 334; parties 103, 325, 326,
Burchard-Motz, Wilhe1m Amsinck 132 329; supporters 323; see also 'Heimat'
bureaucracy 20, 26,107,164,168,172, conservatives 29, 186, 321, 330
175, 190, 208-9; see also civil service; conspicuous consumption 47-8, 49, 66,
officials 67, 68, 74, 87
business 6, 7, 157, 167; elite 46-86; constitutionallconstitutionalism 20, 21,
339
INDEX
298,301; conflict 293; government economic: bourgeoisie 7, 87, 106; crises,
298 Weimar 141, 332; distress of middle-
consumerism 239-40, 242 dass 318; elite 90; interests/activities,
Conze, Werner 163 professional 174-84,213, 219, 295;
Crimmitschau 143, 151 progress 25, 26, 302; see also cities;
culture/cultural 228, 240; and family; industries; labour relations
bourgeoisie 3, 9-10, 18, 25, 29, 75, economy, German 6, 46, 154, 157, 305,
115, 283; and business elite 61-4, 70; 310
capital 10, 283; identity 9; educated and propertied bourgeoisie
organizations 225; see also J ewish 7-8,9,25,26,117,133,162,164,
bourgeoisie; unification 189, 198, 199,220
education (al): associations 12, 17, 248;
Dammert, Dr. Johann Ludwig 123 as bourgeois value 9, 18; and honour
Danzig 267 281; of legal profession 181, 183, 190;
Darmstadt 170, 173 and medical profession 199, 203, 214;
Davidoff, Leonore 115-16 occupations 3; qualifications 164,
Delbrück, Hans 270, 275 185; requirements for legal profession
DDP see German Democratic Party 163, 164, 165-88, 170; and
democracy/democratic 22-3, 27, 202, Weltbürgertum 2,3,8, 10, 15, 19,282,
248, 296-7, 299, 300; and bourgeoisie 300; and women 286
xvi, 28-9, 307, 308; changes 3-4; Ehrhardt, Heinrich 69, 70, 73, 74
participation and liberalism 300-1; Ehrlich, Paul 208, 211
politics 157, 247; and proletariat 307; Einstein, Albert 62
representation 306 Elberfeld 70, 95, 104
democratization 209, 219, 242, 288 Eley, Geoff 18, 19,88, 140, 148
Depression: (1873-96) 295,308,310; e1ites, bourgeois 2, 26, 61, 72, 130, 131,
(I 930s ) 28, 156, 318, 322, 324, 325 288; medical profession 199,200,
Deutsch, Felix 62, 63 201-2, 204, 206-7, 220
Deutsch, Lili 63 employers 16, 27, 127, 140-1, 142-7,
Deutsche Bank 55,57,62 155-7
Diergardt, Friedrich 96, 104 Ende, General von 69
Disconto-Gesellschaft 57, 59 England see Britain
DNVP see German National People's Enlightenment 2, 133,201,230
Party entrepreneurs, bourgeois 7, 88, 97-8,
doctors, the state and bourgeois values 102
5, 6, 11, 198-223; see also medical Essen 50, 52, 90, 141, 151
profession Esser, Max 57, 58, 61
Dohm, Ernst 61 estate-/land-owning bourgeoisie 48,
Dohm, Hedwig 61, 63 117, 120-1
Dortmund 90 eugenics 209, 216, 219
Dresden 154 Eulenburg, Philipp, Prince von 282
duelling xvii, 255-92; as aristocratic Europe 5, 15-16,21,87,88, 107; and
phenomenon 257, 272, 281; and liberalism 293-317
bourgeoisie 14, 117, 272-3; penalties Evans, Richard J. 8, 15, 54
for 266, 267, 272, 281-2; see also
honour; manliness
Duisberg, Carl 70, 72, 74, 100, 155, 157 Falkenhagen, Os wald 266-8
Duse, Eleonore 62 Falter, Jürgen 29, 323, 326
Düsseldorf 72, 91, 95, 96, 99-100, 101, family 2, 10, 199; -/kinship ties and
104 business interests 122, 134;
DVP see German People's Party economic/politicallife, role in 119;
dynasticism, bourgeois 10, 15, 132 grand bourgeoisie 115-39; honour
267; life 49, 219; marriage xvi, 8, 87,
