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KOCKA - Jürgen - Historical Comparison - The Case of The German Sonderweg
KOCKA - Jürgen - Historical Comparison - The Case of The German Sonderweg
KOCKA - Jürgen - Historical Comparison - The Case of The German Sonderweg
Wiley
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FORUM ON COMPARATIVE HISTORIOGRAPHY
2.
JURGENKOCKA
ABSTRACT
A comparative historian, Allan Mitchell recently said, is one who does twice the
work and receives half the credit. Others such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler have
praised historical comparison as a "royal road" to historical knowledge.
Comparative history has become a major field of historical research over the last
decade or so, particularly in Germany.' The aim of this article is to discuss some
of the opportunities and problems of historical comparison in an indirect way,
that is, by reconstructing and discussing the debate on the "German Sonderwveg"
(literally, "German special path," something like "German exceptionalism").2
First, I will present the Sondervveg thesis; second, the most important objections
to it; third, I will discuss which elements of this thesis should be abandoned,
modified, or retained in light of the research and debates of recent years; and
finally, I will draw some conclusions with respect to the methodology of histor-
ical comparison.
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ASYMMETRICALHISTORICALCOMPARISON 41
I
3. See B. Faulenbach, Die Ideologie des delaschen Weges: Die deutsche Geschichte ill der
HistoriographiezvischenKaiserreichund Nationalsozialismus(Munich, 1980).
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42 JURGEN KOCKA
burgerlichenGeistes
4. Cf. H. Plessner,Die verspdteteNation: uber die politische Verfiihrbarkeit
(Stuttgart,1959); E. Fraenkel,Deutschland und die westlichen Demokratien(Stuttgart,1964); K.-D.
Bracher,Die Auflisung der WeimarerRepublik(Villingen. 1962); M. R. Lepsius, "Parteiensysteme
und Sozialstruktur:Zum Problem der Demokratisierungder deutschen Gesellschaft,"in Wirtschaft,
Geschichte, Wirtschaftsgeschichte:FestschriftffirFriedrich Liidtkezum 65. Geburtstag,ed. W. Abel
et al. (Stuttgart,1966), 371-393; L. Krieger, The GermanIdea of Freedom (Boston, 1957); F. Stern,
The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley,1961);
G. L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the ThirdReich, (New York,
1964); K. Sontheimer,AntidemokratischesDenken in der Weimnarer Republik (Munich, 1962); H.
Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience 1660-1815
(Cambridge,Mass., 1958); Rosenberg, "Die Pseudodemokratisierungder Rittergutsbesitzerklasse"
(1958), in Rosenberg, Machteliten und Wirtschaftskonjunkturen (Gottingen, 1978), 83-101; H. A.
Winkler, "Die 'neue Linke' und der Faschismus: Zur Kritik neomarxistscherTheorien fiber den
Nationalsozialismus,"in Winkler,Revolution, Staat, Faschismus (Gottingen, 1978), 65-117; H.-U.
Wehler,Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1918 [1973] (Gbttingen, 1983), 5; F. Fischer, Buindnisder
Eliten: Zur Kontinuitdtder Machtstrukturenin Deutschland 1871-1945 (Dusseldorf, 1979).
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ASYMMETRICALHISTORICALCOMPARISON 43
II
The critique of the critical Sonderweg thesis has been in part methodological.
ThomasNipperdeywas one of the first to stress that there are "severalcontinu-
ities" in Germanhistory.He saw the Kaiserreichnot merely as the prehistoryof
1933 but also of the FederalRepublic, and as a period in its own right as well. 6
One could add that the furtherNational Socialism fades into the past, the less
self-evident it becomes to interpretnineteenth- and twentieth-centuryGerman
history primarilyin relation to the breakdownof the WeimarRepublic and the
victory of National Socialism.
David Blackbournand Geoff Eley have arguedthat the idea of a Sonderweg
assumesthe existence of a "normalpath"from which Germandevelopmentdevi-
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44 JURGENKOCKA
ated. Here, each meaning of the term "normal"calls for a different critical
response. If "normal"means "average"or "most frequent," it is difficult to
demonstratethat French, English, or American development represented"nor-
mality,"quite aside from the great differences among them which rendertheir
grouping as "Western"problematic. But understanding"normal"as "norm"
implies a highly subjective value judgment and, beyond that, the dangerof ide-
alizing "theWest."7One could add that, with the growing doubtsaboutthe supe-
riorityof "the West,"the Sonderwegthesis has lost some of its immediateplau-
sibility rightly or wrongly. Still, in regardto the collapse of democracyand the
rise of dictatorshipin the interwar period, western and northernEurope and
NorthAmerica stood the test betterthan Germanyand much of central,eastern,
and southernEurope.
