RAY STANNARD BAKER’S SEEN IN 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

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Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………...….ii

Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….iii

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………...1

The Military……………………………………………………………………………………………………9

Education…………………………………………………………………………………………………...... 26

Industry……………………………………………………………………………………….………………30

Sport and Empire……………………………………………………………………………………….....34

Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………..39

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………46

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Introduction

The proclamation of the in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors on

January 18, 1871 marked a turning point in European history. Unified under the guidance of Chancellor at the helm of an ascendant ,

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 .

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 (: John Murray, 1929), 473‐74. 1 second only to the 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. , 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 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 in

Lansing, Michigan in 1870 and was educated at Michigan State Agricultural

College and the University of Michigan before beginning his career as a journalist with the Chicago News‐Record. Though he is today widely remembered as the

Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Woodrow Wilson, he was still a budding reporter when McClure’s handed him his first major assignment: to furnish a story on the building of the Deutschland (at the time the world’s fastest and second largest passenger ship) at the ship works at Stettin.

Baker, along with artist George Varian, departed for Germany in March of

1900. Despite the limited scope of Baker’s initial assignment, he ultimately spent months in Germany and returned with a large collection of essays detailing many

10 Ray Stannard Baker, Seen in Germany (New York: Harper, 1902), 117‐118. 11Ute Frevert, Women in German History: From Bourgeois Emancipation to Sexual Liberation (Oxford: Berg, 1990). 5 aspects of German society. The topics of these essays include Germany’s Kaiser, student life, the common worker, and the scientific research institution, in addition to a segment on the ship works of Stettin. Generally speaking, Baker reveals a preference for technology, institutions, and politics in his writing, though everyday life interested him as well. This study will make use of Baker’s writings, combined in the volume Seen in Germany, as a lens through which to view Germany around 1900, but will take a slightly different tack than he himself did in analyzing German culture. Rather than emphasizing institutions or political developments, this essay will focus on the issue of manliness in the hope of elucidating some key continuities that Baker captured in his writings, but did not possess the vocabulary to comment upon explicitly.12

Both American and German scholars of gender have examined the issue of male identity in Wilhelmine Germany in some depth. Foremost among those historians dealing with the topic are Ute Frevert, Kathleen Cannning and Karen

Hagemann.13 For these scholars, particularly Frevert and Hagemann, the subject of the greatest continual interest has been the link between notions of citizenship and military service in Germany. Both Frevert and Hagemann pinpoint the as a turning point in conceptions of manliness in

12 This is to say that Baker captured a great deal of what we would today term gender history, but as he had no such concept to draw upon himself, much of it is tangled in descriptions of institutions and prominent figures. My aim is to illuminate some of the realities that Baker captured but did not have the terminology to comment upon explicitly. 13 Among the most prominent studies produced by these scholars are Hagemann’s Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians, Frevert’s A Nation in Barracks, and Canning’s Class vs. Citizenship: Keywords in German Gender History. 6 Germany because these conflicts irrevocably linked military service with citizen status – after 1815, it was impossible to be a true Prussian (or later German) man without serving in the military.14

While acknowledging the significance of this link, this essay will seek to add to our understanding of notions of manliness in Imperial Germany by exploring a different set of historical circumstances. More specifically, through a close reading of Baker, as well as a number of German accounts from the period,

I will explore German society broadly conceived, with an emphasis on the models of manhood that predominated around 1900. My focus will be less on citizenship and civil society, and more on the experiential dimensions and every day lives of men from a variety of backgrounds. In approaching the subject matter in this way, I intend to situate my essay as a response to Hagemann’s observation that “one of the most glaring desiderata [in the field] is the absence of an analysis that . . . links social history, the history of every day life, and gender history.”15

Though this study will not rely heavily upon a particular theoretical framework, my interest in, and understanding of male identity is influenced by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Writing primarily in the 1970s and 1980s,

Bourdieu devoted much of his career to reconciling the intellectual rift between structuralism and phenomenology. This focus makes his theories a natural fit for a study such as my own, as manliness in the German context was undoubtedly

14 Karen Hagemann and Jean H. Quataert eds., Gendering Modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (New York: Berghan Books, 2007), 49. 15 Hagemann and Quataert eds., 68. 7 tied to formal structures such as the military and bureaucracy, but also functioned on a deeply experiential level.

While acknowledging that gender is, as Joan Scott has shown, fundamentally tied to power relations, my aim in employing Bourdieu is to deal more directly with the lived, every day experience of the late 19th century

German man. In taking this tack, two Bourdieuian concepts emerge as particularly useful. The first is that of the “habitus,” which Bourdieu defines as “a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways.”16 The habitus is at once learned and generative, meaning that it is not innate, but can become so deeply rooted in an individual that it causes behaviors and reactions without being the subject of conscious thought. The various dispositions that form the habitus are extremely diverse, including not only mental tendencies and orientations, but also clothing, demeanor, and physical appearance.

In Bourdieu’s view, the habitus expresses itself most clearly and durably in the human body itself. Thus the second concept employed explicitly in this study is that of the “bodily hexis,” which denotes this style of physical carriage.

As Bourdieu defines it, the bodily hexis is literally a set of historical circumstances “em­bodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable manner of standing, speaking and thereby of feeling and thinking.”17

16 Pierre Bourdieu, trans. Richard Nice, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 52. See also: Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). 17 Bourdieu, 93‐94. 8 Drawing upon Bordieu’s conceptual framework, this essay will explore the types of identities fostered and performed by men in Imperial Germany.

While textual sources will of course be central to this study, I will employ such sources not only to get at what men wrote about manliness, but also at how descriptions of the ways they dressed, acted and carried themselves reflected the embodiment of deeply internalized dispositions. Ultimately, I will argue that despite the diversity and dynamism of Wilhelmine culture, that men across many segments of German society defined manliness in similar, often militaristic, authoritarian terms.

The Military

Although Baker was struck by many aspects of German society, the military is perhaps the most logical place to begin an analysis of his writing as it was the German military that left the most lasting impression on the journalist.

In the introduction to Seen in Germany, the author opens with the statement “all government in Germany smacks strongly of the military camp . . . indeed, the exactness and order, the minuteness of regulation, and the infinite detail of

9 military life pervades the entire social fabric of Germany.”18 Thus Baker saw all of Germany as characterized by a distinct martial air. Throughout the course of his writings, however, two discrete (though closely related) models of military behavior become apparent. The first model was centered on authority, and command, while the second and more common model emphasized strict obedience.

