German Liberalism Research Articles

ТЕНДЕНЦІЇ РОЗВИТКУ ВІДНОСИН МІЖ США І ФРН ЗА ПРЕЗИДЕНТСТВА ДОНАЛЬДА ТРАМПА

The influence of internal political processes in the USA and Germany on the evolution of US-German relations is analyzed in the article. The crisis of the mono-polar system of international relations was synchronized with changes in the global order. It affected relations between the US and Germany. The scientific literature has been dominated by the view that President Trump’s conservative-moderate foreign policy strategy is contrary to the traditions of liberal-democratic multilateral diplomacy. D. Trump’s views on the international positioning of the United States can be considered as a variant of foreign policy realism, in contrast to classical republican neo-conservatism or democratic liberal interventionism. The German foreign policy course in the time of the Bundes Chancellor A. Merkel is a manifestation of liberal-democratic globalism. Under President Obama and Chancellor A. Merkel, German-American relations remained at a high allied level. President Trump abolishes talks on Transatlantic Free Trade Area. German elites see the populist and nationalist policies of D. Trump as a challenge to European integration. They consider US European policy an attempt to split the European Union. In the domestic political dimension, German liberals consider the Alternative to Germany party as Trump’s ideological counterparts. The American liberal political elite accused A. Merkel of failing to prevent the spread of anti-American sentiment in Germany. Political sentiment in the US and Germany after the pandemic is unpredictable. A noticeable trend was the aggravation of the crisis of liberal globalization. This outlines the tendency for further political polarization of American and German societies.

«РЕФОРМАТОР» ВІЛЬГЕЛЬМІВСЬКОЇ ЕПОХИ: БЕРНХАРД МАРТІН ФОН БЮЛОВ (1849-1929)

In the article the author examines the socio-political development of the German Empire during the reign of Emperor Wilhelm II. The author of the article tries to reveal the complex mechanism of the methods of policy of the imperial chancellor B. von Bulow both in the sphere of foreign and domestic politics. He began his activities in a difficult historical time not only for Germany but also for most of Western Europe. It was the time of Germany’s struggle for world domination. The political leaders of the leading Western European countries were representatives of the new formation, therefore, they had to act with new methods of management of society and not only them. The Reichskanzler B. von Bulow was ready to enact political and social reforms in order to weaken social conflicts and improve society as a whole. The author of the article emphasizes that unlike Western Europe, Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century could not completely free itself from the feudal-absolutist heritage. However, the rapid capitalist-industrial development of the country had an impact on all strata of the society and political institutions of power. At the beginning of the twentieth century in Germany, conservatism crystallized as a consistent ideology coupled with liberal tendencies. A bright representative of this ideology was B. von Bulow. Intelligent, charismatic, he was not against the democratic changes at all, insisting that all kinds of changes in the country be introduced in order to promote the organic development of generally recognized state and social institutions. So they are not in danger. As a leader of the country, he understood well the need to abandon extremes of conservatism, from violent methods, insisting on the combination of conservatism and liberalism, thus creating a bloc of party unity. Therefore, he tried to act in a consistent, active manner. At the beginning of the twentieth century Germany failed to build a stable parliamentary system. The Europeans considered the Germans “behind the facade of democracy”, because the effects of liberalization appeared there only from time to time. The article emphasizes that the liberals were not prepared to consider the radical projects of B. von Bulow, for example, general suffrage, because there were authoritarian traditions of the court, the army, and so German liberalism was weak and could not play a leading political role in the country. Relevance of the topic of study is determined by the historical significance of problems raised in it. Significant political parties, political and economic forces have created a “geopolitical consensus,” leading Germany to a struggle for world domination.

Bismarck als Projektionsfläche oder Verfassung als Kunst des Möglichen?

