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This chapter focuses on the work of Carl Schmitt during the Weimar Republic, though the limiting of focus to this period requires a few preliminary words. Chronologically, the movement from Imperial Germany to the Weimar Republic roughly coincides with Weber's untimely death in 1920. Schmitt's rapid rise to prominence within the academy and ‘high society’ during the second half of the 1920s, up to his famous role in the Preiβenshclag of 1932, provides one reason for concentrating on his writings in this period. Furthermore, the discussion suggests that the case that his Weimar writings bear the closest resemblance to Weber's thought.

This chapter begins with a discussion of migration and inequality in imperial Germany from 1870 to 1913. It discusses the role of migration industrialization, and its contribution to the social dislocation which accompanies the early stages of economic growth in modern industrial societies. The chapter then considers the Weber–Lewis–Kuznets hypothesis.

The view that the Kaiserreich suffered from internal flaws is so deeply entrenched in German historiography that one doubts if it will ever be dispelled, however much evidence is produced against it. This chapter reviews the alternative view presented in this book, that the Kaiserreich suffered from no more than the normal problems of a rapidly industrializing society.

This chapter examines the concept of state in Imperial Germany. It attempts to determine what kind of a state the Imperial state was if it was neither a liberal state nor a straightforwardly aristocratic one. It suggests that most of the existing definitions of the Imperial state maintain a discrepancy between the state as a system of political domination and its role in the economy. It highlights the need for an alternative perspective in order to better understand the Imperial period.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of one of the most important heterodox variants of economics, the so-called ‘Historical School’ and the emergence of a ‘younger Historical School’ in Germany between 1860 and 1890. It discusses studies on the impact of statistics and historical economics on empirical social research and the emergence of sociology, and the influence of the ‘Historical School’ on American academic disciplines and the social question as a methodological and epistemological problem in German social science The chapter also considers relevance of Gustav Schmoller and historical economics to the history of Imperial Germany. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the peculiarities of German history, specifically bourgeois society and politics during the nineteenth century. This book explains the basic assumptions in German historiography and the German historians' views concerning the problems of bourgeois revolution. It evaluates the relation of bourgeoisie with liberalism and democracy and attempts to define the concept of state in Imperial Germany.

This chapter dissects how the revolutionary unification of Germany into an empire by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck transformed the German myth of the East, creating anxieties about frontiers even as a new form of statehood was celebrated in official nationalism as a culmination of German culture. Bismarck pursued a foreign policy based on conservative solidarity with Russia while also caught in an internal struggle over the ethnic future of the ‘Eastern marches’ within Germany, its eastern provinces, and Slavic populations. The turn towards ethnic confrontation that came to the forefront after Bismarck's dismissal in 1890 can be traced in a turn towards Social Darwinism, racism, and the organized chauvinism of the nationalist leagues in both Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary. As a result, earlier conservative solidarity between the empires now changed into a mutual terror focused on threatened frontiers.

Who were the left liberals? No political grouping in Imperial Germany, anti-Semitic splinter groups apart, had a comparable history of splits and short-lived mergers. These disruptions were partially bridged by continuity of personnel and tradition. The label ‘left liberal’ was itself a product of diversity. It included North German groups who generally called themselves Freisinnige. However, most South German left liberals, reflecting a greater openness and attachment to radical political reform, referred to themselves as Democrats. Left liberal, as used here and by contemporaries, was an umbrella term to cover the political terrain between the National Liberals and the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). There remains the need for a more detailed and accurate assessment of left liberal sociology. Two features emerge from an analysis of left liberal social composition. The first is the clear correlation between party and social hierarchy. The second is the wide, but correspondingly shallow spread of left liberal support. Left liberalism was also a party of minorities.

This chapter considers the rise of Imperial Germany to world power status at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that Germany’s bid for world power status—Weltpolitik—embodied the recognitive practices constitutive of world power status and was designed to secure recognition from Britain, the system’s preeminent world power. Specifically, in building a powerful fleet of battleships stationed in the North Sea, German leaders reasoned they could alter the political relationship with Britain by creating a display of military force so great that Britain would recognize Germany’s position among the world powers. At the same time, these recognitive practices insulted Germany from the social uncertainty associated with intersubjective identity formation by creating the illusion that its world power status was self-evident rather than dependent on British recognition. The precariousness of its social status was revealed during the First Moroccan Crisis, when in response to acts of misrecognition Germany initiated a serious international crisis that risked war, rousing suspicions among the European great powers that Germany was a revisionist power.

