Richard J. Evans - Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Routledge Revivals)

The ten original essays collected in this book have all been specially written for the occasion and are published here for the first time. The authors are all British historians of the younger generation. It is hoped that the contributions in this volume will give some indication of the wealth and diversity of scholarly research now being carried out in Britain on the history of Germany between 1888 and 1918. All the authors have worked extensively on primary sources in German archives. Their essays make use of unpublished documentary material in East and West Germany to cast new light on many aspects of Wilhelmine politics and society, both familiar and unfamiliar. The contributions are arranged by topic along a political continuum starting with problems of government and moving from the right wing through political movements in the middle peasant populism, political Catholicism, liberalism to Trade Unionism and Social Democracy, ending with a study of militancy and revolution on the far left. Alternatively, the sequence of essays can be viewed in terms of a descent down the social scale, beginning with the Kaiser and the Chancellor and progressing through the industrialists, administrators and intelligentsia via the urban and rural petty-bourgeoisie to the workers on the shop-floor and down the mines, taking in other social groups such as women and youth en route. In this way, the book as a whole tries to give the reader some impression of the range of political opinions and social groups which existed in the German Empire between the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1920s.