German Bourgeoisie Research Articles

The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century. Edited by David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans · New York: Routledge, 1991. xix + 348 pp. Tables, notes, and index. $74.50. ISBN 0-415-03597-X.

The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century. Edited by David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans · New York: Routledge, 1991. xix + 348 pp. Tables, notes, and index. $74.50. ISBN 0-415-03597-X. - Volume 67 Issue 3

The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the social history of the German middle class from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century; The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany

The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the social history of the German middle class from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century; The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany

The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century, edited by David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans

<i>The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century</i>, edited by David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans

The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century.

The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century.

The Business Elites of Hamburg and Berlin

In many respects, Hamburg and Berlin represent two societal models at work in Wilhelmian Germany. Hamburg and the other Hanseatic cities, Lübeck and Bremen, have traditionally been thought to represent bourgeois society as it might have been in Germany as a whole: self-assured, liberal, and antiaristocratic. Historians are generally in agreement with Richard J. Evans in his assertion that “neither the economic activity nor the social world nor finally the political beliefs and actions of the Hamburg merchants corresponded to anything that has ever been defined, however remotely, as ‘feudal.’” Berlin, on the other hand, was dominated by the imperial court and the aristocracy, which, it is said, seduced and fatally weakened not only the business elite of the capital, but in fact the most influential segment of the German bourgeoisie as a whole.

The German “Nationalverein”. The Political Establishment of the German Bourgeoisie, 1859–1867

The German “Nationalverein”. The Political Establishment of the German Bourgeoisie, 1859–1867

Print Culture and the Transformation of Imperial Russia: Three New Views. A Review Article

As scholarship moves us to question the classic dichotomies of Russian historiography-state and society, city and countryside, peasant and proletarianthe social map of imperial Russia is being redrawn. The three studies under review add an important new dimension to this revision. All three, in different ways, are searching for an active populace: a force broader and more diverse than the select company of intellectual and civic leaders, more complex and purposeful than the undifferentiated folk mass. They identify this force not in socioeconomic or juridical terms (by class or estate, however modified) but in relation to cultural systems: high culture, popular culture, and folk culture. The virtue of Marker's study is to provide detailed information on the workings of the eighteenth-century printing business, thereby emphasizing the impact of material and institutional constraints on the struggle over ideas. Most original and daring in its claims, Brooks' work tackles a question neglected by modem scholars: What did the common reader read and how did this popular cultural experience help shape political attitudes on the eve of 1917? Eklof, for his part, traces the growth and impact of popular education and, like Brooks, has produced a book of remarkable depth and imagination. If Brooks and Eklof focus primarily on the consumption of culture, Marker deals with the supply side, arguing that printing helped call to life a public sphere, or civil society-extending beyond the tight circle of learned and literary men who aimed to set the cultural standards. Jurgen Habermas has used these concepts to explain how the German bourgeoisie exercised civic authority through the medium of cultural expression while remaining outside

Bourgeois Class Position and the Esthetic Representation of Class Interest: The Social Determination of Taste

Esthetization describes an understanding of esthetics as interested and linked to class interests which are, however, denied by the cultural practices of which esthetics is a part. The following analyses will show how the emerging bourgeoisie represented its social interests esthetically. It will be shown how these interests are esthetized by being expressed within the confines of a cultural identity, determined by Kultur in Germany and civilisation in France.1 Both practices define the social identity and self-consciousness of an upwardly mobile bourgeoisie, but they also erase the relation between class interest, upward mobility, and the esthetic, artistic, and philosophical articulations of the bourgeoisie. This understanding of culture as a socially disinterested, neutral, and unpolitical sphere of activities is invited by habitus. According to Bourdieu, habitus incorporates the social, economic, educational, and cultural resources of a class and systematically externalizes them in various practices, which in return structure those practices.2 The cultural practices of Kultur and civilisation function precisely in this way. They are practices which are structured by a cultivated habitus typical of the conditions of existence of the German and French bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century. Both practices are thus socially interested. They are a function of the class position and ambitions of a bourgeoisie which is obliged to articulate its

"The Center Cannot Hold." Educational Politics and the Collapse of the Democratic Middle in Germany: The School Bill Crisis in Baden, 1927-1928

