Papers by David Blackbourn
Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertun... more Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages.
Central European History, 1976
Between 1890 and 1914 the Center party was, in Friedrich Naumann's words, “the measure of all... more Between 1890 and 1914 the Center party was, in Friedrich Naumann's words, “the measure of all things” in German politics. Throughout this period it possessed a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and held the balance of power between left and right. Its importance from the standpoint of Bismarck's successors as chancellor stemmed from the electoral and parliamentary decline of the National Liberals and Conservatives, the parties which had formed theKartellthrough which Bismarck governed the Reichstag. After 1890 these no longer commanded a majority, and other parties had to be won over by the government. With the Social Democrats permanently hostile, this narrowed the government's choice down to the Progressives and Center, either of which would give theKartellparties a majority, and both of which were to be used to this effect. However, the Progressives were used only sparingly (above all during the Biilow Bloc of 1907–9) because of their increasing shift to the left...
The American Historical Review, Feb 1, 1995
Geschichte Und Gesellschaft, Jun 1, 2015
Abstract This article is concerned with Germans who lived and worked for longer or shorter period... more Abstract This article is concerned with Germans who lived and worked for longer or shorter periods outside their homeland. This includes Germans who served other empires (Portuguese, Spanish or Dutch) as cartographers, soldiers, sailors or officials; the German learned men and scientists who belonged to the Republic of Letters; travellers and explorers; the Pietists and Moravians who built networks across the Atlantic and beyond; and the Germans merchants whose networks stretched across the globe. The article argues that these Germans, who were often sojourners abroad rather than permanent emigrants, should also be considered part of "Germany abroad" alongside the more famous streams of emigrants to the USA and elsewhere. The article concludes by asking why the highly charged category of the Auslandsdeutsche emerged in the way it did and at the moment it did.
Routledge eBooks, Jun 17, 2014
German Studies Review, Feb 1, 1993
1. The German Bourgeoisie - An Introduction, David Blackbourn 2. Arriving in the Upper Class - th... more 1. The German Bourgeoisie - An Introduction, David Blackbourn 2. Arriving in the Upper Class - the Wealthy Business Elite of Wilhelmine Germany, Dolores L. Augustine 3. The Titled Businessman - Prussian Commercial Councillors in the Rhineland and Westphalia during the 19th Century, Karin Kaudelka-Hanischen 4. Family and Class in the Hamburg Grand Bourgeoisie 1815-1914, Richard J. Evans 5. The Industrial Bourgeoisie and Labour Relations in Germany 1871-1933, Dick Geary 6. Betweens in Estate and Profession - Lawyers and the Development of the Legal Profession in 19th-Century Germany, Michael John 7. Bourgeois Values, Doctors, and the State - the Professionalization of Medicine in Germany 1848-1933 8. Localism and the German Bourgeoisie - the `Heimat' Movement in the Rhenish Palatinate Before 1914, Celia Applegate 9. Bourgeois Honour - Middle-Class Duellists in Germany From the Late 18th to the Early 20th Century, Ute Frevert 10. Liberalism, Europe, and the Bourgeoisie 1860-1914, Geoff Eley 11. The Middle Classes and National Socialism, Thomas Childers.
... The Great War ripped the fabric of society for those who lived through it. ... to the moment ... more ... The Great War ripped the fabric of society for those who lived through it. ... to the moment when the German Question was answered on the battlefield - an engage-ment that was no foregone conclusion, and one which pitted Prussia against every other major German state. ...
German Studies Review, Feb 1, 1989
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Water, Leisure and Culture, 2002
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 2015
Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 2015
Abstract This article is concerned with Germans who lived and worked for longer or shorter period... more Abstract This article is concerned with Germans who lived and worked for longer or shorter periods outside their homeland. This includes Germans who served other empires (Portuguese, Spanish or Dutch) as cartographers, soldiers, sailors or officials; the German learned men and scientists who belonged to the Republic of Letters; travellers and explorers; the Pietists and Moravians who built networks across the Atlantic and beyond; and the Germans merchants whose networks stretched across the globe. The article argues that these Germans, who were often sojourners abroad rather than permanent emigrants, should also be considered part of "Germany abroad" alongside the more famous streams of emigrants to the USA and elsewhere. The article concludes by asking why the highly charged category of the Auslandsdeutsche emerged in the way it did and at the moment it did.