Otto von Bismarck was not a liberal politician at all but had a lot of liberal admirers. German liberal politicians like Gustav Stresemann or Otto Graf Lambsdorff and even Social Democrats like Willy Brandt presented themselves as at least partial admirers of Bismarck and his politics. It is surprising at first sight, because Bismarck had strong conservative roots and never pretended to be liberal. On the other hand, some effects of his politics were deeply accepted and even desired by German liberals: the creation of a strong German national state, political fight against small blimpish duchies or catholic church. Bismarck was rather a pragmatic (and sometimes opportunist) than a theorist, defining politics as „Kunst des Möglichen“ (‚art of art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best‘). Due to his lack of ideology, for many a benchmark of Liberalism, conservative Bismarck could make successful liberal politics, but also its opposite, e. g., in social politics. By his pragmatic approach and his flexibility, Bismarck became a projection screen for many liberal politicians.

A Jewish Faust Commentary: Notes on Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption

A Jewish Faust Commentary:Notes on Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption Willi Goetschel It has often been noted that quotes, resonances, and the style of Goethe permeate if not inform the writing of Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). Viewed as fashionable mannerism in the tradition of bourgeois culture that liberal German Judaism liked to embrace, the adoption of Goethe played an important role in nineteenth-century Jewish cultural life. Serving cultural as well as sociological and political functions, Goethe reception had become a central fixture in the arsenal of a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century culture war, and not just with regard to the positioning of liberal German Jewry. A central asset of the cultural capital backed by Germany's national ambitions, Goethe's stock, however, had not remained uncontested, and his valorization saw occasional fluctuations nervously reacting to the upheaval of an unsteady market. Participating in the Goethe cult could mean many different—and at times opposite—things. Many motives, interests, concerns, and agendas intermingled, but first and foremost, the appropriation of Goethe had become an affair of the liberal bourgeoisie. By the end of the nineteenth century, Goethe reception had become a matter of particular Jewish interest. Without the salons of Jewish women such as Rachel Varnhagen and the rise of Goethe philology in the late nineteenth century (spearheaded by Jewish scholars such as Michael Bernays and Ludwig Geiger, to name just the exponents among the Jewish Goethe philologists), Goethe reception would be hard to imagine.1 At the home of Heine's parents, for example, Goethe had become such a towering presence that Heine's father worried: "Wie soll mein Junge aufkommen . . . wenn man immer und immer nur von Goethe sprechen will?" (How shall my boy succeed if everybody only wants to talk about Goethe all the time).2 Whereas Goethe had become politically unreliable for many nationally conservative Germans, his cosmopolitan and forward-looking vision of culture and Bildung (education) promised the emancipatory development that German Jews had so eagerly been looking forward to since the days of Moses Mendelssohn. If Goethe had become suspect to conservatives, liberals embraced him as an exponent of a reluctant modernity. In embracing a culturally liberal position, Goethe stood for the combination of the best that German culture had to offer. But make no mistake: Goethe remained exposed as a contested figure, and siding with him meant anything but easy assimilation. Rather, embracing Goethe could also mean reimagining the project of German culture in [End Page 251] a creative manner. Instead of occupying a well-defined political and cultural position, Goethe, whose canonical allures often seemed to impose normative rules, thus inspired the emancipatory sentiments that empowered German Jews to see him as an ally in the move toward a more open approach to the renegotiation and reinvention of a more inclusive and emancipatory notion of modern culture and modernity more generally. That was the appeal and allure that made Goethe so attractive and culturally so prolific. For the generation from Georg Simmel to Franz Rosenzweig, Goethe served as a figure for a vision that offered the possibility of imagining German culture as dynamically open, cosmopolitan, and progressive, without forsaking the rich inner life that industrialized mass culture threatened to destroy. Goethe represented many aspects and some of them figure in Rosenzweig's 1921 magnum opus Der Stern der Erlösung (The Star of Redemption).3 I argue here that in order to grasp the finer nuances of the critique that drives Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption, we need to attend to the paramount but complex role that Goethe plays with regard to the book's content, structure, trajectory, and use of language and diction. To do so we first need to examine the different aspects and moments that define the function of Goethe's role in Rosenzweig's argument. This will allow us to better assess the critical significance that Goethe plays in The Star.4 In Rosenzweig, Goethe's presence is marked by numerous quotations that run through the textual weave, sometimes in obvious and other times in a subliminal form. This abundance of Goethe references and allusions modulate the book's form and style...