Baker presents several examples of the command model of military manliness, but the most emblematic figure discussed in these terms is Kaiser

Wilhelm II. The only individual to have an entire chapter devoted to him, Seen in

Germany deals quite extensively with the Hohenzollern monarch. In many ways,

Wilhelm is depicted as a man of his times. Baker views him as a champion of industry, empire and education reform. Despite his modern interests, however,

Baker’s Kaiser fits just as easily into an older model of Prussian/German leadership embodied most immediately by Otto von Bismarck.

In Holger Herwig’s assessment, the Iron Chancellor approached politics as a matter of “horse and rider.” A true leader always played the one part, never the other.19 Despite clear differences in terms of policy and general political aptitude, Wilhelm also saw leadership in these terms. This view of manly

18 Baker, Seen in Germany, 15. 19 Herwig, 128. See also Lothar Gall, Bismarck: The White Revolutionary (London: Routledge, 1990), Alan Palmer, Bismarck (London: Scribner’s, 1976). 10 authority was performed in a number of ways, but Baker begins by emphasizing the raw authority embodied in the Kaiser’s physical bearing20. He writes:

Square, iron jaw, thin firm lips, a certain sharpness and leanness of

visage, a penetrating eye, all speak of invincible determination, pride,

dignity…it would be a large company of , indeed, among whom

one would fail to select him instinctively as the leader.21

These commanding physical attributes were further enhanced by the Kaiser’s choice of dress. As Baker notes, “he loves the outward manifestations of royalty, the symbols of power, and he uses them without stint.”22 These symbols of power also served to tie the Kaiser’s authority explicitly to a martial model of manliness. Much has been made of the Wilhelm’s penchant for dressing in uniform, and indeed, Baker too emphasizes the “great variety of uniforms” he donned on a daily basis, the massive oil paintings depicting the Kaiser in an

20 It is important to note that Baker’s analysis of the Kaiser appears to have been based primarily on second‐hand information. Though he did meet several prominent American and German dignitaries in Berlin, he did not meet the Kaiser personally. Baker’s descriptions of the Kaiser’s appearance are based on observing Wilhelm on parade, as well as in various pictures and paintings encountered during his stay in Germany. While Baker never met the Kaiser many of his observations, particularly those regarding military bearing and dress, are echoed by Anne Topham, an English language tutor who spent a great deal of time with the royal family, in Memories of the Kaiser’s Court. See in particular chapter xi. 21 Baker, Seen in Germany, 40. 22Baker, Seen in Germany, 42. 11 admiral’s uniform, and the “glistening silver helm which he touches with military precision” when on parade.23

Beyond physical appearances, Baker takes care to emphasize the military dimensions of Wilhelm’s character and interests. Baker writes, “Upon his accession to the throne his enthusiasms were chiefly military; he loved his army and longed passionately to use it.”24 After 1890 it seems that the Kaiser’s interests broadened considerably, indeed in Baker’s view by 1900 the expansion of the German navy and German shipping appeared to be foremost on the ruler’s mind. Despite these broadened horizons, Baker makes clear that a martial character remained central to the Kaiser’s person. He writes, “War anywhere in the world mounts like strong wine to William’s head. He hears afar the sounds of strife, and he longs to be there and see.”25

Though the Kaiser’s militaristic character is most strongly emphasized in

Baker’s prose, he ends the chapter with an illuminating look at the monarch as national pedagogue. “The Kaiser is ever a profound educator,” writes Baker.

Being “preeminently a monument‐lover,” the cultivation of marble statuary throughout Berlin is presented as the Kaiser’s favored pedagogical technique.

These pieces of art, most often capturing the image of one of the Kaiser’s ancestors, not only served to beautify the city but also had “a profound educational influence on the people” by demonstrating “what patriotic men can

23Baker, Seen in Germany, 41. 24 Baker, Seen in Germany, 48. 25Baker, Seen in Germany, 51. 12 do.”26 On the whole, then Baker’s Wilhelm II comes across primarily as militarist and educator. If we view the Kaiser as Baker does, as the head of a militaristic national education program, the next step must be to examine the various institutions that made up this program, and gauge how far the military values fostered there permeated other elements of German society.

The idea of the army as a “school of the nation” stretches back to the

Napoleonic period when Prussian reformer Freiher vom Stein tasked Ernst

Moritz Arndt with mobilizing the male population of Prussia in order to fight the

French.27 Ute Frevert has argued that Arndt’s propaganda campaign represented a “pedagogical revolution” in the German speaking lands. On the one hand,

Ardnt’s pamphleteering served to link citizenship to military service—to be a

Prussian meant to dutifully serve against the French. On the other hand, and of greater significance for the purposes of this study, Arndt helped to forge a lasting conceptual bond between manliness and military service.28 Before 1813, the record of writings on male virtue in the German‐speaking lands (primarily etiquette books) emphasized a decidedly civilian model of manhood linked to ones profession and one’s conduct as head of a household.29 After 1813, Frevert

26Baker, Seen in Germany, 58. 27Ute Frevert, A Nation in Baracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 27. 28 Though Arndt’s propganda campaign was central to the reconceptualization of military service in Prussia, the creation of the , a conscript militia composed of all men between ages eighteen and fourty‐five not serving in the regular army, under the leadership of was a key concurrent development in that it vastly increased the number of men actively engaged in the military sphere. 29 Frevert, 26. 13 argues, a true man was increasingly defined by his ability to overcome his

“wretchedness and effeteness” specifically through military service.30

Although the diverse German states maintained vestiges of their own unique military traditions (even after unification), the Prussian model of military service and the values associated with it came to dominate in the German lands after 1866.31 By the time Baker arrived in Germany in 1900, the Prussian model of military manliness was firmly entrenched in the national character of

Wilhelmine society. In the journalist’s view, “the national atmosphere of

Germany is, in reality, the atmosphere of a military camp, as the spirit of the government is the military spirit. Indeed, every German is a soldier.”32 Between

Arndt and Baker, then, it is clear that military service in Germany had long been conflated with manly virtue, and that by 1900 this martial character was virtually omnipresent to the eyes of an American observer. What were the specific characteristics of Baker’s ubiquitous German soldier?

In answering this question, two distinct, yet closely related answers emerge. One the one hand the German army officer internalized a habitus closely related to that practiced by the Kaiser – the cultivation and exercise of authority was central for men in this role. On the other hand the common recruit was largely defined by his obedience to authority. Despite the apparently oppositional nature of these models, a close reading of Baker in tandem with

30 Frevert, 25. 31 David Stone. Fighting for the Fatherland. (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006), 133. 32 Baker, Seen in Germany, 62. 14 writings produced by soldiers at the time reveals some key similarities in the ways both officers and enlisted men imagined and performed proper manliness.