Debate about the Sonderveg thesis itself spurredempiricalcriticism that was
at least as importantas the problematicdefinitionof "normality."In place of an
overview of the literature,I will limit myself to a single example:the majorpro-
ject in Bielefeld on the history of the Europeanbourgeoisie was partly motivat-
ed by the controversy on the "Sonderweg."In the course of this research, it
emerged that aristocraticinfluence on the grande bourgeoisie was probably no
greaterin late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuryGermanythan in many
other parts of Europe. The charge of "feudalization"intended to document the
weakness of the Germanbourgeoisie has lost much of its weight as a partof the
Sonderwegthesis. Comparingmiddle-class self-governmentin German,western
European,and easternEuropeancities of the nineteenthcenturyprovides no evi-
dence for a special weakness of bourgeois norms and practices in Germany.On
the contrary, an internationalcomparison shows that Germany's "Bildungs-
buirgertum," her educatedand cultivatedbourgeoisie,was strongand clearly con-
toured.In the face of these and other findings, the empirical foundationsof the
Sonderwegthesis have crumbled.8
A thirdobjection to the Sonderwvegidea is only beginning to make itself felt.
It traces the tendency toward a certainEuropeanizationof the image of twenti-
eth-centuryhistory. The more this view gains acceptance, the more National
Socialism will be seen as part of a broaderEuropean,and the less as an exclu-
sively German,phenomenon.In the mid-1980s, Ernst Nolte proposed a radical
variantof this Europeanizedinterpretationof National Socialism. It smacked of
apologetics, was criticized in the "Historikerstreit"("historians'dispute"),and
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ASYMMETRICALHISTORICALCOMPARISON 45
III
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46 JURGENKOCKA
11. More in Kocka, "Ende des deutschen Sonderwegs?," 24-25; H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche
Gesellschaftsgeschichte(Munich, 1995), III, 449-486.
12. Cf. H. A. Winkler, Weimar1918-1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Dernokratie
(Munich, 1933).
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ASYMMETRICALHISTORICALCOMPARISON 47
ence of recent years has confirmedthis part of the Sonderweg view of German
historyas well. Even the reunificationof 1989-90 can be adducedhere:elements
of theSonderweg,
inparticular
its illiberal,
authoritarian stillexist-
dimensions,
ed in East Germanylong after it had faded in the Federal Republic. Thus seen,
1989-90 also markedthe end of the GermanSonderwegin the East, where it had
survived-in greatlyalteredform, of course. The FederalRepubliccould expand
its system eastward and the Cold War was brought to an end without pushing
Germanyback to a Sonderwegbetween East and West.'"In other words, a close
look and systematic comparisonconfirms not all of the critical Sonderweg the-
sis, but it does supportits core.
The emerging Europeanizationof our view of the catastrophesof the twenti-
eth centurywill lead beyond the customarynarrownessof nationalhistory; this
should be welcomed. But in the end we should not and may not be distracted
from the fact that Germanywas the leading country of Europeanfascism, and
thatWorldWarII and the Shoah came from Germany.Thus, the Europeanization
of the interpretationof National Socialism has clear limits,'4 and the questions
the Sonderwegthesis sought to answerremain.
What aboutthe declining persuasivepower of the Sonderwegidea as National
Socialism moves furtherinto the past?After more thanfifty years and a new turn-
ing point (1989-90), in the face of new socioeconomic and socioculturalprob-
lems typical for modernWesternsocieties ratherthan specific to Germany,the
Sonderwegthesis should be losing interpretivepower. The tendency to interpret
Germanhistory sub specie "1933" ought to decline. It has been suggested that
we are at the end of a long phase of German self-criticism, which manifested
itself in an emphaticallyskeptical view of Germannationalhistory."' With this,
the plausibilityof the Sonderwegthesis would crumblebecause it answersques-
tions hardlyever posed anymoreat the end of the century.
