Peter Walkenhorst. Nation - Volk - Rasse: Radikaler Nationalismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890-1914. Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. 400 pp. EUR 49.90 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-525-35157-4.
Reviewed by Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker (Indiana University South Bend)
Published on H-German (June, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
Vordenker der Vernichtung
In Nation-Volk-Rasse, Peter Walkhorst presents a comprehensive, theoretically informed analysis of the ideas of core radical nationalist leaders in imperial Germany. Walkenhorst's close reading of the literature of groups like the Pan-German League, the Navy League, the German Eastern Marches Society, and the German Colonial Society allows him to construct a sophisticated examination of radicalism in the Wilhelmine period. He effectively teases out some of the contradictions and tensions in radical nationalist understandings of such terms as Volk, nation, or race, and he demonstrates how these ideas developed over time.
Walkenhorst criticizes those interpretations of radical nationalists that focus on their psychological paranoia or their supposed pre-modern beliefs. Instead, he demonstrates how the men in these radical circles constructed their own form of modernism, one that emphasized national efficiency, social engineering, and science, and was similar to the "reactionary modernism" of the National Socialist period as described by Jeffrey Herf. In fact, in his close reading of radical nationalist publications, especially those of Ernst Hasse and Heinrich Class, Walkenhorst can show many similarities between the ideas of radical nationalists in the Wilhelmine period and those of the National Socialist period. He concludes that the National Socialists did not create any "ideological innovation," but instead built on an "eclectic adoption and a further radicalization of existing radical nationalist interpretative frameworks" (p. 341).
Walkenhorst's overview of existing historiography on radical nationalism is one of the most successful parts of the book. Here he reveals a mastery of the literature on the Wilhelmine era and points to some of the limitations of existing studies of the radical milieu. He defines radical nationalism as "an aggressive and intransigent nationalism that aims at territorial expansion as well as a radical reorganization of the existing order in state and society" (p. 14). He rejects interpretations that suggest a distinction between "normal nationalism" and "pathological nationalism" as " untenable" because such distinctions result primarily from normative judgments (p. 16). In his conclusion, Walkenhorst discusses radical nationalists in Austria-Hungary, Great Britain, and France. In general, he finds enough similarities among radical nationalist groups to speak of radical nationalism as a "transnational phenomenon" (p. 332).
In chapter 1, Walkenhortst examines the ideological origins of radical nationalism, as well as early German imperialism and the founding of some of the radical nationalist pressure organizations. In chapter 2, he details radical nationalist interpretations of ideas like nation, race, Volk, Volksgemeinschaft, Volkskörper, Social Darwinism, and masculinity. Even before 1914, radical nationalists openly discussed the ways that their interpretations of race could lead to policy "solutions" to nationalist conflicts in Germany like ethnic cleansing. Walkenhorst argues that the radical vocabulary and discussion of nationalist aims by leaders like Ernst Hasse provided important "emotional and cognitive preparation" for the "eliminationist solutions" of the 1940s (p. 97). In their discussions of race, radical nationalist leaders described what became the "foundational presumptions and demands of National Socialist race politics" (p. 116). Walkenhorst also examines radical leaders' views on gender and finds an increasing focus on a "biopolitics." While men had to prepare militarily for war, women too had to do their duty to produce the next generation of healthy and pure Germans. Walkenhorst underscores here the "totalitarian claims" of an imperial radical nationalist biopolitics inserted even into the most intimate of spheres (p. 96).
Chapters 3 and 4 trace the development of radical nationalist ideology in the context of German imperialism and ethnic conflicts in central Europe. In each case, Walkenhorst describes a process in which early actions of the government raised the hopes of radical nationalists, which were only to be dashed with the failures and setbacks of government policies. The hard core of radical nationalists increasingly viewed war as the solution to the problems facing Germany. Walkenhorst makes a persuasive case that this embrace of war must not be seen as the result of paranoia, but instead was related to the centrality of war in Social Darwinist ideology and the logic of "empire or defeat." For radical nationalist leaders, war was also a means to achieve an end: the reordering of society. For example, for figures like Heinrich Class, war opened up the possibility of taking land that would then be emptied of people. In his embrace of ethnic cleansing, Class was, according to Walkenhorst, a mastermind and prophet of extermination. The dissemination of these views was, Walkenhorst argues, an "essential factor for the genesis of the 'Final Solution'" (p. 223).