Though Baker outlines some characteristics of both the officer and the recruit, it is in his view the common soldier who was most peculiar to

Germany.33 In stark contrast to other European armies, Baker stresses the fact that the German military enshrined the defense of the nation as its guiding directive. Unlike France, where the army existed “for attack” as a “weapon for offense,” “defense or death” was the “keynote” of the entire German military system.34

In the journalist’s view, this defensive orientation was embodied in a wide range of elements of the German military apparatus. He stresses the unique quality of fictional literature surrounding service in the military; he writes

“although a country of soldiers, it is a curious fact that Germany has produced little or no soldier‐boy literature—literature in which the English language is so rich.” Unlike the romantic figure of “Tommy Atkins” in the English context, or the

“hard riding, dare‐devil regular” familiar in the United States, the German soldier

33Baker, Seen in Germany, 93. 34Baker, Seen in Germany, 64‐65. The differences in the style of habitus cultivated in the British and German army is strikingly captured in Topham’s Memories of the Kaiser’s Court. Topham recalls a conversation with Victoria Louise, the Kaiser’s daughter, concerning a recent trip to England. Victoria Louise’s clearest memory of this trip center on her encounters with a number of English soldiers. She describes their “proud, delightful swagger,” noting with much surprise that “every private walks like an officer.” See page 234. 15 was trained in a tradition where “no heroes adorn the service; soldiery is simply one of the plain duties of life.”35

The defensive orientation of the army was also readily apparent in the demeanor of the individual soldier. The typical German, Baker notes, reflecting his own racial prejudices, “has no Irish blood in him; he is not a natural born fighter.”36 Rather, the German enlisted man is described as solid, strong, and perhaps a bit dull, “doing his duty in his German way with absolute faithfulness, serving his time and [being] proud of it afterword.”37 These characteristics, which Baker views as natural, elemental, and linked to the racial makeup of the

German, were further enhanced through an intense regimen of training and drill.

Though the German is in Baker’s view “by nature physically indolent,” training in the army served to transform “many a frail stripling of a lad” into a “brawny, bronze‐faced soldier, able to stand any hardship.”38 Training served to mold the bodily hexis of the German recruit, altering not only his physical appearance but also his mode of feeling and thinking.

The end result of this training process, then, was to create a soldier who

“is no good in initiative” but who “waits patiently for orders; and when they come, he obeys no matter what obstacle lies in the way.”39 Individuality was

“crushed out,” while his “company, regiment and emperor” were consecrated as

35 Baker, Seen in Germany, 63. 36Baker, Seen in Germany, 64. 37Baker, Seen in Germany, 64. 38Baker, Seen in Germany, 75 39Baker, Seen in Germany, 91. 16 the “everything” of the soldier’s worldview.”40 From Baker’s account then, we are left with an image of the German recruit whose habitus is defined primarily by two characteristics: first, by his obedience to authority, and second, by his willingness to suffer individually so that the group (whether regiment or nation) might prevail.41

Intriguingly, Baker devotes decidedly less space to the discussion of the

German officer corps. In part the journalist explains this absence away by noting the similarity between the training of the officer and enlisted man—though the officer’s training was “much more complete” and slightly less taxing physically,

Baker implies that the general character of instruction remained similar between the two segments of the army. Beyond similarities in training regimen,

Baker argues that while the German officer belonged “to a profession known the world over,” it was the stolid, tough, obedient German private who was “peculiar to the German nation.” Given the short shrift that Baker pays the German officer, it is necessary to look beyond the journalist’s account to gain a complete view of the models of manliness cultivated in the army around 1900.42

Marcus Funck and Steven Clemente have demonstrated that the qualities ascribed to the “ideal” army officer were undergoing significant shifts in the

40Baker, Seen in Germany, 91. 41 Baker’s description of the training (and habitus) of the German soldier is largely echoed by Anne Topham in Memories of the Kaiser’s Court. She writes “it seems to breed up a class of men who are earnest, loyal, and self‐sacrificing, but express extremely narrow views, who see and judge everything from a purely military, autocratic standpoint, and are quite unable to sympathize with or understand the aspirations of the normal human being towards personal initiative and liberty of action.” See page 127. 42 Baker, Seen in Germany, 93. 17 decades following unification. Perhaps the most significant transformation taking place was the changing class composition of the officer corps. In 1860 the nobility dominated the higher ranks of the Army, representing 65% of the total officer corps, and 86% of generalships. By 1914, these numbers had more than reversed themselves, with the middle class representing 70% of the total corps and 48% of generalships.43 Not surprisingly, this radical shift in class composition also heralded a transformation of the types of values cultivated within the corps.

Traditionally a preserve of the nobility, the German army officer pre ‐

1890 was characterized by his devotion to the ideal of military service as royal service, an obligation which called for both professional military and refined courtly behavior. Marcus Funck succinctly captures this code of conduct in his discussion of a Captain von Chappius of the Kaiser Franz Guard‐Grenadiers.

Serving during the Franco‐Prussian War, von Chappius is described by his commanding officer: he “went fully erect in an elegant pace, as if he was leading a dance at court . . . and [exhorted] his men to remain calmly lying down, to calmly take aim and shoot.”44 Though courage and authority were central, elegance and refinement were equally, if not more significant to the hexis of the officer operating under the older aristocratic conception of military service.

43 Steven E. Clemente, For King And Kaiser, The Making of the Officer 1860­1914 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), 202. 44 Marcus Funck. “Ready for War?,” Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth Century Germany (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 47. 18 Initially, middle‐class men entering the Officer corps in the 1860s and

1870s tended to internalize the emphasis on display, intrepidity and superiority cultivated by the nobility. This process of acculturation was perhaps most dramatically reflected in the middle‐class’ eager adoption of the saber duel as a signifier of status within the corps.45 As the social composition of the officer corps grew to reflect the rising status of the middle class, bourgeois values such as self‐restraint and sobriety began to command increased currency among

Germany’s military elite.46 Drawing upon the 19th century move toward

“character” as the mark of middle class manliness, the officer corps underwent a general “hardening” during the late 1800s. While definite traces of aristocratic virtue remained, officers were increasingly defined in terms of “toughness, endurance, service, and duty.”47

A second, and closely related shift that occurred contemporaneously was the rapid technicalization of the army. Eric Dorn Brose has demonstrated that the incorporation of new military technologies between 1870‐1914 served to challenge and complicate the models of martial competence circulating among