WEIMAR GERMANY. The words conjure images of ineffectual leaders and stopgap governments, of haphazard democratic way station en route to Hitler and National Socialism. Historians have probed and assessed the weaknessessociological, political, economic, psychologicalthat bedeviled this ill-fated system. The chief defect oftentimes is judged to be weak and divided middle class, which proved incapable of acting as moderating and stabilizing force of the political center. A variety of studies have pinpointed the political and economic fragmentation of the German bourgeoisie.' Another, not insignificant, factor helped split the bourgeois middle in Weimar Germany. Educational differences founded upon the clash between advocates of religious and secular schooling acted as serious hindrance to bourgeois political cooperation. The dispute over what form German schools should take was one of the oldest and most intractable in German domestic life.2 In the mid1920s, virulent renewal of this dispute resulted in spectacular political crisis, collapse of the government, and crippling of any hope of bourgeois political cooperation. The passions aroused by the school bill conflict of 1927-1928 hampered Catholic-liberal rapprochement and promoted creeping demoralization within the German bourgeoisie. The Heidelberg University professor and ardent liberal Willy Hellpach once observed that the Germans possessed a culture-conditioned love of fantasy which [made] it difficult [for them] to understand . . . politics or [the necessities] of parliamentary government.3 The school bill con-

Versuch einer Politisierung des Geistigen : Die kulturpolitische Zeitschrift März (1907-1917)

The «politico-cultural» review März (1907-1917). März is a «politico-cultural» bimonthly, launched in Munich in 1907 and published by Albert Langen who was its editor as well, together with Aram, Hesse and Thoma, and exerted a dicisive influence on its policy. The review followed a policy of progressive liberalism and aimed at covering all aspects of public life, such as politics, economy, sciences, arts and literature. Through many informative articles and through the collaboration of writers, artists and French political figures, it attempted to improve the relationships between France and Germany. After Langen’s death in 1909, there appeared many divergences between the contributors and the review drifted away from the original ideas of its creator. März is still today a highly valuable historical document, the testimony of all the efforts made by the liberal wing of the German bourgeoisie, which hoped to bridge the gap between politics and the intellect thanks to a democratization of art.

The West German Bourgeoisie During the Era of Intensive Industrialization 1860–1914. Social Behaviour and Social Structures

The West German Bourgeoisie During the Era of Intensive Industrialization 1860–1914. Social Behaviour and Social Structures

A Plea for the Abolition of the Undergraduate Major in German

expression of the small scale of German society until the foundation of the Empire and of the comparative weakness and backwardness of the German bourgeoisie. Here, the history of the society has consequences for the history of a genre; the reverse may also be true: the attempts by German novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to adapt English and French forms to German conditions give interesting insights into the differences between the English or French and the German societies of the period.

Crisis and the Way Out: The Rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany

Abstract Built on petty bourgeois ideology and uniting in its combat organizations mostly déclassé middle class elements, Fascist movements developed in almost all advanced capitalist countries. They surfaced nearly everywhere during the critical period following WWI and the 1929 world crisis. Only in Germany and Italy, however, did Fascism become a decisive political factor. In Italy it succeeded as the “political solution” to the post-war crisis, while in Germany it triumphed as both a political and an economic “solution” to the great world crisis. Why did Fascism become a decisive factor in these countries, and why were the Italians and German bourgeoisie unable or unwilling to find another solution to their problems?

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (On the 150th Anniversary of His Death)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was one of the most outstanding thinkers in philosophy and social thought produced by the German bourgeoisie during the period of its progressive development. His writings are among the finest achievements of classical bourgeois humanism. The concepts, ideas, and demands put forth by Fichte go far beyond the bounds of the backward social conditions of Germany at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. This is explained by the fact that Fichte, like other representatives of German classical philosophy and literature, guided himself, in his understanding of social problems, by ideas that arose in the progressive stage of development of capitalist society inaugurated by the French Revolution. Under its influence Fichte developed in his writings a number of lines of thought having as their object the achievement of a higher form of social development, although they bore the imprint of Utopianism and illusion.

Gustav Freytag and the Assimilation of the German Middle Class

IN A SMALL VALUABLE STUDY of 19231 Werner Wittich analyzed the social content of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (17931796)2. The significance of Wittich's article rests not only on its contribution to certain aspects of German eighteenth-century social history, but on the use of fiction by the author as a source for social history. Without particularly addressing himself to methodological questions, Wittich used Goethe's novel to indicate the status of the German bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century. The novel is a heuristically very valuable source for social history, although an as yet largely untapped one. Not, of course, to document social facts, such as unemployment, living conditions, and general behavior of groups-for these, as Aydelotte3 has pointed out, conventional sources are to be preferred. But it is an unequaled means for determining the ethos, the attitudes and values of groups.4 Wittich's work focuses on the passage in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship in which the hero states that, because of the constitution of [German eighteenth-century] society5 he, a commoner, will never be allowed to develop his mind and his personality. Basing himself on Goethe's novel, Wittich demonstrates that the bourgeoisie was held in low esteem in