Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic Illiberalism

465 Pages·1982·18.574 MB·English

by  Konrad H. Jarausch

STUDENTS,
SOCIETY, AND
POLITICS IN
IMPERIAL
GERMANY

STUDENTS, SOCIETY,
AND POLITICS IN
IMPERIAL GERMANY
The Rise of Academic Uliberalism
• · ·
KOMRAD H. JARAUSCH
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 1982 by Princeton University IVess
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey
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Preface
FROM KARL SAND'S ASSASSINATION of the czarist informer August von
Kotzebue in 1819 to Ulrike Meinhof's war on affluent authoritarianism in
1968, German students have made headlines with their penchant for left-
wing terrorism. Yet their participation in the vigilante murders of Weimar
republicans like Walter Rathenau and the Nazi Student League takeover
of student government two years before the party's seizure of political
power in 1933 indicate that German academic youths have embraced right-
wing extremism with equal enthusiasm. From the time of the Humboldtian
reforms in the early nineteenth century, outcries about student activism
have been accompanied by recurrent complaints about educational ine­
quality, culminating in the controversy over the educational emergency
(Bildungsnotstand) of the 1960s. Government attempts to broaden the elite
basis of higher education by making the university accessible to the un­
derprivileged strata have repeatedly produced academic unemployment and
subsequent pressure for protectionist restrictions to prevent the rise of a
politically volatile academic proletariat. The recent catchwords of "loyalty
checks" for state employment (Berufsverbot) and "teacher surplus" (Leh-
rerschwemme) demonstrate that neither the problem of student radicalism
nor the issue of educational elitism has been resolved successfully. A
historical case study of one crucial phase of the development of activism
and inequality should bring their dynamics and interrelationship into clearer
focus and thereby add some sense of perspective to the inconclusive policy
debates. Such an analysis requires a fresh approach to the history of higher
education—not another look down from professorial and administrative
heights, but a view up from the objects of education, the students, as they
act and react to institutions and ideologies.
The endemic social and political problems of higher education in Central
Europe attracted my interest for both personal and scholarly reasons. The
conflict between academic elitism and social mobility played itself out in
my own home, for my mother descended from generations of scholars and
clerics, while my father came from petit bourgeois origins, despite his
doctorate from the University of Berlin. The political failure of the neo-
humanist tradition when confronted with the Third Reich is still evident
in his writings on Protestant pedagogy, particularly the articles in the
vi · PREFACE
journal Schule und Evangelium, which he edited. Whenever I reread his
wartime letters from Russia, where he died while fighting for the rights
of prisoners of war, I am struck by the question: How could such a humane
and cultivated man fall prey to volkish neoconservatism and fail to offer
a viable alternative to national socialism? From my own postwar education
in the humanist Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in Krefeld in the Rhine-
land, I remember a sense of cultural excellence and a feeling of social
superiority without much concern for the problems of the modern world
or vital democratic commitment. While the student activism of the 1960s
dramatized the questions about the relationship of higher education and
politics in the United States, my experience as visiting professor at the
Universitat des Saarlandes underscored that despite the social reforms of
the early 1970s, the ideological polarization of German society continues
to render the emergence of a liberal academic climate difficult.
Often neglected, the relationship between university, society, and polity
makes up one important strand of the German problem. My earlier research
on the European response to Adolf Hitler's seizure of power convinced
me that literal examination of diplomatic and domestic documents has only
limited explanatory power and that one needs to look beneath the surface
of politics into the social and ideological forces shaping men and events.
During my work on Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, the most academic
of the imperial chancellors, I was astounded by the narrowness of the
choices perceived by the ruling elites. The diary of his assistant, Kurt
Riezler, vividly demonstrates that even the modernist segment of educated
Germans, while more flexible in its political means (liberal imperialism),
was incapable of a fundamental critique of the Bismarckian system, for it
shared many of the authoritarian prejudices of the traditionalists. Because
so many of the key decision makers in government, the bureaucracy, and
the Reichstag between 1914 and i945 were educated in Imperial Germany,
one significant clue to the "unspoken assumptions" of these leaders might
be found in their last common life experience, their student years at the
university. Another important key to their collective behavior might lie in
the structural transformation of higher learning, which fundamentally al­
tered the number, demographic selection, social recruitment, and career
patterns of German academics after unification in 1871. Thus, the trahison
