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Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Sheri Berman
Sheri Berman
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

Practically everywhere one looks these days the concept of “civil society” is in vogue. Neo-Tocquevillean scholars argue that civil society plays a role in driving political, social, and even economic outcomes. This new conventional wisdom, however, is flawed. It is simply not true that democratic government is always strengthened, not weakened, when it faces a vigorous civil society. This essay shows how a robust civil society helped scuttle the twentieth century's most critical democratic experiment, Weimar Germany. An important implication of this analysis is that under certain circumstances associationism and the prospects for democratic stability can actually be inversely related. To know when civil society activity will take on oppositional or even antidemocratic tendencies, one needs to ground one's analyses in concrete examinations of political reality. Political scientists should remember that Tocqueville considered Americans' political associations to be as important as their nonpolitical ones, and they should therefore examine more closely the connections between the two under various conditions.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , April 1997 , pp. 401 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1997

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References

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18 Putnam (fn. 2, Making Democracy Work), 90; idem (fn. 2, 1995), 70.

19 Putnam, for example, cites some development and economic studies to buttress his points, but much less empirical research has been carried out on associationism's political effects, whether on citizens or societies. The old mass society literature did, however, spur sociologists to investigate some of these questions. See, for example, Babchuk, Nicholas and Edwards, John N., “Voluntary Associations and the Integration Hypothesis,” Sociological Inquiry 35 (Spring 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holden, David E. W., “Associations as Reference Groups: An Approach to the Problem,” Rural Sociology 30 (1965)Google Scholar; Pinard, Maurice, “Mass Society and Political Movements: A New Formulation,” American Journal of Sociology (July 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also Verba, Sidney, “Organizational Membership and Democratic Consensus,” Journal of Politics 27 (August 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some political scientists are beginning to investigate these questions. See Dietland Stolle and Thomas Rochon, “Associations and the Creation of Social Capital,” in Kenneth Newton et al., eds., “Social Capital in Western Europe” (Manuscript, 1996); and idem, “Social Capital, Associations and American Exceptionalism,” in American Behavioral Scientist (forthcoming).

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24 For a review of the literature on the middle classes and fascism, see Bernt Hagtvet and Reinhard Kuril, “Contemporary Approaches to Fascism: A Survey of Paradigms,” and Reinhard Kuhl, “Preconditions for the Rise and Victory of Fascism in Germany,” both in Larsen, Hagtvet, and Myklebust (fn. 12). See also Lebovics, Hans, Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany, 1914—1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Speier, Hans, German White Collar Workers and the Rise of Hitler (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Kocka, Jürgen, Die Angestellten in der deutschen Geschichte, 1850–1980 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1981)Google Scholar. For reasons detailed in the text and notes below, observations about bourgeois Protestant associationism do not necessarily apply to its labor or Catholic counterparts, among others.

25 Nipperdey (fn. 21), 182; see also Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Politics and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 194ffGoogle Scholar; Blackbourn, David, “The German Bourgeoisie: An Introduction,” in Blackbourn, David and Evans, Richard J., eds., The German Bourgeoisie (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar; Kocka, Jurgen, “The European Pattern and the German Case,” in Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan, eds., Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth Century Europe (Oxford: Berg, 1993)Google Scholar; Born, Karl-Erich, “Der soziale und wirtschaftliche Strukturwandels Deutschlands am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Moderne deutsche Sozialgeschichte (Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1966)Google Scholar; and Vereinswesen und bürgerliche Gesellscaft in Deutschland, special issue of Historische Zeitschrift, ed. Dann, Otto (Munich: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1984)Google Scholar.

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28 The following section draws heavily on Eley, Geoff, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994)Google Scholar. See also Blackbourn and Eley (fn. 25), 144–55; and Koshar (fn. 23), esp. 46ff.

29 Liberals did make some attempts to respond to the challenges of popular mobilization and the political organization of workers by the SPD, but these proved unsuccessful. See Eley (fn. 28), 2; and Sheehan (fn. 21), pt. 6.

