188

Book Reviews

Nachdenken iiber die deutscbe G eschkhte: Essays. By Thomas Nipperdey.

Munich: Vcrlag C. H. Beck. 1986. Pp. 236. DM 38.
From Raiserreich to T hird Reich: Elements of Continuity in G erm an History*
1871-1945. By Fritz Fischer. Translated and introduced by Roger Fletcher.
London: Allen & Unwin. 1986. Pp. x + 118.
These two books represent two very different approaches to the writing o f history.
Yet there is something fundamentally similar about them in that they are both typical
of the German historiographical tradition. Quoting Gunther Roth, Roger Fletcher, in
his perceptive and valuable introduction to Fritz Fischers essay, refers to the risks a
scholar runs in writing " a sum of his knowledge and insights toward the end of his
career (p. I); but he then goes on to state: Never noted as one for shirking risks.
Professor Fischer here offers . . . a concise articulation of his empirical findings and
a clear application of the Fischer methodology, all within the framework of an explicitly
stated pedagogic purpose. Although a more cautious historian and pedagogue. Thomas
Nipperdcys book provides essentially the same. Like Fischer, he uses the essay, the
published lecture, as his vehicle of expression, and even if his volume contains a
variety of pieces, it is bound together by an underlying vision of German and European
history. So what is it that divides these two well-known authors in the first instance?
Fischers book is an expanded version of a keynote lecture which he delivered to
the 1978 Congress of West German Historians at Hamburg. More important, it is a
veritable tour de force in which he draws virtually a straight line of continuity through
modem German history from the Prussian military state of the late eighteenth century
to the Nazi dictatorship, both with respect to the political system and to the social
forces upholding it. As Fischer puts it, during the Reform Era this military stale
enhanced its efficiency, at the same time strengthening the position of its ruling
caste, the landowning aristocracy. It . . . defeated the Revolution of 1848 and in the
army and constitutional conflict of 1862-6 . . . once again repulsed parliamentary
government and democracy as well as the subordination of the army to parliamentary
control (p. 39). Nor did the agrarians lose control after the founding of the German
Empire under Bismarcks leadership. On the contrary. Bismarck succeeded in rec
onciling the new industrial big bourgeoisie with the agrarian-feudal forces and
henceforth this alliance of 'steel and rye, of the manor and the blast furnace . . .
persisted as the hard-core of reaction within German society and continued to play a
decisive role, despite manifold divergences, in 1933 (p. 40).
The rest of Fischer's essay is devoted to substantiating this particular argument and
to combatting alternative interpretations of the power structure o f Imperial Germany.
It is consistent with the thrust of his essay that 1918/19 should have created no more
than superficial caesuras ; in his view, the First World War had brought about no
qualitative change in the composition of society and the economy (p. 74). Ultimately,
also, the stage was set for the events of January 1933. for it was not the electoral
results which brought Hitler to power . . . but the policy of the power elites (p. 81).
Parallel with these internal developments is a corresponding continuity in German
foreign policy, since domestic and foreign policy objectives cannot be separated
(p. 82). If throughout this period the domestic objective of the conservative power
bloc was the preservation of Germany's socioeconomic and political status quo and
the muzzling o f the rising working class, the success of this particular strategy implied
that there existed no longer any political force to offer serious resistance to those
who would challenge the status quo in Europe and the world, whether by economic

