Making democracy safe for tribal homelands? Self-determination and political regionalism in Weimar Germany

ABSTRACT

This article adds to the literature on political regionalism in the Weimar Republic at the end of the First World War. After four years of hardship at the hands of the central government, proponents of reform were prepared to countenance the dismemberment of Prussia – Germany’s largest state – in favour of autonomous tribal (stammlich) entities under the federal umbrella of the Reich. However, contemporaries soon learned that instead of acting as a catalyst of emancipation, the Wilsonian discourse of self-determination frustrated genuine change because the latter’s appropriation by ethno-regionalists threatened to unravel many of the viable compromises reached in the imperial period. The resulting inability to keep all parties engaged in dialogue generated verbal as well as physical aggression. The article suggests that these phenomena shed revealing light not only on the way in which ideas of space and the ‘othering’ of fellow Germans based on tribal allegiance shaped political conflict but also challenge more broadly the assumption prevalent in some parts of the historiography that when ethnic movements make demands for their own state, they automatically turn nationalist. Empirical evidence from the province of Hanover shows that regionalists could well make violent demands for secession from Prussia while at the same time affirming their identification with the German nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Political violence
• secessionism
• regionalism
• politics of space
• Stämme

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to both institutions for their material support as well as the congenial intellectual environment I had the privilege to immerse myself in at the Institute for Advanced Studies during the 2017/18 academic year. Further thanks are due to the editors of this special issue, the two anonymous reviewers, the participants of the ‘Democratization and Nationalism in Europe’ workshop held at Leiden University (14-16 January 2016) as well as James Koranyi.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Macmillan, Peacemakers, 66.

2. Cf. Gerwarth and Manela, eds., Empires at War; Gerwarth, Vanquished; Manela, Wilsonian Moment; Bartov and Weitz, eds., Shatterzones of Empires; Prott, The Politics of Self-Determination; Heater, National Self-Determination; and Watson, Ring of Steel.

3. Abulof, “We the Peoples?” 542.

4. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 6.

5. Cf. Schlemmer, ‘Los von Berlin’; Neumann, Politischer Regionalismus und staatliche Neugliederung; and Gembries, “Krisenfall Pfalz”.

6. Van Ginderachter, “Nationalist versus Regionalist?” 210.

7. Kurlander, “Landscapes of Liberalism,” 125–27; and Kurlander, Price of Exclusion, 185–94.

8. On ‘ethnicism’ in the former Habsburg Empire and the growing pressure on ordinary citizens to choose sides, see King, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe”; and Zahra, Kidnapped Souls.

9. Confino, Nation as a Local Metaphor; Applegate, Nation of Provincials; Weichlein, Nation und Region; Storm, Culture of Regionalism; Umbach, German Cities and Bourgeois Modernism; Umbach and Hüppauf, eds., Vernacular Modernism; and Jenkins, Provincial Modernity.

10. Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy, 3.

11. On this complex interplay between localism and ethnic identity politics, see King’s Budweisers into Czechs and Germans, esp. ch. 5.

12. Aulke, Räume der Revolution; Szejnmann and Umbach, “Introduction,” 7; Jerram, Streetlife; Reiss, ed., Street as Stage; and Swett, Neighbors and Enemies.

13. Simmel cited in Schwerhoff, “Spaces, Places, and the Historians,” 431. Christopher Tilley has similarly argued that a ‘humanized space forms both the medium and outcome of action, both constraining and enabling it.’ Tilley, Phenomenology of Landscape, 10.

14. Cf. Tümmers, Rhein; and Plonien, “‘Germany’s River, but not Germany’s Border’”.

15. Blackbourn, Conquest of Nature, 9. Cf. Kopp, Germany’s Wild East. The juxtaposition of green German landscapes and Polish wastelands carried the unmistakable stamp of eighteenth-century physiocratic thought, which held that the level of agricultural cultivation determined a nation’s wealth and thus level of development. The longevity of physiocratic theory is evident in its influence on later models of political economy developed by Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and others.

16. Storm, “Spatial Turn and the History of Nationalism”; Warf and Arias, “Introduction,” 10; and Donnan and Wilson, Borders, 9.

17. Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit, 243–4.