30 Sheehan (fn. 21), 236.

31 Eley(fn.28), xix.

32 Workers and Catholics, by contrast, were efficiently organized through and by the SPD and the Zentrum, respectively. In contrast to the liberal parties, both the SPD and the Zentrum were able to create their own affiliated associations in most areas of social life. One consequence of this, however, was the further fragmentation of German society, as the associations affiliated with these parties were so encompassing as to create “subcultures” that hived off their members from other groups. Referring to the SPD in particular, Dieter Groh has termed such behavior “negative integration”; see Groh, , Negative Integration und revolutionarer Attentismus (Frankfurt: Verlag Ullstein GmbH, 1973)Google Scholar. The literature on the socialist and Catholic subcultures in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany is immense; good places to begin are the bibliographies in Kolb, Eberhard, The Weimar Republic (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988)Google Scholar; and Mommsen, Hans, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

33 Sheehan (fn. 21), 237.

34 Ibid., 237–38. See also Thomas Nipperdey, “Interessenverbande und Parteien in Deutschland vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Wehler (fn. 25).

35 von Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald, Betrachtungen zum Weltkrieg, vol. 1 (Berlin: R. Hubbing, 1919–21)Google Scholar.

36 Allen, William Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922–1945 (New York: 1984)Google Scholar; Fritzsche, Peter, Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Koshar (fn. 23). For cross-national comparisions of the impact of civil society activity on democracy, see Bermeo, Nancy, “Getting Mad or Going Mad? Citizens, Scarcity, and the Breakdown of Democracy in Interwar Europe” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the APSA, San Francisco, 1996)Google Scholar; Bermeo, Nancy and Nord, Phil, eds., “Civil Society before Democracy” (Manuscript, Princeton University, 1996)Google Scholar; and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Stephens, Evelyne Huber, and Stephens, John D., Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), esp. 113–14Google Scholar.

37 Kocka (fn. 26); idem, “The First World War and the ‘Mittelstand’: German Artisans and White Collar Workers,” Journal of Contemporary History 8 (January 1973)Google Scholar; Feldman, Gerald, “German Interest Group Alliances in War and Inflation, 1914—1923,” in Berger, Suzanne, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Koshar, Rudy, “Cult of Associations? The Lower Middle Classes in Weimar Germany,” in Koshar, Rudy, ed., Splintered Classes (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990)Google Scholar; and Hagtvet (fn. 12).

38 Jones, Larry Eugene, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

39 Fritzsche (fn. 36), chap. 2, quote at 21. On the middle classes and the revolution, see also Rosenberg, Arthur, A History of the German Republic (London: Methuen, 1936)Google Scholar; Winkler and Kocka (fn. 26).

40 Fritzsche (fn. 36), 76.

41 The most comprehensive treatment of almost all aspects of the Great Inflation and its aftermath is Feldman, Gerald, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics and Society in the German Inflation, 1919–1924 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. On the psychological aspects in particular, see von Krüdener, Jurgen, “Die Entstehung des Inflationstraumas: Zur Sozialpsychologie der deutschen Hyperinflation 1922–23,” in Feldman, Gerald et al. , eds. Consequences of Inflation (Berlin: Colloquium, 1989)Google Scholar.

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43 The SPD itself did much to preserve its image as a worker's rather than a people's party. See Hunt, Richard, German Social Democracy, 1918—1933 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964)Google Scholar; Harsch, Donna, German Social Democracy and the Rise of Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Winkler, Heinrich August, “Klassenbewegung oder Volkspartei?” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 8, 1972Google Scholar; Kremdahl, Hans, “Könnte die SPD der Weimarer Republik eine Volkspartei werden?” in Heimann, Horst and Meyer, Thomas, eds., Reformsozialismus und Sozialdemokratie (Berlin: Verlag J.H.W. Dietz, 1982)Google Scholar; and Sheri Berman, Ideas and Politics: Social Democracy in Interwar Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

44 The 1920s even saw something of a resuscitation of the old Bismarckian coalition of iron and rye, which like its predecessor was able to secure a wide range of subsidies and tariffs, the most infamous of which was the Osthilfe. See Petzina, Dietmar, “Elemente der Wirtschaftspolitik in der Spätphase der Weimarer Republik, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 21 (1973)Google Scholar; and Feldman, Gerald, Vom Weltkrieg zur Weltwirtschaftskrise (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Jones (fnn. 38, 42); idem, “In the Shadow of Stabilization: German Liberalism and the Legitimacy of the Weimar Party System,” and Childers, Thomas, “Interest and Ideology: Anti-System Parties in the Era of Stabilization,” both in Feldman, Gerald, ed., Die Nachiuirkungen der Inflation aufdie deutsche Geschichte (Munich: R. Oldenburg Verlag, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Mommsen, Hans, “The Decline of the Burgertum in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Germany,” in Mommsen, , From Weimar to Auschwitz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