German officers. Cavalry officers, for instance, were highly averse to the incorporation of any sort of new technology, while artillery officers, drawn

45 Ute Frevert, Men of Honor (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 26. 46 Beyond the simple fact that middle class men represented a larger and larger portion of German Officer corps, the shift toward the adoption of middle class values was also spurred by a series of scandals in the upper echelons of the military. Most significant among these was the Eulenburg Affair during which the “Kaiser’s best friend” and Guard Regiment officer Phillip Prince zu Eulenburg‐Hertefeld was publically and vociferously attacked for his homosexuality. 47 Funck, 58. 19 heavily from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, were early adopters of a wide range of technological innovations.48 Thus the continued emphasis on valor among cavalry officers and the technological, expert knowledge privileged by the artillery officer represented competing models of manliness in the Imperial

German Army. It is clear, then, that an undeniable degree of diversity existed in the types of manliness cultivated in the officer corps. Many of the tensions complicating Wilhelmine society writ large—shifting class dynamics, industrialization etc.—also played out in the military. Despite this diversity however, a close reading of military publications from the period suggests a significant continuity in the types of identities privileged in the officer corps, as well as clear affinities in the types of manliness internalized by both the higher and lower ranks.49

Take for example Der Gute Kamerad, a guidebook published in 1915 intended to prepare a wide variety of Germans for service in the infantry. In a chapter dedicated to the duties of the soldier, Der Gute Kamerad emphasizes the notion that the defining characteristic of military service is its universality. Both

48 Eric Dorn Brose. The Kaiser’s Army: The Politics of Military Technology in Germany During the Machine Age, 1870­1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 13. 49 Nicholas Nassim Taleb remarked in The Bed of Procrustes that “the opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice, it’s technology.” Taleb’s analysis aptly reflects what a large number Germans around 1900 thought about the rise of the machine. Technology was a challenge to traditional masculine competency in that it softened demands on the bodily hexis. Machines could by the turn of the century accomplish much of what had before required the bodies and minds of men. Thus the manliness of many skilled professions was deeply in question. We must not allow our modern desensitization to the omnipresence of technology to obscure the profound disorientation that many men felt during the process of industrialization. 20 social background and service rank are downplayed in favor of a set of general values. Von Klass writes,

The obligation to serve is a universal obligation, as every

honorable German man who is healthy in body and soul, whether rich or

poor, big or small, must serve in the army – answering the call of duty is

the honor of every German man.50

Der Gute Kamerad qualifies the nature of this service further by stressing the integrative aspect of military service. Not only was the German soldier tied through service to the nation and the army, he was also imagined as joining a vast temporal matrix that included not only “his forefathers, relatives, and old friends” but also “god willing, his sons and grandsons.51 Thus while military service bestowed a degree of individual honor on any man who served, its deeper significance lay in its linking of the individual to a sanctified moral whole.

The communal character of military service in Imperial Germany is similarly emphasized in Wehrpflicht und Erziehung, a psychology journal published in 1879, which took as its primary subject the issue military education. The author, Dr. Heinrich Stuerenburg, succinctly states that the

50M. Von Klass, Der gute Kamerad: Ein Lern und Lesebuch fuer den Dienstunterricht des Deutschen Infanteristen (Berlin: Liebelschen, 1915), 25. Translations below are my own. 51Von Klass, 24. 21 soldier should experience his “individuality as part of a collective, never separately.”52

In surveying a selection of writings produced by German soldiers in the

Imperial period, it is readily apparent that the idealization of the collective and the denigration of the individual left lasting marks on many who served. Take for instance Rudolph Stratz, a young man born into a middle class family who served in the Prussian army in the 1870s, he writes “The young man who carried a coat of arms, number, or ward on his chest was no longer himself, but was a component of his regiment.”53 A somewhat more prominent figure hailing from the ranks of the nobility, Prussian Minister of War , echoes these sentiments, recounting the great joy he felt as part of “the military organism.”54

While many men had positive recollections of being integrated into the

German military apparatus, others suffered gravely under the system. Renowned sociologist Leopold von Wiese was one such individual. Writing in 1924, von

Wiese bitterly describes the years he spent in the before World War

I. He writes “thinking was not valued . . . there were no individual ideas, there was only the mass.”55

52 Stuerenburg, Heinrich. Wehrplicht und Erziehung (Berlin: Carl Habel, 1879) 53 Stratz, Rudolph. Schwert und Feder, 68. 54Albrecht Theodor Emil von Roon. Denkwurdigkeiten aus dem Leben des Kriegsministers von Roon (Berlin: Eduard Trewendt, 1905), 368. 55 Leopold Von Wiese. Kindheit: Erinnerung aus meinen Kadettenjahren (Hanover: P. Steegemann, 1924), 78. 22 Closely tied to the sublimation of the individual so that the whole might triumph was the concept of sacrifice. The German soldier was expected to bear any hardship he might encounter, regardless of the cost. Der Gute Kamerad drives this point home by stating “while faithfulness is the first duty of the soldier, the highest form of faithfulness is the willingness to sacrifice oneself.”56

On a more official level, this ideal was also enshrined in the 6th German Article of

War, which stated:

The duty of faithfulness demands that the soldier,

regardless of circumstances, whether in war or peace, devote all of

his strength, even if this means sacrificing his life, to the defense of

the his Majesty the Kaiser, the Army and the Fatherland.57

Even publications not directly associated with the military, such as Wehrpflicht und Erziehung, enshrine sacrifice as a fundamental martial value—on the first page of the journal Stuerenberg writes that self‐sacrifice is the “greatest duty” of the German soldier.58

Even if on the strategic defensive, a functional military must of course also train its soldiers to attack, and indeed, many accounts from the period discuss the inculcation of offensive tactics. Baker describes the German army’s emphasis on marksmanship and large‐scale cavalry maneuvers. Similary, Der

56 Von Klass, 29. 57 Von Klass, 29. 58 Stuerenberg, 1. 23 Gute Kamerad includes several sections of marksmanship and bayonet fighting.

