Making democracy safe for tribal homelands? Self-determination and political regionalism in Weimar Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article adds to the literature on political regionalism in the Weimar Republic at the end of the First World War. After four years of hardship at the hands of the central government, proponents of reform were prepared to countenance the dismemberment of Prussia – Germany’s largest state – in favour of autonomous tribal (stammlich) entities under the federal umbrella of the Reich. However, contemporaries soon learned that instead of acting as a catalyst of emancipation, the Wilsonian discourse of self-determination frustrated genuine change because the latter’s appropriation by ethno-regionalists threatened to unravel many of the viable compromises reached in the imperial period. The resulting inability to keep all parties engaged in dialogue generated verbal as well as physical aggression. The article suggests that these phenomena shed revealing light not only on the way in which ideas of space and the ‘othering’ of fellow Germans based on tribal allegiance shaped political conflict but also challenge more broadly the assumption prevalent in some parts of the historiography that when ethnic movements make demands for their own state, they automatically turn nationalist. Empirical evidence from the province of Hanover shows that regionalists could well make violent demands for secession from Prussia while at the same time affirming their identification with the German nation.