Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical

Association
Review: German Master Narratives: The Sequel
Author(s): Jonathan Sperber
Review by: Jonathan Sperber
Source: Central European History, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1996), pp. 107-113
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central European
History of the American Historical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4546574
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ARTICLE

REVIEW

German

Master

The

Narratives:

Jonathan

Sequel

Sperber

Vol. 3, Von der "Deutschen

Gesellschaftsgeschichte.
his
zum
Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges. By
Doppelrevolution"
Munich:
Hans-Ulrich
Wehler.
1995.
Verlag C. H. Beck.
Deutsche

Pp.

xviii

+ 1515.

DM

118.00.

ISBN

3-406-32263-8.

With the publication of this massive book, Hans-Ulrich Wehler has passed
the halfway point in his project of writing a four-volume
history of Ger?
of the eighteenth
to the end of the
man society from the beginning
twentieth century. Part of an ongoing enterprise, the volume is also in
some ways a reprise of an earlier work of synthesis, since it goes over
much of the ground first covered by Wehler in Das Deutsche Kaiserreich,
published in 1973. The need for a new account is certainly understandable in view of the flood of scholarship that has poured out in the intervening two decades, much of which has been inspired by Wehler's earlier
work, sometimes written to support his theses, but also with the intent of
of the third volume
of Deutsche
refuting them. This double context
Gesellschaftsgeschichte will provide the basis for this review. I will look at a
in view of its almost thirteen hunfew selected aspects of the work?and
dred pages of text, any discussion of it would have to be selective?and
contrast them both to the two previous volumes in the series and to the
ideas the author put forward in his Kaissereich.
The structure of volume three follows the basic plan laid down in
the theoretical introduction
to the first volume. There is a section devoted to each of the four factors, taken from Max Weber's sociology,
whose

intersection Wehler
social inequality,
economy,

sees as determining
the historical process: the
and
culture.
As in the second
rule,
political

a short initial section

volume, Wehler has also inserted, unthematically,
on population movements.
Rather than covering the entire period 18491914 all at once, Wehler presents the work in two large parts, each deal?
and the other
ing with the five separate areas, one for the years 1849-1871,
drawn from the realm
for 1871-1914.
This is, of course, a periodization
of high politics, the formation of a unified national state serving as the
dividing line.
The colossal footnotes, in effect, extended
of the first two volumes, have remained,

annotated bibliographies, typical

and, if anything, have grown

107

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GERMAN

108

MASTER

NARRATIVES

larger. The mastery of the literature demonstrated in them is impressive,

and their value for scholarship persistently high, were it not for the fact
that individual titles can be very hard to find. Wehler has actually pub?
lished portions of his bibliography as a separate work, which is one plausible, partial solution to the problem. He also promises an index to cited
authors in the fourth volume, although his contention that such an index
will "make for effortless finding of the necessary bibliographical
refer?
ences" (p. 1299) might well be doubted. Perhaps only if the bibliography
will it be possible to
is available electronically, on diskette or CD-ROM,
utilize completely its enormous potential as a research tool.
The single largest topical difference with the earlier volumes is the
discussion of war, diplomacy, and foreign relations, in contrast
to the brief and cursory treatment they had previously received. Not
surprisingly, in view of the book's structure, the wars of German unifica?
extended

tion and their precursors, back to the Crimean War, receive considerable
attention, but German imperial ventures, Wilhelmian foreign policy, and
the causes and outbreak of the First World War are discussed with the
rigor, and sovereign mastery of the existing literature that one
expects from the author. A particularly useful innovation is a short conclusion to each of the book's two parts, in which Wehler briefly recapitulates the main points he has made in the preceding sections and offers
detail,

