David Blackbourn - Populists and Patricians: Essays in Modern German History

First published in 1987, this collection of essays, from one of the leading historians in the field, is concerned with the central debates about German history from Bismarck to Hitler. David Blackbourn questions many previously held assumptions, whether about the natural conservatism of the German peasantry of the feudalization of the middle classes, and offers a new angle of approach to such subjects as liberalism, anti-semitism and the continuing importance of religion in German history. Bringing together social, economic, cultural and political history, each essay is concerned with the social and political flux that characterized the period, and with the problems and opportunities it presented. This reissue will be of great value to any students and academics with an interest in the history of modern Germany.

Populists and Patricians

Essays in Modern German History

David Blackbourn

First published in 1987
by Allen & Unwin

This edition first published in 2014 by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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1987 David Blackbourn

The right of David Blackbourn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but pointsout 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.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 87001416

ISBN: 978-1-138-02053-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77835-8 (ebk)

POPULISTS AND PATRICIANS

Essays in Modern German History

DAVID BLACKBOURN

London

ALLEN & UNWIN

Boston Sydney Wellington

David Blackbourn, 1987
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

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First published in 1987

It is a pleasure to thank the many individuals and institutions that have helped to make this book possible. I have to thank, first, the following journals and publishers, and the appropriate editors, for permission to reprint material that first appeared elsewhere: Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte, European History Quarterly (formerly European Studies Review), History Today, Holmes & Meier, the Journal of Modern History and the University of Chicago Press, the London Review of Books, Macmillan and Crane Russak, Methuen, Past and Present.

There are two important general debts I should like to acknowledge. The following essays are based on work done in many libraries and archives in Britain and West Germany, and I should like to express my appreciation for the helpfulness their members of staff have invariably shown me over the years. Most of these essays also began life as papers or lectures, and I am very aware of the contribution made by audiences in Britain, West Germany and the United States in helping to curb my errors and sharpen my ideas.

I am very grateful to Birkbeck College, University of London, for granting a year of sabbatical leave in 19845, during which I was able to work on . I should also like to express my appreciation of the financial support provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, during the same period. The Institute for European History in Mainz was my second home in 19845, as it has been on previous occasions.

Some of my individual scholarly debts are recorded in the notes that follow each chapter, but I should like here to express particular thanks to a number of people. Geoffrey Crossick and Gerhard Haupt have contributed much to my thinking on the petty bourgeoisie, and . I should like, finally, to express my thanks to Geoff Eley. He and I have been discussing many of the questions addressed in this book since the early 1970s, and this collection would be the poorer without the exchange of ideas with him and the stimulus it has provided. The notes that accompany the following essays provide a reminder that historians are all engaged in a collaborative enterprise. My largest debt is the one most difficult to acknowledge directly, for it is owed to the many friends and colleagues who have helped to shape the arguments in this book by their suggestions, discussions or raised eyebrows. They should at least know that I am aware of what is owed to them.

I am grateful to Allen & Unwin and Jane Harris-Matthews for their encouragement and patience. The thanks I owe to my wife Debbie for so many reasons cannot be properly expressed here. This book is dedicated to her.

London, October 1986

This book contains eleven essays, all written since the late 1970s and dealing with various aspects of German history in the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. There is a brief preface to each essay which tries to set it in an immediate context, and notes the place of original publication. In this introduction I want to talk more generally about the contents of the collection, pulling together the common threads of the essays and discussing the broad historiographical background.

The British historian of a foreign country necessarily leads something of a double life. On the one hand he spends a great deal of time in that country and tries to make a contribution to its history on equal terms with native practitioners. Sometimes he will acquire a second identity, in the manner of a Richard Cobb;1 more usually he will enjoy the tension and it is enjoyable of being part-insider and part-outsider in the adoptive culture. On the other hand he has the task of interpreting his chosen country to an Anglo-Saxon audience which has no direct access to the primary sources or to most of the secondary literature. Trying to convey the feel and texture of another nations history is obviously not straightforward. The problems that arise, for example, over when and how to translate certain terms invariably reflect genuine cultural and conceptual differences. When, as in the German case, the native historiography is extremely rich and sophisticated, discharging this obligation becomes even more important. I therefore want to begin by outlining some of the major debates in German historical writing against which the essays in this book should be read.