Gründerzeit und Nationsbildung 1849-1871 (review)

The book under review is a "Seminarbuch Geschichte," a new series of history textbooks, sponsored by a consortium of German academic publishers, aiming to provide students with concise guides to specific historical periods. To date, four volumes have appeared, covering German history from 1815 to 1890. Christian Jansen's work on the years 1849 to 1871 is of interest as an example of textbook writing, but also as a new interpretation of this crucial period of nineteenth-century German history. While it is quite a successful work, a number of questions do emerge, in regard both to Jansen's interpretation of the period and also to the way he represents this interpretation to his readers.

The technical aspects of the textbook are quite impressive. Written in a clear and readable style, the book, as is characteristic of the series, contains excerpts from primary sources, as well as boxes explaining basic concepts, elaborating particular points, or exploring the historiography of a given topic. Sources and boxes are skillfully integrated into the book's narrative, improving its pedagogical value. Also supplementing the narrative and heightening its impact are the thirty-five excellent illustrations, chosen primarily from contemporary magazines and thus available without the need to pay increasingly exorbitant fees to copyright holders. English-speaking academics interested in writing their own textbooks might want to examine this one for some useful ideas and models to follow.

Jansen's avoidance of the standard phrase to describe the period, Reichsgründungszeit, and its replacement with Gründerzeit, redeploying a word used to describe the economic boom of the early 1870s, is a conscious choice to emphasize his new interpretation. Rather than foregrounding Bismarck's policies and the German Empire of 1871 resulting from them, and making them central to the political history of the era, the author emphasizes instead the efforts of the forces of political movement—first publicly displayed in the revolution of 1848-49—to implement a liberal or democratic political order and to work toward some form of nation-state. Jansen notes the multiplicity of such efforts and their differing goals, only very partly described by commonly used terms such as Großdeutsch and Kleindeutsch, or liberal and socialist. Although he observes the continuity of political efforts over the entire period covered by his book, and indeed regards the continuity as a defining feature of the era, he also brings out the transforming impact of socioeconomic and intellectual-cultural change on both political goals and the process of achieving them.

This viewpoint stems from the author's previous scholarship: his excellent monograph (based on his habilitation) on the post-1849 political choices of the leftwing deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly, and his admirable collection of the correspondence of German liberal and democratic politicians during the 1850s—and is both the book's strength and its weakness. It allows Jansen to emphasize the openness of the political situation, especially in the 1860s, the diversity of possible forms of unification of the German states, and the significance of political developments outside of Prussia. Bismarck and his policies appear in a new light: Jansen notes, for instance, that the famous "blood and iron" speech, far from being a challenge to the Progressive deputies in the Prussian parliament, was actually an abortive effort aimed at reaching agreement with them, since both liberals and democrats had already endorsed the idea that the Frankfurt National Assembly's attempts at creating a united nation-state had overly neglected power politics.

At the same time, this concentration on liberal and nationalist political movements sometimes excessively narrows the book's focus: for instance, when the author describes in detail all the twists and turns of the policies of the Committee of 36 of the Nationalverein. Other, relevant features of the era are less emphasized or not considered at all. The book does have a chapter on social and economic developments, which is not well integrated into the narrative and generally lacks the original character of...