his latest opinions on the Sonderweg controversy, which one might see as
the master question ultimately shaping the entire volume.
he has,
When Wehler talks about the nineteenth-century
economy,
above all, business cycles in mind. His discussion of them is exhaustive,
albeit mostly elaborating on familiar themes in greater detail. Sometimes,
though, he can offer interesting new insights, such as his demonstration
that the French war indemnity payments had little to do with the boom
of the Grunderzeit (pp. 98-99). The book also includes an extensive discussion
of structural elements in the economy, focusing on organization, growth
and productivity
in industry, the artisanate, and
or decline, innovation
overview of economic
agriculture. Wehler also provides a comprehensive
organization, with an eye to the question of the growth in and nature of
state intervention.
Here, he rejects the concept of organized capitalism
used previously, arthat he?and
many scholars associated with him?had
the
notion
of
instead
for
guing
"corporatism," expanding back into the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries an idea proposed, among others, by
In contrast to these
Charles Maier for the post-WW I era (pp. 663-80).
issues, the discussion of such topics as capital markets, the gold standard and
international financial transactions, as well as central banking, seems thinner.
Perhaps a bit more on finance and a bit less on business cycles might have
increased still further the informational value of the section on the economy.

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JONATHAN

SPERBER

109

are most prominently on display in

presuppositions
in explicitly Weberian
on social structure, that is conceived,
of "Besitz- und Erwerbsklassen."
terms, as a conglomeration
Particularly
useful are the author's global discussions of German society, offering convincing estimates of the sizes of different classes within it at different
points in the period covered by the book. In his discussions of individual
an increasingly
follows
influential
trend in German
groups, Wehler
Wehler's

theoretical

the sections

historiography,
by paying particular attention to the Burgertum, especially
its university-educated
its social and cultural influ?
wing, underscoring
This focus on the Burgertum
ence, as well as its vigorous self-confidence.
does not, however,
involve a neglect of other social groups, from the
nobility through the working class, all of which are discussed with verve
and insight.
The preference for the structural over the experiential
typical of the
discussion

of society

in the two

previous volumes (in contrast, say, to

is
in this one. Family life and gen?
continued
Nipperdey's work)
der relations also receive, as was the case in earlier volumes, only modest
amounts of attention. Wehler does have in his section on politics in Im?
Thomas

perial Germany a brief but acute discussion of the women's movement,

in which he notes that the largest group of organized women in the
Kaissereich, the antifeminist, conservative, and militaristic "patriotic women's
with
association,"
found its historian

a good half million members by 1913, has not yet

(pp. 1090-97).
As was the case with the previous volumes, the sections dealing with
culture have relatively little on the arts, sciences, or high culture in gen?
eral. Instead,

the author provides an institutionally

oriented account of
organized religion and the educational system. Appropriate to the period
there is also an excellent discussion of the expansion
under consideration,
of the print mass media, under the rubric of the origins of the modern
"communications
society." Wehler has his most extended discussions of
in his sections on politics, in particular in his accultural phenomena
and the early twentiSocial Darwinism,
counts of German nationalism,
romantic
movements
228-51,
938-61,
1081-85,
eth-century
youth
(pp.
The
notes
one
his
"a
non-believat
as
author
1097-1104).
point
position
with the Protestant life world [Position eines nichtglaubigen
der evangelischen
Lebenswelt,
p. 1181]," something that
Sympathisanten
in
more
the first two volumes of
colors his judgments,
perhaps
strongly
the work than in this one.
The sections on politics, each a good two hunderd pages strong, are
twice the length of any of the others. They are also where the writing is
at its most dynamic: the account of the appointment of Bismarck as Prus?
sian Minister President in 1862 almost reads like a thriller. Indeed, the
ing sympathizer

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110

GERMAN

MASTER

NARRATIVES

figure of Bismarck dominates the author's discussion of German politics.

Wehler underscores both his presence in the period of national unifica?
tion and the first two decades of the empire, and then his absence, in the
Wilhelmian Era, when no one else could run the complex governmental
system he created.
In line with much of the latest scholarship, Wehler's evaluation of Bis?
marck and the Reichsgriindung is noticeably positive. Rejecting the notion
of a liberal "capitulation" to Bismarck in 1866, he insists that the possi?
toward a liberal state and parliamentary sys?
bility of future developments
tem of government had by no means been foreclosed. Along these lines,
Wehler describes the decade following the Austro-Prussian War as mov?
ing in this direction, as an era of reform and innovation, characterized by
cooperation between the executive and the liberal political parties. Even
the Kulturkampf is largely perceived in this light.
The end of the liberal era is thus an even more pronounced develop?
ment and points once again to the centrality of the figure of Bismarck in
the book's political narrative. Wehler notes that his earlier descriptions of
technique of rule as "Bonapartism" have come under serious,
and justified criticism. Consequently,
he goes off in a new direction and
Iron
is
best
that
the
Chancellor
understood as a "charismatic"
suggests
in
the loose contemporary meaning of a
ruler, employing the term not