Generally, however, the German army in the Imperial period stressed the importance of dying, rather than killing, for one’s country. This point is concisely encapsulated in a passage from the “Terrain and Tactics” chapter of Der Gute

Kamerad, where the infantryman is urged to remember that “there is nothing finer than to die on a German field.”59

While the values discussed in this section are in many ways implicitly linked to notions of manliness, Der Gute Kamerad leaves no doubts about the ties between military service and manliness. In a (very selective) section on German history, von Klass directly links the military values outlined above to notions of manliness through a discussion of storied Prussian monarchs. He writes, “The

Great Elector was not only a great commander, but a true German man!”60

Additionally, Friedrich Wilhelm is described as the root of current German military values—“above all others, he planted the idea that officers and soldiers should possess the never‐ceasing feeling of duty, exactitude, and will‐less subordination that has been the pride of all German soldiers since.”61 This legacy was further embodied in Friedrich III’s “masculine, heroic form.”62 Finally, this heritage is linked to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who is described as the current height of manliness, “a true example of man and soldier.”63

59 Von Klass, 170. 60 Von Klass, 5. 61Von Klass, 7. 62Von Klass, 2. 63Von Klass, 1. 24 Returning to Baker’s Seen in Germany, it becomes apparent that the journalist largely echoes what many Germans around 1900 were thinking and writing about the military. Between Baker’s discussion of the stolidity, toughness, loyalty and defensive orientation of the German soldier, and the consonant descriptions featured in many German sources, it is clear that the code of values cultivated by the German army around 1900 emphasized two primary characteristics: obedience to authority and the willingness to sacrifice oneself for a greater good.

Soldiers of different ranks internalized these values somewhat differently— obedience to authority meant something different to a cavalry general than it did to an infantry recruit. Despite such variations, however, I contend that the “command persona” embodied first in the Kaiser, as well as in the German army officer, represented an organic extension of the concept of obedience, rather than an opposite characteristic. Though a Lieutenant might give orders to the men in his command, he was ultimately subordinate to his superiors in rank, as well as to the larger notion of “Kaiser, Army, and

Fatherland.”64

More significantly, however, both command and obedience were seen as intrinsically producing a habitus of masculine honor. It seems most logical in my view to think of German military values around 1900 as unified in the way they produced social capital for the men who cultivated them. Command and

64 Robert A. Nye, “Western Masculinities in War and Peace,” The American Historical Review vol. 112 nr. 2 (April, 2007), 420.

25 obedience represented two sides of the same coin, rather than diametrically opposed opposites. Thus men in the military, whether officers or recruits, internalized a habitus that stressed above all obedience to authority and sacrifice for the good of the whole. These dispositions were instilled through training and drill and expressed themselves not only through writing, but also in dress and mannerisms, rewarding those who looked, spoke and acted correctly with manly honor. To what degree did this vision of manly norms permeate

German society broadly conceived?

Education

Baker deals with the German education systems on two levels in Seen in

Germany. First, he presents an interview with renowned scientist Ernst Haeckel, a professor at the University of Jena, and second he includes a chapter on

“student life” in the nearby town of Woellnitz. In the section dealing with

Haeckel, Baker is quick to point out the immense prestige enjoyed by academics in Germany. While this is in itself perhaps unremarkable, the author’s deployment of vocabulary is quite suggestive. He writes that the professor in

26 Germany belongs to a social class similar to that of “the admiral or general.”65 On the one hand it reveals that Baker views military rank as the ultimate measure of status in Germany, on the other it suggests a link in the type of skills and persona

Baker associated with both military commanders and academics.

In his descriptions of Haeckel, Baker stresses the scientist’s insistence on discipline in all aspects of his life, never eating or drinking much.66 Baker also quotes Haeckel at length on current trends in the social development of

Germany. While these statements cannot be viewed as an indictment of Haeckel himself, it is intriguing to note that the scientist views Germany as becoming increasingly communal, and decreasingly individualistic. Haeckel is cited as saying:

Here in Germany the tendency is all toward the

centralization of power in the government, the removal of

individual responsibility, and the working together of large masses

of men as one man. In America the tendency has been different:

there the individual is developed, he has great powers and great

responsibilities—the man is the unit.67

In his discussion of student life, it is curious to note that Baker focuses almost entirely on the activities of the local student dueling corps. Though the

65 Baker, Seen in Germany, 134. 66Baker, Seen in Germany, 148. 67Baker, Seen in Germany, 152‐153. 27 golden age of the student duel had passed by Baker’s visit in 1901, it is obvious that even the limited activities he witnessed left a lasting impression on him as he neglects to discuss any other aspect of the German university experience.68

He offers his readers a lengthy, at times gruesome, discussion of several bouts he witnessed in the heat of summer. Here it is worth devoting a bit of space to

Baker’s prose, as he astutely captures the character of the student duel, he writes:

And now the opponents are faced, looking squarely into

each other’s eyes, and yet making no sign of recognition, and

saying nothing, not even to their seconds. It is a point of honor that

there must be no show of emotion . . . it was plain that the

Tyrolean was the better fighter of the two. The longer the duel

progressed, the fiercer became his onslaughts, and in nearly every

round he struck the Bavarian somewhere on the head or face.

Blood was spattered everywhere, on the floor, on the clothing of

the seconds, and on the surgeons. As for the duelists themselves,

they were literally bathed in it . . . there was none of the movement

and activity of the usual swordsman’s conflict, none of the

splendid clash and parry, or advance and retreat. The duelists

68 For more on the history of dueling in Germany see Ute Frevert’s Men of Honor: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel and Kevin McAleer’s Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin­de­Siecle Germany. On other aspects of student life, see Konrad Jarausch’s Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic Illiberalism. 28 stood stock still: it was a dishonor to give way by an inch; it was a

dishonor to move the head in the least, or to dodge a blow, no

matter how severe the wound.”69

In many ways the code of values practiced by student duelists mirrored those privileged in the military. It is beyond doubt that the duel was experienced by those who participated in the practice as a manly, status accruing activity. Just as in the military, the key male virtues associated with the duel were the control of emotions, physical toughness, and the willingness to sacrifice ones body for the good the whole, in this case the dueling corps to which one belonged. While both the “strong and dexterous” swordsman, and the precise infantry rifleman cultivated a well‐defined set of combat abilities, skill at arms was less significant to the production of masculine status. In both cases, toughness and physical sacrifice were more highly valued. This hierarchy of values was physically embodied in the acquisition of dueling scars. In Bourdieuian terms, these markings formed a key element of the male bodily hexis to student duelists, representing a literal embodiment of the manly ideal of self‐sacrifice. As one of the duelists Baker interviewed remarks, the entire leitmotif of the student duel was to “‘go in and get some good scars;’ it was not ‘go in and give the other man some good scars.’”70

69 Baker, Seen in Germany, 300‐301. 70 Baker, Seen in Germany, 307. 29

Industry

In addition to the military and the German education system, the third topic Baker deals with at some length in Seen in Germany is the nation’s booming industry. Specifically, Baker focuses his sections on industry on describing the operation of the Zeiss lens manufactory in Jena and the ship works at Stettin. In the journalist’s view, the Zeiss works represent “one of the most romantic stories of science and business.”71 His emphasis thus falls more upon the technical and entrepreneurial aspects of the Jena factory, rather than upon the men who worked there. Though Baker’s discussion of furnaces, glass blowing, and lens polish is fascinating in its own right, it is of less use for the purposes of this study. In the journalist’s discussion of the Stettin ship works, however, the characteristics of the individual German worker reenter the picture quite prominently.