Central European History, 2014
H ANS-ULRICH Wehler died at his home in Bielefeld on July 5, 2014. He was one of the most influen... more H ANS-ULRICH Wehler died at his home in Bielefeld on July 5, 2014. He was one of the most influential historians of twentieth-century Germany, an enormously productive scholar who authored some three dozen books, including the five-volume Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte that appeared between 1987 and 2008. He came to the fore in the early 1970s as a powerful advocate of a critical social history, and remained a central figure within the field of modern German history for the next forty years. Wehler's influence in the profession extended far beyond his own writings, thanks to the role he played as an editor of books and journals, a mentor, and, not least, a writer of reviews. He was also one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the Federal Republic, weighing in with his distinctive voice on historical and political questions of the day. His contribution to the Historikerstreit of 1986-1987 is just one of many examples. Wehler was a well-known figure in the USA, where he held a series of one-year visiting professorships at Harvard (1972, 1989), Princeton (1976), Stanford (1985, 2004) and Yale (1997). He also lectured in Britain, Japan, and Israel. He became an honorary member of the American Historical Association in 1999, just the eighth German to be thus honored, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006. This was a measure of his standing internationally. 1 Hans-Ulrich Wehler was born in 1931 into a Calvinist family. His father Theodor was a small businessman who was posted as missing in action during World War IIit was not until 1963 that the family finally learned of his death in a prisoner-of-war camp. Wehler's birthplace was Freudenberg, near Siegen, but he spent most of his youth in Gummersbach. By coincidence, he and his lifelong friend and intellectual ally Jürgen Habermas grew up together in this small Rhenish town east of Cologne. They belonged to the "45'er"
Common Knowledge, 2014
For the past few years, David B. Dennis has had the unenviable task of steeping himself in the (t... more For the past few years, David B. Dennis has had the unenviable task of steeping himself in the (turgid, yet strangely compelling) prose of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi party's major propaganda organ, and the Third Reich's daily paper of choice. The result is a synoptic compendium of National Socialist thought on major cultural and artistic figures, which is both chilling in the delusion it reveals, and startling in its originality. Startling in particular because-as Dennis claims-this key resource for scholars of Nazi thought and propaganda has apparently barely received any scholarly attention to date (p. 4; p. 466, n. 8). In many ways, this volume offers the reader a veritable treasure-trove of Nazi absurdities-ranging from swastika-shaped crosswords (p. 4) and analysis of Bach's personality as the product of 'the "best hereditary powers of a healthy species"' (p. 25), to attempts to attribute Brahms's and Wagner's long-standing personal enmity to '"Jewish hatefulness"' (pp. 270-1), and the characterisation of Heine as a plagiarist, pornographer, necrophiliac, '"muckraker"', '"thug"', '"communist"', '"soul of s***"', or even a stinking, poisonous '"swamp"' (pp. 112-20). Meanwhile, every single (non-Jewish) German artist, composer and intellectual seems to be in constant competition for the coveted title of '"the first great völkisch thinker"', in a riotous profusion of contradiction and irrationality (e.g. pp. 142, 177). However, there is something deeply depressing about the way in which such Nazified ideology and language became so tragically widespread, creeping into every last crevice of intellectual life. 'Political correctness' during the Third Reich was so totally at odds with that of our own age, that there is a danger that immersion in such ideas and language can merely feel distasteful (or even deranged). Yet, as Dennis points out, we should guard against 'the urge to refuse to acknowledge … that "anyone could believe all this" and recognise that the purveyors of Nazism firmly-or, in their word, unshakeably-thought that they were bringing about political revolution, cultural achievement, and spiritual order' (p. 454). If fanatical National Socialists really took these outpourings seriously, so the argument runs, then in order fully to understand the regime and its excesses, we must do so too.(1) In general terms, Inhumanities aims to provide an exploration and analysis of the ways in which those journalists and academics who contributed to the Völkischer Beobachter between 1920 and 1945
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1987
ALL the world's a stage, as we know, and the concept of atheatrum mundiis a venerable one. So... more ALL the world's a stage, as we know, and the concept of atheatrum mundiis a venerable one. So too is the specific idea of politics as theatre. As an idea it may not seem very remarkable. Politics lives off metaphor, after all, and theatrical metaphor might seem especially appropriate to describe political activity. Do we not refer naturally to the political stage, to politicians assuming roles, to dramatic political scenes? This very naturalness, derived from repeated usage, presents a challenge. For one of the tasks of the historian is to show how what has come to seem natural came to seem so: to restore the novelty of artefacts and institutions we take for granted, to recover the impact of ideas and metaphors worn smooth by repetition. I want to argue below that metaphors of politics as theatre can be more than just a figure of speech: that they had specific and revealing meanings in the period of German history from the revolutions of 1848 to the advent of National Socialism.
