RAY STANNARD BAKER’S SEEN IN GERMANY AND MILITARIZED MASCULINE IDENTITY AROUND 1900 Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Max Ramme Crowder Graduate Program in History The Ohio State University 2012 Committee: Professor Alan Beyerchen, Advisor Professor Robin Judd Professor Christopher Otter Copyright by Max Ramme Crowder 2012 Abstract The late 19th century has often been described as a tumultuous era in which rapid urbanization, industrialization and increased tension between social classes characterized much of Europe. This study examines how masculine identities were formulated and performed during these turbulent years, specifically within the context of Imperial Germany. It takes as its primary source material the collected writings of American journalist Ray Stannard Baker, who toured the Kaiserreich in 1900 as a reporter for McClure’s Magazine. Baker’s account is analyzed in tandem with a number of German accounts produced around the same time in order to gauge the timbre of the discourse surrounding manliness in Germany. Ultimately this study concludes that, despite the turbulence and diversity of Imperial Germany, a military model of manliness centered on self‐sacrifice and obedience to authority predominated. The ubiquity of this model of masculinity, particularly the widespread belief in the importance of self‐sacrifice, offers a means of partially understanding the descent into the First World War through the lens of gender. ii Vita 2005……………………………………………………… St. Paul Academy and Summit School 2009………………………………………………………. B.A. History, Grinnell College 2010 to present……………………………………… Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University. Fields of Study Major Field: History iii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………...….ii Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….iii Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………...1 The Military……………………………………………………………………………………………………9 Education…………………………………………………………………………………………………......26 Industry……………………………………………………………………………………….………………30 Sport and Empire……………………………………………………………………………………….....34 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………..39 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………46 iv Introduction The proclamation of the German Empire in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors on January 18, 1871 marked a turning point in European history. Unified under the guidance of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck at the helm of an ascendant Prussia, Germany shattered the political order that had dominated the previous half‐ century. British Prime Minister Benjamin Desraeli was well attuned to this fact, remarking that the Franco‐Prussian War represented “a German revolution, a greater political event than the French Revolution . You have a new world, new influences at work, new and unknown objects and dangers to cope with . the balance of power has been entirely destroyed.”1 Thus, on an international power‐political level, German unification represented a stunning blow to the Europe that had been established at Vienna. Domestically, the transformations spurred by unification were equally dramatic. The economy boomed, as Germany industrialized more rapidly than any nation before it. Coal output increased from 30 to 179 million tons per year between 1871 and 1913. Even more striking was the increase in steel production; by 1913 Germany had surpassed Great Britain and found itself 1William Flavelle Moneypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, vol. 2, 1860­1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), 473‐74. 1 second only to the United States in terms of overall output. Beyond the rapid growth that occurred in traditional heavy industries, Germany found itself leading the world in the production of many new Second Indusial Revolution technologies—chemicals and electro‐technology were a particular strong point.2 The massive expansion of domestic production fueled Germany’s ability to export goods worldwide, and by 1912 the German Empire was responsible for 13% of global trade.3 Simultaneously motivating, and undergirding the growth of industry was the rise of German banking. By the turn of the century, German banks exerted a global influence and by 1912 total German stock holdings were worth over $3.4 billion. Both the scale and speed of Germany’s economic and industrial expansion prompted a substantial demographic transformation. In a very general sense, what was most striking on the demographic front was the sheer growth of Germany’s population, between 1871 and 1914 it increased by 60%. Somewhat more specifically, the distribution of Germany’s population base was also altered rapidly. Increased financial opportunities in the nation’s largest cities sparked a rapid process of urbanization. Berlin, by far the largest city in Germany at the time of unification, nearly quadrupled in size between 1880 and 1910.4 2Gustav Stolper, The German Economy from 1870 to the Present (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967). 3 Clive Trebilcock, The Industrialization of the Continental Powers, 1780‐1914 (New York: Longman, 1981). 4 Holger Herwig, Hammer or Anvil: Modern Germany 1648­Present (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1994), 160. 2 Radical economic and demographic transformations also precipitated a culture of political dynamism. Perhaps the greatest political shift was the rapid expansion of popular support for socialism. Spurred by the ever‐accelerating process of unionization, the German Social Democratic party increased its membership from 269,000 in 1895 to 2.5 million by 1913.5 The rise of German socialism resulted in serious tensions between the SPD and the consistently conservative governments of the Imperial period. With the exception of a brief conciliatory phase under Chancellor Leo von Caprivi in the early 1890s, tensions between the left and right remained high up to and through the First World War.6 Both the dynamism and tension of Imperial Germany were captured in the major cultural works of the time. On the one hand official (often literally state funded) art idealized traditional values and archetypes – heroes mounted on horseback and idyllic agrarian landscapes. On the other hand, a wide range of outsiders from Wagner to Nietzsche to the visual artists of the Sezession forwarded a set of bold challenges to traditional notions of high culture.7 The contrast between old and new, and the sense of uncertainty, and dislocation it often caused were captured perhaps most prominently in Thomas Mann’s 1902 novel Buddenbrooks. Drawing upon his own upbringing in the port city of 5 Herwig, 161. 6 Herwig, 162. 7 Peter Paret captured many of these tensions in The Berlin Secession: Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany. 3 Luebeck, Mann detailed the decline of a traditional middle class family in the face of industrialization, urbanization and materialism.8 Both women and men were trying to situate themselves in the frenetic uncertainty of Imperial Germany. Championed by the Federation of German Women’s Associations, the women’s movement made a number of concrete gains around the turn of the century. Most centrally, women were recognized as legal persons for the first time in Germany in 1900. Building upon the foundation of this and other legal victories, the late 19th century was the era in which the “New Woman” first emerged onto the stage of history. Captured in the writings of prominent literary figures throughout the continent, including perhaps most famously Henrik Ibsen, the New Woman was defined by her focus on individual liberty in matters of education, economics, sexuality, and political participation.9 In Germany, the changing roles of women took on a number of unique characteristics due to the powerful social influence of the military during the Kaiserreich. Because conscription pulled over 500,000 men out of the work force at any given time, female laborers in Germany had an easier time finding work than in many other European states. It is against this backdrop of the increased integration of women into what had traditionally been thought of as male 8Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991). 9 Underlying much of my analysis is the idea that gender, as Judith Bulter among others has argued, is a constructed category. Gender roles were learned and performed by both men and women. Though the period treated here saw the growth of several new visions of masculinity and femininity (the New Woman and the military man), the constructed nature of gender remained unchanged. While this essay deals primarily with homosocial constructions of manliness, men were of course also engaged in defining their own manliness heterosocially. 4 professions that men imagined their own status.10 Despite clear gains, the battle for women’s rights remained very much an uphill fight, a reality clearly attested to by Kaiser Wilhelm II’s declaration that women should occupy themselves with children, the kitchen, and the church.11 While men continued to enjoy undeniably greater rights and freedoms during the Wilhelmine period, traditional definitions of manhood were also in flux. The increased status of women, shifting class dynamics and the increasingly technical nature of many professions all played into a sense of uncertainty regarding what it meant to be a true man. Onto this tumultuous scene arrived in 1900 Ray Stannard Baker, an American journalist in the employ of McClure’s magazine. Baker was born