Why Adolf Hitler Spared the Judges: Judicial Opposition Against the Nazi State

The Nazi regime had loyal judges who willingly transformed the liberal German law into an instrument of oppression, discrimination and genocide. This was achieved without substantially interfering with the operation of the courts and without applying disciplinary measures on the judges. But, not all judges were congenial servants of the regime—some resisted in their capacity as judges. Based on case-studies and existing literature, this Article distinguishes between two different lines of judicial opposition to those in power: Between opposition taking place in the open and opposition in secret, and between opposition within what is accepted by those in power as being within the law and opposition that is in breach of the law. The Article then seeks to explain the deference the regime gave to judicial by employing institutional theory and the concept of path dependence. Germany was deeply embedded in the Western legal tradition of emphasis on law as an autonomous institution with an independent judiciary.

Республиканская идея в раннем германском либерализме

Республиканская идея в раннем германском либерализме

LA CIUDADANÍA EN MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO: EL LIBRE EXAMEN Y LA PARTICIPACIÓN POLÍTICA

Unamuno, like all the great classic Western thinkers, is eternally relevant to the present time. His reflections concerning what a democracy should be are in this sense an expression of the timelessness of his political thought. Certainly the question of what democratic citizenship is and involves is motivating the thinking of many of today’s philosophers; it is also no less certain that no other author has been so consistent in taking to the limit the relation between the idea of that concept and its implementation in his civic life. Unamuno – as an irascible “intellectual-politician” in self-exile in Paris owing to his confrontation with the Miguel Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the monarchy and the king– is the highest example of how current democracy and citizenship should be understood and practised in terms of political intervention established on free examination of conscience. And it is precisely here where the influence of German liberal Protestantism played as decisive role in his intellectual formation, especially for an author so adept in heresy as deconstruction of orthodoxies and dogmas that disallow individual thought in its freedom and autonomy.

Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and Music-Critical Discourse in Liberal Vienna by David Brodbeck (review)

IDENTITY, RESISTANCE Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and MusicCritical Discourse in Liberal Vienna. By David Brodbeck. (New Cultural History of Music.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. [xviii, 365 p. ISBN 9780199362707 (hardcover), $45; (e-book, Oxford Scholarship Online).] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.Defining Deutschtum explores notion of Germanness in fin-de-siecle Vienna from perspective of music criticism. More specifically, David Brodbeck's aim in this book is to reveal very great extent to which contemporary political ideology . . . tied to questions of German identity in late-nineteenth-century Austria, and to show how, in turn, these questions were implicated in culture and above all articulated by music (pp. xiii-xiv). To understand what it meant to be German in this context-who counted as German, and who did not- Brodbeck focuses on music-critical reception of three Austrian composers of either Jewish or Czech heritage who were all denied, at some point, German identity: Carl Goldmark, Antonin Dvorak, and Bedrich Smetana.The preface tells us that this ambitious book project originates from a footnote read some twenty-five years ago. Intrigued by Max Kalbeck's mention of the liberal German in Brahms, Brodbeck wondered to what extent composer's political ideology informing his works, but decided to leave question aside and focus on purely musical aspects of Johannes Brahms's Third Symphony. The present book takes opposite stance, shifting focus away from music towards its critical reception, placing previously unaddressed political question at center. Not an object of study per se, music is used here from perspective of its reception, to inform sociopolitical context. In fact, while clearly acknowledging value of music criticism for understanding contested notion of Deutschtum, Brodbeck warns us not to overestimate its ability to inform quotidian life in Vienna, a point clarified at end.The book is divided into two parts. The first follows rise of Austrian-German liberalism (1840s to 1870s), while second describes destabilization of German hegemony (1880s and 1890s). Each part contains four chapters, framed by an introduction and an epilogue. The chapters unfold symmetrically, beginning and ending with question of Deutschtum. Chapter 1 concerns Germanness of Vienna's leading tastemaker, Eduard Hanslick, and chapter 2 discusses cultural self-perception of Goldmark (to which half of book is devoted). We then move on to music-critical reception of Goldmark, Dvorak, and Smetana, before returning to Goldmark's Deutschtum, which parallels opening chapter (Hanslick's Deutschtum). The epilogue is meant to draw these different threads together.The introduction shows up front how evolution of sociopolitical context of late-nineteenth-century Vienna shaped writings of three generations of music critics. The generation of Eduard Hanslick and Ludwig Speidel, representatives of a traditional German liberal attitude (Deutschliberal ), religiously devoted to idea of culture and saw Deutschtum as a matter of conviction and achievement (p. 10). The criticism of moderate German nationalists (Nationalliberal ) such as Theodor Helm reflected tensions between German and Czech-speaking populations that were generated by emergence of Czech nationalism. This development contributed to stimulate, in turn, a radicalization of German nationalism (Deutschnational ), which defined Deutschtum in racial rather than cultural terms; and critics such as Hans Puchstein or August Puringer were strongly influenced by rise of racial anti-Semitism in 1880s.The first chapter examines Hanslick's self-perception of his cultural identity. Raised by a Czech-speaking father and Jewish mother in Bohemia, Hanslick viewed himself as a German liberal, and this, argues Brodbeck, was identity that mattered most to him (p. …