Bismarck's

dynamic and captivating public speaker (which Bismarck was not), but in
the technical, Weberian sense: a ruler drawing his legitimation from the
public belief in his extraordinary, almost supernatural abilities and accomplishments. Bismarck's rise, Wehler suggests, stemmed from this locus of
belief, namely his fulfillment of the long-desired wish for the unification
of the nation. But Wehler attributes Bismarck's fall to the same basic
characteristic: the charismatic ruler's need to counteract growing disillusion with him by creating new crises in order to master them and demonstrate once again his remarkable abilities. Creating one domestic and
foreign crisis too many led to the chancellor's downfall, but also weakened in advance his Wilhelmian
successors, who lacked Bismarck's acand could never find a way to duplicate them, or the
complishments
charismatic influence emerging from them. If this analysis brings to mind
a certain twentieth-century
German ruler, the implication is thoroughly
intended: Wehler places Bismarck in a line of charismatic figures in mod?
ern Central European politics, extending from him through Hindenburg
to Hitler.
Such an assertion will no doubt remind readers of the Sonderweg thesis,
the idea that nineteenth-century
German history took a different path
from that of the countries of Western Europe and North America, a path
ultimately leading to the rise of Nazism. This was the organizing principle

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JONATHAN

SPERBER

111

of Das Deutsche Kaiserreich and has been the subject of heated debate ever
since. Wehler's take on this twenty years of scholarly debate, in which he
has been a most active participant, is now on display. He has simultaneously modified,
changed, and retained his original views in a complex,
multileveled
way.
At one level, Wehler has conceded the validity of a number of criticisms of his position. As noted above, he has rejected some concepts he
previously used: Bismarck's Bonapartism, for instance, or a regime of or?
once
ganized capitalism. The idea of a weak, "feudalized" bourgeoisie,
central to the Sonderweg thesis, has also been abandoned. In noting that
both socioeconomic
and political developments
in Germany were not exceptional through the first two-thirds of the nineteenth
century, Wehler
has limited the validity of any Sonderweg thesis to the period following
the Reichsgrundung, thus severing the concept's ties to a long prehistory of
Prussian militarism or to a failed revolution of 1848.
At another level, Wehler has accentuated the positive in his discussion
of the Kaiserreich, and, more broadly, of the second half of the nine?
teenth century, not so much reversing previous viewpoints
as giving a
broader treatment to areas in which Germany comes off well in comparison with similar countries, Topics discussed along these lines in the third
volume of Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte would include the ability of Ger?
man municipal governments
to deal effectively and often equitably with
the problems of urbanization and industrialization;
the German bureauadministrative
abilities
and
its
limited
and hesitant patcracy's
admittedly
of
social
insurance
and
other
measures
of
social
reform; the
ronage
effectiveness

of primary education
in spreading basic skills among the
and
the
extent
to
which
the system of secondary and univer?
population
sity education encouraged a certain amount of upward social mobility; or
the growth of a large, diverse, and independent
political press. Brief dis?
cussions or sometimes just occasional remarks along these lines can be
found in Wehler's Kaiserreich, but here they take up a good deal of space
and are explicitly noted in the work's concluding
sections.
More subtly, one can also note a shift of emphasis in the treatment of
state intervention
in the economy.
It seems to me that in the work under
review Wehler distances himself from the left-liberal critics of Imperial
in
Germany, who saw an authoritarian political system, state intervention
the economy,
and government
support for east-Elbian landlords as inteWhile having little good to say about government
grally connected.
sup?
port for agriculture and nothing good about the Junkers, Wehler does
assert that he regards the Bismarckian and Wilhelmian state's intervention
in the economy
as often useful, frequently an improvement
on laissezfaire, and pointing

