The Crisis of German Professions 1918-33

Abstract

'Twenty thousand German teachers [will] swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler' proclaimed circular no. 8 of the NS-teachers' league in March 1932. In the decisive electoral struggle of the Weimar Republic, the nazi party mobilized German professionals. 'This conference shall be a powerful demonstration of all German teachers against the destruction of culture, against the present system a powerful demonstration against the destruction of any chance for education'. The 'freedom struggle' of German teachers aimed at 'saving many colleagues from serious disciplinary proceedings' and taking 'another step towards the seizure of power. In the interest of unemployed youth, in the interest of declining education, in the interest of our splendid German culture and of its future improvement, every teacher is duty-bound to muster his entire strength.' Although the front of 'nationalist educators, of Hitler's fighters and soldiers in education' turned out to be somewhat smaller than anticipated, the April 1932 teachers' rally was the largest demonstration of professionals before the nazi seizure of power. Since the democratic Deutsche Lehrerverein had become 'ossified in bureaucracy, the NS-teachers' league arose as a fighting unit within the NSDAP, which rescues the German school from the wheeling and dealing of the liberal-democraticmarxist system'. These pre-1933 nazi assertions about the co-operation of German academics raise the central question: were German professionals forced to co-operate as many apologists claimed afterwards or did they flock to Hitler's banner voluntarily? The professions are a particularly interesting social group since they played a key role in the German upper and middle classes as the academic core of the educated middle class. But since historians have largely neglected them while social scientists have tried to compile lists of ideal-typical traits, their analysis poses a number of difficulties. As the word Profession, still in use in the eighteenth century to describe an artisan career, virtually disappeared in the nineteenth century, the German language developed the notion of Berufsstand (occupational estate) without any particular academic connotation. The German term Beruf carried a strong overtone of Lutheran 'calling', while the notion of