46 Koshar (fn. 23), 166. See also Gerald Feldman, “German Interest Group Alliances in War and Inflation, 1914–1923,” in Berger (fn. 37); and Charles Maier, “Strukturen kapitalistischer Stabilitat in den zwanziger Jahren,” in Winlder (fn. 26).

47 Peukert, Detlev J. K., The Weimar Republic (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 230Google Scholar.

48 Fritzsche (fn. 36), 76.

49 Among the other goals of this neo-Tocquevillean paragon, it is interesting to note, were rearmament, the extirpation of degeneration and foreign influence, and the acquisition of Lebensraum. “Berlin Stahlhelm Manifesto,” first published in Stahlhelm und Staat (May 8, 1927Google Scholar), reprinted in Kaes, Anton, Jay, Martin, and Dimendberg, Edward, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 339–40Google Scholar. On the development of the Stahlhelm, see Fritzsche (fn. 36), chap. 9; Berghahn, Volker, Der Stahlhelm: Bund der Frontsoldaten, 1918–1935 (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1966)Google Scholar; and Diehl, J. M., Paramilitary Politics in Weimar Germany (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

50 A good summary of the history of the Nazi party during this time is provided by Orlow, Dietrich, The History of the Nazi Party, 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969)Google Scholar. Good English-language treatments of the formation of the Nazi constituency include Childers, Thomas, ed., The Formation of the Nazi Constituency (London: Croom Helm, 1986)Google Scholar; idem, “The Middle Classes and National Socialism,” in Blackbourn and Evans (fn. 25); Stachura, Peter, ed., The Nazi Machtergreifung (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983)Google Scholar; and Childers, Thomas, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983)Google Scholar. Perhaps the most up-to-date analysis in German is Falter, Jürgen W., Hitlers Wahler (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1991)Google Scholar.

51 Fritzsche (fn. 36), 13.

52 Koshar, Rudy, “From Stammtisch to Party: Nazi Joiners and the Contradictions of Grass Roots Fascism in Weimar Germany,” Journal of Modern History 59 (March 1987), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem (fn. 23), 185ff; Mommsen, Hans, “National Socialism: Continuity and Change,” in Lacquer, Walter, ed., Fascism: A Reader's Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar; and Hagtvet (fn. 12).

53 Koshar, “Contentious Citadel: Bourgeois Crisis and Nazism in Marburg/Lahn, 1880–1933,” in Childers (fa. 50), 24, 28–29. See also Koshar (fa. 23); Hagtvet (fa. 12); Allen (fa. 36); and idem, “The Nazification of a Town,” in Snell, John L., ed., The Nazi Revolution: Hitler's Dictatorship and the German Nation (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973)Google Scholar.

54 In a study of right-wing extremists in the U.S., Raymond Wolfinger and several colleagues came to a similar conclusion. See Wolfinger, et al. , “Americas Radical Right: Politics and Ideology,” in Apter, David E., ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

55 Koshar (fn. 23), 202.

56 Ibid., 204, 202.

57 On the party's infiltration of a variety of bourgeois associations, see Mommsen (fn. 52);Winkler (fn. 26), 168ff.; Jones, Larry Eugene, “Between the Fronts: The German National Union of Commercial Employees from 1928 to 1933,” Journal of Modern History 48 (September 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Koshar (fa. 37); and Stachura, Peter D., “German Youth, the Youth Movement and National Socialism in the Weimar Republic,” in Stachura, , ed., The Nazi Machtergreifung (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983)Google Scholar.