On the one hand, Baker recounts his visit to Stettin as an almost otherworldly experience. He describes the ship works as a realm of “hugeness, power, toil, noise, heat [and] dust.”72 On the other hand, the human element he encounters there is somewhat more recognizable to the journalist. He claims

71 Baker, Seen in Germany, 207. 72 Baker, Seen in Germany, 253. 30 that the workingman at Stettin would appear rather familiar to men of a similar class and position in the United States, both being united by a “strong cousinship of sweat and grime.”73

Despite the overall familiarity of the industrial worker, Baker is also careful to emphasize several key differences. Unlike his American counterpart, the German worker is more typically characterized by his “stoop, stolidity . . . and patience.”74 Baker attributes these qualities in part to the fact that many sorts of tasks that would in the United States be done by “steam or electricity” were in

Germany still completed through manual labor.75 Thus the German workman, much like the German soldier or student, is in Baker’s view defined to a large degree by the habitus of physicality, and toughness, most clearly embodied in the willingness to endure hardship in spite of potential physical and emotional consequences.

Beyond similarities in the emphasis on toughness apparent in both the military and industrial spheres, Baker’s take on the Stettin ship works also reveals a strong emphasis on obedience to authority. In terms quite similar to those he uses to describe the relationship between army officers and enlisted men, Baker refers to the shipbuilding process as “a score of men directed by the brains of the master engineers and designers.”76 Just as the common soldier was to leave the thinking to his commanding officer and simply follow orders, so too

73Baker, Seen in Germany, 261. 74Baker, Seen in Germany, 262. 75Baker, Seen in Germany, 262. 76 Baker, Seen in Germany, 252. 31 was the industrial worker to leave the thinking to the engineers and obediently follow directions.

Baker’s discussion of the German working class is also intriguing in that it offers one of Seen in Germany’s few glimpses into the lives of women. Though

Baker doesn’t provide a particularly detailed description of the German woman at work, he is quick to point out the peculiar effect that military conscription had on the integration of women into the workforce. He notes that conscription functioned as a serious drain on the German economy, removing about 500,000 men from the workforce during peacetime. These vacancies were often filled by women, resulting in a significantly higher percentage of female labor in industry and agriculture than was the case in many other industrial nations at the time.

In Baker’s assessment the integration of so many women into the workforce confirmed “the low estate of womanhood in the empire,” as hundreds of thousands of female laborers were pushed to take on tasks “of the most menial kind.”77 When coupled with the already strenuous demands of childcare, the large‐scale employment of women served to “coarsen” both the home life, and the “moral fiber” of the typical German family.78 In terms of the impact that these developments had on male identity, it seems likely they served to reinforce the monoculture of military manliness in Germany, as many tasks that had been traditionally viewed as exclusively masculine were by 1900 being performed by

77 Baker, Seen in Germany, 117. 78 Baker, Seen in Germany, 117. 32 women. In this sense the large‐scale integration of women into the workforce helped to cast the military as one of the last refuges of “pure” manliness.79

In addition to observing a number of German workingmen on the job,

Baker also takes time to document the typical Sunday of a working class family.

Accompanying the family from their home to a beer garden located in a neighboring village, Baker writes that even when enjoying a bit of leisure time, the workingman exhibits a slow, steady, mechanical pacing “like that of the soldier.”80

Finally, Baker is clearly struck by the relationship in Germany between the government and the workingman. Part of what surprises Baker is Germany’s burgeoning welfare system—the fact that “the industrial class are . . . trained, protected, and encouraged.”81 The other half of Baker’s surprise however, is somewhat less complementary. He writes of the German worker, “as a man he is not to be considered for an instant; but as an implement to carve a way for

Germany to industrial and commercial greatness. . . he is very precious indeed”82

In contrasting this system to the United States, he argues that the goal of German paternalism is to “make Better workmen,” while the American government consistently seeks to make “better men.”83

79 Baker, Seen in Germany, 116. 80Baker, Seen in Germany, 112. 81Baker, Seen in Germany, 118. 82Baker, Seen in Germany, 119. 83Baker, Seen in Germany, 122. 33

Sport and Empire

The final section of this essay will deal with two elements of German culture that Baker does not address explicitly, namely German sporting culture and German colonialism. Both sport and imperial service are activities that were viewed as unambiguously masculine in most of Europe, including Germany. The objective here will remain to examine to what degree the models of manliness practiced on the sporting pitch or in the colonies mirrored the military habitus

Baker observed in many other parts of German society.

In terms of sporting culture, it is clear that physical activity was deemed a manly undertaking in the Kaiserreich, the specific values associated with sport, however, appear to have been somewhat different than those found in many other European countries. The beginnings of physical education in Germany are marked by the publication of J.C.F. GutsMuths’ Gymnastics for Youth in 1793.

While GutsMuths’ system of gymnastics was not stylistically unique (GutsMuths developed his thoughts in an international dialogue with several other continental thinkers), the reception his theories received among high‐ranking

Prussian officials was rather singular. Von Hardenberg, von Humboldt and

34 others concurred that gymnastics should be a central component of the Prussian

Education Reform act from 1809 onward.84

The high status of gymnastics in the German speaking states was consolidated and expanded upon by F.L. Jahn, founder of the patriotic Turnen movement. While Jahn’s pan‐German nationalism was at times at odds with the rigid hierarchy of the Prussian education system (resulting in a ban on Jahn’s version of gymnastics from 1820‐1842), the events surrounding 1848 served to solidify the hold of gymnastics on the sporting imagination of many Germans. On the one hand, the Prussian government was motivated by the political uncertainties of the period to reinstitute physical education as a form of preparation for military service. Conversely, the outpouring of nationalistic fervor in 1848 sparked a great deal of public interest in Jahn’s Turnen as a means to shape, and educate an ascendant German nation.85

What is striking about the history of the physical education movement in

Germany is that it was from its inception linked to military service. While this link was at times tenuous during the first half of the 19th century, by 1871 physical education was widely viewed as an important preparatory regimen for military service. Based largely on the writings of Jahn, German gymnastics stressed toughness, discipline and correct posture – physical virtues that would be seized upon, and improved during training with the army. In this sense,

84 Roland Naul and Ken Hardman eds. Sport and Physical Education in Germany (London: Routledge, 2002), 15. 85 Naul and Hardman, 16. 35 gymnastics served as a means to literally transform the male body into a hexis of militarized manliness.