Social History, 1985
Six years ago, Gerhard Haupt wrote that 'the petite bourgeoisie is currently enjoying a boom&... more Six years ago, Gerhard Haupt wrote that 'the petite bourgeoisie is currently enjoying a boom'. The historiographical crash has still not come. Since I978 a series of round tables has been held on this subject, organized by Haupt himself (Bremen), Philippe Vigier (Paris-Nanterre), Geoffrey Crossick (Essex) and Ginette Kurgan-van Hentenryk (Free University of Brussels).2 Several publications have already emerged out of these gatherings: two special issues of Le Mouvement Social (no. io8, July-September 1979; no. I 14, January-March I981), several individual articles, and most recently a volume on Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Methuen, i984) edited by Crossick and Haupt. The present report deals with the latest of these round tables on economic crisis and the petite bourgeoisie in nineteenthand twentieth-century Europe. The round table began with a group of three papers on the impact of economic crisis in the late 1840s. The first was Clive Behagg's subtle account of the effect of crisis on small producers in the Birmingham area, especially in the metal trades. The context was provided by recent British work on the labour process and structures of authority in the workshop. Behagg argued that the depression of I847-9 accelerated the move to 'readier methods of working' (a contemporary euphemism for rationalization) in the small workshop. Under the impact of crisis,
Labour / Le Travail, 1987
This book investigates the role of bourgeoisie society and the political developments of the nine... more This book investigates the role of bourgeoisie society and the political developments of the nineteenth century in the peculiarities of German history. Most historians attribute German exceptionalism to the failure or absence of bourgeois revolution in German history and the failure of the bourgeoisie to conquer the pre-industrial traditions of authoritarianism. However, this study finds that there was a bourgeois revolution in Germany, though not the traditional type. This so-called silent bourgeois revolution brought about the emergence and consolidation of the capitalist system based on the sanctity and disposability of private property and on production to meet individual needs through a system of exchange dominated by the market. In this connection, this book proposes a redefinition of the concept of bourgeois revolution to denote a broader pattern of material, institutional, legal, and intellectual changes whose cumulative effect was all the more powerful for coming to be seen as natural.
Historically Speaking, 2006
A SOCIETY'S ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE CAN REVEAL MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN. A WONderful example ofth... more A SOCIETY'S ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE CAN REVEAL MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN. A WONderful example ofthis is David Blackbourn 's latest book, The Conquest ofNature: Water, Landscape, and the Making ofModern Germany (Norton, 2006). Blackbourn, who is the Coolidge Professor ofHistory at Harvard, has written several important books, including The Peculiarities ofGerman History (with G. Eley, 1984); Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1994); and The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918 (1997). We invited him to write an essay exploring some of the themes ofhis new book, which Historically Speaking editor Donald Yerxa pursues a bitfurther in an interview conducted on October 4, 2006 in Blackbourn s office at Harvard's Minda de Gunzburg Centerfor European Studies.
Central European History, 2007
Central European History, 2013
, at the age of 95. Every reader of this journal will know his name; most will have read at least... more , at the age of 95. Every reader of this journal will know his name; most will have read at least some of his work. Eric Hobsbawm was among the greatest historians of the twentieth century and by the time of his death had become one of the best-known historians in the world. He was startlingly knowledgeable about everything under the sun and a restless asker of questions, often big questions. Eric Hobsbawm was a prolific author of incisive essays and books written in the clear, sinewy prose that was his hallmark. The most widely read of his works are the four volumes that make up his "Age of" tetralogy, but he wrote on a remarkable range of subjects, from the general crisis of the seventeenth century to modern nationalism, from crime and social protest to the invention of tradition, from the debate about the standard of living in the Industrial Revolution to the misuse of history in the present. The power and influence of his historical writing came from a combination of qualities-erudition, analytical clarity, the power of synthesis, and sheer originality. He also wrote on jazz, initially under the pseudonym Francis Newton, the name of a communist trumpet player who accompanied the peerless Billie Holiday. Eric Hobsbawm was a Marxist from the time that he became politically aware, which was very early in life, and it is hard to think of any historian who put Marxist ideas to better or more sophisticated use. Eric Hobsbawm was born in 1917-the only possible year, surely, in which he could have been born. His father Leopold Percy Hobsbaum was the second-generation British son of a Polish-Jewish cabinet maker who went to London in the 1870s. Leopold was working in a shipping office in Alexandria, Egypt on the eve of World War I when he met and fell in love with Nelly Grün, the daughter of a Viennese jeweler. They were married at the British Consulate in neutral Zurich and returned to Alexandria, where their first child Eric was born on June 9, 1917. The family moved to Vienna, with the result that Eric spent his childhood "in the impoverished capital of a great empire, attached, after the empire's collapse, to a smallish provincial republic of great beauty, which did not believe it ought to exist." 1
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Papers by David Blackbourn