Although often viewed as ineffectual intellectuals, or a spent political force, Left Liberals had become the third largest party in German politics by 1914 and in the German Revolution of 1918/19 it was Left Liberals who effectively wrote the new Weimar constitution. This study, based on extensive original research, investigates Left Liberals in the locality, as well as at the national level, with case studies ranging from Kiel to Kattowitz. Overturning old notions of German liberalism as the helpless victim of mass mobilization and political polarization, it is central to understanding both increasing left liberal influence and support on the eve of the First World War, and why liberal values could not be consolidated after 1918. This study has powerful general implications for the history of imperial Germany, reassessing the role of political parties, public perceptions of politics, and the impact and character of the state.

’Long live liberty, equality, fraternity and dynamite’ So went the traditional slogan of the radical liberals in Greater Swabia, the south-western part of modern Germany. This book investigates the development of what the author terms ’popular liberalism’ in this region, in order to present a more nuanced understanding of political and cultural patterns in Germany up to the early 1930s. In particular, the author offers an explanation for the success of National Socialism before 1933 in certain regions of South Germany, arguing that the radical liberal sub-culture was not subsumed by the Nazi Party, but instead changed its form of representation. Together with the famous völkish fraction and the leftist fraction within the chapters of the Nazi Party, there were radical-liberal associations, ex-members of radical-liberal parties, sympathizers with these parties, and notables with a radical orientation derived from family and regional traditions. These people and associations believed that the Nazi Party could fulfil their radical - liberal vision, rooted in the local democratic and liberal traditions which stretched from 1848 to the early 20th century. By looking afresh at the relationship between local-regional identities and national politics, this book makes a major contribution to the study of the roots of Nazism.

Germany's imperial era (1871-1918) continues to attract both scholars and the general public alike. The American historian Roger Chickering has referred to the historiography on the Kaiserreich as an 'extraordinary body of historical scholarship', whose quality and diversity stands comparison with that of any other episode in European history. This Companion is a significant addition to this body of scholarship with the emphasis very much on the present and future. Questions of continuity remain a vital and necessary line of historical enquiry and while it may have been short-lived, the Kaiserreich remains central to modern German and European history. The volume allows 25 experts, from across the globe, to write at length about the state of research in their own specialist fields, offering original insights as well as historiographical reflections, and rounded off with extensive suggestions for further reading. The chapters are grouped into five thematic sections, chosen to reflect the full range of research being undertaken on imperial German history today and together offer a comprehensive and authoritative reference resource. Overall this collection will provide scholars and students with a lively take on this fascinating period of German history, from the nation’s unification in 1871 right up until the end of World War I.

A bold re-interpretation of democracy's historical rise in Europe, Ziblatt highlights the surprising role of conservative political parties with sweeping implications for democracy today.

“The failure of Liberalism” in Germany and its responsibility for the rise of Nazism has been widely discussed among scholars inside and outside Germany. This author argues that German liberalism failed because of the irreconcilable conflict between two competing visions of German identity. In following the German liberal parties from the Empire through the Third Reich Kurlander illustrates convincingly how an exclusionary racist Weltanschauung, conditioned by profound transformations in German political culture at large, gradually displaced the liberal-universalist conception of a democratic Rechtsstaat. Although there were some notable exceptions, this widespread obsession with „racial community [Volksgemeinschaft]“ caused the liberal parties to succumb to ideological lassitude and self-contradiction, paving the way for National Socialism.

Student life and political perspectives at Wilhelmine universities

It has often ben suggested that artists and writers in Germany's imperial era shunned social engagement, preferring instead apolitical introspection. However, as Matthew Jefferies reveals, whether one looks at the painters, poets and architects who helped to create an official imperial identity after 1871; the cultural critics and reformers of the later 19th century; or the new generation of cultural producers that emerged in the years around 1900, the social, political and cultural were never far apart. In this attractively illustrated book, Jefferies provides a lively introduction to the principal movements in German high culture between 1871 and 1918, in the context of imperial society and politics. He not only demonstrates that Germany's 'Imperial culture' was every bit as fascinating as the much better known 'Weimar culture' of the 1920s, but argues that much of what came later has origins in the imperial period. Filling a significant gap in the current historiography, this study will appeal to all those with an interest in the rich and diverse culture of Imperial Germany.

What was distinctive--and distinctively "modern"--about German society and politics in the age of Kaiser Wilhelm II? In addressing this question, these essays assemble cutting-edge research by fourteen international scholars. Based on evidence of an explicit and self-confidently "bourgeois" formation in German public culture, the contributors suggest new ways of interpreting its reformist potential and advance alternative readings of German political history before 1914. While proposing a more measured understanding of Wilhelmine Germany's extraordinarily dynamic society, they also grapple with the ambivalent, cross-cutting nature of German "modernities" and reassess their impact on long-term developments running through the Wilhelmine age.

An in-depth analysis of political organization and democratization during the crucial 1860-1920 period in Sweden and Germany, this book centers on the formation of liberalism. It argues that despite ideology's individualistic traits which made liberals less susceptible to political organization on a mass basis, its followers chose to compromise between individual and collective action. Revealing how Swedish liberalism made way for peaceful democratization and collective modes of societal organization while German liberalism turned conservative and prepared for Nazism and extremist nationalism, this record explores the mobilization, formation, and subsequent development of liberalism in these regions.

In a work based on new archival, press, and literary sources, the author revises the picture of German imperialism as being the brainchild of a Machiavellian Bismarck or the "conservative revolutionaries" of the twentieth century. Instead, Fitzpatrick argues for the liberal origins of German imperialism, by demonstrating the links between nationalism and expansionism in a study that surveys the half century of imperialist agitation and activity leading up to the official founding of Germany's colonial empire in 1884.