Journal of Social History

Interest in European Liberalism as a cultural phenomenon and its relation to the European Bourgeoisie has certainly increased in the last decade. One of the new arguments is that, like Socialism and Catholicism in continental Europe, Liberalism in 19th—early 20th century Europe was not an elitist bourgeois movement but a mass-movement, and sometimes a radical one.² This argument, however, is not applied to Germany. Liberalism as a mass democratic movement, and the German Bürgertum as a cultural liberal formation, it was said until recently, only existed in Germany until 1849, or, some will say, until the early 1870s, after which both lost their mass democratic-liberal appeal.³

In this article, however, I would like to speak of German 19th and early 20th-century Liberalism not in terms of crisis and collapse. I would like to offer new interpretations of the strength and peculiarities of Liberalism in Germany by introducing the term Popular Liberalism, hitherto usually applied to a pattern of political behavior in mid and late 19th-century Britain.⁴

In using the term Popular Liberalism in the context of German Liberalism and German Bourgeoisie for the first time, I am trying to clarify political, social and cultural patterns in Germany up to the early 1930s. I argue that popular-radical liberal bourgeois pressure-groups and parties persistently focussed their criticism on the need to move the political system of the German Second Reich and the Weimar Republic in a more radical direction. By studying this political and cultural formation, I believe I can prove the existence of German Popular Liberalism in a specific region: Greater Swabia in South Germany. In this region the local bourgeoisie (artisans, rich farmers, small businessmen, civil servants, small entrepreneurs), as members in Liberal movements, fought hard to retain their constituents' loyalty. With varying degrees of success, they opened up the party leadership to new voices, evolved new organizational forms, and sought to placate their electorate by aggressive defense of local industrial interests. In Greater Swabia, local Liberals (mostly members of the National-Liberal Party and peasant organisations) were proudly conscious of their radical identity and strongly determined to survive as an electoral and social force. It can even be said that in some southern regions Popular Liberalism dominanted the school, the pub, the local voluntary association (Verein), and the Old Catholic church. Together with the popular Catholics, the Popular Liberals were the movers and shakers of the local political culture. In short, the existence of a long tradition of plebeian radicalism and its cultural and institutional expression are undoubtedly of great significance.

The major goal of my article is to offer a new explanation for the success [End Page 181] of National Socialism before 1933 in certain regions in South Germany: one connected with the fact that there was a substantial continuity in Popular Liberalism throughout the second half of the 19th and the first third of the 20th century.

Now, one of the difficulties about discussing the linkages between German Bourgeoisie, German Liberalism and National Socialism is that it is a subject we seem to know so well that we are unable to reconsider its historical roots. In my study, I wish to re-examine the relations between Popular-Liberalism and National Socialism, in the hope that a different viewpoint will produce a deeper understanding of the discourse of the German Bourgeoisie with relation to the Nazi success before 1933. My argument is based on the continuity of radical-liberal bourgeois politics, which in this period continued to be dominant in many parties, pressure-groups and bourgeois associations. According to this interpretation, the post 1920s National Socialism drew from a variety of cultural sources and, especially before 1933, reacted pragmatically to changing circumstances. It is further argued that National Socialist thought and actions did not just emerge from within the Nazi Party itself, but also developed autonomously and concurrently within the various subcultures and regions of Weimar Germany with predominantly rural liberal traditions. A fresh look should be taken at the relationship between local-regional identities and national politics, which is illustrated by the fact that a rural Liberalism with a radical legacy existed in certain regions where the Nazi Party won massive electoral successes. In contrast to prevailing beliefs, I suggest that this local-regional radical identity (which will be discussed below as a radical liberal subculture) was not submerged by the Nazi Party, but changed its form of representation.

The people and associations of this subculture believed that the Nazi Party could fulfil their radical-liberal vision, rooted in the local democratic and liberal traditions which stretched from 1848 to the early 20th century. Until the late 1920s, liberal and peasant parties, bourgeois organisations and bourgeois associations were the sociopolitical representatives of this vision and culture. From the late 1920s to the beginning of the 1930s the representatives of these organisations formed the Nazi Party chapters in many villages and towns. By 1932, at least in south Germany and as a result of the Strasser-Himmler-Goebbels organisational reforms within the Nazi party, this unique Radical-Liberal legacy within the Nazi Party had started to disintegrate and to lose its radical appeal.⁵ To sum up my arguments: it is well known that in most regions which were the strongholds of German Liberalism in the decade before 1914 (Schleswig-Holstein, Oldenbourg, Hanover, Pfalz, Hessen, Baden, Franconia, southern Swabia), the Nazi Party won massive support from the late 1920s.⁶ Many explanations have been offered in recent decades for the Nazi success in these regions. Class terminology, regional culture and the terms Proto-Fascism, Folkism, Demagogy or Populism have very frequently been used to explain this continuity in these and other regions from (National) Liberalism to National-Socialism.⁷ I would like to add another dimension: I wish to exonerate the provincial-bourgeois-Liberals from the accusation of being proto-fascists or völkisch- nationalists, and explain the dual nature of South German Liberalism and National Socialism before 1933. In order to do this, I shall examine neglected radical-bourgeois elements in some southern German regions which were [End Page 182] strongholds of National-Socialism in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and draw attention to the continuity and similarity between the radicalism within the bourgeois Liberal organisations of the second half of the 19th and early 20th century and National Socialism before 1933. Here I should like to follow the advice of the German political historian Karl Rohe: "One is in a better position to estimate the Nazi Party's regional strength if one knows not only the social composition of the regional electorate but its voting behaviour in the Kaiser- reich, that is to say its political-cultural composition".⁸

This article is divided into three parts. In the first, I wish to define the concepts Popular Liberalism, Marginality and Subculture, and to examine their significance in the particular conditions of the region I have chosen: Greater Swabia. In the second part, I shall describe the unique radical-liberal subculture in Greater Swabia. In the third part, I shall describe the principal stages in the development of Popular Liberalism in South Germany from the mid 19th century to the final years of the Weimar Republic. Finally, I will try to describe how this unique radical-liberal subculture changed its form of representation from Popular Liberalism to National-Socialism.

I

By Popular Liberalism I mean a political and cultural mass-phenomenon characterized by six main elements:

1. Support for a liberal economy (in England mainly free trade. In South Germany, a moderate support for free trade).
2. Political populism expressed in an encouragement of freedom and liberty (particularly constitutional liberty), egalitarianism (in the form of anti-elitist, anti-Junkerish sentiments), and republicanism (in the form of the desire for the common good and the preservation of the community).
3. A religious identity based on Nonconformity, anti-clericalism (in South Germany) and anti-Anglicanism (in England).
4. Advocacy of a nationalist-imperialist foreign policy.
5. The view that politics was underpinned by the notion of a "community" (Ge- meinschaft) or a "people" rather than a class or the state.
6. Disestablishmentarianism.⁹

In short, I would like to suggest some German (in this case, one region in Germany)-English comparison about the form that Popular Liberalism took in these two different contexts. First, in Germany, as in mid 19th century England, all six elements found expression in middle-class (bourgeois)liberal extra-parliamentary actions, pressure-groups and "faddist" groups.¹⁰ Secondly, and especially in England, Popular Liberalism was self-generating and self-sustaining. It was a union of many ad-hoc groups: a union always potentially explosive, always gaining supporters as well as losing them. Thirdly, in both places Popular Liberalism was essentially provincial and was the delayed outcome of industrial and religious changes earlier in the 19th century and the product of a new kind of mass-politics resulting from these changes.¹¹ Fourthly, one can view Popular Liberalism in England and in Germany mainly in the mid 19th-century as an exceptional development of class politics. Working-class and middle-class interests fused within the context of popular Liberalism. [End Page 183] In addition, and this is the most important argument in my German-English comparison, the mid-19th.century Popular Liberalism is viewed as the continuation of a popular tradition which preceded 18th-century radicalism, Chartism and the reform campaign of the 1860s (in England) and local southern Germany radicalism which began in early modern period and lasted until 1848.¹² In both cases the relationship among popular Liberalism, political culture, and past traditions is crucial for understanding the phenomenon. For example, one should emphasize the language of radicalism which was persistent in English and southern Germany Liberalism after the 1840s. In both cases one discerns points of continuity between pre-1848 radicalism, and mid-19th.Century (and in South Germany even later) Popular Liberalism. These factors in the culture of radicalism played an important role not only in the formation of the Liberal parties and associations but also in the fragile alliance between elements of the working classes and middle classes/bourgeoisie. All this gave Popular-Liberalism in both countries its own motivations, its campaigning organisations, its own media and leadership.