East Prussia 91, 119 89, 90, 97-8, 117, 120, 122, 127-9,
340
INDEX
133, 140; and politics 119, 127; see also Gierke, Otto von 247
individual; mentality; women Gi1ka, Arthur 55-6
Feldman, Gerald D. 152 Gladstone, William Ewart 300, 304,
feminism 129, 218, 219 307, 313
feudalism and feudalization xvi, 16, 26, Glaser, Hermann 242
73,257,258,319; thesis 13-14,46-8, Gneist, Rudolph von 167, 169, 171,
56,87-91,117-18,121,140-52,189, 175--6, 188
282 Godeffroy family 126, 130
Finck, August von 55 GoebbeJs, Joseph 332, 333, 334
Finck, Wilhelm von 50, 54-5 Gossler family 122, 123, 126, 128, 130
First Wor!d War 27, 153, 285; pre- 6, government 25, 29, 204, 220, 293, 298,
7, 11,22,25,59,95,310 322-3
Fischer, Julius 261 grand bourgeoisie 13-14,47, 57, 115-39
Fischer, Samuel 63, 65 Grogahn, Alfred 199, 209
'folk' activities: 'Heimat' 240, 242, 248; Grunewald 49, 50, 51
studying 236, 240 guilds 4, 185
Forest Association of the Palatinate 231, Guillaurne, Theodor 59
232,236,237,240-2 Gutmann, Eugen 61, 62
France 6, 16, 107, 190,244,301,303, Gutzkow, Kar! 263
308; compare Germany 3, 88, 147, Gwinner, Arthur von 55, 58
295, 330; influence 4, 172, 227, 234,
237, 245, 246; law 172; liberalism 298
franchise/enfranchisement 23, 298, 299, Haber, Moritz von 273
300-1 Hachenburg, Max 175, 183
Frankfurt-on-Main 50, 53, 118, 168, HaeckeJ, Ernst 217
179, 180, 206, 212, 263, 264 Hagen, Louis 69
Frederick II, King of Prussia 237 Hainauer, Os kar 62
Free Conservative Party 18 Hall, Catherine 115-16
Freikorps 152 Halle 278
Freund, Julius 62 Hambach 227, 228, 241
Frevert, Dte, 14,218 Hamburg 23, 53, 54, 72, 170, 182, 212;
Friedberg, Heinrich von 178-9 family and dass in grand bourgeoisie
Friedländer-Fuld family 66 3, 50, 51, 115-39
Friedländer-Fuld, Fritz von 55, 57-8, Hamilton, Richard 29, 322, 323
60 Hamm 177
Friedländer-Fuld, Milly von 60, 65 HanieJ, Franz 101, 104
Frohwein, Adam 155 Hanover 117, 168, 174, 180, 266
Fürstenberg, Aniela 61-2, 65, 67 Hansemann, Adolph von 57, 59
Füstenberg, Carl 50, 53, 56-8, 59, 61-2, Harden, Maximilian 63, 217
63,67, 103 Hardenberg, Kar! August von 4
Fürstenberg, Hans 59 Harkort, Friedrich 8, 12-13
Harrison, Royden 306
Harvestehude 50, 51, 130
Gagern, Heinrich von 171, 173 Hauptmann, Gerhart 61, 62
Gall, Lothar 119,295 health 198, 199, 200, 206, 214-15,
Gallenkamp, Eduard 100 218-19; administration 204, 207-8;
Geary, Dick 16, 27, 29 education 215; ideology 215;
Geiger, Theodor 30 standards 133
Gerrnan Democratic Party (DDP) 155, Health Commissions, city 206
320, 321, 325, 329 Health Counci1 203, 207-8
German Empire 18, 20, 23, 107, 151, Heidelberg 120, 226
218-20, 277, 287, 293, 294, 295, 311 'Heimat' 12, 38n, 224-54; defined
German National People's Party 224-5, 229-30; and state 245; see also
(DNVP) 156, 320, 323, 325, 326 associations; identity
German People's Party (DVP) 152, 325 Heine, Heinrich 262-5, 269, 270
341
INDEX
343
INDEX
marketlmarketing 3, 145, 185, 204, military, the 90, 206, 237, 272, 277, 278,
239-40: employment 187-8 282, 295; see also army
Martin, Rudolf 47, 54, 56, 126 military: jurisdiction, medical 206 and
Marx, Kar! xv nationalism 237
Marxism 151, 157 MiJI, John Stuart 299-300
Marxist left/socialism 320, 321 Minden 103
Mayer, Arno J. 88 Mittelstand and liberals 14, 312
