Oded Heilbronner. "Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit und Dynamik": Populäre Kultur, populärer Liberalismus und Bürgertum im ländlichen Süddeutschland 1850 bis 1930. München: Martin Meidenbauer Verlag, 2007. 224 S. EUR 28.90 (paper), ISBN 978-3-89975-597-8.

Reviewed by Edward Mathieu (Department of History, Beloit College)
Published on H-German (June, 2008)

The Rise and Fall of a Liberal Bourgeois Subculture in Catholic South Germany

In this book, Oded Heilbronner explores the radical liberal roots of the popularity of National Socialism in rural Catholic southern Germany. He draws continuities from the development of an anti-ultramontane, Catholic middle-class subculture in Greater Swabia from the 1860s through a series of crises, especially in the early twentieth century and in the postwar period. In the end these crises extended to move the subculture's constituency to support a perceived successor of regional bourgeois liberalism: National Socialism. Thus, he points out, the NSDAP enjoyed great success in regions that had been liberal bastions before 1914. Heilbronner wants to offer a new challenge to the idea of a German Sonderweg, which he sees as claiming that a long-term failure of liberalism and the middle class was one cause of fascism. Heilbronner proposes instead that fascism arose out of a shorter-term crisis of a liberal middle class that had enjoyed long-term success. The focus of the book is on the development of a rural Catholic bourgeois subculture. This subculture's social basis included big (especially dairy) farmers, small industrialists focused primarily on exports, artisans, innkeepers, and traders. The subculture was anti-clerical and anti-socialist. It opposed central (especially Prussian) state authority. It embraced modern bourgeois values such as a capitalist economic system, education, and "culture."

An important element of Heilbronner's story is the rise of this liberal subculture in the context of feelings of crisis in the face of ultramontanism in 1860s and 1870s. In southern German Catholic liberal eyes, ultramontanism threatened personal freedom, a free economic order, and the German national idea. The subculture combined its struggle against the ultramontane threat with the ideal of struggle against aristocracy and bureaucracy. Both the sense of crisis and the mood of fighting its causes were themes of continuity within this subculture. It also connects with current historiography on the German "crisis of liberalism" following a golden age of success in the 1860s and 1870s. Its fortunes declined in the face of competition from interest parties and groups, the rise of socialism, and the democratization of the nation.

The problems of bourgeois liberalism in Greater Swabia as Heilbronner describes them were in many ways similar to those of German liberalism more broadly, especially as detailed by Dieter Langewiesche. South German national liberalism was transformed from a Catholic-bourgeois milieu party to an anti-socialist, anti-ultramontane interest party. The network of bourgeois associations, originally the central institutions of the milieu, were joined by a plethora of political and social institutions, increasingly de-centered in the sphere of political and social life. Catholic liberalism also had to contend with the decline of its religious compatriot, the old Catholic Church, and the resurgence of Catholic piety and political affiliation, particularly in the guise of the Center Party, in the face of the perceived economic failure of liberalism after 1873.

Within this general mood, Heilbronner identifies a key moment of crisis of the radical liberal South German subculture at the end of the nineteenth century. He points to the strengthening of the state, both at the federal and the Land level, as undermining the authority of bourgeois associations and the ability of Catholic liberals to support and defend the old Catholic Church. Additionally, he sees increasing competition for the subculture's attention in face of the growth of a society of mass consumption and expanding leisure opportunities. Finally, the increasing importance of economic interest undermined liberal party legitimacy and significance--the party was no longer seen as above interest or representing the commonweal. In this atmosphere, Heilbronner's liberals pursued an aggressive response against the clergy, socialism, and the local establishment. In this, they opened themselves up to rhetoric of violent action in defense of equality, freedom, and other liberal ideals. One aspect of this opening was a radicalization of language. South German liberals began to use words like "eradication" (Vernichtung), "war," "battle," "military campaign," and "clerical terrorism" (p. 123).