Walkenhorst succeeds in providing a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of the views propagated in radical nationalist publications and in the internal correspondence of radical nationalist leaders. He asserts rather than proves, however, his argument that the Wilhelmine era saw the "growing attractiveness of the radical nationalist worldview" in circles of the Bildungsbürgertum (p. 12). Rather than describing the ideas of those across the wide spectrum of the radical nationalist milieu, Walkenhorst focuses his analysis on the views of Pan-German leaders. Even within the Pan-German League, however, he cannot prove that rank-and-file members shared the ideological orientation of their leaders. In fact, he does note several points at which the views of the leadership differed from the views of the members, especially in antisemitism and the idea of ethnic cleansing. In general, he points to a division between a "hard core" and a "wider circle of sympathizers" (p. 308). Roger Chickering's earlier research on the Pan-German League also challenges Walkenhorst's claims about the dissemination of radical nationalist ideology; Chickering provides persuasive evidence that the leaders of the league were not always able to spread their ideological views to their members.[1] Although the increasing diplomatic tensions leading up to World War I certainly would have led to nationalist radicalization, Chickering's evidence, as well as Walkenhorst's own distinctions between a "hard core" and a "wider circle of members," undermines some of Walkenhorst's claims about the growing influence of the radical nationalist ideas of Volk, race, and nation that he describes so thoroughly at the beginning of the book.
Walkenhorst uses analysis of the 1913 citizenship law to claim that radical nationalist "patterns of interpretation" also applied to other groups within German society (p. 160). Walkenhorst cites the work of Dieter Gosewinkel, who describes the new importance of ethnic background in the 1913 law, but Walkenhorst does not engage with Gosewinkel's other conclusions, which emphasize the differences between radical nationalist interpretations of race and the principle of descent (Abstammungsprinzip) that was part of the 1913 law. Additionally, Eli Nathan's work on citizenship has shown how German laws not only discriminated against foreigners, but against women as well. A consideration of the role of gender in this debate might have enhanced Walkenhorst's discussion of biopolitics and the role of women in nationalist groups. In contrast to Walkenhorst, both Gosewinkel and Nathan see National Socialist legislation on citizenship as a dramatic break from the laws of the imperial period.[3]
Walkenhorst does make a good case for the growing power of radical nationalist ideas in his discussion of the role of the Defense League (Wehrverein). This organization emerged in 1912 in the wake of Germany's diplomatic defeat of France over Morocco and by 1913 counted 90,000 members. It played an important role in helping to pass a new military bill in 1913 with large increases in army funding and more generally in preparing Germans for war. The ties between the Defense League and the Pan-Germans and other radical nationalists also helped to spread a radical nationalist worldview.
It is also of significance that in 1913 and 1914 the radical nationalists developed close ties to the Agrarian League, the Free Conservatives, and the Conservatives. The influence of these politically conservative groups directly affected Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and the others who steered the ship of state during the July Crisis and the beginning of the First World War. In this way, Walkenhorst demonstrates the importance of the leaders of radical nationalist organizations. At the same time, the close ties between radical nationalists and conservative and agrarian groups suggest some problems with the argument that it was in the circles of the Bildungsbürgertumthat the influence of the radical nationalists grew.
For scholars interested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German nationalism, the German middle classes, or the outbreak of World War I, Walkenhorst's study will be of essential importance. Although he does not fully document the growing spread of radical nationalist ideology within the Bildungsbürgertum, he does make a persuasive case for the similarities between radical nationalist ideas of the Wilhelmine period and the worldview of National Socialists.
Notes
[1]. The writings of the Pan-German League leaders comprise the bulk of Walkenhorst's evidence. Walkenhorst could have strengthened his claims about the growing influence of the radical nationalist views had he engaged with Roger Chickering's persuasive findings in We Men Who Feel Most German (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984). Chickering suggests that most members initially signed up with the Pan-Germans at the end of a rally when membership lists were circulated. They renewed their memberships "reluctantly, if at all" (p. 110) and even "fled the organization at the suggestion that dues be raised" (p. 135). Chickering describes how most members were "unfamiliar with much of the League's program" (p. 161) and states that only one-third of members subscribed to the journal. Most activities in local chapters did not relate to Pan-German ideology and instead were social events. After 1900, when Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow associated the Pan-Germans with beer hall politics (Bierbankpolitik), "'Pan-German' became a formula word to connote any crazy scheme in foreign policy" (pp. 213-214). Of the 400 chapters in 1902, more than two-thirds "existed only on paper or were dormant on all be select occasions" (p. 223). In the 1903 election, association with the Pan-Germans was a "political liability" and all those who had "strong ties" to the organization lost the election, even Ernst Hasse, the group's leader. In 1908 the Pan-German organization was on "the verge of collapse" (p. 225) and by 1909 nearly bankrupt because so many members were behind on dues. The group's financial recovery after 1910 came from the influx of money dedicated by industrial leaders, which led to a "growing distance between the executive [of the Pan-Germans] and the rank and file" (p. 226). Because of the financial interests of heavy industrialists and their ability to control the league after 1910, Chickering argues that it is "difficult indeed to quarrel with Marxist-Leninist historians who have argued that the League was the propaganda arm of the most reactionary and aggressive segment of German industry" (p. 229).
[2]. Dieter Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschliessen: Die Nationalisierung der Statsangehörigkeit vom Deutschen Bund bis zur Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 325-326.
[3]. Eli Nathans, The Politics of Citizenship in Germany: Ethnicity, Utility, and Nationalism (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 217.
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Citation:
Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker. Review of Walkenhorst, Peter, Nation - Volk - Rasse: Radikaler Nationalismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890-1914.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
June, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15532
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