The senator’s tale: the development of Bremen’sbourgeoisie in the post-1945 era

Abstract

Were members of the German bourgeoisie capable of formingthe foundation for a new self-understanding of post-1945German society?Or did they prove to be unsuited as agents of Germany’snew beginning? This article seeks to answer these questions by focusingon historical developments in the early phase of the Federal Republicof Germany as reflected in the biography of one prominent representativeof the German bourgeoisie. Theodor Spitta, who was born in 1873,was elected in 1911as a senator for life in the government of theFree Hanse City of Bremen. Spitta was an outstanding representativeof a generation socialized under the last German Kaiser, a generation whichperceived itself as part of a politically liberal Bremen bourgeoisie.He feared the gradual decline, indeed the disintegration of hisclass. None the less – or perhaps for that very reason – hecommitted himself to the goal of restoring a regionally specificform of bourgeois life in the city of Bremen. Although Spitta declareda ‘farewell to the bourgeoisie’ in his autobiographicaltexts, that did not prevent him from actively pursuing the revivalof a unique urban-bourgeois ‘spirit’. This spiritwas to serve as a tool in promoting Bremen’s central politicalgoal in post-1945Germany: the preservation of the city-state’sunique status within Germany’s federal system.