Mayer, Gustav 307 Mittermaier, Kar! 171, 173, 175
Meckel, Wilhelm Kaspar 95 modernity xv, 19, 238-40, 246, 288, 311
Moltke, General Field Marshai
Mecklenburg 168
Helmuth von 61
medical: administrators 207-11, 220;
Mommsen, Hans 30
associations 205; authority for
Mommsen, Wolfgang J. 295
bourgeois values 217-18; care,
Mönckeberg family 122, 130
demand for 199-200; maUers and the
Mönchen-Gladbach 95
Church 203; co-operatives scheme
morality 214, 258, 262, 297, 299, 300,
202; hierarchies 201; innovations
305
215; institutions 215; officials 205-6;
Mosse, Rudolf 62, 64
reform 202-20; services and social
Mosse, Werner 119
hygiene 204-5, 210, 219; influence on
Munich 50, 54, 180, 320
the state; see also National Socialism
municipal government/policies 22, 189
medical profession 199,212,214,215, Münster 177
216; and honour 260-1; income 56, Muthesius, Hermann 52
200, 212-13, 214; power of 202, 206,
207, 209, 211, 216; and sodal welfare
200,210; and state 202, 206, 210, 211; Nasse family 206, 207
see also autonomy; insurance nation: German 3, 244-8; 'Heimat' and
schemes; quackery; training community 244-8; -state 19, 244, 302
Mehlis, Christi an 236 national: aspirations, Palatinate 227;
Meinecke, Friedrich 2, 285 -authoritarianism 28-9;
Mendelssohn, Franz von 58, 62 consciousness 229, 233; solidarity 310
Mendelssohn, Giulietta 62 National Association 26
Mendelssohn, Robert 62 National Community 247
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix 62 nationalism 19, 29, 227, 229, 237-8,
mentality Imentalities 23, 68, 73, 257 302: domestic 237-8; 242; and
Menzel, Wolfgans 262-3 medical profession 200, 217, 218
merchants 3, 131 nationalist culture 198
nationality and locality 246, 247, 248
Merck family 126, 130
National Liberal Party 19, 103, 228,
Merton, Wilhe1m 51
310, 311
Mevissen, Gustav 104, 258, 259 National SocialismlNational Socialist
middle dass: and business elite 47, 64, Party (NSDAP)/Nazi/Nazism I,
68, 69; dassification 76n; duellists 29-30,46, 152, 158,219, 318, 332,
and honour 255-92; family, role of 333, 334; and bourgeoisie 23, 29-30,
119; honour 259; 261, 281, 282; and 132,318-37; electorate 29; and
lawyers 162, 186; and National 'Heimat' 229, 240, 246-8; and
Socialism 22, 26, 27, 29-30, 318-34; medical profession 219; policies and
and nation-state relationship 244; scicntific medicine 215-16;
Palatine 228; professionals 208-9; propaganda 327-34
provincial 242; reform movements National-Sozialer Verein 310
218; and working c1asses 27; see also nature 217,237,238-9,240,248
bourgeoisie; Catholic; culture; Naumann, Friedrich 107, 214, 218
education; Depressions; 'Heimat'; Navy League 22, 189, 212, 237
identity 224; localism Nether!ands 107
'middle Germany' 25 Neustadt-an-der-Haardt 227
344
INDEX
'New Woman' 26, 287 professional (ism) Iprofessionalization
New York 124, 128,231 199,204,215; autonomy 176-7;
Nipperdey, Thomas 230, 295 honour 260,261; ideology 163; publie
nobility 75, 90, 104, 272; see also interests 185; specialization 164
aristocracy professions xvi, 6, 27, 75, 177, 286; see
NSDAP see National Soeialism also legal profession; medical
profession
officer: corps, naval 272, 275; reserve proletarianization 180, 212, 318
276 propaganda, Nazi 333-4
officers: bourgeois 275-7; and honour property 4, 10, 181, 259, 282, 297, 305;