18. Maier, Once within Borders, 3; and Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History,” 808.

19. Soja, Globalization and Community, introduction; Zerubavel, Time Maps, Gupta and Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture’,” 40; 10–11; Murphy, “Regions as Social Constructs”.

20. Cf. East and Prescott, Our Fragmented World, 164. On the complexity of German history in its Central European context, see Ingrao and Szabo, eds., The Germans and the East. See also Livezeanu and Klimó, eds., The Routledge History of East Central Europe Since 1700.

21. Sheehan, German History 1770–1866, 24–5; Hagen, German History in Modern Times, parts 1 and 2; Breuilly, ed., Nineteenth-Century Germany; Smith (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Modern German History. On the game-changing ramifications of the French Revolution on conceptions of national sovereignty in Europe, see Kolla, Sovereignty, International Law, and the French Revolution.

22. Wilson, Holy Roman Empire, 1–5.

23. Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 647.

24. Lent, “Niedersachsenbewußtsein im Wandel der Jahrhunderte,” 30–43.

25. Goethe, Goethes Gespräche mit Eckermann, 428. On the impact of Goethe’s cultural nationalism on later generations of federalists, see Martius, Reich des Geistes.

26. Cf. Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism.

27. Green, Fatherlands; Hanisch, “Nationalisierung der Dynastien oder Monarchisierung der Nation?” 71–92; and Heinzen, Making Prussians, Raising Germans.

28. Cf. Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria, 21; and Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism.

29. On the flexibility of Prussian administrative integration in 1866, see the contributions in Baumgart, ed., Expansion und Integration.

30. Wright and Clark, “Regionalism and the State in France and Prussia,” 285.

31. Bukey, “Guelph Movement,”, 45–6; and Pitz, “Deutschland und Hannover,” 132.

32. Cf. Riotte, Der Monarch im Exil; Schubert, “Verdeckte Opposition in der Provinz Hannover”; and Bösch, ‘Margin at the Center’.

33. Anon., Politische Briefe eines Hannoveraners, 42–52; Ibs, Politische Parteien und Selbstverwaltung, 146–8; and Neff, “‘Dekorationsmilitarismus’”.

34. Aschoff, Welfentum und politischer Katholizismus.

35. On Guelph electioneering techniques, see Riotte, “‘Seiner Majestät Allergetreueste Opposition’”.

36. Hanke, Niedersächsische Heimatbewegung, 35–46.

37. This point is well made by Bourdieu, “Identity and Representation,” 221.

38. Ina Geverus cited in Blickle, Heimat, 10.

39. Fahlbusch, “Volk ohne Raum – Raum ohne Volk,” 257–69; Pinwinkler, “‘Grenze’ als soziales Konzept: Historisch-demographische Konstrukte des ‘Eigenen’ und des ‘Fremden’,” 31–48; Nagle, “Peripheries and Contested Regions in Nationalist Imaginations”. On the rise of demographic information gathering and cartography as tools of nation-building, see also Hansen, Mapping the Germans; Herb, Under the Map of Germany; and Mingus, Remapping Germany after National Socialism.

40. Winter, Dreams of Peace and Freedom, 55; and Hagen, “Mapping the Polish Corridor,” 63–82.

41. Oberschelp, Stahl und Steckrüben, 44.

42. The literature is vast. Cf. Schneider, An der ‘Heimatfront’; Buhr, Celle im Kaiserreich und in der Phase des politischen Umbruchs 1918/1919; Hermann and Weßels, eds., Ostfriesland im Ersten Weltkrieg. For an overview of the latest scholarship on the divisions caused in German society by the First World War, see Weichlein, ‘Schlafwandler und Mehlschieber’, 241–7. Cf. also Stibbe, Germany, 1914–1933; Bessel, Germany after the First World War; 1–48; Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War; and Davis, Home Fires Burning.

43. Steber, Ethnische Gewissheiten; 163–92.

44. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature, 84.

45. Hartung, Konservative Zivilisationskritik, 280–7.

46. Ziemann, War Experiences in Rural Germany, 1914–23.

47. Klemperer cited in Langewiesche, “Gefühlsraum Nation,” 207. See also Leonhard, Büchse der Pandora, 551–2.

48. Paula Müller-Otfried to v. d. Wense, 9 May 1919, Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover (hereafter NHStAH), VVP 17, Nr 204. On the alliance negotiations, see Prilop, “Vorabstimmung,” 237–56.