On the other hand, one can discern some important differences. The uniqueness of the German Popular Liberalism is that it was a regional phenomenon, while in England Popular Liberalism was a national phenomenon.¹³ Much more important is the fact that in England until the 1880s, one can discern in Popular Liberalism the persistence of "pre-industrial", traditional politics in which local, aristocratic and religious influences remained untouched. It is the persistence of the aristocracy in liberal politics, evident not only in the electoral reforms of 1832 and 1860s, but also in party and governmental politics in the period between the 1830s and the 1880s that stands in contrast to our finding from south Germany where (as I will show later) from the 1860s local radical and modern bourgeoisie were the heralds of new forms of politics. These groups were the main component of Popular Liberalism.¹⁴

Another important difference is that in Greater Swabia (and this is that the main argument here) Popular Liberalism survived the turn of the 20th century, the First World War and the first years of the Weimar Republic. In England on can speak about "The Strange Death of (Popular) Liberal England" already before the war, as a result, among other things of the challenge of Labour.¹⁵

Up to this point I have discussed several factors which explain Popular Liberalism in two different contexts. I would like to continue this segment with a discussion of the importance of marginal regional and provincial Bourgeoisie to the rise of Popular Liberalism in Germany. I wish to point out that Liberalism (and National-Socialism before 1933) in Parliament and the political centres and in the provinces were generally two different things. Popular Liberal culture in Germany as well as other political cultures including Nazi political culture, originated in the local and regional rather than the national context. The study of local conditions ought to be fundamental to any analysis of political and ideological formations. As C. Applegate has argued, we should consider regions, not nations as the locus of economic and political change and accordingly examine the ways that identity formation and cultural change have centered in regional, rather than national contexts, and emphasize regions as spatial and geographic entities and thus as places subject to the forces of cultural and political change. Applegate and Alon Confino, in their important work on the Heimat culture [End Page 184] in southern Germany, highlight local factors, provincial social groups and the relationship between them and national identities. Confino stresses how Heimat symbolism and genre became popular after 1880s because everyone (in a given region) could identify with it and believe in it¹⁶ At the same time, Confino argues that we should not forget that regionalism is fundamentally an act of "translation", of "invention" of imagination. As Roberto Dainotto argued, regions are no more real than nations; they are "simply inventions, poetic acts, metaphors".¹⁷

My evidence for the existence of Popular-Liberalism in the second half of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century consists of regional surveys of some of the marginal Catholic rural areas in southern Germany along the Austrian, Swiss and the French borders. In regions with "frontier conditions"¹⁸ such as in the South German regions of South Baden, the Allgäu, Hohenzollern (particulary Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen) and the south-western parts of Upper Bavaria (in other words, "Greater Swabia" or Gross Schwaben),¹⁹ the predominance of stock-raising permitted greater independence of the working class (mainly rural workers), artisans (who were the main supporters of Liberalism and National Socialism), independent farmers and—most important—the rural bourgeoisie.²⁰ In this landscape, anti-clericalism, democratic values and a close-knit community life were the characteristics of rural Liberalism. Greater Swabia is often regarded as a classic region of large-scale capitalist farming. And finally, from the early modern period Greater Swabia was a center of covert rural protest (mainly expressed in arson and thieving) and political unrest.

The "Sense of Place", the cultural construction of the south German landscape, the peculiarity of the Swabian mental topography, the threatening quality of the Black Forest, the Alpine image of the Allgäu and the warm, sunny climate of the region of Lake Constance, played an important role in determining the cultural construction of Greater Swabia which in turn had a deep influence on the local political culture.

But it was a "reactionary sense of place." Drawing on Doreen Massey's distinction between progressive and reactionary senses of place, I would describe Greater Swabia as a reactionary region, a place which was confined rather than open, conscious of its own internal history rather than alive to a variety of historical connections, and embracing a single identity rather than multiple identities.²¹

In Greater Swabia, the centres of radical-liberal activity were towns and villages with heavy Catholic majority such as Memmingen, Lindenberg, Günzburg Immenstadt, Lindau, Constance, Sigmaringen, Stockach, Messkirch, Donaue- schingen, Bonndorf, Wadshut, Breisach. Together with an awareness of the lega- cy of the republican traditions of the "Old Reich", the Salpeter rebellion of 1768, the conflicts of overlords and peasants and the revolution of 1848, the "sense of place" in this particular instance is an important precondition for an understanding of the uniqueness of the local political culture.²²

This strong "sense of place" also represents a kind of response: in the 19th century a response to the dominant south-German ultramontane Catholic culture as well as to the dominant North-German-Protestant-Prussian culture. Later on, in the late 1920s and early 1930's radical-Popular Liberalism in the National Socialist chapters was an act of response to the dominant-official Nazi [End Page 185] ideology and actions in Munich, Berlin and many northern rural areas, and to the Catholic Church and the Weimar centralization. I would describe these responses as a "subculture response". Following the British cultural scholars Sarah Thornton and Dick Hebdige, among the influential theorists of contemporary popular culture, I would describe Popular-Liberalism in Catholic south Germany as a cultural phenomenon which represents a "group of people that have something in common with each other which distinguishes them in a significant way from the members of other social groups...s What is unique [ about them] is...s also that there is something innately oppositional in [their] world,... which [is] perceived to deviate from the normative ideals...s Subcultures, in other words, are condemned to and/or enjoy a consciousness of 'otherness' or differ- ence...s"²³ Apart from their radical anti-clerical activities which were certainly acts of revolt against the Catholic Church and its agencies, the south-German radical Liberals (many of whom were Catholics) were never openly rebellious. They never tried to rebel against the Prussian-Liberal ideas dominant in the 19th century, or against the National-Socialist culture in Munich or in Nürnberg in the early 1930's. They were always trying to express their independence, their otherness as south-German radicals with a long tradition of revolt against political Catholicism, Ultramontanism, against the establishment, against the State, but always within the framework of the hegemonic politics and culture.

To sum up the first section of this article. In the 1920s and maybe before, the political aspirations of social groups can no longer be regarded simply in terms of class or party loyalty but must also be considered in terms of culture. Their orientations bear the traces of past traditions, linguistic conventions and cultural phenomena which became integral parts of the reality. Moreover, individuals entered the public sphere with a variety of social identities. One can speak of the multi-dimensional behaviour of the group or the individual in his/ her political activities.²⁴ That means that as late as the 1920s and the early 1930s, one could be a liberal or radical liberal (in the 19th century sense of the word) and still support National Socialism, and by examining a person's memories, traditions and cultural activities we can perceive his vision. By focussing on the success of Popular Liberalism in rural Catholic South Germany in the period between the 1860s and early 1930s, I wish to explain why and how it happened, and to examine the people who supported this phenomenon and their visions. My thesis is that those who were originally called National-Liberals were later called by contemporary observers "liberal" National-Socialists.²⁵

II

Both in the period of the German Second Reich and in the Weimar period, the radical liberals in Greater Swabia built their success on special traditions and a special infrastructure. Side by side with the accepted image of South Germany as an Ultramontane domain where liberalism (mainly as political force—The National Liberal Party) failed after the 1870s,²⁶ we must consider the case of Greater Swabia, which constituted a definite radical-liberal subculture with agents who carried the popular-liberal culture beyond the end of the 19th century. [End Page 186]

I would like to dwell briefly on the long-term reasons for the strong support for the radical liberals in Greater Swabia. Greater Swabia was an unusual area in South Germany. It did not form part of the political landscape (politische Landschaft) of the states of Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden in the first half of the 19th century.²⁷ Most of the towns and villages in Greater Swabia had a tradition of self-administration (Selbstverwaltung) which was contrary to the political culture of some of the areas to the north of Greater Swabia which from the 17th century were under a centralized rule, whether a regional ruler or the Habsburg emperor. During the process of state-building at the beginning of the 19th century, Greater Swabia developed hostile feelings towards the new post-Napoleonic central authorities. Until the 1820s, the areas of lake Constance, Hohenzollern and South Baden formed part of the archbishopric of Constance, known for its tolerant liberal attitude which both religiously and politically was in opposition to the archbishopric of Strassbourg and from the 1820s to the archbishopric of Freiburg and the Baden central government in Karlsruhe. Even before the year 1848 and especially in that year, the area was a focus of social and political protest against the Baden government.²⁸ In Prussian Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, there was resentment against the Prussian government from 1850 onwards, when the area was annexed to Prussia.

In the 1860s, the cultural strategies were forged which typified the radical-liberal subculture in the area until the eve of the First World War: i.e., a fierce struggle against Ultramontanism plus opposition, which sometimes took the form of physical protest, to any form of central government organization.²⁹ This opposition was accompanied by the development of organizational, cultural and linguistic tools of expression and the formation of social groups which stressed a tradition of freedom, anti-élitism and an awareness of the special quality of the locality and region (Heimatgefühl): e. g., The National Liberal Party, the local liberal newspapers, the bourgeois cultural Voluntary Associations (Vereine) which cultivated sport, music, culture and local folklore, and the local schools which even after the 1860s were under the control of the liberals. Finally the local bourgeoisie—many of them anticlerical in their religious behaviour—con- centrated around the Old Catholic Church in towns like Kempten, Lindenberg, Lindau, Constance, Messkirch and Donauschingen. This subculture was based on a partial opposition, or rather reaction, to the two hegemonic cultures, or—it would be more accurate to say—a reaction to the image of the two hegemonic cultures. One was the hegemonic political culture which originated north of the River Main, which stood for a Prussian-German nationhood, bureaucracy, a strong state, militarism and Protestantism, and which was to be found both in Berlin and in the regional governmental-Protestant centres of South Germany: Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and Frankfurt. The other was the culture associated with the Catholic-ultramontane hegemony in South Germany and its religious centres in Freiburg, Augsburg and Munich. The response and partial opposition to these two cultures created a radical-liberal subculture characterized by protest and reaction. Although in certain periods in the second half of the 19th century and even in the Weimar period, the liberal Prussians and even Bismarck served as temporary models for many of the cultural élites in the area, especially in Hohenzollern,³⁰ the republican traditions of the early modern period, the memory of the frequent rebellions against the central government in the 17th [End Page 187] and 18th centuries and the strong hatred for the Catholic Church, especially in its Ultramontane form, fuelled radical-liberal activity during most of the period until the First World War and also afterwards.