274-5 owners 7-8, 131, 132; and the vote
officials 2, 4-6, 24, 64, 90, 220 300
Oggersheim 273 Protestant Chureh 129, 138n
order/orderliness 199,218 Protestantism 134, 296
Protestants 9-10, 18, 26, 56, 96, 101-2,
226; and NSDAP 321, 323
Pan-German League 22, 26, 198,212, provineialism 237, 238, 242, 248
237, 238 Prussia 4, 5, 19, 20, 21, 23, 56, 62, 68,
para-military organizations, middle 118, 228, 308, 322-3; Commercial
dass 27 Councillors 87-114; duelling in 272;
Paris 231, 263 elite in 58, 59, 62; honour in 258,
parliament/parliamentary: democracy 259,262-82; King of92, 237; and law
293, 296-7, 306; national 20; reform 162, 165-82, 186, 187, 189; legal
298 training 165-8, 174, 176, 186;
paternalism, employer 141-8, 201 liberalism in 293, 306; medical
patriarchal business structuresl concerns in 203-14; unification of
employers 73, 140; see also pre- Germany under 19-20, 75n; West 56
industrial Prussian Advisory Committees 207-11
patriotism 198,216,218,233,237 Prussian Health Committees 209
Paulsen, Friedrich 279, 291 Prussian Scientifie Advisory Committee
peasantry/peasants 14, 38n, 303, 322, 211
330; and Iiberalism 22, 296, 304, 308,
309, 312
Petersen family 130 'quackery' 207, 210-11
petty bourgeoisie 14-15,241,303; and
liberalism 22, 296, 304, 309, 312; and Raeial Hygiene Society 209
NSDAP 318, 319, 322; see also lower Rath family 69
middle dass Rathenau, Emil 7, 53, 57, 58, 63, 67, 68
Pfeufer, Sigmund von 231 Rathenau, Mathilde 63
philanthropy 213-14, 215 Rathenau, Walther 57, 58, 59, 63, 66-7
Phillips, Gordon 150 Raumer, Hans von 155
Pierenkemper, Toni 89 Ravensberg 102
Pittsburgh 147 Rechtsstaat, doctrine of 187
Poensgen, Carl 72, 74 Reich Health Office 205
Poland 144, 214, 227 Reinhardt, Max 51
poor, the 184, 202, 203, 219 Reisser, Gabriel, 264, 265
populism, regionalist 242, 304 Reitz, Edgar 224
positivism 187, 300 religion 9-10, 203, 241, 296; see also
pre-industrial: attitudes 140, 141, 142, Catholic; Catholicism; Protestant
189; elite 48, 87; mentalities 330-2; Church; Protestantism
traditions 144-5,295,319 Remak, Robert 202
press, the 23, 173, 306 residential: patterns 16, 49-56;
Preuss, Hugo 247 provisions in employment of lawyers
profess ionl es ta te differentiation 5, 183
162-97, 199,260 Reusch, Paul 69, 70-1, 74, 75
345
INDEX
Reuter, Gabriele 62 committees/medical advisors
revolution: of 1848-916, 18, 19,87,228, 207-11; education 216; basis for
244,300; of 191826-7, 153, 154; and medical training 201,203-4,205
bourgeoisie 75n; from above 293; and secularization/urbanization 9, 236
honour 258; and medical reforms Selve, Gustav 100-1
202, 203 Sennett, Richard 243
revolutionary crises 304 sexual reform 218
Rhineland 56, 69, 172 Sheehan, James 23
Rhineland-Westphalia 48-9, 56, 69-75, Siegrist, Hannes 189-90
87-114, 117, 146 Siemens, Arnold von 61, 64-5
Rhine Province 56, 69-75, 95 Siemens company 57, 61, 144, 145, 155,
Riehl, Wilhe1m 235-6 156
Rilke, Rainer Maria 63 Siemens, Ellen von 66
Rittergüter 54-6, 140 Siemens, Georg von 51, 55, 57, 67-8, 74
Röchling, Kar! 72, 74 Siemens, Wilhe1m von 55, 57, 61, 64
Roesicke, Richard 58 Siemsen, Peter 125
Rohe, Kar! 311 Sieren, Jacob Albrecht von 123
Rome 52 Sieveking, Amalie 129
Rosenberg, Hans 295 Sieveking family 126, 130