Otto Scheel (1876–1954). Eine biographische Studie zu Lutherforschung, Landeshistoriographie und deutsch-dänischen Beziehungen by Carsten Mish

Reviewed by: Otto Scheel (1876–1954). Eine biographische Studie zu Lutherforschung, Landeshistoriographie und deutsch-dänischen Beziehungen by Carsten Mish Robert Kolb Otto Scheel (1876–1954). Eine biographische Studie zu Lutherforschung, Landeshistoriographie und deutsch-dänischen Beziehungen. Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte 61. By Carsten Mish. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. 386pp. Theologians are people, too. They are not only enmeshed in their engagement with Scripture and/or the church’s tradition but also in their contemporary context. They share the concerns and desires of their fellow citizens and react as they do to both past and present. This biography demonstrates this embeddedness in culture through the life and writings of Otto Scheel, a prominent Luther scholar and church historian of the first half of the twentieth century. Scheel’s parents bequeathed him the peculiar perspective of people living in borderlands, she a Danish Schleswiger, he a German from the same northern German, southern Danish province. The war between Prussia and Denmark in 1864 brought a sizable Danish-speaking population into Prussian and then German governance, but not without resistance from one side and the intense desire to Germanify the region on the other. Out of this context Scheel became a fervent advocate of German national ambitions and a loyal servant of the Wilhelminen Reich during World War I, when he contributed mightily to the German effort to win the war and expand the empire’s landholdings. [End Page 442] By that time Scheel had acquired a professorship on the theological faculty at the University of Tübingen and become a rising exponent of the classical Liberal theology of Albrecht Ritschl, Adolf von Harnack, and their school of thought. German Liberalism embraced the bourgeois “Cultural Christianity” that gladly and effortlessly supported the expansion of German rule and German thinking. Mish’s extensive archival research enables him to use Scheel to depict precisely how German cultural Liberalism embraced both limited broader participation in the political process and the bourgeois recasting of the Christian tradition in the image of industrializing Germany. During World War I the young Tübingen professor enthusiastically endorsed the war effort, induced, he believed, by Germany’s English and French foes, and contributed actively to support of the imperial German dreams of a greater Germany. Mish does not extensively analyze the course of Scheel’s contributions to Luther studies, including his two-volume biography that appeared during World War I, but he does place his scholarship and more popular writing into their context. Scheel praised Luther as a pioneer of modernity and defended him against Roman Catholic critique but also rejected his understanding of Scripture as “contradictory” and his teaching on the Lord’s Supper as “sub-evangelical.” After 1918 his presentation of Luther accentuated even more his place as a national hero. Alongside his own literary activity, he presided over the Verein für Reformationsgeschichte (Society for Reformation History) from 1931 to 1945. Deeply disappointed by the 1918 defeat of his Fatherland, during the Weimar Republic, Scheel continued to dream of reclaiming his native northern Schleswig from Denmark while encouraging respect for the Danish minority within northern Germany. Scheel took a call to the University of Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein in 1924 as professor of territorial history. Although he later claimed to have been a victim of a National Socialist putsch when he lost the rectorship of the university in 1933 after only a few months in office, he in fact enthusiastically supported his Nazi-sympathizing successor. With Hitler’s accession to power, he quickly accommodated himself to the new national program although he never became rabidly [End Page 443] anti-Semitic as did some of his fellow sympathizers and supporters of National Socialism within the church. James Stayer observed in his study of German Luther research after World War I that in contrast to many who had become “German Christians” on the basis of their Liberal views, (including Scheel and Emanuel Hirsch), Paul Althaus and Werner Elert abandoned their support of Hitler rather quickly after initially enthusiastically supporting the National Socialist promise of a return to traditional German values in reaction to the chaos of the Weimar Republic. Stayer suggests that this happened because Althaus and Elert...

