Continuity and Change in German Social Structure: Germany: an Enigma? Scheuch, Erwin K
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www.ssoar.info Continuity and change in German social structure: Germany: an enigma? Scheuch, Erwin K. Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Zur Verfügung gestellt in Kooperation mit / provided in cooperation with: GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Scheuch, E. K. (1988). Continuity and change in German social structure: Germany: an enigma? Historical Social Research, 13(2), 31-121. https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.13.1988.2.31-121 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY Lizenz (Namensnennung) zur This document is made available under a CC BY Licence Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden (Attribution). For more Information see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de Diese Version ist zitierbar unter / This version is citable under: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-34413 Continuity and Change in German Social Structure Erwin K. Scheuch* Germany: An Enigma? Uncertain Knowledge and Definite Beliefs During the last two decades, Germany has been one of the most fre• quently studied societies. Yet there is less agreement among social resear• chers today than earlier about the presumed characteristics of Germany (1). No recent social science treatise has the authority of Lowie's The Ger• man People, which dealt with pre-World War I social structure (2). Empi• rical researchers are more and more prompted to confess limitations to their knowledge. At the same time, however, a great many people in a great many countries hold very strong beliefs about what they consider to be the unique features of Germany. There is a plethora of books and articles on contemporary Germany, and in the fall of 1964, in one of those recurrent bursts of interest, the Federal Republic became a favorite topic of more or less intellectual magazines (3). On the one hand, then, we observe a widespread certainty that Germany is not merely another industrial society, that it has (mostly disturbing) features setting it apart as a social system. On the other hand, there are relatively few attempts to explore the subject systematically. This paradox is a symptom that in itself is in need of explanation. Despite the volume of publications on postwar Germany, the interest displayed has been highly selective. What the world usually wanted to know about Germany was how Nazism was possible, or—with the benefit of hindsight—why it was inevitable, and whether it was likely to recur in one form or another. Some of the theories about the causes of Nazism gained wide acceptance, and accordingly those aspects of the German so• cial structure that were believed to be responsible for Nazism (or, more generally, for the failure of democracy) received attention. As features that are presumably characteristic for German society, sociologists and psycho• logists tended to single out a rigid class system, an authoritarian family system, and a distinctive »modal personality« plus a particular value sy- * Adress all communications to: Prof. Dr. Erwin K. Scheuch, University of Colo• gne, Institute for Applied Social Research. Greinstr. 2, D-5000 Köln 41, W. Germany 31 stem (4). Historians and political scientists, on the other hand, concentra• ted on the effects of political institutions and on the structure and the value system of the elite (5). Depending on the observer's theories of hi• storical causation, any one of these aspects could be treated as an expla• nation of Germany as an anomalous case of an industrial society (6). A close look at the themes of such writings shows that it is not Germany as a case of an industrial society which social scientists try to analyze; rather, they purport to see a nation-state of possibily unique and definitely undesirable features. Consequently, in treating present-day Germany it is less the dramatic changes in this society by itself that command interest than it is the question of whether all this change leaves unaltered the causes for earlier dangerous political developments (7). For very good rea• sons, Germany does not present itself as an object of sociological or social psychological investigations analogous to Britain or France or Italy, but unfortunately this also leads to remarkable narrowing of focus when de• fining the scope of analysis. Reaction to such phenomena as Nazism or German imperialism, or an anti-Semitism of unparalleled violence accounts for only a part of this selective attention. There is in addition to these political phenomena—and intensified by them--a certain tradition of Germanophobia among We• stern intellectuals. Social scientists in Western democracies are not im• mune to this Germanophobia. Quite the contrary. Sometimes this Ger• manophobia comes close to being simply racist, more frequently it is a consequence of a recurring historical pattern: whenever Germany was confronted with a real test situation which left it some choice, she tended to opt for anti-democratic solutions (8). In Germany, the Boulangers or McCarthys remained not a mere threat but often attained political domi• nance. Such dicta as »Germany is at your feet or at your throat« (Chur• chill) refer to an emotional reality. Thus Germany has served and conti• nues to serve for many intellectuals as a symbol of the forces that are hostile to a liberal, free, and humane society—a sentiment that is shared by quite a few German intellectuals (9). Obviously, this does not contribute to a detached assessment. Notions about the uniqueness of Germany may persist longer with in• tellectuals than with other people. Surveys of attitudes toward Germans do indeed show that these beliefs have changed in western countries: such formerly used attributes as »cruel« are now out of use (10). However, stereotypes about Germany are still better »organized« in the West than is true of notions about most other peoples with the exception of such distant nations as Japan and China. A good indicator for the »organization« of such a national stereotype is the finding that in open-ended questions a smaller number of words suffices to account for the perception of Ger• mans than is true, e.g., for Americans or French. 32 Typical for the present stereotype about Germans in Western Europe and the U.S. are such attributes as hard-working (effective working-hours in Germany are among the lowest in Europe), disciplined (traffic viola• tions and crime rates are high), scientific (the share of students in engi• neering and natural sciences is rather low), conscientious, aggressive, boi• sterous, stiff, obedient; largely lacking are now such attributes as natio• nalistic, arrogant and militaristic. This list of attributes would presumably be different and much less friendly were comparable data available from Eastern European countries. For Western Europe, however, the present stereotype is a sort of simplified and unfriendly version of stereotypes about the British. Among intellectuals in Western countries, the stereotype is, of course, more varied, and includes the complicating notion that Germany is a uni• quely complex and unpredictable society. Indeed, notions about Germany and the Germans have fluctuated more than is true for beliefs about most other countries. The emphasis of Henry Adams and Madame de Stael on the presumably easygoing and reflective nature of Germans as against Heinrich Heine's, Lord Acton's, or George Clemenceau's emphasis on the thoughtless energy and self-negation of Germans before the demands of authorities signify an unusual divergency of opinion, partly reflecting the differing political organisations of the very same German society. A re• current theme in the analysis of Germany by Western intellectuals has been the thesis of the two Germanies: a peaceful, humane, and cultivated Germany; and a cruel aggressor that rules despotically whether at home or as an occupation power. In the 19th century Ernest Renan observed an uneasy coexistence between the cultivation of learning and the adoration of power. There is not much use in now trying to weigh the relative truth of conflicting allegations by various observers or to confront popular ste• reotypes about Germany with the results of research on the same pheno• mena. The analyses of intelligent observers do not refer to purely imagi• nary phenomena, and even popular stereotypes often have some remote relationship to real differences between social groups (11). I think that the usual approach if explaining a nation or a national character is itself ill-advised: to start with the concrete political form of a society, then to infer from this the structure of a society, and finally to use this inferred structure to explain the political manifestations at a particu• lar moment as a necessary consequence. It should be obvious that not all aspects of a particular social structure are expressed at a given moment, and the political and social phenomena that happen to be internationally visible at a particular time do not constitute a country's total social struc• ture. Furthermore, the features that writers on national character take as their points of departure are usually determined by the interests of the observer's home constituency. 33 In Search of an Integrated Social Structure Germany is a society apart—this is both the conventional wisdom and a widely shared attitude among social scientists. However, a more systematic analysis of any modern, industrialized society must always lead to the con• clusion: the respective society is both unique and a variation on a common theme; whether one or the other aspect is stressed depends mainly on the political outlook at a particular time and on the standards of comparison. Even aside from this consideration, Germany remains a society apart: it is not even obvious whether there is such a thing as one German society.