49. Clark, Iron Kingdom, 620.

50. Gollwitzer, “Politische Landschaft in der deutschen Geschichte,” 542–4; and Retterath, “Volksbegriff in der Zäsur des Jahres 1918/19,” 97–118.

51. Biewer, “Preußen und das Reich in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik,” 332–3; Reuling, “Reichsreform und Landesgeschichte,” 258–9, 66–7.

52. Jebsen, “Dividing Regions? 70–1; Jebsen and Klatt, “Negotiation of National and Regional Identity”. Cf. Laponce “National Self-Determination and Referendums,” 40–7.

53. Bjork, Neither German nor Pole, 265; Karch, Nation and Loyalty in a German-Polish Borderland; Judson, “When is A Diaspora Not a Diaspora?”; and Chu, The German Minority in Interwar Poland.

54. Neumann, Politischer Regionalismus, 310.

55. Berlit-Schwigon, Robert Leinert, 100–21.

56. The quote comes from Girvin’s reply to Pavković ‘Secession and Secessionism’. By making the French Revolution his point of reference, Girvin of course argues from a western perspective that only imperfectly captures the motives for emancipation from Habsburg and Ottoman imperial rule in East Central Europe and the Balkans. The challenge was often how to find universally acceptable definitions of nationhood for multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual populations in the first place. Cf. Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe.

57. Manias, “Race prussienne Controversy”. For similar racialist arguments advanced by Guelph writers, see Hodenberg, Sechs Briefe über die Gewissens – und Begriffsverwirrung in Politik, Kirche und Wissenschaft der Gegenwart, 79–81; and Lent, “Niedersachsenbewußtsein im Wandel der Jahrhunderte,” 45.

58. Börries von Münchhaussen “Bekenntnis zum ‘weißen Sachsenroß der Heimat’”, Hannoversche Landeszeitung, 2 July 1922, front page. See also ‘Hannovers Schicksalskampf in völkischer Beleuchtung’, Niedersächsische Volkszeitung, 3 November 1925; ‘Eine Kundgebung zur hannoverschen Abstimmungsfrage’, Volkswille, 8 May 1924 (clipping in NHStAH, VVP17, Nr. 193). Like the debate concerning the mongrel origins of the Prussian people, the propagation of a special ‘Low German’ racial mission by ethnoregionalists in Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein can be traced back to the völkisch discourse of the late nineteenth century, in particular Julius Langbehn’s influential treatise Rembrandt als Erzieher (1890).

59. Schlemmer, ‘Los von Berlin’, 484–9.

60. Dr. von Campe, ‘Der 18. Mai: Die geschichtliche und politische Bedeutung der Welfenabstimmung in Hannover’, 14 May 1924 (clipping in NHStAH, VVP17, Nr. 193); Carl G. Harke, “Die niedersächsische Bewegung – eine großdeutsch-völkische Notwendigkeit,” Hannoversche Landeszeitung, 4 April 1925, front page. On the place of Arminius and the Saxon struggle against Charlemagne in völkisch memory politics more generally, see Wiwjorra, “Deutsche Vorgeschichtsforschung”; and Lambert, “Widukind or Karl der Große?”.

61. Jacob, Hannover im preußischen Etat, preface.

62. Wilhelm Henning, “Die hannoversche Frage“, Hoyaer Wochenblatt, 24 April 1924 (clipping in NHStAH, VVP17, Nr. 195); and Dickinson, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy“.

63. Hermann Schuster to Chancellor Gustav Stresemann, September 1923, Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BAB), R43 I/1846, fo. 71.

64. Interior minister to the Chancellery, 28 January 1928, BAB, R43 I/1846, fo. 90.

65. Braun, Von Weimar bis Hitler, 356. Cf. Schulz, Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur, 318–9.

66. Bode, Gustav Noske als Oberpräsident der Provinz Hannover 1920–1933, 373–81.

67. Applegate, “Democracy or Reaction?” 248.

68. Schlemmer, ‘Los von Berlin’, 638.

69. Cf. protocol of the federalist congress in Hanover on 12 September 1924, NHStAH, Hann. 122a, Nr. 2765, fo. 589.

70. ‘Hannoveraner!’, in flyer collection ‘Volksabstimmung zur Abtrennung Hannovers von Preußen (18. Mai 1924)’, Stadtarchiv Göttingen.