Homoerotic Travel, Classical Bildung, and Liberal Allegory in Adalbert Stifter'sBrigitta(1844–47)

Critics approaching Adalbert Stifter'sBrigitta, a novella long admired for its convoluted portrayal of aesthetics and politics, often strive to clarify its deliberate ambiguity, failing to see how Stifter composes his text in such a way that ambiguity pervades it at every level. In this essay, I argue that Stifter's representation of erotic relationships can be read allegorically, as a commentary on both German liberalism and the aesthetic project of realism. InBrigitta, Stifter combines political double‐speak with the legacy of German classicalBildungto instruct and discipline liberal readers in the 1840s. He situates liberal ideology within a classical literary tradition in an effort to tame it. In this way, Stifter offers a political vision that is consistent with his literary one, crafting a new mode of realism by inscribing an ideology onto nature and travel that is both inclusive and exclusive, political and non‐political.

Political Portrait of the 19th Century German Liberalism: the German Origin of Anti-Westernism

Political Portrait of the 19th Century German Liberalism: the German Origin of Anti-Westernism

The Aesthetics of Sexual Ethics: Geschlecht und Gesellschaft and Middle-Class Sexual Modernity in fin-de-siècle Germany

From its fin-de-siècle inception against the backdrop of Wilhelmine-era body culture and Lebensreform movements, the liberal German periodical Geschlecht und Gesellschaft consistently worked to push the boundaries of sexual discourse within a framework of bourgeois respectability. Until the end of World War I, it did so by prioritizing aesthetic discourse, with contributors undertaking progressive, sexually explicit readings of the Western canon, challenging controversial censorship decisions — using ‘high’ culture to appeal to an educated Bildungsbürgertum readership — and exploring a new Darwinian-inspired sexual ethics. While the institutional and intellectual history of the furor sexualis as a paradigm of modernity has largely been mapped since Foucault, with historians charting the ‘scientification’, ‘biologization’ and ‘medicalization’ of German society in early twentieth-century modernity, this article positions aesthetic discourse as a key aspect of the pursuit of the truth of sex. It also shows how this cultural paradigm largely disappeared in the Weimar era, when shifts in middle-class demographics led to an increasing focus on science in discussions of sex.[Es scheint] mir angebracht, sich klar zu werden, was die Erotik in der Kunst, wie sie in unserm Buch zum Ausdruck kommt, bezweckt. Sie dient als Ausflußbett für alle Regungen im Menschen, die sexuellen Timbre haben und sich im Liebesleben nicht erschöpfen. Ihr Maß ist ein erhebliches, wird aber immer noch so völlig unterschätzt, daß man nicht klar und laut genug von ihrem Dasein sprechen kann.Emil Schultze-Malkowsky, ‘Die Erotik in der Kunst’ (1908)

Missionaries, Modernism, and German Theology: Anglican Reactions to the Outbreak of War in 1914

AbstractThis paper discusses the Anglican reaction to the so-called “Appeal to the Civilised World” of October 1914 in its broader context. After briefly outlining the direct response to the Appeal it then goes on to discuss the prevailing perception of Germany by English theologians as well as the complex relationship of English theology to German liberalism. It moves on to discuss the aftermath of the inter-denominational Kikuyu Missionary Conference which had taken place in 1913. This had divided the Anglican Communion since Anglo-Catholics, led by Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, disapproved of intercommunion with nonepiscopal churches. After the outbreak of war, there were calls from Germany for unity in the mission field since Christian nations could not be seen to be at war with one another. Anglo-Catholic opposition to Kikuyu was coupled with a long-standing anti-liberalism which soon became fiercely anti-German in its rhetoric. Somewhat unwittingly the primitive German and English propaganda machines helped seal the fate of liberal theology into the next generation on account of its “Made in Germany” origins.

