The Course of German History

1 The Course of German History In those extraordinary months after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, when discussion of the unification of the two ~er manies was for the first time in forty years back on the serious politi cal agenda, many voices were raised giving views on 'the German question'. From a variety of quarters, prejudices were aired which had lain dormant - along with the memories, gas masks and other relics of the Second World War - over the years when the Cold War and the balance of terror had seemed to ensure a fragile peace in a divided Europe. Suddenly, the prospect of a united, economically powerful, and politically sovereign Germany, active again in central Europe and in a position to mediate between East and West, aroused strong emotions among those whose view of Germany had been largely confined to an ill-assorted combination of images of Hitler and sleek West German capitalist competitors. Who were the Germans? What was their national character, if they had one? Who were those people who called themselves Germans, from the other, eastern, side of the rapidly crumbling Iron Curtain, who in many ways seemed not a bit like their western brothers and sisters? Pro voked into having to make a rapid response to the collapse of com munist rule in Eastern Europe, many people outside Germany found they had a serious deficit of knowledge and understanding. Many Germans, too - both East and West - found that the Iron Curtain, and the proclaimed 'zero hour' of 1945, had raised barriers to informed interpretation. History - although it did not come to an end in 1989, as some pundits, like the American scholar Fukuyama, wished to proclaim- did indeed seem to have stopped, as far as many textbooks were concerned, in 1945. Thereafter, politics and sociology took over - to provide partial snapshots of an apparently eternal present, unconnected with the radically different past. 2 The Course of German History The Course of German History 3 But prejudices based on partial perceptions of Hitler's rule, more had increased in size and importance, many duchies having achieved than half a century earlier, combined with limited impressions of a the status of kingdom for the first time with the demise of the old rapidly changing present, can scarcely provide a secure basis of Empire. understanding. The 'land in the centre of Europe', Germany, had for In the course of the nineteenth entu.ry it proved to be the econo decades held an uneasy position in the European and world balance mically more advanced Prus ia which was able to gain the edge over of power - as well as being an extraordinary powerhouse of creativ Austria in competition for domination over the medium-sized Ger ity, in cultural and intellectual as well as economic respects. The man states. Prussia was in the forefront of moves towards economic complexities of German history demand serious and detailed engage integration in the Customs Union, in the century which was to see ment- and many observers have seen it as a most peculiar history, those dramatic processes of transformation associated with industria thus provoking heated debates on interpretation. lization. Attempts to achieve political unification of the German Over the centuries, there has been a 'German question'. Some state under liberal au pice fai led in 1848 and it was ultimately the analysts have seen its beginnings - somewhat anachronistically - in Prussian Chancellor Bismarck' policies of 'blood and iron' that pro the 'failure' to establish a unified state in the Middle Ages. In the days duced the unification, fraught with tensions of a 'small Germany' of the politically decentralized 'Holy Roman Empire of the German (Kfeindeutschland), excluding Austria in tb second erman •mpire Nation', the multiplicity of German lands - ranging from the more founded in 1871. Fi.rst seeking to secure its pl.ace in Europe, and then important secular and ecclesiastical principalities and city states to gain a po iti n am ng the imperial p wer of the wodd, Imperial through to the minuscule fiefdoms of 'independent imperial knights' ermany prov d t be an Lm table entity. It came to n end, f !low - formed an interdependent system over which the emperors (often ing defeat in th First World War, in the revo.l uti .nary autumn of pursuing dynastic interests outside the Empire) never quite gained 1918. After ermany's b.ri f and ill-far d attempt at democracy in central control. The cultural and political conflicts involved in the th • Weimar Republic th ultimate denouement was to be the geno Reformation of the sixteenth century helped to institutionalize the cidal rule f Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich an empire