The Splintered Party : National Liberalism in Hessen and the Reich, 1867-1918 / Dan S. White.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

White, Dan S., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

HISTORY / General.

HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century.

Nationalliberale Partei--History.

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Political Parties.

Local Subjects:

HISTORY / General.

HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century.

Nationalliberale Partei--History.

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Political Parties.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (311 p.): 1 Frontispiz

Edition:

Reprint 2014

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

As a study of the greatest middle class party of Imperial Germany, The Splintered Party is inevitably, in its broadest aspect, an inquiry into the weaknesses of liberalism in the Empire of Bismarck and Wilhelm II. How did the National Liberals, the dominant force in the Reichstag of the 1870s, become by 1914 a spent and divided power? Professor White explores this question from a new perspective, emphasizing regional circumstances as primary agents of the party's decline. The resulting portrait underscores the paradox of the National Liberals: a party with strength in all areas of the Empire, a rarity before 1914, yet a party whose impact was undermined by divisions among its regional branches. In The Splintered Party the former Grand Duchy of Hessen serves as a testing ground where the regional foundations of National Liberalism can be exposed. As Professor White points out, the party's reversals on the Imperial plane after 1878--rejection by Bismarck, electoral defeats, internal splits--not only ended its early primacy in German affairs but also shifted political initiative from Berlin and the Reichstag delegation to the National Liberal branches in the states and provinces, which had maintained unity, power, and alliances with local government in spite of the upheaval above them. The consequences of this change become visible through close examination of the political and social structure in Hessen. On the regional level a liberalism based on the claim to majority representation by the notables (Honoratioren) of bourgeois society, a creed no longer plausible in national politics, remained defensible. Through the Heidelberg Declaration of 1884 the National Liberals of the German Southwest attempted to buttress this approach with an economic and social platform and, simultaneously, to make it the impulse of the national party's revival. But they succeeded only in deferring National Liberalism's adjustment to democratic politics and in subordinating their movement to the clash of regional and constituency interests. The result was a chronically splintered party. Against the backdrop of this main theme, White delineates several additional features of the changing political and social scene in Imperial Germany--the local power of the notables, Bismarck's skills as a political manager, the character of agrarian discontent and rural anti-Semitism, the steady advance of socialism. The uniquely German element in National Liberalism's failure is assessed in a concluding comparison with the development of liberal politics in Britain and Italy.

Contents:

Frontmatter

PREFACE

CONTENTS

1. National Liberalism in the Context of German Politics

2. Profile of a Regional Liberal Party

3. The Crisis of National Liberalism and the Hessian Progressive Party

4. The Heidelberg Declaration

5. The Era of Heidelberg

6. The Autonomy of the Provinces

7. National Liberalism in the Context of European Politics

Appendixes Bibliography Notes Index

Appendix A

Appendix B

APPENDIX C

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-43714-4

OCLC:

1013938664