Some aspects of the currentdebates among historians and publicists indeed
point in this direction. It is also conspicuous that comparativeresearch today
focuses more on the long-taboo comparisonbetween brown and red, fascist and
communist,dictatorshipsthanon comparingthe Germandevelopmentthatled to
dictatorshipwith Westerndevelopmentthat did not.'6
On the other hand, interestin National Socialist Germanyand its misdeeds is
hardlyflagging. The more one examines the history of the second Germandicta-
13. Cf. J. Kocka, "Ein deutscher Sonderweg: Uberlegungenzur Sozialgeschichte der DDR," in
Kocka, Vereinigungskrise. Zur Geschichtedee Gegenwart(Gottingen, 1995), 102-121; Jirgen Kocka,
"Nationalsozialismusund SED-Diktaturin vergleichenderPerspektive,"in Materialiendee Enquete-
Kommission "Aufarbeitungvon Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatilr in Deutschland" (12.
Wahiperiodedes Deutschen Bundestags), published by the Deutsche Bundestag (Baden-Badenand
Frankfurt,1995), IX, 591ff.
14. For a skillful presentationof the intertwiningof the Europeanand Germandimensionssee Saul
Friedlander,Das Dritte Reich und die Juden (Munich, 1998), volume 1.
15. Cf. for example S. Berger, The Searchlfor Normality: National Identity and Historical
Consciousness in Germanysince 1800 (Oxford, 1997).
16. Cf. Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Compearisol,ed. I. Kershaw and M. Lewin
(Cambridge,Eng., 1997); S. Courtoiset al., Le livre noir du conimunisme:Crimes,terreui;repression
(Paris, 1997).
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48 JURGEN KOCKA
IV
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ASYMMETRICALHISTORICALCOMPARISON 49
specific issues in the historyof one country.To this purpose,a brief sketch of the
historyof anothercountryor othercountriesis used merely as a foil for the pecu-
liarities of the case one in which one is really interested here, Germany."7
Asymmetriccomparisonsare often risky, as the history of the Sonder-wegthe-
sis shows. Based as a rule on selected secondary literature,the sketch of the
foil in this case the sketch of the history of a Western country or of "the
West" can be so selective, superficial,stylized, and idealized thatit leads to dis-
tortingresults. It can also be objected that asymmetricalcomparisonabuses the
unit of comparison,which is not studiedin its own right,but is instrumentalized.
One examines the other only to understandoneself better.
On the other hand, a lot can be said for asymmetriccomparison, as long as
superficialityand distortionare avoided. It has labor-savingadvantagesbecause
it does not demandthe same effort for all the objects compared.For dissertations
and otherprojectssubjectto narrowtime limits, asymmetriccomparisonis often
the only way to open oneself to comparisonat all. Even in its asymmetricform,
comparisoncan lead to questions that cannot otherwisebe posed and to answers
that cannot otherwise be given. Consideringthe degree to which nation-specific
approachesdominatemodernand contemporaryhistory,there is much to recom-
mend accepting the comparativeperspective as a means of widening horizons,
even where it is not accomplishedin a balancedfashion, but only asymmetrical-
ly. And even if asymmetriccomparisoncan lead to problematicresults and dis-
tortions,it can be self-correctingby motivatingempiricalresearchto uncoverini-
tially one-sided or distortedassumptionsand interimresults.
The example of the Sonderwvegdebate makes extremely clear the degree to
which the results of a comparisondepend on the selection of the objects of com-
parison. Comparedwith its Dutch or English parallels, the nineteenth-century
Germaneconomic bourgeoisie appearsrelatively limited in extent, power, and
bourgeois qualities. But comparedwith east-centralor eastern Europeancoun-
terparts,it appearsstrongand intensely bourgeois.The westerncomparativeper-
spective makes National Socialism appear deviant; from a southern or south-
eastern Europeanperspective, Nazism becomes part of a phenomenon spread
across large partsof the continent.One must not lose sight of the resultingselec-
tivity of comparison.Changing the partnercomparedcan make this selectivity
conscious and can mitigate the gross distortionsof one-sided comparisons.
But a resolute "Western-oriented" comparativeperspective can be defended
despite the resulting selectivity. In the study of history,comparisonserves vari-
ous purposesand fulfills many functions.'8In the case of the Sondenveg debate,
it serves with critical intent the collective examinationof identity. Comparison
with the West opens the gaze to alternativehistoricaldevelopments,in this case
to better, non-fascist, less dictatorial alternativesunfortunatelynot chosen by
Germanhistory. In light of such alternatives not mere possibilities but actual
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50 JURGEN KOCKA
Freie UniversitdtBerlin
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