Red Saxony: Election Battles and the Spectre of Democracy in Germany, 1860-1918 - Hardcover

Retallack, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199668787 ISBN 13: 9780199668786

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Red Saxony throws new light on the reciprocal relationship between political modernization and authoritarianism in Germany over the span of six decades. Election battles were fought so fiercely in Imperial Germany because they reflected two kinds of democratization. Social democratization could not be stopped, but political democratization was opposed by many members of the German bourgeoisie. Frightened by the electoral success of the Social Democrats after 1871, anti-democrats deployed many strategies that flew in the face of electoral fairness. They battled socialists, liberals, and Jews at election time, but they also strove to rewrite the electoral rules of the game. Using a regional lens to rethink older assumptions about Germany's changing political culture, this volume focuses as much on contemporary Germans' perceptions of electoral fairness as on their experiences of voting. It devotes special attention to various semi-democratic voting systems whereby a general and equal suffrage (for the Reichstag) was combined with limited and unequal ones for local and regional parliaments. For the first time, democratization at all three tiers of governance and their reciprocal effects are considered together. Although the bourgeois face of German authoritarianism was nowhere more evident than in the Kingdom of Saxony, Red Saxony illustrates how other Germans grew to fear the spectre of democracy. Although twists and turns lay ahead, that fear made it easier for Hitler and the Nazis to win elections in the 1920s and to entomb German democracy in 1933.

About this title

About the Author

James Retallack studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and received his DPhil in 1983. He joined the History Department at the University of Toronto in 1987 and served as Chair of the German Department from 1999 to 2002. In 1993 to 1994, he spent a year at the Free University Berlin as a Humboldt Research Fellow in the Political Science department. He also held a Visiting Professorship in History at the University of Gottingen in 2002 and 2003 when he was awarded the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Bessel Research Prize by the Humboldt Foundation. He became an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2011.

Review

"Retallack in many ways presents a masterpiece of sober historical research. He patiently examines many agendas for historical reform, and analyses parliamentary and electoral histories as well as various strategies of exclusion at many levels-rhetorical, legal, and physical." -- Stefan Berger, German Historical Institute London Bulletin

"Retallack [has] made an important contribution to the discussion about the modernization ability of the empire." -- Volker Stalmann, Journal of Social History

"a combination of exhaustive archival research, complete mastery of the existing body of secondary scholarship, and writing that is engaging, erudite, and replete with literary references ... The final result is a reading of the recent German past that places Retallack's Red Saxony on the cutting edge of political history and how it should be written -- with multiple methodologies, command of the sources, a sense of nuance and discernment, and a sensitivity to the different ways in which the material in question can be interpreted." -- Larry Eugene Jones, American Historical Review

"Red Saxony is a powerful contribution that calls into question long- and widely-held assumptions while establishing new ones: it will define the field for years to come. The appearance of this book within the current global political moment, as long-held democratic commitments are increasingly under attack, makes Red Saxony a work as timely as it is erudite." --Hans Rosenberg Book Prize committee: Frank Biess (University of California, San Diego), Andrea Orzoff, (New Mexico State University), Daniel Riches (Univer sity of Alabama)

"James Retallack has become perhaps the most interesting and important historian of Imperial Germany currently working in the field ... His most recent work ... constitutes a major landmark in the historiography of Imperial Germany. The depth of research on display in this book reflects decades of close and thoughtful engagement with the subject matter ... It is hard to think of a better book on Imperial Germany published in recent years."--Andrew G. Bonnell, European History Quarterly

"[Retallack] has produced probably the most important English-language study ever published of the suffrage struggles that characterized 19th-century Europe."--Robert J. Goldstein, CHOICE

"Retallack's magnificent study explores election battles -- encompassing both election campaigns and debates over suffrage laws -- as the best site for understanding the course of regime transformation ... Historians will be impressed by [Retallack's] breathtaking knowledge of political life in Saxony, based on a firm command of the archival and secondary materials."--Anna Ross, German History

"Red Saxony is not just the synthesis of many years of research, nor just a lucid portrayal of Saxony's social history in Imperial Germany. Rather, the book is a convincing plaidoyer for the explanatory value of regional approaches with the inclusion of local perspectives and ... transnational contextualization, for which Retallack has set a new standard."--Swen Steinberg, Neues Archiv für Sachsische Geschichte [translated]

"[this] may well be the definitive study of high and popular politics in pre-1918 Saxony ... [it] offers many fresh comparative insights into the larger context of 19th-century Central European history as well as thoughtful discussions of the socio-political dynamic of this period and ideas on how to conceptualize it ... those who are prepared to read this excellent book from cover to cover, will be richly rewarded."--Volker Berghahn, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0199668787
• ISBN 13: 9780199668786
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 740