Adolf von Harnack and the entry of the German state into war, July–August 1914

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
German State ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
German Army ◽  
German People

Adolf von Harnack, perhaps the most influential theologian of the twentieth century, helped the Kaiser to draft his Call to the German People of 6 August 1914, and almost certainly knew that the Kaiser, the Chancellor, and the German army planned to precipitate war that month. Despite that knowledge, Harnack always maintained that Russia and France launched the war. He drew a sharp distinction between private morality and state morality, and asserted that law played no part in either. One and the same spirit rules in history and in us. The dangers of love without law.

Origins of Progressivism

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blake Emerson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
German State ◽  
Normative Concept

This chapter describes German state theory in the nineteenth and twentieth century. It describes this tradition in order to clarify the relevance of German ideas to the American context. American political scientists and legal scholars frequently rely on German thinkers such as Max Weber and Carl Schmitt to understand the state. But these divergent assessments lack a grounding in the longer trajectory and the institutional dilemmas of German legal theory. The chapter provides that broader context and directs readers’ attention to the most promising strand of German thought: the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel would have formative significance for the Progressive thinkers who developed the American administrative state. Hegel understood the state’s purpose to be the advancement of freedom. The chapter contextualizes this idea and shows its influence throughout the nineteenth century, in the Rechtsstaat theories of Robert von Mohl, Lorenz von Stein, and Rudolf von Gneist. It then shows how this normative concept of the state was emptied out with the turn to legal positivism at the end of the century. Weber’s formal-rational conception of bureaucracy then arrived at a particularly unstable moment in German constitutional history, in the transition from monarchy to democracy. Weber’s bifurcated conception of legal and charismatic authority paved the way for Schmitt’s proto-totalitarian theory of the state. The chapter concludes by showing how German theorists in the second half of the twentieth century, such as Jürgen Habermas, continued to rely on Weber’s instrumental conception of bureaucracy.

Wir Sind das Volk: Notes About the Notion of ‘The People’ as Occasioned by the Lissabon-Urteil

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.T. Eijsbouts
Keyword(s):  
German State ◽  
The People ◽  
East German ◽  
German People

Leipzig 1989: dissolution of the East German state people or Staatsvolk – Karlsruhe 2020: dissolution of the German people – Courts and the people as a neglected constitutional relationship – Bundesverfassungsgericht's versions of the people – Analysis of the concept of people – Forms of action – Political people breaks down into two: original and electoral people – Marbury v. Madison – Duality as a matter of doctrine and principle – Duality in Lissabon Urteil – Conflation and reduction of authority to vote – Subordination of electoral to original people – The Court's logic pushed into motion – Exposing the constitution

Fortress Under Siege: A New German History

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Brady Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
German History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Berlin Republic ◽  
German People ◽  
Ancient Forests ◽  
German Historian

Measured against its subject, German history from the ancient forests to the “Berlin Republic,” A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People by Steven Ozment is a very short book. Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915) required some 6,000 pages in twelve volumes to cover the subject, and he had no twentieth century to master. Ozment's book is readable. It moves along in the athletic style and at the brisk pace we expect from him and is largely free of the sarcasms that pepper some of his earlier (though not the earliest) writings. The most surprising thing about A Mighty Fortress is that it was written at all. Why no German historian would tackle the subject today needs no explanation, but it is truly curious that a foreigner would essay the task. Yet Ozment has done just that. The product is a book easy and fun to read, in many respects better entertainment than history. A Mighty Fortress' point of view is so obstinately personal, its attitude toward established scholarship so brusque, and its narrative so broken and at times opaque, that only generous quotations can supply a fair impression of the book.

The German Opposition to Hitler: A Non-Germanist's View

1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 362-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert O. Paxton
Keyword(s):  
German State ◽  
German Army ◽  
Foreign Occupation ◽  
Different Order

This paper originated as part of a panel in which the author's intended role was to bring comparative perspectives formed in the study of other parts of Hitler-dominated Europe to bear upon the German opposition to Hitler. After giving hard thought to my comparative assignment, I came to the conclusion that internal opposition, as in Germany between 1933 and 1945, is fundamentally incomparable to resistance to a foreign occupation. The constraints of patriotism and the problems of legitimacy that face a domestic opposition, especially in wartime, are of an altogether different order than the more narrowly corporeal dangers facing resistance to a foreign occupation. Very few even of the most determined opponents of Hitler were willing to accept the defeat of the German Army or the overthrow of the German state as necessary for Hitler's removal, while very few resisters outside Germany believed that his removal could be accomplished in any other way. Such unbridgeable differences of perception make comparative discussion of resistance to Hitler inside and outside Germany so general as to be of little use. I have even used different terms here, referring to struggles against foreign occupation as “resistance” and to the anti-Hitler movements within Germany as “opposition.”

XI.—Schiller and Hebbel, 1830–1840

PMLA ◽  
1907 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-344
Author(s):  
William Guild Howard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
German Literature ◽  
German People ◽  
Popular Audience

Considered with regard to the author's intention, nearly all of Schiller's dramas have established their right to be ranked among the most successful achievements in German literature. They were written for representation on the stage before a popular audience; and throughout the nineteenth century, in spite of the vagaries of literary fashion and the frequent hostility of literary men, the German people as such remained true to its admiration of Wallenstein, and Wilhelm Tell. No student of the drama can fail to perceive that Schiller is an indispensable presupposition to all dramatic production in Germany since his time; or can underestimate the value of his example in all that pertains to the architectonics of the drama; or ought to suppose that Schiller will not continue to speak from the stage to the twentieth century and beyond.

A Perplexed Ally

Worldview ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 21-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfhart Pannenberg
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Defense System ◽  
European Continent ◽  
German State ◽  
The World ◽  
Entire Country ◽  
General Feeling ◽  
East German ◽  
German People

For many years the German people liked to consider themselves America's closest allies on the European continent. Since the late 1940s, when former foes joined ranks against further Russian expansion, the Germans could be counted as one of the more solid rocks in the Western defense system. Within decades of a devasting war they not only surprised the world with a strong economy, but they took pride in developing a model democratic society. Even most East Germans (unofficially, of course) used to look to the young Federal Republic as an example and testing ground for the future of the entire country, although the East German state tried desperately to promote a model of its own. The general feeling was—and to some extent still is— that the Eastern model did not work, while the Western one did.

Soldiers, Citizens, and the State: East German Army Officers in Post-Unification Germany

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-287
Author(s):  
Andrew Bickford
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The State ◽  
Smooth Transition ◽  
The West ◽  
German Government ◽  
German State ◽  
German Army ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

Despite official narratives of a relatively smooth transition, of the merging of “those things which belong together,” German unification and the formation of a new German state has been an uneven project filled with friction and animosity. While the West German government celebrated the “victory” of unification, and stated that all East Germans wanted unification, one group of East Germans did not look forward to the dissolution of the GDR: members of the East German military, the Nationale Volksarmee (National People's Army, or NVA). Disbanded immediately upon unification, the overwhelming majority of NVA officers were left unemployed overnight, stripped of their status as officers and portrayed by the West Germans as the “losers” of the Cold War. For these men, unification was not a joyous, desired event; rather, it represented the end of their careers, security, status, and the state they had sworn to defend. As such, the “fall” into democracy for these men was from the start fraught with uncertainty, disappointment, anomie, and a profound sense of loss.

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