71. Brüning, Niedersachsen im Rahmen der Neugliederung des Reiches, 87.

72. Klein, “Preußische Provinz Hessen-Nassau 1866–1944/45,” 354–5.

73. John, “‘Unitarischer Bundesstaat’, ‘Reichsreform‘ und ‘Reichs-Neugliederung‘ in der Weimarer Republik,” 361. See also Reeken, Heimatbewegung, Kulturpolitik und Nationalsozialismus, 54–98.

74. The quote comes from Wilson’s famous ‘Safe for Democracy’ speech given to a joint session of the US Congress on 2 April 1917, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4943/(accessed on 6 November 2017).

75. For a stimulating discussion of the fraught relationship between secessionism and democracy, see Buchanan, “Making and Unmaking of Boundaries”.

76. ‘Der Klarheit entgegen!’, manifesto, August 1930, BAB, R72/2304, fo. 25. On the pervasive presence of the Stahlhelm in the Province of Hanover, see Fritzsche, Rehearsal for Fascism, 167–89.

77. ‘Der Klarheit entgegen!’, fo. 30.

78. ‘Percentage of votes cast in favour of the NSDAP’, in Noakes and Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 1, 83. For the regional socio-political context and the Nazis‘ profitting from local hostility to SPD rule, see also Schmiechen-Ackermann, “Nationalsozialistische Herrschaft im ‘völkischen Kernland‘ des ‘Dritten Reiches‘,“ 210–26; Stegmann, Politische Radikalisierung in der Provinz, 83; Büttner, “‘Volksgemeinschaft’ oder Heimatbindung,“ 96; and McElligott, Contested City.

79. Noakes, “Federalism in the Nazi State,” 121.

80. Brecht, Federalism and Regionalism in Germany, 88.

81. Rickhey, “Hannoversch-niedersächsische Freistaatsbewegung,” 6.

82. Gerwarth, “The Past in Weimar History,” 2.

83. Cf. Hodo von Hodenberg to Dr. Bingmann, 30 April 1930, NHStAH, VVP 17, Nr 182, fos. 2–4; von der Decken, Bahn frei für ein reichsunmittelbares Niedersachsen, 8–9.

84. King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans, 170; and Cornwall, “The Czechoslovak Sphinx,” 214.

85. Cf. Blickle, Heimat, 13–4, 20, 27; Waal, “Turn to Local Communities in Early Postwar West Germany”; and Reeken, “Heimatbewusstsein, Integration und Modernisierung”.

86. Nentwig, Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf, 580–2.

87. Ibid., 579; Alvis, “Holy Homeland”; and Schroeder, “Ties of Urban Heimat”.

88. D’Erizans, “Securing the Garden and Longings for Heimat in Post-War Hanover, 1945-1948,” 214; and Fisher, “Heimat Heimstättensiedlung”.

89. Demshuk, “What was the ‘Right to the Heimat’?”.

90. Klein, Westdeutscher Protestantismus und politische Parteien, 293.

91. ‘Das Gewissen entscheidet’, report to the 8th party congress of the German Party in Berlin on 7 June 1958, reprinted in Hellwege, Heinrich Hellwege, 160.

Additional information

Funding

This article benefitted from a EURIAS fellowship at the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies (France), co-funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, under the European Union’s 7thFramework Programme for research, and from a funding from the French State programme ‘Investissements d’avenir’, managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11-LABX-0027-01 Labex RFIEA+).

Notes on contributors

Jasper Heinzen

Jasper Heinzen is a lecturer in modern European history at the University of York. He is the author of Making Prussians, Raising Germans: A Cultural History of Prussian State-Building after Civil War, 1866-1935 (2017) and various articles on the Second German Empire, the survival of monarchy as an institution in the modern period, European international relations and the place of the Napoleonic Wars in European collective memory. He is currently writing a book about the role of honour as a transnational medium of communication among prisoners of war in the nineteenth century.