March to the Right: The National Liberals (Introduction)
[This is kind of a follow-up to my post “The 19th Century Also Provides Some Lessons.” It is broadly related to my post: “Libertarianism and Representative Democracy.”]
What I would like to do in this and further posts is sketch the development of the National Liberal Party in Germany from its founding in late 1866/early 1867 to the 1890s and maybe also beyond. You get some information in the Wikipedia article, but I would warn you that some things are there not quite right in my view. If that keeps you reading: The plan at the moment is three or maybe four further posts. This here is an introduction with some general considerations and an overview.
If I wanted to lure you into reading this series of posts, I could say that the National Liberals were the Republican Party of the time. But then this would be a naive parallel, many things are simply different. Still I would see some similarities in the general development.
It would be even sillier to equate Donald Trump with Otto von Bismarck or Kaiser Wilhelm II although, again, there are some similarities: Bismarck was a political opportunist, he often railed against the press unless he manipulated it, had a deep hatred of Liberalism, and could not appreciate the value of an opposition. Kaiser Wilhelm II was a moody and grandiose person, not up to the task, and prone to listen to his advisers. However, such apparent parallels can sometimes yield insight, but more often they probably mislead you.
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The topic is huge, and it would take a book or even several to explore it fully. The context is also long forgotten. A reader with no knowledge of German history needs some explanations of the background that I will try to provide. Also modern German readers will not know most of this, and can get many things wrong. For example, terms like “left” and “right” may not mean what you think they mean. The “left” would intially be the classical liberals, including the National liberals: pro-free trade and generally pro-free market. Only perhaps from the 1890s on, the Socialists became the dominant force on the Left. But then at some point I just have to stop with providing context because it is too much.
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If you asked me for a good book with an overview, I am afraid I cannot name one. I would be interested in one myself, so if you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments. What I know is deficient in many ways. Most authors have a certain slant: Those more on the Right focus on Bismarck’s power politics, those on the Left hunt for a class struggle. There is also a strong tendency to view German history just as a run-up to the Nazis. Many things indeed started much earlier. But in the 19th century this was still far in the future, and the situation was open and not a funnel that runs to the 1933.
It is worse for older books where you mostly have a partisan take: Bismarck was great and unified Germany. The Social Democrats did it right and were the only interesting development at the time. Or whatever. Especially, the history of Liberalism is usually neglected because its influence declined over the 19th century. Mostly it was written by opponents of Liberalism who had an axe to grind how the Liberals failed. Often the liberal parties are ignored. I have seen books where major politicians at the time are not even mentioned or only in the footnotes. If they are, it can be with a very crude approximation.
My own point of view is also slanted: At the time, I would have been a “Fortschrittler” (progressive, but the meaning is not the same as in the US) and later a “Freisinniger” (literally: free-minded, but actually just the German word for: liberal). It is a political standpoint that was rather close to the National Liberal Party in the political spectrum. But for that reason the view on the party was perhaps also particularly critical.
My knowledge comes to some extent from such a perspective, so I look at the National Liberals from the outside, not as what would have been my party. I will still try to be empathetic. I should also admit that while I think I have some knowledge about the time, it is still rather limited. I have done no deeper research to write these posts and draw on my current and evolving views on the subject, which I know are incomplete. So be critical: I may get things wrong or miss something.
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The National Liberal Party was for some time the strongest political force in Germany. In the Reichstag (parliament) elections of 1871, it won 30.1% of the vote. It remained at such a level until the late 1870s. It was not in the government, always hoped that it might happen, and was often played by Bismarck.
But in a way, the National Liberals were really the driver of many policies from the 1860s to the 1870s. Bismarck’s opportunistic calculation was that he could not get around the liberal Zeitgeist and drew the conclusion for some time that it was better to join it if he could not beat it. This led to a far-reaching economic liberalization, a move in the direction of free trade, reinforcement of the rule of law and to a lesser degree also of civil and political liberties.
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The incisive event that changed this liberal Zeitgeist was the economic crisis from 1873 on. It caught many people off-guard who had not expected something of this kind after the resounding victory against France in 1870/1871 and the creation of the German Empire as the strongest power in Europe. The starting-point for the crisis was what was called the “Gründerkrach” (founders’ crash) at the time, especially the crash on Black Friday May 9, 1873. The term “Gründer” alluded both to the foundation of the German Empire and to those who had started businesses, often publicly listed, that now went down. The word took on a very negative meaning somewhat like English “huckster.”
