Local and National Elites in the German Empire: The Case of the Württemberg Varnbülers
The formation of a national elite in Germany during the period before and after political unification, 1871, is still a largely unexplored topic in German social history. The Prussocentric perspective in German historiography, which is still prevailing in much of the work done by the so-called critical history of the 1960s and 1970s, has tended to give scant consideration to the sociocultural diversity underlying and enshrined in the federal structure of the Empire. The process of national consolidation of Imperial society could profitably be studied along the center-periphery continuum of national integration. It would be interesting, in particular, to subject to closer scrutiny the notion of “preindustrial elites,” which held on to the reigns of power in Prussia-Germany at a time of such rapid social and economic change.