Rosenberg, Hermann 50, 63 Silesia 60
Rotherbaum 50, 130 Sillem, Martin Gar!ieb 122, 124
Rudorff, Ernst 225 Silverberg, Paul 152, 153, 154, 155, 156
Ruggiero, Guido de 300 Simmel, Georg 255-6
Ruhr 7, 102, 143, 144, 151, 152, 157
Simon, James 58, 62
Ruhrlade 152
Simon-Sonnemann, Therese 57, 62
Ruperti family 130
Smith, Bonnie 115
social: barriers 46, 47, 50, 52-4, 60, 64,
Saarbrücken 72 73; dass 232; dimbing 47, 48, 60,
Sachsen-Co burg and Gotha, Duke of 69 283-4; contact 69, 87, 90, 133; control
Sa1omonsohn, Adolf 57, 64, 67, 68 200; differentiation 259, 299;
salons 59, 61-2, 75 harmony 25, 233; identity 9;
San Francisco 231 institutions 129; integration 199;
Savigny, Friedrich Carl von 165 isolation 47, 72, 118, 130; leadership
Saxony 23,107,168,170,179-80,181, 3, 12, 165; life 26, 49, 50, 215, 287;
258, 260 mobility 14-15; network 8, 49, 130;
Schacht, Hja1mar 53 obligations 49, 64; order 16, 297,
Schandein, Ludwig 231 302-3; prestige 74; reforms 199,
Schanz, Vii 105 202-3, 218, 311; security 209;
Schieder, Theodor 294-5 segregation 68, 133; 'state' 24; status
Schinckel, Max von 53, 58 56, 106, 213-14; strata 219;
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 239 structures xvi; transformations 284-5,
Schlippenbach, Count Otto 61 306; values 1; welfare 310
Schmits, Julius 104 Social Darwinism 22, 217
Schnitzler, Arthur 271, 288 Social Democratic Party (SPD) 17, 29,
Schröder family 122 143, 145, 151, 307, 312; change in
Schröder, Octavio 124 attitude 153, 155, 156, 157, 158;
Schuback family and company 119, Hamburg 132; 'Heimat' 245, 253n;
123, 124, 125, 128 and National Liberals 310; and .
Schücking, Levin 104 NSDAP 321, 323, 326; social
Schulz-Briesen, Bruno 69, 72, 74 boundaries of 320; and universal
Schwabach, Leonie von 65-6 suffrage 309
Schwabach, Paul 55, 57, 58, 60, 66 sociology 296, 303-4
science, German 18, 203, 216-17 Sohnrey, Heinrich 214, 225, 246
scientific: achievement 218; advisory Sombart, Werner 87-8
346
INDEX
Sonderweg xv, 1,87,88, 189, 294, 297; Thyssen, August 49, 53, 69, 70, 71-2,
and National Socialism 46, 319, 330 74, 104
SPD see Social Democratic Party Thyssen, Fritz 152
Spengler, Oswald 70, 71 Tiergarten (Berlin) 50, 51
Spree, Reinhard 200 Tietz, Georg 67, 68
Stahl, Wilhelm 89 Tietz, Oskar 53, 57, 64
Stand (corporate) ideology 4, 119, 163, titles/orders: bourgeois 87-114, 117,
170-3,186-7,188-90,258-9,328-31 121, 204
Ständestaat (corporate state) 185, 329 Townley, Lady Susan 60
state: authoritarian I; and bourgeoisie trade unions xvi, 16, 296; attitudes to
xvi, 1,5, 14,24,90, 106, 107-8, 143, 154, 155; Britain 147, 148, 150,
282-3, -building 3, 4, 247-8; and 300, 307; and politics 149, 151, 158;
business elite 47, 68, 75, 131; -church and the state 150, 153; 'yellow'
dispute 10; fragmentation 4; and (company) unions 144--7, 151, 153
labour relations 150-2, 153, 157; and tradition 157, 158, 240, 248, 295
legal profession 3, 4, 163-84, 186, training, legal/medical 165-6, 168, 174,
187, 190; and medical 176, 180, 200, 204
profession/services 3, 198-223; power Traun family 126
17, 23-5, 26, 238, 243; sodal 24, 202, Trier 308
311; and society 305; Turner, Henry A. 152, 155
status 36, 53, 56; and honour/duelling Twesten, Karl 261-2, 269
255, 259, 261, 272, 279, 283; lawyers'