58 In the 1928 elections, for example, the NSDAP share of the vote in the predominently rural districts of East Prussia, Pomerania, East Hannover, and Hesse-Darmstadt was below its national average. Gies, Horst, “The NSDAP and Agrarian Organizations in the Final Phase of the Weimar Republic,” in Turner, Henry A., ed., Nazism and the Third Reich (New York: New Viewpoints, 1972), 75 fn. 2Google Scholar. See also Evans, Richard J. and Lee, W. R., eds., The German Peasantry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Moeller, Robert G., German Peasants and Agrarian Politics, 1914–1924 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Baranowski, Shelley, The Sanctity of Rural Life: Nobility, Protestantism, and Nazism in West Prussia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Angress, Werner, “The Political Role of the Peasantry,” Review of Politics 21, no. 3 (1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 On Nazi agricultural policy during this period, see Farquharson, J. E., The Plough and the Swastika: The NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany, 1928—1945 (London: Sage, 1976)Google Scholar. For a discussion of why other parties such as the SPD passed up this opportunity, see Berman (fn. 43).

60 Quoted in Gies (fn. 58), 51.

61 Ibid., 62. See also Zdenek Zofka, “Between Bauernbund and National Socialism: The Political Orientation of the Peasantry in the Final Phase of the Weimar Republic,” in Childers (fn. 50).

62 Ibid., 65.

63 Hagtvet (fn. 12), 91.

64 At least partially because of the RLBs efforts, which were directed by the Nazis; Hagtvet (fn. 12), 75.

65 In a tragic irony, Hindenburg's decision may well have allowed the Nazis to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. After the July 1932 elections the NSDAP began to run into trouble, as Hitler's inability to deliver on his promises caused dissent among different groups within the Nazi coalition and the party's previously formidable organization had trouble maintaining necessary levels of enthusiasm and funding. A few months more out of power and the party might have begun to self-destruct. See the new study by Turner, Henry Ashby Jr., Hitler's Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (New York: Addison- Wesley, 1996)Google Scholar; and also Orlow (fn. 50), 233ff.; and Childers, “The Limits of National Socialist Mobilization,” in Childers (fn. 50).

66 Many, indeed, have blamed Bismarck for the nature of the German party system. By allowing universal suffrage but failing to provide responsible government, Bismarck ensured that political parties would be necessary but also somewhat impotent. Furthermore, by continually manufacturing crises and identifying certain parties (i.e., the SPD and Zentrum) as enemies of the Reich, Bismarck increased the difficulty that parties and their constituencies had in working with each other.

67 Both the SPD and the Catholic Zentrum managed to avoid such problems with their core consituencies. Each maintained close ties with an extremely wide range of ancilliary organizations, and the SPD in particular was a very effective mass party. Largely as a result of these parties' ability to integrate political and civil society life, their constituencies (i.e., workers and Catholics) proved less likely to vote for the Nazis later on than were other groups. Because they contributed to the segmentation of German society during the 1920s, however, these parties can still be held at least indirectly responsible for the collapse of the Weimar Republic.

68 Fritzsche (fn. 36), 232. On this point, see also Lepsius, M. Rainer, “Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur: zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft,” in Ritter, Gerhard A., ed., Deutsche Parteien vor 1918 (Cologne: Droste, 1983)Google Scholar.

69 Foley and Edwards (fn. 7); Skocpol (fn. 7, “The Tocqueville Problem”); Diamond (fn. 7); Pinard (fn. 19); Hagtvet (fn. 12), esp. 94; Koshar (fnn. 37, 23); Winkler (fn. 26), esp. 196; and Fritzsche (fn. 36).

70 See Tarrow, Sidney, “Making Social Science Work across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work,” American Political Science Review 90 (June 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, Tarrow also criticizes Putnam for failing to recognize that much of the civil society activity he finds was directly or indirectly created by Italian political parties. According to Tarrow, in other words, civil society may not be an independent variable (as Putnam claims) but rather an intermediary variable, along the lines suggested by the analysis presented here.

71 Ward 3 block-watch organizer Kathy Smith and Cleveland Park Citizens Association president Stephen A. Koczak, respectively, quoted in Clines, Francis X, “Washington's Troubles Hit Island of Affluence,” New York Times, July 26, 1996, p. A19Google Scholar.

72 “Promoting a Return to ‘Civil Society,’ Diverse Group of Crusaders Looks to New Solutions to Social Problems,” Washington Post, December 15, 1996.

73 On this point, see also Skocpol (fn. 7, 1996,1996).