The Ambiguity of Veto Power in Coalitions: German Liberals' Role as a Watchdog in Justice and Home Affairs and their Failure to Sell Stalemate as Success in the Federal Elections of 2013

The article demonstrates that the rigid use of veto capacity in coalitions causes risks for re-election. Justice was a high-salience domain of the German Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), which occupied this portfolio in its coalition with the Conservative majority in the federal legislative period from 2009 to 2013. By analysing several legislative projects the article shows that their contents or non-adoption were an effect of liberals' vetoes. This policy-seeking strategy provoked conflicts within the coalition and stalemate making it impossible to realise popular measures that would have enhanced the Liberals' reputation and the importance of the domain for the voters who were mainly interested in economic and social policy. Moreover, the Liberals' vetoes led to a loss of support from its major coalition partner in the pre-election campaign. Thus governmental parties have to trade off policy and vote-seeking goals in order to get re-elected.

German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism and the United States, 1776-1945

The main argument of Jan-Uwe Guettel’s book is that Germany’s imperial liberalism, which began in the mid-nineteenth century, was racist and expansionist, drawing as it did both on examples of westward expansion in the USA and on the discriminating racial politics prevalent in the American South to further the cause of German colonies. The perception of America as a liberal colonial empire was incorporated into German liberal theories from the late eighteenth century, and put into practice in the late nineteenth century when colonial debates in the Reichstag allowed for a framing of issues that transcended political lines. In defining liberalism, Guettel notes that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, it is often seen as a relatively benign concept when compared with Nazism. He disputes this, positing that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial liberalism was infused with violence, racism and oppression. In his lengthy introduction Guettel argues that German colonialism was supported and championed by German liberals, a stance contrary to traditional historical narratives, yet one aired by various newer studies. He draws upon a wide range of secondary literature (watch out for footnote 7, which is almost two manuscript pages long) to contextualize and describe the intellectual development of this historiography in reference to German history. His broader argumentation throughout the book questions the three prevailing methodologies describing German liberalism: cultural pessimists (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer); those who see European colonialism as the origin of European totalitarian ideologies (Hannah Arendt and others); and those advocating the theory of a German Sonderweg. In describing the historiography of the positive exceptionalism of America’s imperial and colonial past, Guettel draws upon a much smaller and predominantly older set of sources than he does for the German historiography. This sets the tone for the focus upon German domestic and international politics as opposed to domestic US politics.

THE QUESTION OF ATLANTIC SLAVERY AND GERMAN READINESS FOR FREEDOM IN A. G. F. REBMANN’S HANS KIEKINDIEWELTS REISEN IN ALLE VIER WELTTHEILE

In his satirical novel, ‘Hans Kiekindiewelts Reisen in alle vier Welttheile’ (1794), A. G. F. Rebmann turns to the question of slavery in the Atlantic world to test his eponymous character’s commitment to freedom, which had been born in revolutionary Europe. Placing Hans in St. Domingo during the Haitian Revolution, Rebmann not only provides one of the most nuanced explorations of that uprising by a German writer, but launches a stinging critique of European colonialism. This novel, by one of the most prominent liberal writers in 1790s Germany, demonstrates a global perspective among progressive Germans during the Age of Revolution. Rebmann insists that a seemingly foreign question — the rights of Black slaves — is of central importance to the foundational ideas that are at stake for Germans too. There was an appreciation in Germany that a limited focus on domestic concerns and politics as the revolution raged in France could not do full justice to the ideals which many German liberals professed. Even without colonies and slaves of their own, Rebmann argued, Germans must take seriously the question of slavery.