After 1848, in the second half of the 19th century, social protest, sometimes of a violent nature, was directed against the representatives of the state who visited the area, especially if it was for the purpose of supervising finances or imposing legislation. But most of the physical and verbal violence was directed against the Ultramontane Catholic Church. In addition to the traditional rebelliousness of the lower classes, generally caused by disputes about common land (Allmende) or forestry, or by poverty, poor conditions of life or hostility to the local priest,³¹ the radical-liberal protest and violence could often be traced to liberal clubs concerned with culture and sport together with the dissemination of the local culture and folklore. As well as engaging in protest, popular liberalism in South Germany stressed popular-liberal values such as science and progress, imperialism and free trade (this last point became particularly topical in the 1860s and 1870s and again at the beginning of the 20th century).

In addition, a great deal was said about a constitution being the basis of all governmental actions and about the importance of the concept of freedom and the liberty of the individual. This was not the accepted model of the German idea of freedom, in which Obrigkeit (the authority of the state) determined the degree and limits of freedom. But here it was a freedom determined by a local authority, voluntary bodies, and which existed in a narrower framework—whether it was the Heimat, the village, the place of residence or the "community" (Gemeinschaft)—to which all who shared the same belief in a vision of freedom deeply rooted in the local culture belonged. The idea of self-administration as a protection for the freedom of the individual and the community against the encroachments of the state and the central authority was extremely popular and continued to be influential in the Weimar period.³² Prominent figures like Otto Merkt, the mayor of Kempten, who developed the idea of Greater Swabian self-administration as a protection for the Swabian tradition of freedom from Prussian hegemony and later the Weimar centralization policy, represent this contin- uity. Merkt was a son of an Old Catholic family in the small town of Kempten in southern Swabia. He was a liberal activist before the war both in Kempten and in Munich, then a member of the radical organization the Young Liberals and a member of the Nazi Party already at the beginning of the 1930s. Merkt strongly supported the Heimatbewegung movements in Bavarian Swabia, and exerted his influence as the mayor of the second-largest town in Bavarian Swabia on behalf of the aspirations of his friends in Greater Swabia.³³ Merkt and the radical-liberals in Greater Swabia, people like Anton Fehr, Jakob Herz, Anton Mayer or Jacob Vögel, advocated constitutional and social reforms as the way to achieve the desired freedom within the framework of the communuity and within the framework of legality.³⁴

In view of these traditions and the response of the radical-liberal subculture to the Ultramontane threat and to Prussian hegemony, it is hardly surprising that the Catholic political press, the journals of the National Liberal party and other political observers described the liberals in a number of regions of South Germany as radical and rebellious.³⁵ Catholic towns like Messkirch, Sigmaringen, [End Page 188] Bonndorf and Immenstadt had the reputation of being places where liberalism was manifested at its fullest.³⁶

The economic infrastructure provided a strong support for economic liberalism which in turn provided a basis for popular liberalism. The economic structure of Greater Swabia was unique in South Germany. In addition to many backward farms and villages, there were also large, prosperous farms covering more than twenty acres. In southern Swabia there were farmers of substance who generally engaged in dairy farming, but there was little agriculture based on wheat and grain in the region, which made a policy of economic protectionism less attractive. In addition to this agriculture, there were rural industries geared to export in South Baden and Hohenzollern like precision mechanics, woodworking and manufacture of clocks and watches. As well as the dairy farming in South Baden, there were regions devoted to cereals and cattle. In Allgäu and Hochschwarzwald there were large, isolated farms which were subject to the Inheritance Law (Geschlossene Hofgüterrecht),³⁷ whereby holdings could not be divided.

As a result of all this, an economy with agrarian-capitalist characteristics had developed in the area.³⁸ A large and visible segment of Catholic bourgeoisie, wealthy farmers, prosperous artisans and owners of workshops had existed in the region since the 18th century.³⁹ Representatives or supporters of the liberals, most of whom were anticlerical Catholics, directed the main economic institutions of the region: agricultural institutions like the Agricultural Association, the Co-operative and Further-Education Association and the Cattle Insurance Association.

In the areas of South Baden, liberals headed the Savings Bank (Sparkasse) and strongly supported economic liberalism.⁴⁰ Liberals native to the region like P. Trischeller and R. Gerwig were among the initiators of the South Baden railway to Constance. Both of them represented the liberal-democratic wing of the National Liberal Party in Baden. So did Ernst Friedrich Kraft of St. Blasien, who ran the local Spinnerei (spinning-mill) and was a partner in the local branch of the Savings Bank together with another liberal, Otto Sach, who also represented the Baden government in the province. While the small farmers, artisans and agricultural workers depended on these financial institutions because of their debts, they, together with the local bourgeoisie, expressed much admiration and support for the people who headed them, and their economic and political contribution to the region was remembered for many years after their deaths.⁴¹

Many of the more well-to-do inhabitants of the area, including farmers, factory-owners and prosperous artisans, favoured free trade (Freihandel). In the period between the late 1870s and the 1890s, when many peasants, landed aristocracy, artisans and industrialists, often members of the National-Liberal Party elsewhere, favoured protectionism, support for a moderate free-trade economy (mässige Freihandel) was current among the bourgeoisie of the villagers and small towns of Greater Swabia.⁴²

Most of the region was a centre of tourism. From the mid 19th century, the Allgäu, the Black-Forest and the Lake Constance region were popular areas for vacations and convalescence. This contributed to the special radical-liberal character of the region both by exposing it to the ideas of people from outside Germany (especially English, Swiss and Dutch, who constituted most of the [End Page 189] tourists in the area) and by promoting economic liberalism as beneficial to the development and prosperity of the region. The character of Greater Swabia as a tourist centre contributed to the secular, anticlerical tendencies which were so prevalent there, so that it was generally the Catholic priests who opposed the penetration of the tourist culture into the towns and villages of the area, thereby arousing the anger of the local bourgeoisie.⁴³

Another South German socioeconomic peculiarity was that in most regions of Greater Swabia, the artisans remained faithful to radical liberalism many years after the 1870s, the period which is usually defined in terms of a break took place between the liberals and the artisans in Germany. The radical legacy of the artisans already from the 18th century created a fixed basis of support for radical-liberal forces, which was a phenomenon for which it is hard to find a parallel in other areas of Germany.⁴⁴ Later on, this group was the main supporter of National-Socialism.

This unique infrastructure relied on four major cultural institutions which were of great assistance to the liberal cultural élites of the region. The first was the National-Liberal party, which enjoyed a position of unique strength. During the Kaiserreich, an electoral survey of Greater Swabia showed a definite, unusual attraction towards liberal parties and movements. It is appropriate to characterize the party as a People's Party (Volkspartei) which united citizens of all regions, beliefs and social background.⁴⁵ The second has already been mentioned, and that was the Old Catholic Church, which until the end of the 19th century provided the moral support for popular liberalism. The third was the local pro-liberal (and in early 1930s, pro Nazi) press, which played a key role in the formation of local and radical-national sentiment. The fourth institution which helped to preserve the bourgeois-national anticlerical hegemony in the region and disseminate radical ideas involved the bourgeois voluntary associations and clubs. From the 1860s onwards, voluntary associations like the Gymnastics Association, the Veterans Association, the Sharpshooters Association, the Choral Association, the Museum and Theater Association, or the Historical Association and many others disseminated the idea of radical-liberal freedom in their meetings and events. In the Weimar period, many of them turned towards the nationalist-folkish ideology, stressing the values of direct democracy without the intervention of parties, and the freedom of the individual within a "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft).⁴⁶

Thus, the main pillars of Popular Liberalism in Greater Swabia were: local traditions and memories, concentrated mainly around self-administration, freedom, independence, and disestablishmentarianism; the local bourgeoisie and anti-clerical activists; the economic infrastructure which permitted capitalist activity and encouraged enterprise and free trade; the National Liberal Party chapters; the radical press; and finally the bourgeois associations.