Furthermore, the hegemony of gymnastics in German athletic culture served to impede the influence of British sporting culture. To many Germans,

British athletic values such as sportsmanship, record setting and individual excellence were regarded as “typical English diseases.”86 Thus, in the realm of athletics we see a culture of manliness that was largely consonant with what

Baker observed in the German army. Owing to the firmly entrenched tradition of gymnastics, toughness and self‐control, rather than individual achievement, were the hallmarks of 19th century German athletics.87

In terms of military manliness in Germany’s overseas colonies, Isabel

Hull’s Absolute Destruction is perhaps the work of most immediate import. Hull’s primary contention is that the Imperial German army fostered a military culture that gravitated toward “the repeated and unlimited application of violence” in order to achieve “final, or total solutions.”88The German military’s propensity for extreme operational violence was embodied most clearly in the suppression of

86 Naul and Hardman, 20. 87 The distinction between German athletic and British sporting culture is clearly demonstrated in Memories of the Kaiser’s Court. After an afternoon spent trying to teach the Kaiser’s children a variety of games, Topham concludes that the Germans “consider any game ‘sporting’ where there is plenty of running…they are unable to grasp the sporting idea, which, after attempted explanation, they believe to be a figment of the English imagination.” See page 120. 88 Isabel Hull. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practice of War in Imperial Germany (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2005), 2. Although German actions in Southwest Africa were instrumental in creating a culture of military extremism, Hull is quick to point out that the suppression of the Maji‐Maji Revolt in German East Africa several years later actually resulted in a greater number of deaths. 36 the Herero and Nama in German Southwest Africa, a campaign that ultimately constituted the first example of genocide in the 20th century.

The penchant for extreme applications of violence that Hull describes in the context of German Southwest Africa is equally apparent Kaiser Wilhelm II’s famous Hunnenrede. Speaking to a group of soldiers who were about to be dispatched to China, Wilhelm implored his troops,

When you come upon the enemy, smite him. Pardon will

not be given. Prisoners will not be taken. Whoever falls into your

hands is forfeit. Once, a thousand years ago, the Huns under their

King Attila made a name for themselves, one still potent in legend

and tradition. May you in this way make the name German

remembered in China for a thousand years so that no Chinaman

will ever again dare to even squint at a German!89

In Hull’s narrative of violence in Africa, and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s “Hun

Speech” we see model of military manliness quite different from that which I have emphasized throughout this essay. Aggression and brutality, rather than the willingness to suffer and sacrifice seem to have been the guiding ideals of the

German military in the colonial context.90 Though it lies beyond the purview of

89 Wilhelm Schroeder ed., Das persönliche Regiment: Reden und sonstige öffentliche Äusserungen Wilhelms II (Munich, 1912), pp. 40‐42. Translated by Richard S. Levy 90 Much has been made of the “cult of the offensive” which dominated military thinking at the doctrinal level in most European states in the years leading up to 37 this study to fully explore this tension, a revealing passage from Seen in Germany sheds some light on one potential explanation. Baker writes,

There have been signs recently that the attitude of

Germany, in high official circles at least, was changing, that a new

spirit of conquest and extension had been born (witness the

Chinese expedition); but if that is so, it has not yet affected the

German citizen‐soldier91

Thus Baker appears to have visited Germany at a time when the first indication of a new model of military behavior was emerging. Despite clear examples of a growing interest in offensive action, particularly in the colonial context, it appears that self‐sacrifice and obedience to authority remained the preeminent manly values in the Kaiserreich. This reality is attested to by the memoir of Paul

Koenig, a soldier serving in Cameroon, who remarked that despite the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, “what tasted like home was duty.”92

the First World War. While it is impossible to deny the predominance of the this line of thought, it appears that the experience of the individual German soldier in the early 19th century, particularly the enlisted man, was centered more closely on duty and sacrifice than offensive action. This tension between offensive grand strategy and individual emphasis on sacrifice is in my view a key, and perhaps underemphasized factor in shaping the conduct and experience of WWI. Among other things, I believe this tension might account in part for the SPD war credit vote of August 1914. 91 Baker, Seen in Germany, 65. 92 Paul Koenig, Als Schutztruppler und Jaeger in Kamerun (: F.A. Brockhaus, 1943), 17. 38

Conclusions

Why was Ray Stannard Baker so struck by the militaristic atmosphere of

Germany in 1900? Why did a journalist, who was sent abroad with the primary task of documenting the building of the Deutschland at Stettin, return to the

United States with a three hundred page tract on the militaristic character of

German society? It would be easy enough to conclude that Germany was simply more militarized than the United States. A side‐by‐side comparison of the number of active duty soldiers in both countries (500,000+ in Germany vs. about

100,000 in the much larger US) shows this to be true. If reserve troops are added to those numbers, the scale tips even more decisively in Germany’s favor. The issue goes deeper than this, however. Fundamental to Baker’s reaction to

German society was the fact that he arrived in Germany with a very different idea of what it meant to be a man.

In gauging the characteristics of American notions of manliness around the turn of the century, the works of Robert Kemble and Anthony Rotundo are of particular use. In his foundational book American Manhood, Rotundo identifies three distinct historical stages of masculine culture in the United States. In the author’s view, late 18th and early 19th century manhood in the United States was defined by its “communal” characteristics. “Duty” was the leitmotif during these 39 years, and status was associated primarily with a man’s public usefulness.93 By the mid 19th century, spurred primarily by economic transformations in the US,

“self made‐manhood” had become the norm. This shift was marked by an increased emphasis on the individual performance of manly virtue. More specifically, the “self‐made” man was expected to compete individually against other men, particularly in the realm of business, and was judged to be masculine if he could do so successfully.94 “Passionate manhood” built on the values of the mid 19th century, but also stressed the importance of manly passions as a positive force, as opposed to something that needed to be controlled. The individual triumph of one man over another was still the ultimate measure of success, but by the late 19th century aggression and manly vigor were seen as essential to achieving such success.95

While all three phases were closely tied to economic realities, particularly a man’s ability to successfully earn a living in a competitive market, the later two phases also offered a wide range of alternative activities through which a man could compete and succeed to prove his manliness. Athletes, cowboys and sailors were all viewed as appropriately manly individuals.