The panic of 1873 was a symptom of a much larger international economic crisis. In Germany, it pulled the plug on a real estate bubble in the previous years. There was a deep recession for the remainder of the decade with repercussions beyond. Many people viewed the crash as proof that the liberal reforms in the years before had failed. The Social Democrats, then a minor and pretty extreme party, gained some traction, and a first wave of anti-Semitism started to build up that culminated around 1880.
Bismarck saw the political opportunity to corner and split the National Liberals he had had to rely on. Until the late 1878, he went from being a freetrader, sometimes even too extreme for classical liberals, to an avowed protectionist. He also started to play around with a certain Socialist rhetoric, while effectively outlawing the Social Democrats from 1878 on. During the campaign for the Reichstag elections of 1881, Bismarck let it be known by his press that he was now a Socialist, just not a Social Democrat. Around the same time, Bismarck also dogwhistled to the rising anti-Semitic movement although he never committed himself and after it failed disowned it.
As many observers at the time thought, the main reason for Bismarck’s turn was to put pressure on the National Liberals: They should either become a subservient party, join a “party Bismarck sans phrase” (without phrase) and abandon the liberal program, or go into the opposition. This caused a growing strain within the National Liberal party that had a pre-existing faultline Bismarck had in view.
Around 1880, first the right wing split off and merged with the Conservative parties, Conservatives and Free Conservatives. Then the left-wing — nota bene: freetraders — had enough and formed the “Liberale Vereinigung” (Liberal Union) that would join the classical liberal “Fortschrittspartei” (Progress Party) in 1884 to form the oppositional “Freisinnige Partei” (literally: free-minded, but actually: Liberal Party).
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The electoral prospects of the remaining National Party declined with the exodus of much of the party, and it would hover around 15% of the vote from then on. Over the 1880s, the National Liberals moved further and further to the Right. By 1887, they were ready to form a “Kartell” with the Conservative Parties for the elections, which boosted their share of the vote to slightly more than 20% in 1887. Aligning with the reactionary Conservatives and Free Conservatives would have been unthinkable two decades before.
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After the demise of Bismarck in 1890, the National Liberal Party could finally make some headway with their long-term project and gain a foothold in the government. It was perhaps the staunchest supporter of the new Emperor Wilhelm II and his grandiose pretensions of making Germany a world power with colonies and a fleet to rival the Royal Navy.
While aligned with the Conservative parties, there was still a marked difference that I would interpret as a hollowed-out liberalism. The National Liberals retained a certain hostility towards the first two first: aristocrats and orthodox religion although there was also an accomodation and a social merger of the old and new elites. National Liberals would also be more inclined to defend a “Rechtsstaat” (state with a rule of law). They were also more positive than the Conservative parties regarding a parliament and elections, but still rather lukewarm.
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The transformation from the National Liberal Party of the late 1860s and early 1870s was stark although its members viewed as continuity. There was an overlap with the jingoistic “Pan-Germans” in the 1890s. A certain anti-Semitism had crept in since the 1870s although also a part of the party remained opposed.
National Liberals were still more market-friendly than the Conservative parties, but not very principled in this regard. Protectionism or government subsidies were okay if they benefited the party’s constituencies and supporters aligned with big industry. National Liberals also thought of themselves as modern and in tune with the scientific developments at the time, not as the defenders of an old order as the Conservative parties. Already form the 1860s on, Darwinism was absorbed into the general worldview, and also sometimes race theories.
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Heinrich Mann, the brother of Thomas Mann, wrote a novel before the First World War about the mindset and reality of National Liberalism on the ground: “Der Untertan” (literally; “The Subject,” but translated to English as “Man of Straw,” “The Patrioteer,” or “The Loyal Subject”). I like to recommend the novel because it is a great panorama of what went on the 1890s, and I plan to write about it in further posts.
The anti-hero is Diederich Heßling who is easily recognizable as a National Liberal if you know about the time. He is an incompetent businessman who has inherited his business and keeps it afloat with his social and political machinations. His worldview is Darwinian and a justification for his social status. While he is a serial adulterer, he becomes outraged when he finds out about a pre-marital affair among his workers. Heßling’s attitude is full of hypocrisy, he lies as it suits him, tries to dodge the draft, but outwardly supports the Wilhelmine order and is a huge fan of the Kaiser because he represents the “Power” to him that impresses Heßling in and of itself.