III

Between the 1860s—the period of the birth of popular liberalism in the region—and the beginning of the 1930s, with the ascendancy of dogmatic national-socialism, five stages in the development of the radical-popular liberal subculture in South Germany may be discerned. [End Page 190]

1. The end of the 1860s and the beginning of the 1870s. This was the period when the radical-liberal subculture came into being. Its guiding principles were opposition to Ultramontane tendencies in the Catholic Church, the call for a free-trade economy and the struggle for a united Germany in which the southern regions would find their independent position. The struggle against the Ultramontanes was the most prominent factor at that period, but there were also other matters which preoccupied the south German liberals, like the demand for far-reaching reforms in schools and in the administrative bureaucracy, together with a demand for equal opportunities for every man, whatever his status or origin, to realize his abilities in the economy and in social life. This demand was not only part of local tradition and the heritage of 1848 but was also influenced by the radical struggle around the Second Reform Act in England in 1866-67,⁴⁷ and it was combined in this period with a struggle for a liberal economy and with opposition to the Prussian aristocracy and bureaucracy and also, to a lesser degree, to those of Bavaria and Baden.⁴⁸

For the radical liberals in Greater Swabia—people like Paul Trischeller (Lenzkirch), Max Stromeyer (Constance), Karl Friedrich Kiefer (Lörrach), Julius Röck (Memmingen), Marquand Barth (Kaufbeurer), B. Huttler (Füssen), Fridolin Eisele (Sigmaringen) and Karl Pfisterer (Kempten)—a German Reich under the hegemony of the Prussian Emperor was the theoretical model they aspired to, but a Germany in which a constitution would fix the role of the government and the various states and where South Germany would have a special status. Its connection to the areas to the north of the River Main would be chiefly economic: the inhabitants would benefit from Prussian economic progress but could preserve the local democratic governmental apparatus. They would preserve their independence as Catholics, although not of the Ultramontane kind, and would nurture their local cultural traditions.⁴⁹

The Old Catholic Church played a prominent role in Greater Swabia. It attracted to its ranks many local bourgeois. It sought to represent a subculture in which every individual was free to decide about his faith. From this religious-ideological milieu the message also went out to the political and economic spheres, and it was supported by many Catholic liberals who were not members of the Old Catholic Church. This was the republican-democratic model of a free society, in the tradition of the struggle of Jan Hus against the Church in the days of the Council of Constance in the years 1414-1415, and the time of the tolerant Archbishop Wessenberg of Constance in the first decades of the 19th century. In the view of the Old Catholics, a constitution should play a central role in the new German Reich. The king or emperor might serve, but the people alone had the right to decide on their fate. The individual, with the resources at his disposal, could follow any profession he wished, in any place he wanted, and he also had the right to hold his own religious beliefs, which was not a matter to be determined by the state. It is hardly surprising if these ideas aroused the anger of the clerical Catholics, the local aristocracy and the conservative liberals.⁵⁰

All these aspirations found expression in the struggle against the Ultramontane Catholic Church (the Kulturkampf), which was basically a struggle for the future character of Germany.⁵¹ Only twenty years had passed from the glorious year 1848-1849, which in Greater Swabia was a revolutionary year in which republican-democratic ideas played a central role. Already in the elections to [End Page 191] the Customs Parliament (Zollparlament Wahlen), and all the more at the beginning of the 1870s, the radical liberals put forward a programme which was an almost exact copy of that of 1848: the priests, the senior officials, the Junkers and the local aristocracy were to give way to the educated and democratic bourgeoisie and the productive class of artisans and skilled workers.⁵² The new society which emerged would be more egalitarian, and every citizen would be free to hold whatever religious beliefs he wished. As a result of the economic freedom, there would be an economic prosperity which would not only benefit the middle classes but also the workers.⁵³ The Kulturkampf was a pretext for obtaining a new sociopolitical arrangement⁵⁴ exactly as the question of slavery and the civil war in the United States a few years before, or the struggle over the Second Reform Act in England in the same years had been a pretext for creating a new society.

The question of the freedom of the individual and the necessity of preventing the interference of the establishment, the élites and the state in his affairs also preoccupied the radical liberals of the region in the first decade of the Second German Reich. Thus, for instance, the local authorities' decision that at a certain hour in the evening (Polizeistunde) strong drinks would not be sold in the local tavern was seen by the many liberals as an example of state interference in the affairs of the individual. The conscription of the sons of peasants into the army in harvest-time in summer was also considered an intrusion into the freedom of the people. Yet the German and especially the Prussian army was highly regarded by many inhabitants of the region, including liberals, though this admiration stopped at the entrance to the homes or farms of the farmers, who refused to send their sons to the army at harvest time.⁵⁵

2. The 1890s and the first decade of the 20th century. In the final years of the 19th century the radical-liberal subculture entered a new phase. The reasons for this were the increasing conservatism of the National Liberal Party in the regions northern of the river of Main, the participation of a younger generation in politics on a local level, and social and religious changes caused by economic conditions in Germany (which was emerging from a period of economic depression), the modern consumer culture and growing nationalization of the masses. In Swabia and Bavaria the liberals were weakened and the hegemony passed to their temporary successors, the Bavarian Peasants' Association (Bayerische Bauernbund), which operated chiefly in Lower Bavaria but also had influence in a few regions of Swabia. Although the Bavarian Peasants' Association (in Swabia sometimes called the Swabian Peasants' Association) did not have equal success in all areas, and the organization contained a variety of elements—democratic, liberal, nationalist, conservative—it often engaged in a struggle against the Obrigkeit, the government representatives and the Catholic Church which resembled the radical-liberal activities of the 1860s and 1870s.⁵⁶ In Swabia many members of the Peasants' Association were farmers and artisans, former activists of the National Liberal Party who were disappointed in the party's swing in an urban-national-conservative direction from the end of the 1870s. Some of them left the liberal chapters and established liberal-democratic societies before joining the Peasants' Association.⁵⁷ The radicalism of the Swabian liberal farmers in their former party, the National Liberals, was now expressed in the Swabian Peasants' Association, especially in the Mindelheim-Günzburg region. In this region, the Peasants' War of 1525 was [End Page 192] seen as the model for a struggle for freedom which still had to be waged at the beginning of the 20th century. The "rebellious peasants" of that period devoted their efforts to the battle against clericalism, opposition to the aristocracy, bureaucracy and urbanization, and championship of the needs and rights of the individual, especially the small farmer and the agricultural labourer.⁵⁸

In other areas of Greater Swabia, there was a significant weakening in the electoral power of the liberals. Although relative to their electoral strength north of the River Main, the liberals in southern Swabia (Allgäu), Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and South Baden still provided a considerable counterweight to the Zentrum, they were very much weakened in comparison to their achievements in the 1870s. This electoral weakening reflected a decline in the drawing-power of the liberals due to the arrival of a new generation of voters, a weakening of the Old Catholic Church, and—perhaps most important of all—the movement of the liberals in a more conservative direction.⁵⁹ But it was precisely the electoral weakening of the liberals in South Baden and Hohenzollern which gave rise to extreme and sometimes violent manifestations against Catholic priests, government officials and even the Kaiser.⁶⁰ In addition to the many anticlerical liberal activists (many of them schoolteachers—Landlehrer) working against the priests, one finds radicalism in the activities of the bourgeois Vereine in southern Swabia and especially in South Baden and the Lake Constance area. The members of the bourgeois Vereine, who, as we said, were mostly supporters of the National Liberal Party, reacted—as a compensation for the weakening of their party—by a lively activism aimed at re-enlisting support for the local liberals. This was expressed in a number of ways. In the Illertissen region in southern Swabia the Association for Educating the People in Election Principles (Verein zur Erziehung volkstümlicher Wahlen), was set up with the purpose of explaining to the peasants their rights at the time of elections. Many of the activities of the Vereine in the Constance area (Messkirch-überlingen) were accompanied by rhetoric and sometimes violent action against clerics, anti-socialist rhetoric, and agitation against the local establishment. Certain Vereine even sought to woo the lower classes with a series of actions and publications stressing the equality and brotherhood of all Germans. A number of Vereine were also ready for women to appear in them. In addition to supporting German nationhood, the Bismarckian heritage and an anti-socialist policy, the Vereine stressed the local culture and the necessity of finding a place for it within the German Reich. Once again, one finds here the combination of a call for liberty and equality, activism against the local establishment, strong anticlericalism, nationalism, imperialism and a view of the German Reich as a suitable framework for local cultures.⁶¹

Verbal and physical violence was expressed at that period by groups other than the Vereine against the opponents of liberalism, which included the few inhabitants of the area who favoured the conservatives, the antisemites, the aristocracy, Catholic priests and socialists.⁶² It was not only the Vereine which attacked the priests but also supporters of the liberals, representatives of the local authorities in the area (Oberamtmann), schoolteachers, artisans and the owners of small local factories who were often guilty of attacking, insulting and denigrating anyone who disagreed with them.⁶³ [End Page 193]

It seems that at the end of the 19th century, a period regarded as both a low-point in the history of German liberalism and as a period in which North German liberalism was attempting to decide on the path to take in the future,⁶⁴ in Greater Swabia as well as other regions a special German model of a radical democratic movement came into being. Much has been written about the rise of the democratic-antisemitic movements in Hessen and Saxony,⁶⁵ plus the newly-established Catholic mass-organizations and the extension of the scope of socialist activities throughout Germany. The expression "politics in a new key" (Carl Schorske) is a good description of these developments. In South Germany, together with the struggle against the priesthood, the aristocracy and officialdom, there now came into existence for the first time since the 1860s a form of radical liberalism combining national-liberal imperialist patriotism with economic policies based on a compromise between tariff policies (Schutzzölle) and a free market (Absatz) for industrial products.⁶⁶ Other elements of this model were a stress on individualism, an opposition to the traditional élites, a demand for freedom for workers and peasants under a constitution which would assure the intervention and assistance of the state in social legislation, and of course the traditional anticlericalism. The heritage of the republican-democratic period 1848-49 continued to be felt. Throughout the elections of 1893, and, even more, 1898—in which the liberals throughout Germany were supposed to (but did not) celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the revolutionary year 1848⁶⁷ —the radical liberals of Greater Swabia continually praised the heritage of 1848, especially the revolt of the peasants and artisans in that revolutionary year against the priests and the local aristocracy. Thus, the Schwarzwalder Zeitung claimed in 1893: "Vote on Thursday for a man who has a real belief in religion and who supports our government, a man that in 1848 really suffered,"⁶⁸ and on the 900th anniversary of the founding of the town of Villingen in 1899, the republican Swabian heritage was celebrated there with an emphasis on the anti-democratic and coercive character of the Prussian north.⁶⁹