The Religious Underpinnings of Early Prussian Liberalism: The Case of Wilhelm Grävell

Writing in 1957, Leonard Krieger famously argued that Lutheranism was “not itself central” to what he called the “problem of political liberty” in the German lands during the nineteenth century. By downplaying the influence of Luther's teachings on German political thought, Krieger tacitly aimed to refute the controversial “from Luther to Hitler thesis” proposed by some historians in an effort to identify the ideological roots of National Socialism. Contrary to these scholars, Krieger blamed the emergence of Germany's “peculiar 19th century version of political freedom” not on religious doctrine, but on a complex of political and socioeconomic circumstances that, he argued, were unique to central Europe. Scholars have almost universally followed Krieger's line of interpretation. Recent debate focuses not on whether he was correct to argue that political and socioeconomic factors were primarily responsible for engendering a distinctively German species of liberalism, but rather on the question of which of these factors was paramount. As a consequence, religion's role in the making of early German liberalism seldom receives serious consideration today.

Moritz Bonn, Southern Africa and the Critique of Colonialism

ABSTRACTIn 1906/7 Moritz Bonn (1873–1965) set out to test Hobson's theory of Imperialism in southern Africa. His extensive analyses, published in the leading social science journal of the era and in pamphlet form, constitute the first systematic analyses of southern African societies. Bonn's experiences in the region also led him to become the first scholar to argue for the necessity and inevitability of decolonization; he also anticipated the rise of fascism. While Bonn was well known and well connected during the inter-war period, he is today virtually forgotten even among specialists. This paper offers an intellectual biography in order to understand how Bonn's first-hand experience of colonialism, in Ireland, South Africa and German Southwest Africa led to important insights. A fresh consideration of this important liberal political economist of colonialism and empire challenges the established genealogy of ideas and approaches to world system theory and to empire, and especially the recent tendency to view German liberals as imperialist boosters.

Neue Aspekte einer kontroversen „Gesetzgebungswissenschaft“ bei Filangieri und Constant

Gaetano Filangieri’s „Scienza della legislazione“, published in Naples from 1780 to 1791 and soon translated into many languages, is a fine document of late Enlightenment’s political theory and Neapolitan juridical culture. In 1822/23, Benjamin Constant severely criticized Filangieri’s treatise from a liberal and constitutionalist point of view. Filangieri’s „Scienza“ as well as Constant’s commentary on it were referred to in Rotteck and Welcker’s „Staatslexikon“, thus finding their way in German liberalism. Vincenzo Ferrone, the editor of Filangieri’s „Scienza“, in a controversial re-interpretation published in 2003, as well as his co-editor Antonio Trampus blame the liberal Constant for having disregarded Filangieri’s republicanism, the constitutionalism of the „Scienza“ as well as its deep foundation in natural law theory.

Karlsruhe--Friedenstein: Family, Cosmopolitanism and Political Culture at the Courts of Baden and Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg (1750-1790)

Court studies has become virtually its own historical subfield. Although remnants of the old ‘gossip’ and ‘scandal’ histories still survive, most court studies today, such as those represented in The Society for Court Studies (www.courtstudies.org), are inter- and multidisciplinary in their perspectives. They cast their scholarly net quite widely to include a potpourri of histories that survey military, political and architectural achievements, evaluate rulers as connoisseurs and patrons of art, make gender analysis a prime focus, and unravel patronage and clientage networks, among other concerns. Veronika Bunk’s analysis of two medium-sized German courts fits this paradigm, indeed her chief objective is to investigate the amalgamation of culture and power at the Baden court in the latter half of the ‘long eighteenth century’ (p. 11). That sentence suggests exactly what is at stake in her decision to concentrate on one court and its ruling family. Her interpretations are revisionist in several ways. For example, she questions the validity of the Baden myth that portrays its ruler, Carl Frederic, as the heroic margrave who single-handedly lifted Baden into a new age of nineteenth-century German liberalism and whose astute reforms preserved Baden as a state at a time when many others experienced a mediatisation (Mediatisierung) that wiped them off the map as independent political entities. While she finds that apotheosis doubtful, and while she also questions the idea of a golden age presided over by Carl Frederic’s talented and charming wife, Caroline Louise of Hessen-Darmstadt, in the end, her work argues, if by no means in a hagiographic vein, for the central importance of both figures and especially that of the margrave.