toward

the beneficial

interventionist

policies

of the

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GERMAN

112

MASTER

NARRATIVES

century. If benefits from state action were often enjoyed inequitably as a result of differential access to political power, the economic
interest groups that looked to the state for help were nonetheless, accord?
ing to the author, precursors of a pluralist social and political order. (c(.
esp. pp. 646, 654-56, 661). One might argue that such views are at least
twentieth

implicit in Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, but they are expressly stated in this
work. In doing so, Wehler is moving very much against the intellectual
current of pro-free market and antistatist thought, that has enjoyed an
increase in influence since 1973, both in academic and in policycircles.
making
For all these modifications,
a hard core of the Sonderweg thesis remains
in the third volume of Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Wehler regards as
enormous

deeply pemicious the power and influence of the landed aristocracy, whether
at the highest levels of the civilian administration of Prussia and Ger?
many, in the upper ranks of the officer corps, or in the leadership of
agrarian interest groups. All such positions, he argues, had been weakening through much of the nineteenth century, but the victory of Prussian
forces in the wars of national unification?and
here, once again, we can
see the central role of Bismarck?dramatically
reversed the fortunes of
the east-Elbian landed nobility, increasing its power and rehabilitating its
prestige. More than anything else, Wehler continues, this reinvigorated
group and the institutions it dominated prevented the creation of a democratic
and parliamentary form of government, a flexible political regime that, as
"the history of the West in the modern era" (p. 1294) demonstrates,
could best have mastered the crises and difficulties caused by socioeconomic and cultural modernization.
Such a formulation, posing a uniquely
Central European contrast between modernization
of the economy and
civil society on the one hand, and domination of the state by traditional
elites on the other, demonstrates, for all the retractions, modifications,
and limitations expressed in the book, the continuing saliency of the idea
of a German Sonderweg in Wehler's thought.
No doubt the author's critics and his defenders will have more than a
little to say about this revision of a key concept, and a book review is
not the place to offer an extended commentary.
I will make just two
remarks, both pointing out how Wehler's revised concept of a Sonderweg
does not quite fit with some of the new directions of scholarship that he
has integrated into his work and discussed with great acuity. First, it is
difficult to see how Wehler's description of the years of the Reichsgriindung
as a period of successful liberal reform, open to many potential future
can be squared with his assertion that the victories of the
developments,
Prussian state in the wars of national unification decisively reversed the
long-term decline in the power and influence of the east-Elbian landed

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JONATHAN

SPERBER

113

and in doing so blocked the

nobility and the institutions it dominated,
Second, while the
way toward democratic and parliamentary government.
of
a
traditional
elite
the
of a demo?
picture
preventing
implementation
cratic and parliamentary system of government
a
may capture
good deal
of what was going on politically in Bismarckian Germany, I am less sure
that it provides the best way to understand the Wilhelmian Era. Many of
the political developments
occurring in the twenty-five
years before 1914,
that would

reverberate

perniciously through the first half of the twentieth

of
technocratic
century?the
growth
military planning, the development
of "scientific" notions of racism and eugenics, and the creation of a na?
tionalism imbued with them, or the drive to make Germany a world

chronicled
meticulously
by the author)?seem
power (all developments
difficult to attribute exclusively or even primarily to the "traditional" elements of German society.
In the end, though, differing interpretative preferences pale in impor?
tance before the sheer scope of this work. Its broad coverage, consistent
thematic guidelines, clearly asserted theses, explicit extended dialogue with
the author's own, past work?and
im?
the scholarly literature?including
in
intellectual
all
a
one
with
broader
trends,
presented
vigorous and
plicit
prose, make it a model work of historical synthesis. More than
it
is
a crucial part of a major project, marking the culmination
of
that,
one
of
and
the
world's
historians.
It
the life's work of
Germany's
leading
to an influential and compelling
school
will remain a lasting monument
forceful

of historical studies. With the completion of the fourth volume of Deutsche

Gesellschaftsgeschichte, that is to cover the entire "short twentieth century,"
from 1914 to 1990, we will have a work of scholarship that will tower
over the historiographical

landscape

for decades

University

of

to come.
Missouri,

Columbia

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