Socialism and the question of the workers was also a central concern of the liberal radicals. There were many small towns in the area in which there were concentrations of workers employed in the clock and watchmaking industry, precision mechanics and a number of steel and ironworks, and also agricultural labourers. The Social-democratic Party (SPD) was weak in all areas of South Germany until the first decade of the twentieth century,⁷⁰ and thus the liberal radicals and the National Liberal Party did not see the SPD as hostile to the people, there were no anti-socialist actions and rhetoric in the activities of the liberal radicals, and they supported collaboration with the few branches of the SPD in the area. All the liberal-radical movements and organizations adopted a positive position with regard to social questions and showed themselves strongly in favour of advanced social legislation. The liberals enjoyed the support of the majority of the workers and artisans in the region, and only just before the war did these social groups begin in a number of small industrial towns in Greater Swabia to abandon the various liberal groups and support the SPD. The Liberals viewed this with concern, but here too they decided not to oppose the socialists but to increase their collaboration with them, to intensify their social activities among the lower strata of society and show them that the local liberals could look after their interests better than the socialists.⁷¹ [End Page 194]

In the years before the war the bourgoisie in many villages and small towns in Greater Swabia began to initiate evenings of cultural activities on behalf of and together with the workers of the area, and to express concern for the rights of the workers in the factories and places of work belonging to the local notables, most of whom were members of liberal societies. Thus, for instance, Junghaus, the owner of a factory in Constance, said that he intended to reduce his workers' hours of work and in this way to show his concern for their rights in contrast to the humiliating attitude of the National Liberals to the miners in Prussia. In the election campaigns for local government and the Reichstag, the Liberal candidates were careful to stress that they had nothing against socialism and that the SPD was doing good work in the Reichstag in social matters, but that this party had no understanding or experience in administration, in implementing social reforms and, most important of all, in the struggle against the greatest enemy of the workers in the region—the Ultramontane Church which threatened to turn the workers of the area into slaves. And thus only the Liberals could struggle effectively for the rights of the workers and succeed.⁷²

3. The years before the First World War. Another and very significant change in the radical-liberal subculture took place on the eve of the First World War. In this period, there was a strengthening of the electoral base of liberalism which had been weakened (especially in Greater Swabia for the reason we have mentioned) after the Kulturkampf, and popular liberalism acquired new characteristics. This was part of a general process of a strengthening of German liberalism. The decade before the First World War was marked throughout Germany by a consolidation of the National Liberal Party and the leftist liberal parties.⁷³ South Germany was no exception, apart from the fact that there a unique form of liberalism, Popular Liberalism, as part of the process.

There were some outstanding features of the radical-liberal subculture in Greater Swabia. The first was the establishment of the Young Liberal Associations with a radical character.⁷⁴ Another outstanding feature of Popular Liberalism in South German at that period was the establishment (or sometimes re-establishment) of liberal Vereine representing the National Liberal Party and/or the leftist liberals (not connected to the Young Liberals). From the beginning of the century, many of them drew up new statutes in which the words "freedom" and "democracy" featured prominently, as a few examples from southern Swabia demonstrate: the liberal Verein in Sonthofen reformulated its principles in 1911, and called for "the encouragement of free thought and democratic opinion in the Fatherland regions." In the village of Altusried, the liberal Verein declared that its aim was to encourage liberal as well as social activities. In the village of Bayersreid, it said that its aim was to educate the public to "popular-free national principles" (volkstümlich-freiheitlicher, nationaler Grundsätze).⁷⁵

In accordance with the liberals' desire to gain the support of as many groups as possible, peasants and bourgeois came together in Swabia within the framework of the local liberal Verein (which was in rivalry with the Swabian peasant organisations) in order to give a stronger representation to their social and economic demands, especially those of the peasants.⁷⁶ Throughout South Germany, there was a growing demand for greater democracy in Prussia, with an emphasis on the contrast between the authoritarian political conditions north of the River Main and the more democratic ones to the south of the river. Here the Young [End Page 195] Liberals, in sharp contrast to the interests of the "Young Liberals" in Prussia, collaborated with the opponents of Prussia in the south in a struggle against the Prussian electoral system in which the leftist-liberal and national-liberal movements, political Catholic groups and of course the socialists all took part.

Before the war, South German popular liberalism had a broader base than in the previous decades. It collaborated on an ad hoc basis with groups with which it would not have dreamt of co-operating a few years earlier. Its message consisted of the demand for political reform in Prussia, greater democracy and national unity, plus the traditional South German liberal principles of opposition to "reactionary forces," the Church and the aristocracy, and the encouragement of individualism and free trade.⁷⁷ Support for colonialism, for building up the navy and a more powerful Germany and limited support for the army and the Kaiser continued to be shared by leftist and national-liberal groups in both north and south Germany.

On the eve of the First World War, there were, in fact, a number of elements in South German popular liberalism which emphasized its radical nature. One was an intensification of the struggle against the Catholic Church, another was support for an alliance with the socialists and opposition to an alliance with the leftist liberals and a third was the intensified character of the language and expressions which the radical liberals used.

The language used by the radical liberals on the eve of the First World War deserves particular attention, since later, part of it was discernable in the radical-liberals' post-war subculture. In Greater Swabia, the liberals reminded the farmers that it was they who had initiated and realized the concept of freedom. In a series of writings entitled Liberalism and peasant order (Liberalismus und Bauernstand), the liberals pointed out to the farmers that from 1830 onwards, the liberals had done more than anyone else to liberate them, and that because of the anti-protectionism (Zollfreiheit) and labour freedom (Gewerbefreiheit) championed by the liberals, their conditions of life and the fodder for their livestock had improved.⁷⁸ In 1912 there were elections shortly before the traditional festivities of the south German carnival (Fasching), and the Fool Associations (Narrenvereine) and the Carnival Associations (Faschingvereine—clubs which were closely connected with the liberals) exploited the election campaign in order to advertise their appearances in the Fasching, and simultaneously to disseminate strong anticlerical and pro-liberal propaganda. In South Baden, the Echo vom Wald claimed before the festivities that in Baden the word "conservative" meant "anrüchig" (having a bad reputation), and that radical liberalism was strongly opposed to clerical conservatism and to powerful figures of the the aristocracy and bourgeoisie.⁷⁹

The liberal delegate to the Reichstag, Friedrich Faller, claimed in an article in the newspaper Donaueschinger Tagblatt that the meaning of the word "liberalism" was freedom for all and in every sphere: political, artistic, educational and in the realm of ideas. In his article, Faller described the aims of liberalism in the region: freedom for all, liberation from servitude to plutocrats and the aristocracy, universal suffrage and a struggle against the anti-democratic Prussian electoral system.⁸⁰ In a text next to the article, Faller was described as "the people's representative" (Volksvertreter), a model family-man and a devout Catholic with [End Page 196] liberal-democratic principles and a deep local Baden consciousness—something which endeared him to the inhabitants of the region. In southern Swabia, the liberal delegate Josef Wagner likewise declared in a newspaper article that the idea of freedom included loyalty to Germany, loyalty to Bavaria and devotion to the general interest, and that anyone who voted for the liberals received a "package deal" under the banner of freedom.⁸¹ He too was described as a Volksvertreter, in contrast to Catholic priests or members of the unions who represented interest-groups in the population. The Catholic archivist Dirr concluded in a meeting of the Young Liberals in Augsburg that only a "demokratische Führer" could direct such policies within the liberal movement.⁸²

The rhetoric we have illustrated here was usually directed against the priesthood and the Zentrum. It was accompanied by verbal and physical violence. The violent language which had been so noticeable from the time of the Kulturkampf now re-emerged stronger than ever. It was sometimes used by liberal personalities who were revealed as being violent in their private lives and public activities as well.⁸³ Expressions like the description of the struggle against the Zentrum as a Vernichtung (extermination) and the election as a Krieg (war), a Schlacht (battle) or a Krieg Feldzug (military campaign) recurred again and again. The liberals assailed the priests as "spiritual terrorists" (purveyors of geistlichen Terrorismus) or "robbers." The liberal activists themselves were described as "liberal troops" (Liberalen Truppen) engaged in a "crusade" against the Church.⁸⁴ In southern Swabia, the liberals were described as warriors marching forth to battle (needless to say, against the priesthood) "with a calm expression, cold blood and confident steps."⁸⁵ This language was apparently not unique to South German liberalism: in Kassel (Hessen), the representative of the Young Liberals in 1907 expressed himself as follows: "For us National liberals there is a clear duty: struggle against the Zentrum and the Antisemites until their elimination."⁸⁶

This language was also not unique to that particular period. Already in the 1860s and the 1870s the liberals had used it in connection with election campaigns and the struggle against the Zentrum (as the word Kulturkampf had signaled). At that time, it reflected the process of national revival and the wars of unification in which military language and a war atmosphere played a prominent role in daily life.⁸⁷ On the eve of the First World War, these terms survived as forms of political expression, especially in South Germany where this unique radical-liberal language represented a subculture which saw its task as "preventing the whole of South Germany from falling into the hands of the Ultramontanes."⁸⁸

Thus, the continued frequent usage of expressions like "Freedom," "Democracy," "Liberation from Slavery," "Struggle","War", "Constitution," "Gemeinschaft," "Vaterland," "Heimat," alongside expressions of opposition to the state, the establishment, the bureaucracy and the aristocracy, as well as the verbal violence we have described (and of which the citation at the beginning of the article is an example) show remarkable continuity, at least in the culture and political language of Greater Swabia, despite the difference of atmosphere between the 1860s and the decade preceding the First World War. This continuity undoubtedly illustrates the special character of South Germany: the combination of aggressiveness with liberal-democratic-republican principles gave a unique [End Page 197] colouring to South German liberalism on the eve of the First World War, something which perhaps facilitated its adaptation to the protest movements after the war and finally to National-Socialism.