I hope I have made it clear by now who I have to think of. ;-)
Heinrich Mann parodies and exaggerates Heßling’s attitude and so it should not to be taken as a literal description of society at the time. Still, in my view, Mann manages to grasp the main thrust very well and that provides great insight. Modern readers, also in Germany and visible in the Wikipedia entry, too, tend to get the message wrong because they try to fit a folk Marxist template onto it:
This is a critique of the “bourgeoisie.” But it is more specific, and actually the Social Democrats are not painted in a favorable light either, they collude with Diederich Heßling. Heinrich Mann writes as a “Freisinniger” here (and also about their beginning ideological drift at the time) and what he is after the hollowness of the National Liberal worldview in theory and practice.
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As I have noted above, one temptation is to read German history just as a road to the Nazis. The National Liberals were a distinctly different strand on the Right. They went on as the “Deutsche Volkspartei” (German People’s Party) in Weimar Germany whose perhaps most prominent politician was Gustav Stresemann. On a social level, they were rather separate from the National Socialist. Here a reduced form of liberalism plays a role that created tensions with the “proletarian” habitus of the National Socialists.
But then the National Liberals had also a major ideological overlap, and so many National Liberals found the move to National Socialism rather easy before and after 1933. The National Liberal worldview was very influential with educated and economic elites, and prepared the ground for what happened later: First the jingoism during World War I, and then also what brought the Weimar Republic down, though it was mostly supported by the National Liberals of the DVP, and then also what paved the way to power for Hitler.
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I would say that a National Liberal worldview is still quite popular in Germany, and it can be found all across the political spectrum, sometimes in unexpected places. In 2010, Thilo Sarrazin, a life-long Social Democrat, published his book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (Germany Abolishes Itself), which became a huge bestseller. It paints a dark picture of a country in economic, social, cultural, and demographic decline. As far as I know his editor convinced Sarrazin to use the more innocuous term “ethnic groups” instead of “races,” which would have broken a longstanding taboo in post-War Germany. Of course, immigration, especially from Muslim countries, plays a main role in the doom scenario.
Many critics were stomped by Thilo Sarrazin’s outlook. Because of the overlaps it smelled like something, and so many immediately jumped to the conclusion that Sarrazin was a closet Nazi. There was an attempt to throw him out of the Social Democratic party. However, probably since Sarrazin had struck a chord with many also of the party’s voters, they eventually decided to call it off.
The claim that Sarrazin was a Nazi actually made it rather easy for him to deflect criticism as unfair. In his book, he writes of Jews with an awe that is hard to square with being an outright Nazi. (References to Kevin MacDonald makes me wonder how sincere that was, though.) The problem for critics in my view was that they lacked the right label. I find it obvious that Thilo Sarrazin is a National Liberal although he may not know it himself. That is not the same thing as a National Socialist, but then also not totally dissimilar.
You can find National Liberal attitudes — not the least attested by the great success of Sarrazin’s book — also elsewhere. I would see them, perhaps not in a pure form, with many Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, and sometimes Social Democrats, too. And it is also conspicuous with the “liberal” wing of the “Alternative for Germany.” I write the “liberal” deliberately in scare quotes here because it is a hollowed-out liberalism as pioneered by the National Liberals, and the understanding of the term in Germany is generally slanted in such a direction.
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And then, when I think about Donald Trump’s worldview, it also seems like that of a National Liberal in many ways. His grandfather emigrated at age 16, so I would not think he was the primary channel. Maybe via his grandmother who had lived longer in Germany, his grandparents’ families, or perhaps an environment of recent immigrants from Germany at the time? I am guessing.
It is hard to tell whether there is a specifically German input to Trump’s worldview because such attitudes were and are not uncommon in the US either. Germany was not an isolated island in the 19th century, many developments were part of larger ideological shifts on an international level. Much of the National Liberal worldview seems like an import from the United Kingdom, and similar elements were also absorbed in the US. Darwinism, eugenics, and racial theories have always been popular in the US, maybe even more so than in Germany. So the connection could be more indirect.
But what strikes me about Donald Trump even though is that he lacks what defines American Conservatism in my view: a strong religious, even Puritan component. The funniest moments in his presidency are when he is praised as a man of God. Trump also has this instinctive hatred for an “aristocratic” elite that has not fought its way to the top in some Darwinian struggle. Both aspects would be perfect for a National Liberal. But then I don’t know whether the similarity is direct, indirect, or just coincidental.
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Anyway, so much for now with a sketch of a longer sketch that I will work out in further posts.