Military service, especially during and after the Civil War, was also valued as a manly profession. As Kemble has demonstrated, however, the public image of the American soldier fluctuated far more radically than that of his German counterpart. In the US, soldiers were viewed as everything from “officer

93Anthony R. Rotundo, American Manhood (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 12. 94 Rotundo, 178. 95 Rotundo, 222. 40 gentlemen” to “Indian fighters” and “frontier policemen.”96 Furthermore, the army in the US was generally more strictly separated, both physically and intellectually, from American society writ large than was the case in Germany.97

In the final analysis, then, there existed no hegemonic model of manliness in the

United States around 1900.

There were of course moments in 19th century American history when military manhood took center stage. The Civil War was one such instance, as was the Spanish American War, which as Kristin L. Hoganson has argued, was in many ways precipitated by the insecurities felt by American men during the late

19th century “crisis of masculinity.”98 The literal and figurative distance between the American military and American society however, remained apparent even during the height of jingoism. This is attested to by the continued existence of prominent voices that called for the channeling of male passions toward other pursuits. William James’ 1910 proposition that the United States create an “army against nature” where boys could learn manly values through physical labor without needing to fight in war is a particularly striking example. The status enjoyed by known pacifists such as Andrew Carnegie due to successes in non‐ military competition is equally revealing.99

96 C. Robert Kemble, The Image of the Army Officer in America (London: Greenwood Press, 1973), 59. 97 Kemble, 97. 98 Kristin L. Hoganson. Fighting For American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish­American and Phillipine­American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 204. 99 Rotundo, 234. 41 As Baker makes clear in Seen in Germany, the Kaiserreich, too, was a very diverse place around 1900. If anything, Baker’s emphasis on military, educational, and technological institutions comes across as slightly reductionist to the contemporary reader. Thus, my central claim has nothing to do with denying the highly varied cultural landscape of early 20th century Germany— rather, I have hoped to demonstrate that there existed key continuities in the ways men imagined, and enacted their manliness across many segments of society.

Put in Bourdieuian terms, the “military habitus” appears to have been the most commonly practiced, and most highly esteemed in German society around the turn of the century. This body of values functioned primarily through a clear understanding of command/obedience that emphasized duty, and the willingness to sacrifice above all else. These values were embodied in, and communicated through a range of symbolic displays from uniforms, to physical conditioning, to the production of monumental statues throughout the capital.

The Kaiser, soldiers, policemen, firemen, students, teachers and industrial workers were all participants in this order, albeit to varying degrees. As Baker puts it, in Germany all manner of officials, from the lowly postman to Wilhelm II himself defined themselves through “the methodical habits of the barracks.”100

The breadth and depth to which these values had penetrated German society, as well as the social capital they commanded for men who successfully cultivated them, is perhaps most saliently encapsulated in the 1906 events

100 Baker, Seen in Germany, 62. 42 surrounding the “Hauptmann von Koepenick.” Born Wilhelm Voigt in Tilsit (now

Sovetsk) in 1849, this common criminal concocted a scheme to rob a city hall in suburban Berlin by impersonating an imperial army officer. After acquiring a complete captain’s uniform and adopting a set of military mannerisms, Voigt was able to stop a group of soldiers (four grenadiers and their sergeant) and ordered them to follow him to the city hall of Koepenick. They obeyed without question.

Commandeering six additional soldiers from a shooting range en route, Voigt ordered his followers to arrest the local mayor and treasurer for bad bookkeeping while he himself confiscated the entire contents of the Koepenick treasury. Once the ruse had been completed, Voigt discarded the uniform and became instantly unrecognizable. This episode drives home the symbolic power attached to the militarized bodily hexis in Germany—a man’s appearance and demeanor (Voigt was undoubtedly a skilled actor) were absolutely central to his status and authority in German society.101

Placed in a comparative framework, and drawing upon Rotundo’s terminology, German ideas of manliness appear to have been far more communal in orientation than those in the United State around 1900. While

German notions of manliness were rooted in obedience to authority and sacrifice for the good of the whole, American men living at the same time were performing a “passionate” model of manhood that rewarded individualism,

101 The story of Voigt appeared in newspapers throughout Germany such as the Berliner Morgenpost of October 17, 1906, but was perhaps most famously captured in Carl Zuckmeyer’s 1932 play The Captain of Koepenick: A Modern Fairy Tale in Three Acts. 43 aggression and vigor. Though military service was viewed as a manly activity in the American context, the hierarchical nature of military life was far more frequently at odds with the individualistic nature of American manliness than was the case in Germany. Thus, diversity reigned in the United States, while most

German men were generally committed to a model of manhood closely tied to the barracks. This fundamental difference can at least partially explain Baker’s shock upon arrival in a state where “the national atmosphere was that “of a military camp.”102

While it lies beyond the scope of this study to probe at the deeper roots of this model of male behavior, a few potential avenues for future exploration are worth mentioning here. On the one hand, Frevert’s assertion that the pamphleteering campaign of Ernst Moritz Arndt during the Napoleonic Wars marked a “pedagogical revolution” in the sense that it linked military service and manliness is highly suggestive and warrants further exploration.

Perhaps the roots of military manliness go deeper than government sponsored propaganda, however. If this is the case, Max Horkheimer’s contribution to Studies on Authority and the Family may be of use. According to

Horkheimer, the family represents the first, and most significant apparatus of human socialization. While other models of family life are possible, Horkheimer argues that in the German context authoritarian family dynamics served to crush individualism out of most children—in such an environment, “The child's self‐ will is to be broken, and the innate desire for free development of his drives and

102 Baker, Seen in Germany, 62. 44 potentialities is to be replaced by an internalized compulsion toward the unconscious fulfillment of duty.”103 Thus the family might serve as a useful subject for future investigations of German masculinity.

In very broad terms, this study has aimed to demonstrate that the lens of gender has much to tell us about Imperial Germany. Baker, astute observer though he was, was not thinking along these lines in 1900. Thus, Seen in Germany offers its readers a fascinating picture of Germany, but perhaps overemphasizes class, technology, and institutions in assessing the Kaiserriech. Approaching

Baker’s work with issues of gender in mind allows for a more nuanced understanding of German culture around the turn of the century. While Wilhelm

II’s empire was without doubt a diverse, vibrant place, it is my contention that there existed important continuities in the ways men imagined and performed manliness. There were of course exceptions; many German colonial troops fall into this category. Ultimately, however, a close look at the types of images and behaviors men cultivated, and were rewarded for, in German society reveals a rigorously instilled military habitus that connected many disparate segments of the populace.

103 Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 2002), 119‐120. 45

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