IV. The First World War and the First Decade of the Weimar Republic. Discontinity and Currents of Continuity

The deep discontinuity between the pre-war and the post-war periods caused by the First World War and the post-war German crisis and inflation is well documented. But, despite these upheavals, there are some cases where a continuity is also well documented.⁸⁹ Here I would like to use the experience of ordinary people at the local level in order to press an argument about certain currents of continuity in the German political culture, and as an illustration of this, I claim that the ideologies of Popular Liberalism and National Socialism cannot be understood without a knowledge of the linguistic and historical traditions they represent. To paraphrase Gareth Stedman Jones's argument, I believe that an analysis of some elements of the National Socialist activities and ideology in south Germany during the late 1920s and early 1930s must start with what radical Liberals actually said and wrote and the way they were acted and organized years before.⁹⁰ It cannot simply be reduced to the Sonderweg argument, or to traditions of eliminatory ideology (the Goldhagen thesis) which prevailed among the German people.

There is no doubt that the Greater Swabia suffered like all regions in Germany from the war, but in spite of the intervening upheavals, on the whole, continuity prevailed over change. Truly, the war effort damaged the handful of industries which constituted the economic backbone of Greater Swabia. Most branches of local economy were harnessed to the need of war production and agriculture, the most important source of livehood for local population, had been placed under state control in 1915. By then, the nationalist enthusiasm which had swept parts of the region's population in August 1914 had disappeared without trace. In this regard, the Greater Swabia inhabitants shared the experience of German society at large from 1916. However, their plight was further exacerbated by the traditional peripheral economic and social position of the region which rendered them more vulnerable to administrative decrees and intervention.

In consequence, after two years expressions of opposition to the state, the establishment, the bureaucracy and the aristocracy, as well as verbal anti-Catholic violence and a bürgeoning anti-Prussianism on the part of local radical liberals, had started to re-appear in Greater Swabia.⁹¹ Anti-clerical activity which also embodied anti-French sentiments was deeply felt in many parts of Greater Swabia. In some villages army inspectors and state bureaucrats were insulted as French spies and the German army was blamed as representing mainly Prussian war aims.⁹²

The revolutions of 1918-1919 in all parts of Germany, including Greater Swabia, affected the radical-liberal subculture. The events of 1918 made themselves felt differently in several parts of the region.⁹³ In southern Baden and Württemberg councils of peasants and workers were established. They confined themselves to purely economic matters: food supplies and combating hunger. In most places it was liberal associations and notables and SPD representatives [End Page 198] who took the initiative to control local councils.⁹⁴ This Lib-Lab corporation turned into a conflict after a few months, which led to a feeling of resentment against local workers and socialists. In Bavarian Swabia however the leftist and rightist revolutions in Munich and Bavaria at the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919 were effective in the process of radicalization of local society. The Freikorps which in 1919 fought the communists in southern Swabia led to fear of the communists as well as the old fears about the Catholic Church. Though the revolution of 1918 in Greater Swabia was experienced differently, the new hatred and fears of the socialism and particularly communism were something new to the political culture of the region.

Currents of continuity in radical-liberalism were noticeable and I will come to these later. But together with them, some components of the radical liberal subculture began to disintegrate. Popular liberalism split into a number of different liberal and agrarian groups which from the beginning of the 1920s fought against each other as well as engaging in the traditional struggle against the state and the Catholic Church. In addition to this organizational fragmentation, new radical elements—anti-Marxism and an intensified antisocialism (unfamiliar elements to the region's political culture)—contributed to a change in the modes of action of South German popular liberalism and of course (despite continuity in many spheres) to changes in the radical-liberal rhetoric of the liberal movements which existed in Greater Swabia before the war.

But before describing these changes, one must note the elements of continuity. The traditional liberal parties, under new names, continued to operate and to win considerable sympathy after 1918 in the majority of towns and villages in which they had been strong previous to the war. In southern Swabia, chapters of the National Liberal Party continued to operate under the name Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP)—Nationalliberalen at least until 1928, and in a large number of important towns and villages like Lindenberg, Walterhofen, Immenstadt and Oberstdorf they won electoral success until 1920.⁹⁵ In Central Swabia, the liberals, and especially the German Democratic Party (the DDP), succeeded in putting forward a radical-liberal platform focusing on fear of communism and opposition to state intervention in the economic sphere. The use of these motifs against the background of the leftist and rightist revolutions in Munich and Bavaria at the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919 was effective with the dairy-farmers and the representatives of the light industries in the area until at least 1920.⁹⁶ From the mid 1920s,there was an increasing collaboration between the liberals and the branches of the Bavarian Peasant Association (the Bayrische Bauernbund, after 1919 called the Bauern-und-Mittelstand Partei) in the whole of Bavaria and in southern Swabia.⁹⁷ In this co-operation, the peasants' movements set the tone. In southern Baden, an independent peasants' movement was established for the first time: The Baden Agrarian Association (Der Badische Landbund). It grew out of the post-war peasants' councils (Bauernräte), and had many radical-liberal members.⁹⁸ But here too one finds continuity: in the Constance region, the new liberal parties founded associations in accordance with the traditions that existed before the First World War. In the elections to the National Assembly and the Reichstag in 1919 and in 1920, the liberals won wide support in their traditional strongholds: Constance, Messkirch, Waldshut, St. Blasien, Lenskirch, Bonndorf and many other towns and villages. [End Page 199]

Old symbols made a reappearance in the region: the republican colours, the colours of the 1848 revolution, appeared on the standards of the Freikorps which in 1919 fought the communists in southern Swabia.⁹⁹ In the atmosphere of disintegration which prevailed in the entire Reich and especially in Bavaria after 1918, plans for an administrative separation of Greater Swabia from Bavaria and the granting of self-rule to the villages of the region again seemed feasible. Otto Merkt, a member of the Young Liberals before the war and the mayor of Kempten, became president of the Provincial Assembly of Swabia (Kreistag von Schwaben und Neubürg) which aimed to preserve the independence and special character of Swabian culture. Although the centre of the society's activities was Bavarian Swabia, its intention was to spread the message of Swabian uniqueness and of the necessity of self-rule to all regions of Greater Swabia. In nearby Hohenzollern, the liberal Friedrich Wallishauser declared in 1918: "With the end of the Hohenzollern rule in Prussia... We, the people of Hohenzollern must find, with the construction of the new Reich, our connection to the south German condition, to our Swabian folklore. Thus, we do not belong to the North, but to South Germany".¹⁰⁰

The traditional attitudes of desire for freedom and opposition to the aristocracy were also strongly expressed in the referendum on the expropriation of the property of princes (Volksbegehren und Volksentschied "enteignung der Fürstenmörgen") which took place in 1926. In many towns and villages of South Baden where radical-liberal elements had been strong before the war, there was great support, far beyond the state average (39.7%) or the national average (37.9%) for the expropriation of the princes' property. Thus, in the areas of Waldshut, Stockach and Engen, almost half the inhabitants took part in the referendum (as against the national average of 37%) and nearly half of them expressed support for expropriating the princes' property.¹⁰¹

In addition to this anti-establishment tendency, there was a continuity of support for a liberal economy among liberal groups and peasants' organizations. Slogans in favour of a free liberal economy and a respect for private property were popular, especially in the period of economic control (Zwangswirtschaft) at the beginning of the 1920s.¹⁰² . In a memorandum written by the Church authorities (Ordenariat) in Freiburg on the process of secularization and the purchase of land by Protestants in the Constance region, the liberal socioeconomic orientation of the large-scale farmers and the artisans in the towns of the region was mentioned. Here too, said the writers of the memorandum, one sees a continuity in liberal activity from the years before the war.¹⁰³

