Abstract
Nationalism was the most pervasive doctrine in the society and politics of Imperial Germany. The national idea coloured every major facet of social experience, not least in the empire’s ideological powerhouse, the Prussian state. The extent of its suffusion by the turn of the century was exemplified by Georg Schiele, writing in the Preussische Jahrbucher:
The word national is today on all people’s lips. One speaks of national duties and rights, national education and fulfilment. The word unifies and divides political parties. It has become an article of faith, a dogma, as in the past century were the words freedom and equality. This word represents the measure of good and evil; the justification of war and revolution. It is as if it were one of the Ten Commandments.1
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Notes
G. Schiele, ‘Staat, Volk und Nation’, Preussische Jahrbücher, 110 (1902), 189–206 (p. 189).
Eric Hobsbawm identifies three particular social factors which gave impetus to this development: ‘the resistance of traditional groups threatened by the onrush of modernity, the novel and quite non-traditional classes and strata now rapidly growing in the urbanizing societies of developed countries, and the unprecedented migrations which distributed a multiple diaspora of peoples across the globe, each strangers to both natives and other migrant groups, none, as yet, with the habits and conventions of coexistence’. E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 109.
H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 4 vols (München, 1987–2008), III (1995), p. 1021.
S. Woolf (ed.), Nationalism in Europe, 1815 to the Present: a Reader (London, 1996), pp. 19–20, 26–8; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 109–10. On the cultural aspects of nation-building in Imperial Germany, see, for instance, M. Jefferies, Imperial Culture in Germany, 1871–1918 (Basingstoke, 2003);
R. Alings, Monument und Nation: Das Bild vom Nationalstaat im Medium Denkmal-Zum Verhältnis von Nation und Staat im Deutschen Kaiserreich, 1871–1918 (Berlin, 1996);
M. Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800–1945 (London, 1988), pp. 149–53.
In Imperial Germany, the self/other construct was particularly evident in the phenomena of anti-Semitism (especially from the 1880s), and in respect of Bismarck’s ‘enemies of the Reich’ and the Kulturkampf. There were also the depictions of ‘external’ enemies such as France and Russia. S. Berger, Germany (London, 2004), pp. 92–6; K. v. See, Freiheit und Gemeinschaft: völkischnationales Denken in Deutschland zwischen Französischer Revolution und Erstem Weltkrieg (Heidelberg, 2001); M. Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde: Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich 1792–1918 (Stuttgart, 1992);
M. Keller (ed.), Russen und Russland aus deutscher Sicht: 19./20. Jahrhundert: von der Bismarckzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkreig (München, 2000).
V. Berghahn, Imperial Germany, 1871–1914: Economy, Society, Culture and Politics (New York, 2005), pp. 254–63.
Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, pp. 961–5, 355–61; P. Alter, Nationalism (London, 1994), p. 78.
O. Zimmer, Nationalism in Europe, 1890–1940 (Basingstoke, 2003), p. 53.
W. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (Chicago and London, 1980), pp. 211–12.
M. Hughes, Nationalism and Society, pp. 132–3;
S. Berger, The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany Since 1800 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 21–35;
O. Dann, Nation und Nationalismus in Deutschland, 1770–1990 (München, 1996), pp. 30–5;
R. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass., 1992);
P. Alter, Nationalism (London, 1994), pp. 8–15;
F. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, 1974);
H. James, A German Identity: 1770–1990 (London, 1990).
On Polish nationalism, see P. Brock, ‘Polish Nationalism’, in P. Sugar and I. Lederer (eds), Nationalism in Eastern Europe (London, 1969), pp. 310–72;
W. Molik, ‘Entwicklungsbedingungen und —mechanismen der polnischen Nationalbewegung im Grossherzogtum Posen’, Berliner Jahrbuch für Osteuropäische Geschichte, 2 (1995), 17–34;
W. Molik, ‘The Poles in the Grand Duchy of Poznan 1850–1914’, in A. Kappeler (ed.), The Formation of National Elites (Dartmouth, 1992), pp. 13–39 (p. 13);
M. Hroch, Social Pre-conditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge, 1985);
A. Walicki, Poland between East and West: the Controversies Over Sel f-definition and Modernization in Partitioned Poland (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), pp. 35–42;
N. Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland. 2 vols (Oxford, 1981), II, 18.
Despite their ‘modern’ characteristics, Blanke makes the important point that neither national movement can be analysed according to modernist theories which link the advent and development of nationalism to processes of ‘modernization’, given the low level of industrialization in the region and the political dominance of feudal elites. R. Blanke, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871–1900) (New York, 1981), p. X.
G. Ritter, Wahlgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch: Materialien zur Statistik des Kaiserreichs 1871–1918 (München, 1980), pp. 68, 72.
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Tilse, M. (2011). Conclusion. In: Transnationalism in the Prussian East. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230307506_8
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