Sean Dobson. Authority and Upheaval in Leipzig, 1910-1920: The Story of a Relationship. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. x + 476 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-50470-6.
Reviewed by Sara Ann Sewell (History Department, Virginia Wesleyan College)
Published on H-German (December, 2003)
Authority and Upheaval in Leipzig, 1910-1920: The Story of a Relationship is an ambitious project by Sean Dobson that examines the interactions between social groups in Leipzig from the turn of the twentieth century through the beginning of the Weimar Republic. Dobson's aim is to provide an explanation of local social and political conflict, which climaxed in the revolutionary upheavals following the collapse of the Kaiserreich. He argues that "the revolution represents [...] the culmination of increasingly bitter protests against the authoritarian state and its bias against workers," who began to express their objections many years before the outbreak of revolution in 1918 (p. 187).
Dobson explains at the outset that he chose to study Leipzig not only because it contributed significantly to the second revolutionary wave beginning in January 1919, but more importantly, because this second revolution unfolded differently in Leipzig than in Berlin and the Ruhr, the two locales that have dominated scholarship on the revolution. In particular, Dobson maintains that a broad, radical working-class movement characterized the revolution in Leipzig, wielding such power as to bring "the life of an entire region to a standstill and almost forcing the national government to acquiesce to its demands" (p. 2). He also asserts that industrial workers in Leipzig adhered to an ideology that diverged from those advocated elsewhere. In Berlin revolutionaries looked to the Worker and Soldier Council as the political vehicle to achieve their objectives, and in the Ruhr they primarily sought the nationalization of key industries, he contends. By contrast, in central Germany revolutionaries aimed to invest power in the Works Councils to effect production and labor decisions in individual factories. Thus, Dobson reasons that an investigation of the Works Councils in Leipzig in 1919/20 offers a unique opportunity to examine a "rare experiment in the democratization of a capitalist economy" (p. 2), which he views as a precursor to the co-determination that shaped industrial relations in Germany after 1945.
By challenging historical interpretations that stress the historical ruptures created by the First World War, Dobson contributes to recent historiography that reconsiders the question of continuity in modern Germany history. Specifically, Authority and Upheaval in Leipzig is an attempt to re-evaluate the long-term factors that fostered revolution in 1918/19. Instead of viewing the war as the sole event that created the conditions for revolution, Dobson argues that "strong continuities mark the decade from 1910-20 in Leipzig" (p. 3).
This work is an important addition to the field of German working-class history. Above all, Dobson offers a persuasive argument about the continuities in German labor history. Without diminishing the impact of the war on the political climate in Leipzig, Dobson shows that long-term social and political factors provided workers with a framework to respond to the crises engendered by the war and the subsequent political struggle. This assertion of continuity rests upon the claim that workers "felt radical dissatisfaction" (p. 11) with the social order in Germany prior to the outbreak of war, which Dobson demonstrates with a plethora of examples, from demonstrations by Leipzig's unemployed during the recession of 1907-9 to working-class children's game of "scare the bourgeoisie" (Buergerschreck) during the Taucha Annual Market festival. By analyzing workers's discontents prior to the war, Dobson likewise cogently challenges older research that maintains that workers were successfully "integrated" into the Wilhelmine social order, a thesis advanced by scholars such as Gerhard Ritter and Klaus Tenfelde.
In the introduction, Dobson bravely wrestles with methodological problems concerning class identity. Questioning Marxist and Weberian structuralism as well as post-structuralist and cultural anthropological approaches, Dobson seeks to occupy a methodological middle ground that recognizes the importance of class as mediating social life and political choices while simultaneously acknowledging the heterogeneity of collective identities. This middle ground focuses on the relationship between social groups in Leipzig. As Dobson states, "Although the revolution in Leipzig is a story of conflict between workers and nonworkers, this book will not depict a working class struggling with a bourgeoisie. Instead, it will examine the interactions of different social groups" (p. 7).