Hostility to to the Catholic Church and to political Catholicism remained one of the cornerstones of the organizational activities of the farmers, and especially of the Badische Landbund, after the war as well. The call for freedom, for the right of the farmer and the artisan to live as they pleased and to practice religion as they wanted, and a rejection of the dictates of the priests in the schools, betray a continuity in popular liberalism from the period of the Empire to the time of the Weimar Republic. Attacks on priests were a routine affair in the Baar region in South Baden after 1920,¹⁰⁴ and farmers' tales of their sufferings and their exploitation by the priests from the time of the Peasants' War in the 16th century, including their experiences during the Salpeterer rebellions in the [End Page 200] 18th century, and the traditional descriptions of the oppression of the workers by the monastery of St. Blasien, were recycled after the war and disseminated throughout southern Baden. Local tales (Heimatgeschichte) became a vehicle for peasants' leaders and for local poets (Heimatdichter) like Josef Albicker of the region of Donauechingen, to attack the priests and the Zentrum, as was the case during the Kulturkampf and as would again be the case with the radical-liberals, now in the ranks of the National-Socialists, at the beginning of the 1930s.¹⁰⁵

Currents of continuity are reflected in the post-war careers of radical liberals. Immediately after the war many of them gave their support to the DVP or the DDP, but during the first yeas of the republic they found their way into peasant organizations and parties such as the Badische Landbund, Allguer Bauernverband, or the Bayerische Bauernbund. The Merk, Weishaar and Frank families—all large-scale farmers or prosperous artisans—joined the Badische Bauernbund, and later the Nazi Party. Together with these, local notables such as mayors of towns, heads of villages and many schoolteachers (especially teachers in primary schools—Volksschullehrer) emerged, as in the days of the Empire, as a radical, anticlerical element.¹⁰⁶ They were all disappointed at the collaboration between the old liberal parties and the old-new régime established after the 1920 elections to the Reichstag and mainly composed of representatives of the old Prussian and local élites.

There was also in South Germany a certain continuity in the activities of those cornerstones of German liberalism, the bourgeois Vereine. Despite the crisis which hit many of them during the war and immediately after, from the beginning of the 1920s most of them acted on behalf of the unique Swabian culture in the best pre-war liberal cultural tradition, although now they did not specifically declare their commitment to popular liberalism. Together with these activities, there was a nationalist and anti-socialist extremism in the actions of the Vereine which had not been so noticeable before the war. This extremism was generally accompanied by anticlerical activity under the slogan "Volksstum gegen die Bayerische Volkspartei."¹⁰⁷ In addition to their activities on behalf of the Heimat, the Vereine saw themselves as defenders of the Vaterland against its external enemies—at that time, the socialists and the communists.¹⁰⁸ Prestigious Vereine like the Turnvereine and the Männergesangverein saw themselves as representing the true will of the people divided by opposing party loyalties. Calls for a democracy which would rise above class and political differences appeared increasingly in the pronouncements of the Vereine.¹⁰⁹ Together with the Vereine activity, the aggressive language, the violent rhetoric and the physical violence which had existed before the war, were now exacerbated by the events of the war, the rightist and leftist revolutions experienced in a number of regions of Bavarian Swabia and the economic distress and the larger climate of disorder experienced by the people of the period. For example, there was the (new and frequent) use of the terms "communists" and "bolshevists" to describe government officials visiting the villages of the Baar in southern Baden in order to apply some law or other. The use of the word "extermination" (Vernichtung) which had already occurred before the war, was now more frequent, and was accompanied by an overtone of violence which reflected the violence that existed in reality. In Immenstadt in southern Swabia and Lindau on the shores of Lake Constance, [End Page 201] liberal activists and folkish and right-wing groups (a new phenomenon on the local scene) used violent language and conducted power demonstrations in the streets.¹¹⁰

But the break that took place was as noticeable as the continuity. The clearest sign of the weakening and finally the disintegration of the radical-liberal subculture in Greater Swabia was the collapse of the bourgeois Vereine, especially from the mid 1920s onwards.¹¹¹ Popular liberalism also lost its newspapers. Many newspapers which had supported the liberals before the war, began immediately after the war to support the peasants' organizations, and from 1930 they moved in an increasingly anti-republican and finally National-Socialist direction. Support for anti-Marxist actions and fear of the bolshevist menace became very central to the decisions of liberal voters, supporters and activists. Such behaviour represents maybe more than anything else the rupture with the radical-liberal tradition.

The liberal parties also experienced a profound crisis from the end of the 1920s. It is true that immediately after 1918 the liberal sympathisers, mainly farmers and artisans, supported them in rural communities with a liberal electoral past. But from 1921, many of them directed their support to the local peasants' organizations: in Swabia and Bavaria the Bavarian (and Allgäu) Peasant Association and in Baden the local Agrarian Association.¹¹² They in turn grew weaker towards the end of the 1920s and suffered from internal disputes which centered around the attitude to the Weimar republican institutions, liberal economy policy, local economic-administrative independence and finally the attitude toward strong government intervention.¹¹³ In South Baden, some of the former members of the Agrarian Association joined the DVP, which under the leadership of Stresemann supported the Weimar Republic, while others joined the newly founded Baden Agrarian Association (Badische Landbund), and later joined the Nazi Party which had just begun to operate in South Baden from 1928.¹¹⁴

A typical example which also contains some biography comes from South Baden. Ernst Glöckler, born in the famous anticlerical town of Uberlingen in South Baden, was in 1911 one of the founders of the football Verein in the town of Neustadt.There he was the co-editor in the radical-liberal newspaper, the Hochwächter. After the war, he supported the DDP and the DVP. By the mid 1920s he supported some local peasants' groups. By the end of the decade, he was one of the founders of the local "Independent Economic Association" (parteilose Wirtschaftsvereinigung), a nationalist-liberal, pro-Nazi group in the town council of Neustadt. In 1932 he, together with some other people, bought the liberal Hochwächter and gave it a Nazi line.¹¹⁵

IV The re-emergence of popular-radical Liberalism

In view of the processes of fragmentation and disintegration and the current weakness of the former radical-liberal subculture, many of those who had belonged to it in the past now sought a cultural alternative which would restore their vigour and provide a real promise of regeneration for the disintegrating subculture. Many

flocked to the National-Socialist chapters in Greater Swabia. [End Page 202] They came from many different political and cultural backgrounds. In the ranks of the Nazi Party and among its voters there were both Catholics and Protestants, and of course people from many different social strata. The social composition of the Nazi Party in Greater Swabia after 1930 could have undoubtedly have reminded many people from both the Catholic clerical camp (who would have regarded it with deep suspicion) and from the radical-liberal camp (who would have been encouraged by it) of another, similar "people's party" (Volkspartei): the National Liberal Party in the days of the Kulturkampf, and especially the southern radical-liberal fraction within it. Thus, together with socialists, communists, antisemites and conservative liberals, the radical-liberal fraction was one of the constituent elements of the chapters of the National-Socialist movement in Greater Swabia.¹¹⁶

From 1929 a growing number of priests began to notice a disturbing resemblance between the pre-war radical-liberal movement and the Nazi movement in Southern Germany. By 1931 the uneasiness had extended to many conservative bourgeois who viewed the radicalism of the new movement with apprehension. Both the priests and conservative bourgeois were aware of the points of continuity between pre-war radical liberalism and the Nazi movement,¹¹⁷ i.e, the revived idea of a "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft) and the Nazis' opposition to the Obrigkeit and the Catholic Church, along with their call for equality and direct democracy, which echoed the radical-liberals' dream of returning to the "lost world" prior to the war. Unlike these two groups, some segments of the local society were attracted to the National Socialists' violent use of anticlerical motifs while others were drawn to the movement's anti-institutional, anti-system image, as it was reminiscent of the Young Liberals' preoccupations just before the war. Still others believed the vigorous actions against the left in the cities of Northern and Western Germany were the National Socialists' most important contribution.

In a large number of villages, it was well known that many of those who began to support the Nazis in the late 1920s were the same persons or were descendants of families and individuals who had professed radical-liberal beliefs or had supported Popular Liberalism before 1914 or during the Weimar period.¹¹⁸

Among radical liberals, support for the National-Socialist movement followed three patterns: 1. Radical-liberals who set up chapters (Ortsgruppe) became members and disseminated National Socialist propaganda with a radical-liberal flavor in the various regions of Greater Swabia.¹¹⁹ 2. Another group, consisting of former farmers, artisans and notables (Honorationen), tended to see National Socialism as the continuation of their radical path before the war. They or their parents had been members of the liberal or peasants' movements in the past and after 1928 joined the chapters of the National Socialist movement, worked on its behalf, but did not become members out of fear for their jobs and position. 3. And, finally, there were liberal figures who, while still active in their old parties (the DDP or the DVP), publicly endorsed the Nazi movement or some of its ideas.¹²⁰

The rituals and ceremonies of the new movement and those of pre-war radical-liberals displayed several similarities, e.g., the role of the "travelling speaker" or the local poet in the activity of both movements, the very strong affiliation [End Page 203] between the bourgeois Vereine and the Nazi movement, and the same tavern which was chosen as the meeting place for both radical-liberals in the past and members of the Nazi movement in the early 1930s.¹²¹

Similarities could equally be found in both movements' narratives: the narrative of inclusion and exclusion, the narrative of struggle (Kampf), the narrative of freedom (Freiheit), the narrative of a "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft). And, lastly, both groups were democratic in their commitment to a "government for the people": e.g., Popular Liberalism before 1914 and National Socialism, at least in Greater Swabia until 1931-32, were marked by a strong emphasis on pragmatism and an acceptance of both constitutional methods (elections, elected government) and the already existing aspirations of the people.¹²² The resilience of these attitudes in a variety of political contexts can be explained by their very deep historical roots, which can be traced back to 1848 or even earlier.