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means, through the use of military force or even by means of w ar" (p. 83). In other
words. Fischer also sees the same traditional elites pursuing " a line of continuity . . .
in German foreign policy" from William II to Hitler. In comparison with the hirst
World War "there was no qualitative leap entailed in the military contest with Poland
and France in 1939 and 1940" (p. 94), nor ultimately in the Russian campaign of
1941: The exploitation of Continental western Europe and, to an even greater extent,
of eastern Europe" moved "quite within the bounds of traditional (German) powerpolitics"; even racist policies were but a radicalized version of measures taken during
the First World War (p. 95). Thus. Fischer contends, "continuity is not to be equated
with sameness and least of all is it synonymous with unbroken homogeneity," and it
would be "a n inadmissablc truncation of historical reality" to contemplate the Third
Reich exclusively from the viewpoint of the Hitler dictatorships singular inhumanity.
"W hat is no less necessary," he writes, " is analysis o f the on-going structures and
enduring aims of the Prusso-Gcrman Empire bom in 1866-71 and destroyed in 1945,
together with clear identification of the continuous elements within the change and
diversity of this Empire and (heir impact on the international system" (p. 98): Fischer's
vision of modem German history in a nutshell.
Judging from its table of contents, Nippcrdcys volume appears to be preoccupied
with very similar issues. There arc essays on "Problems of Modernisation in Ger
many." centralism and Federalism in German History," "Romantic Nationalism."
"Cologne Cathedral as a National Monument." "Prussia and Its Universities," "G er
man Unity in Historical Perspective." and finally on "1933 and Continuity in German
History." But by the time he has reached Nippcrdey's "W as Wilhelminc Society a
Society of Subjects (Untertanen)." if not before, the reader will discover that the
author is anything but a Fischcritc. The contrast between the two historians is probably
most evident in Nippcrdeys essay on 1933. For. though he docs not completely reject
Fischers continuity thesis, Nippcrdey is clearly worried by its exclusive focus on
elites and power. To Nippcrdey there is a multitude of "dominant (though divergent)
continuities" (p. 197). He feels that the antidemocratic continuity, whose existence
he would not deny, was a combination of very different, even contradictory, continuities
of "Prussian statism and vdlkisch nationalism, of the authoritarianism of the old elites
and the protectionism of the Mittelstand. of capitalist and middle-class anti-socialism,
the criticism of democracy advanced by the Youth Movement and by the corporatists"
(p. 196). Nor. in his view, do all these elements add up to a syndrome. Above all.
"1 9 33" represents not merely a radicalization of manifold continuities but also a new
combination of earlier tendencies and, in this sense, something novel. Then, however.
Nipperdey raises the question of whether "1 933" helps us to explain Germanys
previous historical development. Here he reveals himself as a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic,
rejecting all "quasi-teleological" explanations and engaging in a vigorous critique of
Hans-Ulrich Wchlers The German Empire (Leamington Spa, 1985) and its method
of social-cost accounting. This kind of "continuity history," he argues, is bound to
force a complex past into polarized categories. Worse, it uses anachronistic yardsticks
on earlier generations and, quite indefensibly, puts the grandfathers in the dock. The
past is thus more "than meets the eye from any continuity perspective": it is different
(p. 205). Varying Rankes famous dictum, Nipperdey concludes that, though "each
pre-1933 epoch is indirectly related to Hitler," it is "immediate to itself." The task
of the historian is " to give back to earlier generations what they once possessed, just
as we own it today: the multitude of possible futures, its uncertainty, its freedom, its
finality, its ambiguity" (p. 205). Given this philosophical stance, it is not surprising
that the bulk of Nippcrdeys essays treat continuity as a means of emphasizing variety

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Book Reviews

and relative modernity while Fischer stresses dichotomy (if not uniformity) and back
wardness. Certainly the essays on federalism and dcnominationalism in German history
revolve around the theme of pluralism, while the pieces on Luther. Prussian universities
and modernization are concerned with relative modernity and its crisis in the twentieth
century which. Nipperdey believes, culminated in fascism. For him the Nazi movement
was both directed against modernization and. hypermodem' in style and method,
had a modernizing impact on German society. Above all, in the final analysis. Nazism
was a response to the fundamental ambivalence towards modernity (p. 194).
In extolling variety and fluidity. Nipperdeys distance from Fischer becomes most
striking. Fischer is concerned with those who ruthlessly assert their positions and.
more indirectly, with those who are knuckled under. In Nipperdeys volume, social
groups and political movements arc not identified in this way. Power, which is so
central to Fischer, does not appear as an explicit category in Nipperdeys pluralist
picture; it is virtually absent from his pages, and where it puts in an appearance, it
does so in its most intangible form, that is, as the power of History" (Macht der
Geschichte). And yet, however different these two historians may be in temperament,
methodology, and perception o f German history, writing is not for them a l'art pour
l"art exercise. Fischer is quite explicit about this and sees his book as a contribution
to the task of strengthening our self-consciousness and the viability o f our state
(p. 99). Nipperdey. arguing from a very different ideological vantage point, is more
opaque in his appeal to a wider educated public to learn the lessons of the past, but
it is tangible enough. It is difficult to think of many professional historians in Rnglishspeaking countries publishing their positions as these two German scholars have done.
V. R. B krghahn
Brown University

Handwerker-Soziallsten Regen Fabrikgesellschaft: Lokale Fachverelne,

M&ssengewerkschaft und Industrielle Ratlonalisierung in Solingen,
1870 bis 1914. By Rudolf Roch.
Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985. Pp. 382. DM 74.
Apart from a few exceptions, even the newest studies on the history of German trade
unions tend to depict union development as the triumphant progress of industrial
unions. '1716 first organizations of this kind were founded by workers of the metal and
wood industries in the early 1890s. In contrast to the traditional associations, which
were organized along vocational lines, the new organizations were meant to include
the workers of an entire industrial sector rather than only those of a particular trade.
This new approach to organizing workers interests was introduced by its protagonists
as the only appropriate response to the assumed course of capitalist development.
Union leaders expected an increasing homogeneity of the labor force and a simulta
neous intensification of class struggle. Concentration and centralization of workers
power as well as a scientific approach to labor conflicts seemed to be the need of
the moment and the only hope for a better future.
Many of the past and present bourgeois interpreters of the strategics of the new
generation of union leaders in the 1890s share their basic ideas. They also assume
that the growth of the labor movement is dependent on economic progress and that
an increasing degree of rationality in capitalist production leads to an increase in the
rationality o f class struggles. They tend to interpret the origins of industrial unions as