which wa decentralization of the German lands. Religious differences coincided upposed to last a thousand years but which in the event oilap ed and overlapped with political conflicts to confirm this diversity in the in ruins after a mere dozen, charact riz d by arguably unequalled course of the seventeenth century, in the series of conflicts which eviL It was this outcome- this Gotterdammerung- which provides formed the so-called Thirty Years War (1618-48). Yet the Peace of the unjque wist to the problem of e plaining German hist ry. Westphalia in 1648 was effectively able only to seal a stalemate: Many b ervers have puzzled over this a_ppar ntly pecttliar pattern neither religious uniformity nor political centralization was achieved. of erma.n history - this allegecliy unique German path, or Sonde?· The territorial rulers enjoyed sovereignty within their own states, weg. Diver attempts have been made to explain its course. Uroadlx while still remaining formally subordinate to the Emperor. Clashes whether they have wanted to or not, hi torians of crmany wntmg among states competing for domination in the emerging European aft r Hitler have had to engage in a long-nlluling battle, characterized state system continued in the 'age of absolutism' of the later seven by local skioni hes over particular peri cl and is ue , on the ques teenth and eighteenth centuries. While, from the myriad of small tions of 'what went wrong? and when did it go wrong?' Arearguard states which made up 'Germany', Prussia emerged as a powerful rival action ha been mounted by those who want to ay that not every to Austria, the relatively weak German lands were still easily overrun thing did go wrong, r.· at least, it did not go wrong so early, or by an expansionist post-revolutionary France under Napoleon. it ould have been prevented. However far serious historians have Under the impact of Napoleonic aggression, a fundamental reor tried to step outside this sort of framework, the shadow of Hitler ganization of the domestic and external affairs of the German states has stretched a long way back, shaping even counter-arguments was begun. In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was abolished. Legal, about the diversity of trends and the non-inevitability of historical social and economic reforms were introduced, either as a direct result outcomes. of Napoleonic rule or in a form of 'defensive modernization'. After Given this sort of context, there has been a widespread (although the eventual defeat of Napoleon, the formation of a German Con far from universal) tendency to castigate Germany's past for what it federation in 1815 included a strengthened and enlarged Prussia was not: German history has fr qu ntly been written in terms of its as an intended bulwark against France in the West, tsarist Russia alleged distortion failures, 'turni_ng-poi.nrs where Geonany fai led to in the east. At the same time, with territorial reorganization and turn' (to use A. .J. P. Taylor's phra e) . hus, f r xampl , Germany a great reduction in the number of German states, other states too 'failed' to become a centraHzed tate in tbe Middle Age . The 'earJy The Course of German History 5 4 The Course of German History . , f h p, sants' War 'failed', because in the context of longer-term traditions and trends. While some his bourgeois revolu non t e 1525 . _ea ~ • . I date (in the I k d ' ·e' botu·geo tste at wu s very ear y torians devote major attention to the role of individual personalities ~crmany a . a£ nll1at~ Friedcich Engels). The 'failure' to resolve in shaping the course of political history in particular, others have v1ew f ManClsts o owmg - . · h R f · · · d 1· · . 1 ·o 1_tl i ts assoctated wtrh t e e ormatwn concentrated their energies on exploring patterns of social, economic the rehgtous an po Iti .1 ' f h . h h r Kleinstaaterei pattern o t e e1g teent or cultural development in more detail. Greater theoretical awareness le d to t h petty bac kwate _, 1 d ._ le py Gennany produced, to be sure, some e evate has led to rejections of simple empiricism, and of the belief (based century; wnen a s 1 d · · - · -·rs but remained at ne remove from the rea nvmg on the views of the great German historian Ranke) that one can seek L'-Lru ra I p •u ' . ' . 1 1 . h b . f history vidcnt u1 Bntam mdustna revo utwn or t e our- to recount 'how it actually was', while the experience of Hitler has f or e d h . ~ . F is revolution which put an en to t e a11c1en regtme m ranee. given cause for thought to those who held that historians should seek ~:pattern of small states allegedly nurtmed the burea u_rat i , su bje~ t to empathi ze with tbe people about whom they wrote.

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