It may be assumed that the capacity of Nazi chapters in Greater Swabia to assimilate time-honoured traditions congenial to pre-war liberal activists, activists of the peasants' movements and supporters of the Weimar liberal parties created a radical-liberal current side by side with the social-leftist and folkish-rightist currents within the chapters of the National Socialist movement.

The radical-liberal activists, now members or supporters of the National Socialist movement, were dealing with a public that had partly retained the characteristics of the "world of yesterday"—the period before the First World War. Until 1931-32 they did not fear to express in meetings of the movement or in internal discussions ideas similar to those they had expressed on the eve of the war or earlier.¹²³ Many speeches featured the familiar themes of the Swabian Heimat and opposition to Prussia, the monarchy and the Junker aristocracy and called for the abolition of the republican-democratic system, the practice of a nationalistic foreign policy and the creation of an anticlerical, democratic-egalitarian Volksgemeinschaft without class differences, where freedom would prevail and individuals could find happiness and pursue their self-development. At least until 1932, no one among the folkish or the semi-socialist National Socialists would have opposed the activities of radical-liberals in the Nazi Party's chapters in the regions of Greater Swabia.¹²⁴

Conclusion: the peculiarity of southern German liberalism

By early 1930, the Nazi movement in Germany contained many different propagandist and ideological elements. Some, like racial antisemitism, lost their propagandist-power by that time.¹²⁵ At the same time, the radical-liberal factor also lost some of its force of attraction in the movement's chapters in Greater Swabia. The worsening of the political and economic crisis, the ever-increasing violence, the fear of bolshevism and the strengthening of the communist party, together with internal processes within the Nazi Party such as the rise of the cult of the Führer at the beginning of 1932, the transference of the movement's centre of activity to the corridors of power in Berlin and the policy-shift of the party headquarters in Berlin and Munich in a more totalitarian, anti-liberal direction (expressed by the imposition of centralization and ideological control) influenced the activities of the movement in the provinces¹²⁶ and made things [End Page 204] difficult for those who felt uncomfortable with the new atmosphere in Germany as reflected in the party's chapters. In South Germany, these were chiefly radical-liberal activists. It was more difficult for them than for others to realize their vision in the chapters of the national-socialist movement in South Germany.¹²⁷

But that does not mean that many of them went back to supporting their former liberal parties and the peasant movements or took refuge in political indifference. Some of them became more extreme in their attitudes and from 1932 supported the new radical Nazi line with its more anti-liberal, folkish and extremist tone. Most of the elements of the traditional slogan of the radical liberals in Greater Swabia—"Long live Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Dynamite"¹²⁸ —had now been abandoned due to the strengthening of the extreme left and the impasse reached by the régime, and only the Dynamite remained. The radical liberals in South Germany like many other Germans wanted a solution which would bring order and stability, and if it was necessary to use force in order to achieve this, it was better to do so before a communist revolution broke out.

The year 1932 may perhaps have reminded elderly radical liberals and their families and children in South Germany of another, similar period: the 1860s and the 1870s. The atmosphere of that period had been perceived at the time as posing a threat to their existence. Ultramontanism was viewed by the liberals as a threat to freedom of the individual, to a liberal economy, to the right of the Germans to live in a nation-state. This was the background to the rise of the Old Catholics and the democratic liberal movements. In addition to this struggle, the radical liberals also launched their campaign against enemies like the aristocracy and the bureaucracy whom they regarded as corrupt. The struggle against the bolshevists and communists and the popular claims against the German élites was seen by quite a number of former radical liberals in 1932 as resembling the struggle against Ultramontanism in the period of the Kulturkampf.

But there were also definite differences which caused the radical liberals at the beginning of the 1930s to behave differently and to end their careers in a different way from their counterparts in the 1870s. From the mid 19th century until the 1880s, the liberals had the cultural hegemony in Germany.¹²⁹ Most Germans saw their culture as unchallengeably bourgeois-liberal. This culture went together with a successful liberal economy, a bourgeois legal code, universal values of justice and freedom of the individual, and—in most German states—a political majority in the local legislative bodies. That Germany was able to permit the liberals to dictate the nature of the struggle against the Catholic Church and the aristocracy. Similarly, in South Germany, popular liberalism was able to develop, within the dominant Catholic culture, a style of its own and its own forms of reaction and struggle against Ultramontanism, the state and the aristocracy. The special character of South Germany was expressed in the liberal subculture, which had lasting-power and prolonged success.

But after the First World War and especially at the beginning of the 1930s, the German power-structures and culture, including those in South Germany, were entirely different. The liberal forces were weakened and tired, the liberal economy was in deep crisis and the liberal political culture was no longer hegemonic but fragmented, violent and very frightened of the extreme left. The only force on which the radical liberals who had come into existence in South Germany felt they could rely to protect their interests and allow them to act freely [End Page 205] were the chapters of the national-socialist movement in Greater Swabia, some of which had been founded by liberals, and which closely resembled those of the radical liberals and their successors, the peasant movements. For some time it seemed that the radical-liberal subculture might be resurrected. But the more the German crisis intensified, the more extreme the National-Socialist movement and the German population became, and the hope of the radical liberals dwindled. From being radical liberals they now became national socialists.

Although every region's story is unique, the history and the fate of Popular Liberalism in Greater Swabia from 1860s to 1930s is in some sense more unique than patterns in other Liberal strongholds in Germany. As I have mentioned earlier,very few scholars have examined the Catholic radical-liberal subculture in South Germany, and even those who have done so have dealt with the matter briefly, without considering its causes.¹³⁰ The scholars' main interest has undoubtedly been the Catholic Ultramontane anti-liberal culture dominant in the region. Those who have examined the special liberal tendencies in South Germany have pointed out that the political culture of the inhabitants of most areas of Greater Swabia is evidence that not all the German Catholics remained within the Church milieu and that there were many who favoured a radical-liberal order within "Small Germany" under a liberal-democratic hegemony and later a national-socialist hegemony. Most of the scholars, however, have come to this conclusion on the basis of election results and not on the basis of a systematic investigation of the local liberal-bourgeois subculture.

An examination of Liberal activities in their different varieties in the various agrarian regions of Germany reveals the special nature of South Germany. Naturally, in the Protestant areas north of the River Main and in South Germany as well, the Liberals (whether the left Liberal parties or the National Liberal Party) had successes comparable to and even greater than those of the liberal radicals in Catholic South Germany, and in certain areas they put out a radical platform resembling that of the South German radicals.¹³¹ But in general, in the Prussian areas, Liberal activities expressed conservative values such as loyalty to the State and Kaiser, belief in a state of law and authority (Recht und Obrigkeit Staat) and support of Prussianism.¹³² The special character of Popular Liberalism in Greater Swabia is all the more remarkable in view of the environment in which it operated. While in the Catholic areas of Prussia the Catholic party, the Zentrum, was wholly in control, in those in South Germany the bourgeoisie, the peasant groups and the liberal radicals were under the overarching organization of The National Liberal Party, and were serious rivals to the Zentrum.

This is another regional peculiarity: the popularity of the National Liberal Party—a popularity due to its radical and belligerent character. This party, in contrast to the Left Liberals, was known throughout Germany for its conservatism and its opposition to radical ideas.

On the eve of the First World War, the party was on the point of splitting up into the Prussian-conservative North German branch and the young radical groups, mostly from South Germany, which desired a more liberal policy, greater cooperation with the SPD and a break with Prussian values.¹³³ Thus, in Greater Swabia the party mainly demonstrated its radical character, thereby gaining many sympathisers.

Greater Swabia was also special in the way it came to support National Socialism. [End Page 206] If in many agrarian areas the Nazi party succeeded in gaining the support of the local bourgeoisie and other groups by means of a radical (right or left) platform reflecting the crisis of agrarian society after the war and the break in continuity with the pre-war period,¹³⁴ in Catholic South Germany the party was seen as the heir to the radical democratic tradition.¹³⁵ As has been pointed out a number of times in this article, those who were originally called National Liberals were later called "liberal" National Socialists by contemporary observers.

And finally, one should point out the special character of the local Catholic bourgeoisie. This social group constituted a social sector without any parallel in Catholic agrarian areas and perhaps in Protestant areas. The radical democratic traditions of Greater Swabia and the ceaseless struggle against the Catholic Church from 1848 onwards created a radical bourgeoisie which sought to preserve its special character not only in the face of ultramontanism but also in the face of the Prussian-dominated Reich. After 1918, however, this radical-bourgeois subculture underwent a process of decomposition and disintegration—a process which also took place in other Catholic and Protestant areas throughout Germany after the war.

The sociopolitical model we see here shows that at least until the First World War and perhaps in the Weimar period as well it is difficult to speak of Germany, the German bourgeoisie, German liberalism or the Nazi Party in Germany. Regional traditions and the special patterns of behaviour of particular social strata make it hard to reach conclusions concerning the character of German liberalism and the connection between its supposed "weakness" and the rise of Nazism. Despite the abundance of studies of the subject in the last decade, it seems that the last word on these matters has not yet been said.