This study does indeed focus on the relations between various social groups in Leipzig; however, the way it defines these social groups and evaluates their interactions yields some weaknesses. First, Dobson's definitions of the social groups are somewhat teleological. Specifically, rejecting structuralist conceptions of class, Dobson classifies his subjects primarily according to their actions. As he states in the introduction, this book examines Leipzig's "workers" because "they made the revolution" (p. 7). In other words, the historical actors ("workers") are defined as a social group because they generally behaved in a certain way--"they made the revolution." Yet given that the aim of this study is to explain the revolution, characterizing workers as a group that "made the revolution" constructs a social group that exists primarily to serve the historical question, rather than considering the behavior of social groups independent of the historical outcomes. Moreover, by defining social groups primarily according to historical outcomes, this approach de-emphasizes social, cultural, and political characteristics that unite disparate actors into a social group. If these subjects had not participated in a revolution, would they no longer constitute a social class labeled "workers"?
Second, despite Dobson's effort to categorize social groups by explaining their relationships with each other, he ironically relies on traditional class definitions to delineate Leipzig's social groups. Chapter 1, which explores the socio-economic conditions of various classes prior to the outbreak of war, defines Leipzig's social groups in a manner markedly similar to structuralist class analysis: unskilled workers and skilled workers constitute the "worker" category, and the old middle class (alter Mittelstand), lower-white-collar workers (Beamter and Bankbeamter), and "elites" make up the nonworker category. Furthermore, Dobson emphasizes wages and social mobility when describing each group, arguing that prewar Leipzig was characterized by an inflexible social structure determined primarily by income and education and which was reinforced by the geographical separation. Thus, this study reinforces the perception of a great divide between workers and nonworkers, which manifested itself above all in political conflict from 1917 to 1920. This approach, despite Dobson's initial intentions, fails to highlight the subjects' actions and relationships with each other. Instead, Leipzig's social classes become somewhat immutable entities that tend to react in predictable ways.
Dobson's "worker" category, however, does become more nuanced than initially described. In particular, he convincingly shows that workers's politicization was influenced by the actions of elites, particularly military authorities. The other social groups, by contrast, do not receive such differentiated attention. Indeed, Leipzig's nonworkers are often portrayed as one-dimensional, seeking only to retain their traditional social positions at all costs. While Dobson narrates the evolution of workers' social consciousness and politicization, his description of "nonworkers" renders a rather static portrayal, which is most evident in his discussion of fraternity students whom he depicts as economically privileged young men who embraced ultra-nationalism, detested workers, and relied on wanton acts of vigilantism to confront workers.
One of this study's chief contributions is an exploration of the formation of collective identities. By studying the relationships between social groups, Dobson demonstrates how collective identities form often in opposition to perceptions of an Other. For example, he contends that wage relationships influenced working-class collective identity, as workers assumed the label of Arbeiter in opposition to Buerger. This argument thus challenges a great deal of scholarship that has problematized class identities to the point that class labels have been deemed misleading or invalid. Yet Dobson skillfully shows that while social, economic, and political differences created tensions within classes, perceptions of an "other" did anchor collective identities in Leipzig. Cognizant that skill levels, age, gender, unionization, and political affiliation created clear differences among Leipzig's working classes, Dobson simultaneously illustrates that workers's perceptions of social elites rallied working classes, especially during moments of acute political and social crises.
This work also recognizes that gender played a determining role in the formation of working-class attitudes and behavior in Leipzig. Even though women generally resisted joining unions and political parties, Dobson asserts that they were at the forefront of protests and strikes. Such evidence proves that Leipzig's women were not as "apolitical or even conservative" as other historians have claimed (p. 173). While Dobson is sensitive to the impact of gender on working-class identity, this study offers only a glimpse of how gender mediated working-class behavior and attitudes. Indeed, how gender shaped politicization and socialization in Leipzig is left under-explored. Given the significant number of recent studies that demonstrate the impact of gender on public protest, an examination of working-class protest in Leipzig would be served by a more thorough analysis of how gender framed working-class behavior.
Authority and Upheaval in Leipzig is a valuable work for scholars of German labor history. While it does display some methodological weaknesses in explaining class identity, such problems are faced by most labor historians who also grapple with understanding class after the post-structuralist revolution. Dobson's emphasis on the importance of long-term trends in working-class behavior, however, outweighs these methodological weaknesses. Indeed, this work calls into question the periodization of modern German history, which influences not only interpretations of working-class history but the dominant paradigm of German history as well.
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Citation:
Sara Ann Sewell. Review of Dobson, Sean, Authority and Upheaval in Leipzig, 1910-1920: The Story of a Relationship.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
December, 2003.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8492
Copyright © 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.