Intellectual Politics and Cultural Science in the Wilhelmian Era

Abstract

Abstract Many German academics specializing in the social and cultural sciences experienced a quickening of their interest in politics in the early 1890s and perceived an opportunity to exert an influence on the nation’s future that they had not had in many years.’ The opportunity arose in part from obvious sources, including the fall of Bismarck in 1890, the adoption of the “New Course” by the Caprivi government, and the appearance of highly divisive issues (such as those surrounding the Caprivi policy of lowering tariffs) that encouraged the disputants to seek academic buttressing for their positions. In addition, the colonial movement had recently demonstrated the ability of imperialism to mobilize educated Germans for political action. This demonstration was taken to heart by alert politicians-who increasingly tried to tie domestic issues to those of foreign and imperial policy in order to gamer the support of the educated-and by politically oriented academics, who did the same thing. The latter recognized that they had a chance of affecting politics by focusing their fields of study on major issues (such as the social question and its political cognate, the growing power of the Social Democrats) within some sort of nationalist ideological context.