5, 6, 164, 172, 184, 185, 186; of unification of Germany, 75n, 87, 202,
medical profession 200, 204, 213-14, 204, 293, 302-3; and 'Heimat' 230,
220 231, 245
Stedman Jones, Gareth 332 Uni ted States 147,204,297,330; see also
Stegmann, Dirk 295 America
Stein, Heinrich Friedrich Karl von 4 universities 164--8, 182, 277; see also
Sternen berg, August 100 students
Unruh, Fritz von 63
Stinnes, Hugo 63, 70, 71, 72, 153, 154
Upper Silesia 144
Strauss, Richard 61
urban: areas 50, 214; culture 225;
Strauss, Salomon 263-5
industrial-capitalist economy 310;
Strauss, Walther 275-6
urbanization 236; see also city/cities
Stresemann, Gustav 3 I I, 325
students 277-81, 285: see also legal values/beliefs, bourgeois xv, xvii 5, 9, 18,
training, universities 23, 48, 107, 130-1; and aristocracy
Stumm-Halberg, Carl Ferdinand Baron xvi, I, 282; cultural 71, 303; family
von 7, 58, 142 10,11,115; and legal system 189;
Stürmer, Michael 52 liberal 18; and medical profession
Stuttgart 180, 273 198-233; pre-industrial 16;
Sudermann, Hermann 63 traditional 74; see also thrift
suffrage, universal manhood 300-1, 309 Veblen, Thorstein 47,48,67
Suttner, Bertha von 62 Venedey, Jakob 264
Svarez, Carl Gottlieb 272 Vereine see associations
Switzerland 107 Viersen 96
Vincent, John 306
Virchow, Rudolf 64, 199, 202, 203-4,
teaching profession 183, 184 209,210,217
technology 149, 239, 285 Vögler, Albert 152
Teuteberg, Hans-Jürgen 89 Vormärz; period 173, 174
Third Reich 30
Thouret, Peter Julius 273 Wagner, Richard 269
thrift as bourgeois value 46, 48, 53, Wahlendorf, Willy Ritter Liebermann
66-8, 72 von 57
347
INDEX
Walker, Mack 246-7 Wilhe1m II, German Kaiser 20, 24--5,
Wallers tein, Immanuel 243 46, 52, 58-9, 66, 275-6
Wallich, Hermann 53, 65 Wi1he1mine Germany 46-86, 140,256,
Wallich, Hildegard 55 331
Wallich, Paul 62, 65 Wilke, Adolfvon 104
Warburg, Albert 53 Willinck family 122, 124, 126, 127
Windthorst, Ludwig 183
Weber, Max 24, 25, 102, 255, 259, 295
Winkler, Heinrich August 294, 295-6,
Wehler, Hans-Ulrich 140, 187, 294, 295 330
Weinburg, Garl von 53 Woermann family and company 125,
Weimar Republic xvi, 141,209,219, 126
220, 332, 334: and big Wolff, Hans von 121
businesslindustrialists 29, 152, 325; women 11,27,68-9,74,128,129,
coalition 27, 321; government of 157, 286-7; enfranchisement 299; in
215, 312, 319, 330; and labour family 10, 116, 133, 134
relations 153-8; party system of work: ethic 51, 67, 130; force 16, 146;
320-1, 323, 324, 325, 327, 333; -/home separation 10, 116, 127, 129;
politics of 27-8, 329, 330 -pi ace 130
Weisbach, Valentin 57, 61, 63, 67 workers 12, 17, 27, 73, 127, 142, 241,
Weisbach, Werner 66, 67 319-20, 323
Weissler, Adolf 175, 187 working cJasses 11, 16, 17,51, 75n, 133,
welfare 199,209,213-14,215, 218, 181, 245, 300-1, 303, 307--8; and
296-7; schemes 141-6; taxation 155, liberalism 22, 299, 304, 312; and
NSDAP 321, 323 as threat 14, 17,
157
22-3,30, 75n, 87, 132, 150, 154,246,
Western Europe 294, 298-305 299-300. 318
Westphal family 122, 126, 130 Württemberg 7, 165, 168, 181,308
Westpha1, Otto 122 Würzburg 180
Westphalia 7, 8, 56, 117; see also
Rhineland Young Liberal Movement 310
Wiegand, Heinrich 58, 59 Zabern 24
Wiess, A1ma 26 Zunkel, Friedrich 88, 90
Wilhe1m I, German Kaiser 274, 282 Zypen, Julius van der 194
348