This chapter analyses the experiences of German soldiers in the trenches and the origins of ‘war neurosis’. It explores attempts by doctors to diagnose, control and stigmatize men who suffered mental wounds as unmanly fakers. Most doctors argued that these men were hereditarily ill and that their symptoms were inherent rather than combat-induced. Traumatized men were excluded from pensions and treated as criminals and deviants. This chapter explores how traumatized men experienced and characterized the violence that shattered their minds.

This Introduction explains what the book hopes to achieve, its central thesis, and the related arguments it puts forward. It explains how the book throws new light on the reciprocal relationship between political modernization and authoritarian governance in Germany over six decades. The first section differentiates between social and political aspects of democratization and outlines two kinds of election battles fought in Imperial Germany—over suffrage laws and during election campaigns. Both can be appraised in terms of the values, norms, and concepts that link a society to the act of voting. The second section outlines the book’s contribution to histories of Social Democracy and the German bourgeoisie. Section three asks: Why Saxony? It argues that regional history works best as a critical tool to reassess larger questions of German history over the longue durée.

The first two sections of this chapter cover the war years 1914–18. The first section considers the salience of suffrage issues in the effort to establish a “new order” in Germany. The crumbling legitimacy of the German and Saxon states is examined, particularly after July 1917. The second section examines the parliamentary and suffrage reforms that arrived in Saxony at the eleventh hour, before the Second Reich collapsed in war and revolution in November 1918. An intermezzo follows, provided by Mark Twain’s fictional account of The Curious Republic of Gondour and its plural suffrage. Concluding remarks underscore this book’s contribution to debates about long-term continuities in German history, the processes of social and political democratization, and the best ways to study electoral culture. This section argues that both kinds of election battles—election campaigns and suffrage reforms—need to be studied together.

This chapter begins by examining the violent street protests in 1905 in favor of suffrage reform in Saxony. At this time, the authority of Saxony’s state ministry reached a new low, and opponents of Social Democracy were forced to temporize even as they considered which suffrage reform proposals to adopt. Then the culture of working-class protest is examined from the perspective of Social Democracy’s new confidence and bourgeois fears of “the rabble.” This chapter’s second section examines the setback suffered by Social Democrats in the Reichstag election of 1907, and the lessons they and their enemies learned. This section examines the reasons for Social Democratic losses in Saxony, which included a new willingness on the Right to undertake the hard labor of grass-roots agitation. Yet the Right still sought to slow or halt Germany’s political democratization.

This chapter examines Imperial Germany’s final half-decade of peace (1909–14). It charts Saxon traditions of anti-socialism, anti-liberalism, and antisemitism, including their contingent trajectories, in the context of developments elsewhere in Germany. The first section examines Saxon parliamentary life up to the outbreak of war and battles to reform or defend Prussia’s three-class suffrage. The second section is devoted to Imperial Germany’s last general election in 1912, looking at the campaign, the voting, and efforts to “spin” its outcome. Local examples of dirty tricks are juxtaposed with larger reflections on the meaning of “politics in a new key.” After Social Democrats scored another Reichstag victory, the anti-socialist parties licked their wounds, but pressures for further suffrage reform and the task of mustering parliamentary majorities ensured that Saxony’s and Germany’s electoral cultures continued to evolve. The final section examines suffrage proposals and other remedies to overcome democratic, “dysfunctional” parliaments.

In October 1909 Saxony’s new plural suffrage was tested for the first and only time. This chapter begins with an examination of Social Democratic strength and the election campaign. The chapter ends by citing different answers to a question that had resonance beyond Saxony’s borders: Did the plural suffrage save the existing social and political order from Social Democracy, or was it a grave miscalculation? In between, sections are devoted to the actions and reactions of anti-socialist groups during the campaign; to the role of left-liberal and National Liberal parties between Left and Right; to statistical analysis of plural voting and its impact on the parliamentary representation of workers and the lower-middle classes; and to contemporaries’ realization that statistical predictions about the plural suffrage’s effect on voting outcomes were flawed.