The willingness to accept and use this language marks an ever stronger embrace by the subculture and its associated bourgeois associations of a "militarist-national communitarian ideal" (p. 104), especially after 1900. This ideology included, Heilbronner tells us, an affinity for "direct democracy without mediation through political parties" and a demand for "personal freedom within the Volksgemeinschaft" (p. 104). Heilbronner suggests that such developments in the south German radical liberal subculture before the war "facilitated the absorption into protest movements after the war and later into National Socialism" (p. 124).

Before that, however, the First World War and its aftermath brought new crises to the subculture. Some of its elements defected to agrarian interest politics. The economic chaos of the postwar years caused the network of liberal associations to collapse. The decline of these associations, the traditional bulwark of liberal bourgeois hegemony, enhanced the worries of the Catholic Bürgertum. The experience of the 1919 revolution added to these worries, making anti-Left sentiment more urgent and nationalism more prominent. South German radical liberals demanded "the reestablishment of order and stability" and saw violence as a viable tactic for achieving it (p. 149).

Due to these concerns, the subculture rejected the new mass democracy (which included socialists as a ruling party) and the perceived domination of materialism. It feared the growing power of the Left, especially its communist elements. South German Catholic liberals longed for past glory, a harmonious society free of class antagonism, and democratization in the sense of a Volksdemokratie. Heilbronner indicates that local branches of the NSDAP arrived in southern Germany at a time when the subculture's infrastructure and cultural and political power stood at a nadir. The NSDAP was thus in a strong position to exploit what Heilbronner calls an affinity between its ideology and that of the subculture: "Above all, the protest of the National Socialist movement against the 'system,' 'authority,' and the Catholic Church, together with its call for equality and direct democracy, may have corresponded to radical liberal longing for the re-establishment of the 'lost world' of the time before the First World War" (p. 135).

Heilbronner finds important evidence for these affinities in the writings of the Catholic clergy, who expressed their recognition of continuities between pre-1914 National Liberalism and the NSDAP. Clergymen believed that both were radical, demanded direct democracy and equality, opposed the establishment, attacked ultramontanism, and embraced the idea of Volksgemeinschaft. Southern German liberals experienced the atmosphere of late Weimar as an existential threat akin to that of the 1860s and 1870s. For members of local bourgeoisies, the NSDAP appeared as a replacement for its own now defunct associational network. Heilbronner suggests that National Socialist organization appeared as a protector of old bourgeois traditions. According to Heilbronner, the NSDAP reminded people of national liberalism, especially of its south German popular liberal wing in the time of the Kulturkampf.

In conclusion, Heilbronner points to the scarcity of research on the bourgeois liberal roots of National Socialism, although he sees the work of Rudy Koshar and Robert Hopwood as important first steps. Heilbronner indicates that local liberal National Socialism was derived from a liberal nineteenth-century ideal of Volksgemeinschaft as inclusive, participatory, and harmonious. It offered an opportunity for the inclusion of south German Catholics in the national community and for the modernization of backward, southern Germany. And its local orientation invited the leadership of the previous liberal elite.

Heilbronner's work is an important contribution to a field that gives no indication of having lost its relevance. It also clearly points to the need for closer study of the liberalism of South German National Socialism in local settings. If correct, Heilbronner's research suggests a number of important questions for future research. For example, since members of the south German Catholic bourgeois subculture clearly expected a lot from the National Socialists, what did they think of the reality of National Socialist rule? Moreover, given that Nazism's ideology as expressed on the local level resonated effectively with older liberal ideals, were Nazis on the local level disappointed with its execution? Given the affinities of south German liberalism for political revolt, it would seem that a basis for resistance to the reality of National Socialist rule would have been inherent to the subculture. The Nazis must have disappointed both liberals and party members, then, as the regime proved markedly illiberal. Given this apparent fundamental conflict between ideology and its execution, the book leaves us wondering not only how members of the subculture and local party members experienced this disappointment, but also whether central party authorities felt the need to discipline the south German party's leadership or membership after 1933. How did the relationship between the ideals of the subculture and actual National Socialism work itself out in southern Germany after 1933?

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Citation: Edward Mathieu. Review of Heilbronner, Oded, "Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit und Dynamik": Populäre Kultur, populärer Liberalismus und Bürgertum im ländlichen Süddeutschland 1850 bis 1930. H-German, H-Net Reviews. June, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14614

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