Public Opinion and Foreign Policy in Wilhelmian Germany, 1897–1914

Abstract

The age of high imperialism was also the age of the emergence of mass journalism. This heralded a steady widening of what might be called the “political nation,” that is, those groups who took an active interest in politics in contrast to the mass of the population still largely outside the political arena. Up to the 1890s politics tended to beHonoratiorenpolitik—confined to “notables” orHonoratioren, a term first applied by Max Weber around the turn of the century to describe the elites who had dominated the political power structure up to that time. Gradually “public opinion” ceased to be, in effect, the opinion of the educated classes, that is, theclasses dirigeantes. In Wilhelmian Germany the process of democratization had been successfully contained, if seen in terms of the constitutional system; the age of mass politics was still far away.