des clercs of the cultured during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich
was not only a reaction to the immediate problems of the day, but also a
result of the dual social restructuring and political reversal of the educated
from the liberal nationalism of the first half of the nineteenth century to
the national socialism of the first half of the twentieth century. Because I
have explored some of the methodological problems in previous articles
and assembled quantitative tools in an earlier volume, the present study
PREFACE · vii
attempts to explore the pattern, causes, and consequences of this momen­
tous social transformation and ideological Tendenzwende.
Such an inquiry raises the issue of the social conditions and political
results of liberal education in general. The German conception of neo-
humanist cultivation (Bildung) is only one version of a wider Western ideal
of elite higher education, steeped in the classics and directed toward non-
utilitarian goals. Based on industrialization or democratization, reformist
demands for the expansion of educational opportunity for the underpri­
vileged posed major social and political problems for every European
country in the second half of the nineteenth century. The transition from
a liberal phase of competitive opportunities, which in fact camouflages
elite recruitment with meritocratic rhetoric, to a social democratic phase
of welfare-supported educational mobility for the lower-middle and lower
classes has yet to be achieved completely. Moreover, the political content
of classical liberal education varies greatly over time and place. In many
instances there is little relationship between a cultivated taste and liberal
politics; neohumanism does not always mean humaneness. Even where
the connection is close, the ideological interpretations of what is to be
considered as man's essence differ sharply. Hence, the social and political
transformation of liberal education needs to be examined in a series of
comparative studies in order to bring the limitations of the nineteenth-
century elitist vision of neoclassical training into sharper focus. Although
budget-minded administrators consider liberal education less relevant than
professional training, published research, or demonstrable service, the
German example illustrates the grave dangers of a purely scientific or
technical higher education. Instead of leading to resignation in the face of
mounting doubts and difficulties, the present crisis should prompt a reex­
amination of the broader purpose of the humanities and a rededication to
those egalitarian and democratic values that are vital to the survival of a
free society.
ONLY a few of the many debts incurred in such a long and complex
enterprise can be acknowledged publicly. The generous financial support
of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the American Council of Learned
Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the University of Mis­
souri Research Council made various stages of the research possible. The
gracious hospitality of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Schol­
ars in Washington and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship facilitated the
actual writing. The unselfish help of Herr Waldmann at the Zentrales
Staatsarchiv Merseburg, Drs. Trumpp and Buchmann at the Bundesarchiv
Coblenz, Dr. Wreden at the Bundesarchiv Aussenstelle Frankfurt, Dipl.
Hist. Kossack at the Archive of the Humboldt University, Dr. Schmidt at
viii · PREFACE
the University Archive Bonn, Dr. Leist at the University Archive Marburg,
and Dr. Angerer of the Institut fur Hochschulkunde facilitated the gathering
of documentary evidence. The frank criticism of B. vom Brocke,
M. Heinemann, H. Kaelble, P. Lundgreen, D. K. Miiller, T. Nipperdey,
the QUANTUM group, W. Schieder, P. Baumgart, and H.-U. Wehler in
Germany and the suggestions of J. Craig, G. Feldmann, T. S. Hamerow,
J. F. Harris, A. Heidenheimer, M. Kater, L. Krieger, V. A. Lidtke, C. E.
McClelland as well as Lawrence Stone's guidance at the Davis Center in
this country improved many portions of the manuscript. I am equally
grateful to W. Konig, H. Schilling, W. Kamphoefner, and T. Baldeh for
their technical help. At the risk of straining the reader's credulity with yet
another tribute to that exalted but elusive species, the academic wife, I do
want to thank Hannelore Louise Flessa-Jarausch for her intellectual, emo­
tional, and physical sustenance in this project. Finally, I hope that when
my sons Tino and Peter go to college they may still experience something
of Die alte Burschenherrlichkeit, which inspired the famous verse:
Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenes dum sumus!
Post iucundam iuventutem, post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus, nos habebit humus!
Contents
Preface V
List of Figures xi
List of Tables xii
Glossary xiii
Abbreviations XV
One • In the National Spirit 3
An Academic Mission 6
Approaches to the Problem 13
Two * The Enrollment Explosion 23
Dynamics of Expansion 27
Causes of Growth 32
Problematic Consequences 49
Three • The Social Transformation 78
Neohumanist Patterns 81
Demographic Trends 90
Social Changes 114
Faculty Structures 134
Four • The Teaching of Politics 160
Implications of Cultivation 165
Ceremonial Speeches 174
Scholarly Lectures 189
Political Instruction 206
Five • The Hidden Curriculum 234
Corporate Subculture 239
Organizational Developments 262
Societal Settings 294
Six • The Politics of Academic Youth 333
Constraints on Activism 336
Varieties of Nationalism 345
Student Self-Government 367