The end of Hamburg’s Anglophilia: Wilhelmine Hamburg attitudes viewed through school examination essays and a university lecture (1912–1914)

Abstract

Late nineteenth-century German–English rivalry changed attitudes in Hamburg. Previously, the once fiercely independent city and its burgeoning mercantile middle class had developed an Anglophilia that justified Hamburg being labelled a ‘London suburb’ and ‘the most British town on the Continent’. The affinity for all things English – from liberal politics to refined fashion sense – had developed on the back of close business links by seafaring merchant adventurers, Hanseatic traders and shipping magnates. Only hesitantly did the people of Hamburg join Bismarck’s Germany, but the prospect of war demanded a drastic shift towards German patriotism. Pragmatically, the Hamburg bourgeoisie complied – and severed their intellectual and emotional bond with England. This paper investigates the extent of Hamburg’s compliance by looking at essays that were produced at extreme ends of academe. The key sources are 1913 Abitur examination essays by secondary school students on the topic ‘England and Germany – two rivals’. They are assessed here alongside a 1914 public lecture from the English faculty at Hamburg’s university. The dual ambition of this study is to examine how Hamburg’s intelligentsia coped with new loyalties brought on by changing political contexts and to assess the validity of school essays and examination papers as historical sources (in so far they must be considered a niche interest). In many ways the results are sobering. While at university level Anglophilia prevailed in a strange form of nostalgia for a great Britain of peaceful gentlemen and honest workers, who should have resisted the imperial ambitions of a corrupt banking elite that provoked the war, the students’ essays almost betray Hamburg’s heritage by simply repeating the popular and one-dimensional propaganda about warmongering British imperialists attempting to suffocate Germany’s earnest ambitions for its rightful place on the world stage. On paper at least, German nationalism had thoroughly replaced Anglophilia. There are, however, indications that while teachers and students were compliant with current popular opinion, they did not expect it to last: the England-bashing essays are written in perfect English. A lot of time and effort went into the study of English, which surely would have been superfluous if Anglo-German relations were not expected to improve again soon. Seen as a whole then, students’ essays can be valuable sources – if one looks beyond their content.