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What was distinctive—and distinctively "modern"—about German society and politics in the age of Kaiser Wilhelm II? In addressing this question, these essays assemble cutting-edge research by fourteen international scholars. Based on evidence of an explicit and self-confidently "bourgeois" formation in German public culture, the contributors suggest new ways of interpreting its reformist potential and advance alternative readings of German political history before 1914. While proposing a more measured understanding of Wilhelmine Germany's extraordinarily dynamic society, they also grapple with the ambivalent, cross-cutting nature of German "modernities" and reassess their impact on long-term developments running through the Wilhelmine age.
"It is one of the main merits of this volume to historicize the 'modern' concept of parliamentarianism and democracy ... offers a stimulating contribution to the scholarship on Imperial Germany." · H-Soz-u-Kult
"[this] brief review cannot do justice to the breadth of contributions offered in this slender volume. While the collection does not cover all aspects of Wilhelmine history…it does provide a good introduction to the current state o f the field…these essays offer avenues for further exploration rather than definitive statements." · German Studies Review
"…a valuable volume which makes some substantial contribution to a number of subfields in modern German history…the editors are to be thanked for assembling a volume of original and insightful works, one which ought to be in the collection of every library that supports programs in contemporary German history, cultural studies, or political science." · Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire
Foreword
Volker R. Berghahn
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Geoff Eley and James Retallack
Chapter 1. Making a Place in the Nation: Meanings of "Citizenship" in Wilhelmine Germany
Geoff Eley
Chapter 2. Membership, Organization, and Wilhelmine Modernism: Constructing Economic Democracy through Cooperation
Brett Fairbairn
Chapter 3. "Few better farmers in Europe"? Productivity, Change, and Modernization in East-Elbian Agriculture, 1870-1913
Oliver Grant
Chapter 4. The Wilhelmine Regime and the Problem of Reform: German Debates about Modern Nation-States
Mark Hewitson
Chapter 5. Lebensreform: A Middle-Class Antidote to Wilhelminism
Matthew Jefferies
Chapter 6. Imperial Socialism of the Chair: Gustav Schmoller and German Weltpolitik, 1897-1905
Erik Grimmer-Solem
Chapter 7. "Our natural ally": German Social Democrats, Anglo-German Relations, and the Contradictory Agendas of Wilhelmine Socialism, 1897-1900
Paul Probert
Chapter 8. The "Malet Incident," October 1895: A Prelude to the Kaiser's "Krüger Telegram" in the Context of the Anglo-German Imperialist Rivalry
Willem-Alexander van't Padje
Chapter 9. Colonial Agitation and the Bismarckian State: The Case of Carl Peters
Arne Perras
Chapter 10. The Law and the Colonial State: Legal Codification versus Practice in a German Colony
Nils Ole Oermann
Chapter 11. Max Warburg and German Politics: The Limits of Financial Power in Wilhelmine Germany
Niall Ferguson
Chapter 12. Continuity and Change in Post-Wilhelmine Germany: From the 1918 Revolution to the Ruhr Crisis
Conan Fischer
Chapter 13. A Wilhelmine Legacy? Coudenhove-Kalergi's "Paneuropa" as an Alternative Path towards a European (Post-)Modernity, 1922-1932
Katiana Orluc
Chapter 14. Ideas into Politics: Meanings of "Stasis" in Wilhelmine Germany
James Retallack
Notes on Contributors
List of Publications by Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann