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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f
GERMAN
P OL I T IC S
The Oxford Handbook of
GERMAN
POLITICS
Edited by
KLAUS LARRES, HOLGER MOROFF,
and RUTH WITTLINGER
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Oxford University Press 2022
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
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ISBN 978–0–19–881730–7
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In Memory of Prof. Ruth Wittlinger
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Klaus Larres, Holger Moroff, and Ruth Wittlinger
PA RT I : L E A DI N G S C HOL A R S A N D T H E I R
I N T E R P R E TAT ION S OF G E R M A N H I S TORY
F ROM WOR L D WA R I I TO T H E P R E SE N T
1. Encounters with Modernity: The German Search for Alternatives in
the Twentieth Century 7
Konrad H. Jarausch
2. From Post-National Democracy to Post-Classical Nation-State 24
Heinrich August Winkler
3. Emotional Styles in Post-War German Politics 33
Ute Frevert
4. The Development of Germany After 1945 45
Klaus von Beyme
PA RT I I : G E R M A N Y DU R I N G
T H E C OL D WA R E R A
5. Atlantic Integration and ‘Ever Closer Union’: West Germany, the US,
and European Unity during the Cold War 59
Klaus Larres
6. Germany and the Soviet Union during the Cold War Era 82
Peter Ruggenthaler
viii Table of Contents
PA RT I I I : G E R M A N Y SI N C E 1 9 90
P OL I T IC A L I N ST I T U T ION S A N D
C ON ST I T U T IONA L DE SIG N
9. The Executive: The German Government and Civil Service 139
Ray Hebestreit and Karl-Rudolf Korte
10. The German Bundestag: Core Institution in a Parliamentary
Democracy 161
Suzanne S. Schüttemeyer and Sven T. Siefken
11. The Federal System and the Länder 179
Arthur Benz
12. The German Legal System and Courts 196
Russell A. Miller
13. The ‘Old Five’: The Bonn Parties in the Berlin Republic 216
David F. Patton
14. Germany’s Political Parties—the Newcomers 234
Hartwig Pautz
P OL I T IC A L E C ON OM Y A N D P OL IC Y- M
AKING
15. The German Economic Model: From Germany’s Social Market
Economy to Neo-liberalism? 251
Christian Schweiger
16. Germany’s Trading System and Export-Driven Economy 265
Andreas Busch
17. Germany’s Banking and Financial System 285
Janine Jacob
Table of Contents ix
C U LT U R E A N D S O C I E T Y
21. Demographics and Generational Transition and Politics 367
Reinhold Sackmann
22. Religion and the Churches 381
Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller
23. Jewish Life and Politics in Post-War Germany 396
Joseph Cronin
24. Identity and Diversity in Post-Unification Germany 416
Priscilla Layne
25. German Literature, Theatre, and Film since 1990 432
Michael Braun
26. German Art After 1990 450
Marion Deshmukh
PA RT I V: G E R M A N Y I N G L OBA L A F FA I R S
G E R M A N Y A N D E U ROP E
27. German Foreign Policy: Roots, Reasonings, and Repercussions 469
Holger Moroff
28. Franco-German Relations and the European Integration Process
since 1990 491
Carine Germond
x Table of Contents
G E R M A N Y A N D T H E WOR L D
B E YON D E U ROP E
31. German Multilateralism After the Cold War 561
James Sperling
32. Germany and NATO 589
Markus Kaim
33. German-American Relations from 1945 to the Present 606
Klaus Schwabe
34. Three Chancellors and Russia: German-Russian Relations since 1990 626
Stephen F. Szabo
35. A Quarter Century of German Relations with the Indo-Pacific 639
Volker Stanzel
PA RT V: L O OK I N G BAC K WA R D
A N D F ORWA R D
36. Angela Merkel in Power: How Influential Was the Merkel Era? 659
Stefan Kornelius
37. Leaders in Partnership: Germany in the Biden Era 672
Jackson Janes
Index 687
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Tables
Table 4.1 Dominant actors and aims in the transformation of East Germany 49
Table 4.2 Comparison of the years 2000 and 2016 (Finanzbericht, 2016,
pp. 402ff) 53
Table 9.1 Chancellors of the Federal Government of Germany since 1949 141
xii List of Figures and Tables
and security in democratic societies. His publications include Freiheit und Sicherheit.
Eine Ortsbestimmung (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2016); German
Democracy. From Post World War II to the Present Day (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006);
Sicherheit in Freiheit. Die Schutzfunktion des demokratischen Staates und die Freiheit der
Bürger (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2003).
HARNISCH, Sebastian—is Professor of International Relations and Foreign Policy
at the University of Heidelberg. His publications include The Politics of Resilience and
Transatlantic Order: Enduring Crisis? co-edited with Gordon Friedrichs and Cameron
Thies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019); Foreign Policy as Public Policy? Premises and Pitfalls
(Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2019); The Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign
Policy Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
HEBESTREIT, Ray—is Research Coordinator at the NRW School of Governance
and Program Coordinator at the Institute of Political Science at the University of
Duisburg- Essen. His publications include Partizipation in der Wissensgesellschaft.
Funktion und Bedeutung diskursiver Beteiligungsverfahren (Wiesbaden: Springer VS,
2013); ‘Partizipation und politisches Entscheiden. Politische Beteiligung im Kontext
aktueller Entscheidungszumutungen in der Politik’, with Karl-Rudolf Korte, in Lothar
Harles and Dirk Lange (eds), Zeitalter der Partizipation. Paradigmenwechsel in Politik
und politischer Bildung? (Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag. 2015), pp. 22–38; ‘Das
Institutionengefüge des bundesdeutschen Regierungssystems’, with Karl- Rudolf
Korte, in Andres Kost, Peter Massing, and Marion Reiser (eds), Handbuch Demokratie
(Frankfurt: Wochenschau Verlag. 2020), pp.157–74.
JACOB, JANINE—works as an adviser for Ralph Brinkhaus, member of the German
Federal Parliament since 2009 and the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary
group from 2018 to 2022. She previously worked as a business consultant to a finan-
cial consulting firm in the area of finance and risk management. She received her PhD
in 2015 from the Hertie School of Governance. Her published dissertation is entitled
Hybrid System: A Political Science Perspective on the Transformation Process of the
German Financial System During the 2000s (Berlin: Hertie School of Government,
2015): https://www.econbiz.de/Record/from-bank-based-hybrid-system-political-scie
nce-perspective-the-transformation-process-the-german-financial-system-during-
the-2000s-jacob-janine/10011416668.
JANES, Jackson—is Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in
Washington DC. He was President of the American Institute for Contemporary German
Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University/SAIS in Washington, DC, from 1994 to
2018. His most recent publications include ‘Transatlantic Relations Under President
Joe Biden’ (Zeitschrift für Aussen-und Sicherheitspolitik, March 2021); ‘Biden’s Grosse
Herausforderung’ (Sirius: Zeitschrift für Strategische Analysen, March 2021); ‘Die USA
und Deutschland,‘ in Länderbericht USA (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung,
June 2021).
xvi List of Contributors
Community: Beyond Containment and Hegemony (ed.) (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1993); Germany’s Difficult Passage to Modernity: Breakdown, Breakup, Breakthrough
(ed.) (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001).
LARRES, Klaus—is the Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor of History and
International Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously
he held professorships at Johns Hopkins University/SAIS, Yale, London University,
and Queen’s University Belfast in the UK, and served as Counselor and Senior Policy
Adviser at the German embassy in Beijing, China. His publications include Churchill’s
Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002);
Dictators and Autocrats: Securing Power Across Global Politics (London: Routledge,
2021); Uncertain Allies: Nixon, Kissinger and the Threat of a United Europe (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2022).
LAYNE, Priscilla—is Associate Professor of German at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill and Adjunct Professor of African and Afro-American Studies at UNC.
Her publications include the book White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black
Popular Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018); and articles such
‘Halbstarke and Rowdys: Consumerism, Youth Rebellion, and Gender in the Postwar
Cinema of the Two Germanys’, Central European History (2018) 53(2), pp. 432–52; and
‘Regulating and Transgressing the Borders of the Berlin Republic in Doris Dörrie’s Die
Friseuse (2010)’, Women in German Yearbook (2015) 31, pp.147–73.
MILLER, Russell A.—is J.B. Stombock Professor of Law at Washington and Lee
University in Lexington, Virginia. He is the co-founder of the German Law Journal,
former Head of the Max Planck Law Network, and inter alia has won a Humboldt
Research Prize in recognition of his years of scholarly engagement with German law. His
publications include The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany
(with Donald Kommers) (3rd edn, Durham: Duke University Press, 2021); Privacy
and Power: A Transatlantic Dialogue After the NSA-Affair (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2019); Transboundary Harm in International Law: Lessons from the
Trail Smelter Arbitration (with Rebecca Bratspies) (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006).
MOROFF, Holger—is Visiting Professor of Strategic Studies at the National Defense
University and an adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously he taught international and comparative politics
at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and at Leibniz University Hannover. His research
focuses on security theories, comparative political corruption, and the international-
ization of anti-corruption regimes. His publications include European Soft Security
Policies: The Northern Dimension (ed.) (Kauhava: The Finish Institute of International
Affairs, 2002); Fighting Corruption in Eastern Europe: A Multilevel Perspective, co-edited
with Diana Schmidt-Pfister (London/New York: Routledge, 2017); he has also published
numerous articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes.
xviii List of Contributors
MÜLLER, Olaf—is a Researcher at the Institute of Sociology and Project Leader at the
Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ at the University of Münster. His research
focuses on the sociology of religion, social change, and political culture. His publications
include articles in the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, and Religion
and Society in Central and Eastern Europe. He has also co-edited (with Detlef Pollack,
Volkhard Krech and Markus Hero) the Handbuch Religionssoziologie (Handbook of the
Sociology of Religion) (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2018).
PATTON, David F.—is Joanne Toor Cummings’ 50 Professor of Government and
International Relations at Connecticut College in New London, CT, where he teaches
classes on comparative and European politics. He has published books and articles
on German party politics, reunification, and German foreign policy. His publications
include ‘Party-Political Responses to the Alternative for Germany in Comparative
Perspective’, German Politics and Society (2020) 38(1), 77–104; Out of the East: From PDS
to Left Party in Unified Germany (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2011); and Cold War Politics in
Postwar Germany (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999).
PAUTZ, Hartwig—is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of the West
of Scotland. He has published widely on the relationship between policy, politics, and
expertise, in particular with regard to the role of think tanks in policy-making, as well
as on e-democracy, the modernization of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
and German party politics more generally. His publications include ‘Germany’, in
Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa (eds), Populism and New Patterns of Political
Competition in Western Europe (London: Routledge, 2020); ‘The German New
Right and Its Think Tanks,’ German Politics and Society (December 2020) 38(4),
pp. 51–7 1; Think Tanks, Social Democracy and Social Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012).
POLLACK, Detlef—is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Münster.
He is also deputy speaker of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ at the
University of Münster. His research focuses on the sociology of religion, political cul-
ture, democratization in Eastern Europe, new social movements, and systems theory.
His publications include articles in journals such as Sociology of Religion, Social
Compass, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, European Sociological Review,
and many others as well as the recent book, Religion and Modernity: An International
Comparison, co-authored with Gergely Rosta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
RUGGENTHALER, Peter—is Deputy Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute
for Research on War Consequences in Graz, Austria. Since 2008 he has been a
member of the Russian-Austrian Historians’ Commission. His publications include
The Concept of Neutrality in Stalin’s Foreign Policy, 1945–53 (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2015); Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary, and Austria, 1944/45–1948/
49, co-edited with Csaba Békés and Laszlo Bochi (Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2015); The Soviet Union and Cold War Neutrality and Nonalignment
in Europe. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021).
List of Contributors xix
Institution Press, 2004); and Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-Economics (London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
THRAENHARDT, Dietrich—is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the
Westphalian University Münster. He has published more than forty books and 250
articles. His publications include recent essays on asylum politics in Germany and its
neighbouring countries and, for instance, Integration: Begriffe—Prozesse—Institutionen
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2021); SelbstHilfe: Wie Migranten Netzwerke knüpfen und
soziales Kapital schaffen, with Karin Weiss (Freiburg: Lambertus Verlag, 2005);
Europe—A New Immigration Continent: Policies and Politics in Comparative Perspective
(Münster: LIT-Verlag, 1992/1996).
WINKLER, Heinrich August—is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Humboldt
University Berlin. He has held multiple fellowships and visiting distinguished
professorships. His publications include Germany: The Long Road West. Vol. 1: 1789–1933
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Germany: The Long Road West. Vol. 2: 1933–
1990 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007); Wie wir wurden, was wir sind: Eine kurze
Geschichte der Deutschen (Munich, C.H. Beck, 2020).
WITTLINGER, Ruth (1961–2020)—was a Professor in the School of Government and
International Affairs at Durham University, UK, and the Lady Davis Visiting Professor
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She published extensively on memory and
identity in post-unification Germany and Europe and her work appeared in journals
such as West European Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, German Politics and
German Politics and Society. Her publications include German National Identity in the
Twenty-First Century: A Different Republic After All? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010); German- American Relations in the 21st Century: A Fragile Friendship, co-
edited with Klaus Larres (London/New York: Routledge, 2019); Understanding Global
Politics: Actors and Themes in International Affairs, co-ed. with Klaus Larres (London/
New York: Routledge, 2020).
I n t rodu ction
Few countries have caused or experienced more calamities in the twentieth century
than Germany. The country emerged from the Cold War as a newly united and sover-
eign state, eventually becoming Europe’s indispensable partner for all major domestic
and foreign policy initiatives. As such it is not surprising that German Chancellor
Angela Merkel was named ‘person of the year 2015’ by Time Magazine as she played piv-
otal roles in resolving various European and global crises.
In fact the post-war Federal Republic has been fortunate with its leaders and coali-
tion governments. The first (West) German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was rightly
praised for his successful though at first heavily criticized policy of Western integration.
Willy Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his initially even more controver-
sial rapprochement with the East and the acceptance of Germany’s post-war borders as
decided by the Second World War victors at Yalta and Potsdam. Helmut Schmidt obtained
much praise for his strategic and financial leadership and Helmut Kohl skilfully grasped
the tremendous window of opportunity to steer Germany towards unification in 1989/90.
Gerhard Schröder was courageous enough not only to reform the country’s economic and
social policies but also to cautiously steer the united country towards a more active foreign
policy, together with his Green coalition partner, by getting involved in the wars in the
former Yugoslavia. Schröder, however, fell out seriously with the US over the invasion of
Iraq. He also provided governmental respectability to the Green party and may thus have
hastened the popular appeal and decline of his own Social-Democratic party.
Schröder’s successor, Angela Merkel became the longest-serving modern Chancellor
after Kohl. While her sixteen years in power have ended only comparatively recently, it
is clear that she was confronted with uniquely challenging issues and addressed them in
a way that may well prove to have a lasting impact on modern German politics. Among
the issues she had to grapple with were the sovereign debt crises of 2008–12, which
threatened the continued existence of the Euro, and the 2014 Ukraine and Crimean
annexation crisis, which undermined the inviolability of the post-Second World War
borders in Europe. There also was the 2015–16 refugee crisis threatening social cohesion
2 Klaus Larres, Holger Moroff, and Ruth Wittlinger
and solidarity in the European Union (EU) as well as the UK leaving the EU in January
2020. And from 2020 to 2022 the Covid-19 pandemic caused the greatest post-war re-
cession and global health crisis so far.
These external shocks and the responses they triggered from policy-makers within
the EU and elsewhere were complemented by forward-looking and sometimes vi-
sionary policy initiatives coming from Germany itself. For instance, the country
abandoned atomic power in an attempt to decouple economic growth from nuclear and
fossil-fuel consumption, and emphasized data and privacy protection in the face of un-
precedented spying and surveillance revelations. The German Chancellor also became
a target of pervasive disapproval by US President Trump, who attempted to turn Merkel
into the butt of constant ridicule and criticism. He represented the opposite of her in
political style and value-based policy content. For much of the world, however, Merkel
became the stalwart defender of liberal Western values and democratic convictions.
This was both recognized and commemorated when Trump’s successor President Joe
Biden invited the outgoing Chancellor to a state visit to the White House a couple of
months before her voluntary retirement in December 2021. Her Finance Minister, the
Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, succeeded her, leading a “traffic-light-coalition” with the
Green Party and the Free Democrats. The new governments foreign policy resolve and
acumen was immediately tested by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand to halt
any further expansion of NATO and Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February
2022. As in 1998, it is a Green Party foreign minister that will have to help lead Germany
in cooperation with its transatlantic allies into uncharted territory of security and mili-
tary challenges in Europe in the aftermath of Russia’s ruthless war in Ukraine.
Still, all of Scholz’s and his predecessors’ policies have come at a price to German
consumers and taxpayers. That they seem able and willing to pay it has as much to do
with Germany’s history as with more recent economic and political dynamics. To name
just a few issues, Germany kept Europe’s common currency viable during protracted
sovereign debt crises, helped to deescalate the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in
2014/15, and invented a new ‘welcoming culture’ in Europe’s refugee crisis, in the process
wielding it like a weapon. Two World Wars and various transformations of its welfare
state, party system, citizenship, and immigration laws, and of its export driven economy
have informed Germany’s domestic democratic culture and the country’s thoroughly
multilateral foreign policy as well as its reluctant leadership in global affairs and inter-
national organizations. This self-assertion through self-restriction also applies to the
role of politics in society at large. The experience of both fascist and communist versions
of totalitarianism instilled a large degree of both scepticism of autocracy and demo-
cratic convictions in the German people.
are challenging and transforming the modern state. The growing importance of
Germany as a political actor and economic and security-military partner makes this
endeavour all the more timely and pertinent from both a German and European but
also from a global perspective.
This Handbook has assembled a large number of eminent scholars and outstanding
younger experts on Germany. They are based in Germany, on the European continent
and Scandinavia, the UK, as well as North America and have explored and analysed
developments in German politics from 1945 to the present, with a particular focus on
the years since 1990. Within the thirty-seven chapters of this book the contributors and
the three editors have done their best to look at Germany from both the outside and
from within, providing a well-balanced picture of the most crucial developments in
German politics over the last few decades.
This book starts with four eminent scholars’ divergent historical interpretations of
the developments in Germany in the post-1945 world, reflecting upon a great number
of important aspects that have influenced wider European and global views of modern
societies at large.
The second part of the book focuses on Cold War Germany. The authors analyse
West and East Germany’s domestic, economic, social, and external relations during the
Cold War and Germany’s embeddedness in both the Atlantic and the European policy
structures. The final chapter of this part of the book deals with the domestic and external
dimensions of German unification as well as with the economic and social legacies of
this momentous event.
Part III of the Handbook is dedicated to Germany since 1990—the domestic dimen-
sion. The first section considers Germany’s formal and informal political institutions,
focusing on its parliamentary democracy and federal structure. The subsequent section
explores how the policy-making process has shaped its welfare state as well as its energy,
environmental, immigration, and gender policies. The following section deals with the
role of culture and society while the final section looks at the structure of Germany’s
political economy with a special emphasis on its model of a coordinated social market
and export-driven economy.
The fourth part of the book focuses on the external dimension of German politics
since 1990. The first section deals with Germany’s role in the EU. It explores monetary
relations and the Euro crisis, Justice and Home affairs, as well as Germany’s import-
ance in the EU’s common foreign and defence policy. The subsequent section deals
with Germany’s role in global affairs since unification. The respective authors analyse
Germany’s relationships with some of the major powers such as the US, China, and
Russia.
The fifth and final part of the handbook consists of two chapters. The authors reflect
on the lasting importance of the Merkel era and analyse the development of German
politics in the post-Merkel era. While in the US, President Joe Biden has returned to
a more traditional Western policy, in China and Russia, the other two global powers
of great importance to Germany, the autocratic leaderships of Xi Jinping and Vladimir
Putin are continuing. With the end of the Merkel era and Olaf Scholz’s transformational
4 Klaus Larres, Holger Moroff, and Ruth Wittlinger
chancellorship, an important turning point has occurred in German politics with mo-
mentous consequences for German domestic, economic/environmental, and external
affairs.
This handbook is dedicated to our co-editor Professor Ruth Wittlinger of the
University of Durham in the UK. After a grave illness Ruth passed away much too early
and was unable to see the completion of this book. We are immensely grateful for her
hard work and dedication to this Handbook and to the study of German politics, his-
tory, and culture in general. Ruth was a wonderful person with a very pleasant and
unique personality and a great sense of humour. We miss her tremendously as do all her
many friends and family.
We also would like to thank all our many contributors for their hard work, dedication,
and patience, and of course for their insightful and well-written essays. All this is greatly
appreciated. Oxford University Press senior editor, Dominic Byatt, accompanied this
book from the beginning with much helpful advice and guidance for which we are also
most grateful.
Chapel Hill, NC, February 2022
Klaus Larres and Holger Moroff
PA RT I
L E A DI N G S C HOL A R S
AND THEIR
I N T E R P R E TAT ION S
OF G E R M A N H I STORY
F ROM WOR L D WA R I I
TO T H E P R E SE N T
CHAPTER 1
ENC OUNTERS W I T H
MODERN I T Y
The German Search for Alternatives in
the Twentieth Century
Konrad H. Jarausch
In March 1915 the sociologist Torstein Veblen published a treatise that attributed
German bellicosity in the First World War to a deficit in political modernity. Like
other critics, he was struck by the contradiction between the rapid development of
industrialization and the tenacious survival of an authoritarian dynastic state. ‘This
united German community, at the same time, took over from their (industrially) more
advanced neighbors the latest and highly efficient state of the industrial arts’, allowing
the Second Empire ‘to grow to formidable dimensions’. But simultaneously ‘Germany
carried over from a recent and retarded past a state of the dynastic order, with a scheme
of detail institutions and a popular habit of mind suitable to a coercive, centralized and
irresponsible control and to the pursuit of dynastic dominion’ (Veblen, 1915). In contrast
to Great Britain which had pioneered both industrialization and parliamentary govern-
ment, Germany, he argued, excelled at the former without embracing the latter.
In contrast, the novelist Thomas Mann at the end of the war published a massive
volume in defence of Germany’s special cultural achievements. Rejecting his older
brother Heinrich’s cosmopolitan call for democracy as deeply un-German, he insisted
on his country’s middle position between Western individualism and Eastern autocracy,
which he brilliantly explicated in The Magic Mountain a few years later. ‘The difference
between spirit and politics contains [a distinction] between culture and civilization,
soul and society, freedom and right to vote, art and literature.’ For Mann, ‘Germanness
meant culture, soul, freedom, art and not civilization, society, right to vote, literature’.
Provoked by the universalism of the post-Enlightenment claims of democracy, the
writer defended the German ‘authoritarian state’, since ‘his heart belonged to Germany’
(Mann, 1918, p. xxxiii). Instead of considering the Prusso-German system as backward,
8 Konrad H. Jarausch
Mann defended its distinctive combination of economic prowess and political authori-
tarianism as culturally superior.
After the Third Reich, self-critical West German historians returned to this Sonderweg
thesis as a negative deviation from Western development. From a macro-sociological
perspective, it seemed indeed that Germany had chosen a historical path that differed
from the Anglo-American model, enshrined in the textbook notion of Western civiliza-
tion. This viewpoint inverted Thomas Mann’s claim of cultural superiority and revived
Veblen’s approach of using Great Britain as the yardstick by which Germany failed in
disastrous ways. Led by the theoretically minded and fiercely partisan Hans-Ulrich
Wehler, scholars clustered around the new university of Bielefeld elevated this inter-
pretation to a general thesis of ‘partial’ or ‘defensive’ modernization from above that
would explain German responsibility for the World Wars and the Holocaust (Wehler,
1975; Wehler, 1973; Wehler, 1987; Nolte, 2015). However, hermeneutic traditionalists
such as Thomas Nipperdey attacked such conclusions as overly generalized, while leftist
historians such as Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn disputed the suitability of Britain as
a positive model. Moreover, Michael Geyer and I questioned the appropriateness of the
national master narrative in general (Jarausch and Geyer, 2003, pp. 1–33).
Though the ‘special path’ interpretation has lost much of its explanatory power, it
posed the central question of Germany’s relation to modernity. That elusive concept,
defined variously as a description of a historical period, a claim to constant progress, and
a projection screen for blueprints of the future came into general use around the turn
of the twentieth century. Initially sociologists employed a simplistic normative under-
standing of modernization, based on Anglo-American experiences (Gerschenkron,
1943; Moore, 1966), but more recently the theoretical discussion has moved towards a
plural conception of competing modernities. Based on my interpretation of twentieth-
century European history in Out of Ashes, I argue that the German story no longer needs
to be read as incomplete Westernization but rather as a set of failed attempts at creating
alternate authoritarian, organic, or socialist forms of modernity, different from the
Western liberal-democratic pattern (Eisenstadt, 2000, pp. 1–29; Jarausch 2018a, pp. 21–
38). The following remarks attempt to sketch out some of the implications of such a more
nuanced understanding.
Authoritarian Modernization
castles and patrician townhouses, these travellers were impressed by the speed and in-
tensity of the transformation of what had been a sleepy set of dynastic territories. What
fascinated them most was ‘this work of modern improvement, especially in public
appointments’ led by the government, which was a product of ‘the scientific spirit and
method’ (Krause, 2017, pp. 25–52). For many observers, the Reich was not backward but
rather a paragon of progress.
One particular area that stood out was the excellence of science and technology,
since in the late nineteenth century German universities were considered the best in
the world. Out of neo-humanist philology, these institutions had developed a ‘research
imperative’ as a secular calling of scholarship which centred on the production of new
knowledge rather than on the transmission of received truths. This innovative ethos
attracted more than 10,000 American students who brought the new spirit as well as
institutional arrangements such as the doctoral degree, the seminar, and the research in-
stitute to the US on their return. The renown of scientific discoveries in fields like medi-
cine is evident in the disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes which German scholars
gathered during the first decades of the twentieth century. Equally prominent were the
technical institutions which turned theoretical innovations in chemistry or physics into
practical applications that produced entire new branches of industry (McClelland, 2017;
Jarausch, 1988, pp. 181–206).
Another area that struck foreign visitors was the rapid industrialization of Imperial
Germany which transformed the country into an industrial powerhouse. On the eve of
the Great War, the Wilhelmine Empire was catching up to British leadership in areas like
coal and steel production, also increasing its share of international trade at great speed.
In contrast to the Anglo-American model of laissez-faire, much of this dynamism was
due to state intervention, shielding infant industries with tariffs and supporting the
development of businesses such as the Krupp steelworks with subsidies. Especially in
technology-based areas typical of the second phase of the industrial revolution, such as
chemistry and electricity, the public support of research made it possible to carry innov-
ation over into production companies such as Bayer, BASF, Siemens, or AEG. The style
of this modernization has sometimes been called ‘organized capitalism’ in order to stress
the cooperation between government, academe, and monopolistic industry (Lee, 2017;
Winkler, 1974).
A final aspect of Imperial Germany that impressed many observers as a sign of pro-
gress was systematic state intervention to foster modernity. In contrast to the corruption
of some American officials, the Prussian bureaucracy seemed to be a model of incor-
ruptibility and efficiency in the solution of problems. Also the development of a trans-
portation infrastructure of roads, canals, and railroads appeared to be better organized
than the market-driven expansion in the US. Progressives especially travelled to
Germany in order to study its pathbreaking efforts at urban reform by fostering public
health through water and sewer-line construction, building of streetcars and subways,
moving away from tenements to housing with green spaces, the provision of allotment
garden plots (Schrebergärten), and the like. Finally, foreigners were fascinated by
Bismarck’s insurance scheme for pension, disability, and accident that was designed to
10 Konrad H. Jarausch
wean the workers away from socialism by offering an incipient welfare state (Rodgers,
2000; Mauch and Patel, 2010).
In the iron test of the First World War, the German version of authoritarian mod-
ernity nonetheless failed disastrously, since the democracies were better able to sustain
its strains. Already before the conflict many commentators had wondered about the
persistence of the Kaiser’s ‘personal rule’ and the lack of parliamentary control in spite
of universal male suffrage in the Reichstag. Moreover, the rapid growth of the labour
movement with its powerful trade unions and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as the
largest party indicated an unresolved conflict. During the war, the power of the military,
represented by the quasi-dictatorship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, seemed to guar-
antee efficient decision-making by suppressing dissent. But in the long run the suspen-
sion of politics in the Burgfrieden failed to resolve such vital problems as the rationing
of food (Jarausch, 1973; Leonhard, 2014). In the competition of different versions of pro-
gress, the particularism of the German Kultur proved unable to compete with the uni-
versalism of Western democracy.
Weimar Modernism
The ill-fated Weimar Republic was in many ways an effort to rejoin Western civiliza-
tion by establishing a German variant of liberal-democratic modernity. The Supreme
Command’s defeat in battle and collapse of nerve discredited the prestige of the military,
while the grassroots revolution of the sailors and soldiers in November 1918 overthrew
the Kaiser’s authoritarian rule by forcing William II to abdicate and flee to Holland. This
double rupture offered a chance to end the discrepancy between socio-economic mod-
ernity and political backwardness by changing the political system from the Empire to
a Republic. As a result, some historians like Detlev Peukert have labelled the Weimar
Republic as apogee of ‘classical modernity’ which inspired innovation in many areas
of society and culture (Peukert, 1993; Machtan, 2018). But the very radicalism of these
departures prohibited a stable synthesis, inaugurating instead a massive backlash that
denounced modernism as a ‘crisis’ that had to be remedied by a neo-conservative return
to older traditions.
Among the three major ideological blueprints for modernity that issued from the
First World War, the Weimar Republic represented the Wilsonian, liberal-democratic
version. The Fourteen Points proposed by the American president seemed to offer a
less onerous peace treaty than the vindictive demands of the Anglo-French statesmen.
Moreover, the transfer of government responsibility to the largest Reichstag party, the
SPD, offered a gradual transition that facilitated the drafting of a Republican constitu-
tion. The compromise between the trade unions, led by Carl Legien, and the employers’
associations, represented by Hugo Stinnes, created a chance for orderly bargaining for
wage increases. And the deal struck between President Friedrich Ebert and war minister,
ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY 11
Wilhelm Groener signified that the Reichswehr would at least tolerate the Republic.
In the chaos of defeat and revolution, these agreements represented an evolutionary
attempt to fashion a truly democratic form of political modernity (Winkler, 1993).
The calling of a constitutional convention also meant that the new government would
reject the Soviet example of modernization that was based upon grassroots councils.
During the Revolution numerous workers and soldiers had spontaneously elected such
Räte which understood themselves as carriers of revolutionary legitimacy, demanding
the end of the war, the creation of a socialist Republic, and the socialization of in-
dustry. In Berlin members of the socialist Left wing, called Spartacists, in January 1919
staged a general strike and rose up in order to seize power. The moderate SPD leader
Gustav Noske thereupon used Free Corps, made up of veterans and students, to put
down such rebellions in Berlin and other cities. The radical Right killed the leaders
of the revolt, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, irretrievably splitting the labour
movement (Schütrumpf, 2018). The victory of the moderates stabilized the Republic
and inaugurated a whole series of modernizing reforms such as green-belt housing for
the working class.
In cultural terms, Weimar proved to be a hothouse of modernist innovation and ex-
perimentation, since the institutional supports of tradition had broken down. An ex-
plosion of creativity by avant-garde groups like DADA sought to provoke the staid
burgers of the middle class. A flood of new visual styles, ranging from expressionism
to cubism rejected the traditional standards of representation, while twelve-tone music
began to reflect the dissonances of urban life. At the same time radio and film opened
up popular worlds of mass entertainment, often geared to the lowest common denom-
inator. Advertisements for the ‘new woman’, with slim shifts and bobbed hair threatened
conventions of maternalism with androgynous sexuality. In building and design, daring
Bauhaus architects attempted to marry form with function, irrespective of cultural
baggage from the past. Challenging traditional ways in virtually all avenues of human
endeavour, Weimar culture exuded a hothouse atmosphere of excitement, daring, and
conflict (Gay, 1970; Weitz, 2007).
This shock of rapid modernization created an angry backlash against cultural mod-
ernism which inspired the formation of a new, neo-conservative Right. Many religious
leaders denounced the abandonment of bourgeois conventions of morality as decadent
and sinful; nationalist commentators criticized the cosmopolitanism of the innovators,
many of which hailed from outside of Germany; a fanatical band of biological racists also
accused the Jews of destroying the core of culture; and many elitists blamed the lowering
of standards on ‘the rise of the masses’ and their entertainment by popular culture.
Like Moeller van den Bruck, this motley group of neo-conservatives did not want to go
back to the Second Empire but rather longed for the foundation of a new, anti-modern
Third Reich that would lead Germany to a national rebirth. Unfortunately, many leftist
intellectuals, such as Kurt Tucholsky, found the Republic too mundane or capitalist and
therefore failed to rally to the defense of its democratic modernity (Peukert, 1993, p. 281;
Weitz, 2007, p. 330; Woods, 1996).
12 Konrad H. Jarausch
Organic Modernity
Ever since the establishment of the Third Reich, commentators have debated the
paradoxical relationship between National Socialism and modernity. Though con-
temporary leftists denounced the NSDAP as a reactionary movement, some later
analysts have stressed its unwitting modernizing effects. But trying to reaffirm the
Enlightenment tradition of liberty and equality, most progressive scholars have
vigorously denounced the racist repression of the Third Reich as nefarious and
backward-looking. Unconvinced, some other, more moderate social historians have
pointed to modern features of the Nazi system in its embrace of technology, efforts
at biological social engineering, and the like. According to Peter Fritzsche, ‘the
Nazis were modernists because they made the acknowledgement of the radical in-
stability of twentieth century life the premise of relentless experimentation’. Seeking
to reconcile such contradictions, Jeffrey Herf has coined a concept that addressed
both dimensions by calling it ‘reactionary modernism’ (Fritzsche, 1996, pp. 1–22;
Herf, 1984).
Many aspects of Nazi ideology and practice that rejected modernity suggest that
the Third Reich was, indeed, a reactionary system. On the negative side, Hitler and his
followers hated the experiments of Weimar modernism, railing against ‘degenerate
art’; they promoted a racial anti-Semitism, denouncing Jews both as capitalists and
socialists; and they vigorously fought against the revolutionary egalitarianism of com-
munism, accusing it of cosmopolitan treason to the nation. On the positive side, the
Nazis embraced a romantic agrarianism, praising the healthy farm life of ‘blood and
soil’; they similarly promoted Nordic mythology as an invigorating martial creed, su-
perior to pacifist Christianity; and they fostered a medieval belief in a strong leader, the
charismatic Führer who would restore the country to greatness (Jäckel, 1981; Link, 2014).
Though much of the iconography was also reactionary, the Nazis were less interested
in the real past than in an imagined earlier age that would solve all the problems of the
present.
Numerous other indicators, however, imply that National Socialism was itself an out-
growth of the very modernity it claimed to combat. Holding a permanent pass to the
Deutsche Museum in Munich, Hitler was not alone in his infatuation with technology
such as driving in fast cars, flying in airplanes, and the like. The sophisticated propa-
ganda apparatus of Joseph Goebbels also used modern devices from loudspeakers to
radio receivers, from newsreels to feature films. Moreover, the Wehrmacht drew on in-
novative engineering to develop the first jet-fighter planes and the infamous V-2 rockets.
On a more general level, the Third Reich was a mass dictatorship that differed from trad-
itional authoritarian regimes in the radicalism of its methods and ideology. To Aryan
citizens the regime offered attractive incentives such as the subsidized vacations of the
Kraft durch Freude (strength through joy, KdF) and the ‘people’s cars’ of Volkswagen
(VW), but towards its opponents the Gestapo and SS used ruthless repression (Prinz
ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY 13
and Zitelmann, 1994; Allen, 1996). In spite of its neo-conservative claims, the mass mo-
bilization of the Third Reich was a quite modern form of dictatorship.
Thoroughly modern too was the gigantic Nazi project of social engineering in
order to strengthen the body of the nation for Darwinist competition. The positive
measures of such a eugenics programme consisted of efforts to reverse the decline of
the birthrate, which had been dropping due to the population transition, by fostering
motherhood and improving children’s health. The negative sides of this racial
approach to public health involved the prohibition of reproduction with Jews so as
to prevent the ‘pollution of Aryan blood’ as well as the weeding out of the hereditary
ill through sterilization or even euthanasia. Part of this biopolitical crusade was also
the reaffirmation of traditional gender distinctions between a ‘martial masculinity’,
ready to defend the fatherland against external enemies, and a ‘volkish femininity’,
providing children for the perpetuation of the Aryan race. This partly supportive
and partly murderous effort to remake the Volkskörper speaks of an astounding
ambition that can only be called modern (Dickinson, 2004, pp. 1–48; Burleigh and
Wippermann, 1991).
The Nazi project of creating an alternate ‘organic modernity’, however, failed
even more disastrously than the earlier authoritarian effort. While the Third Reich’s
rhetoric stressed the inclusive character of building a true people’s community, the
exclusions of political enemies and ‘racial inferiors’ turned the NS-Volksgemeinschaft
into a licence for mass murder. The attempt to seize ‘living space’ in the East triggered
an orgy of violence during the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the mostly Slavic inhabitants
of these territories. The anti-Semitic project of eliminating an entire people such
as the Jews unleashed a systematic genocide of unprecedented proportions in the
Holocaust. As long as the ‘lightning warfare’ of the Wehrmacht produced victories,
the Aryan majority was willing to support Hitler’s aims, but when the radio
announced one defeat after another, it began to understand that the war would come
to Germany itself. In spite of their ideological differences the Grand Alliance powers
ultimately combined to defeat the National Socialist challenger (Jarausch, 2018b,
pp. 33–46; Jarausch, 2015, p. 393).
Conservative Modernization
The second, even more total defeat discredited the fascist alternative and offered a
choice between the liberal-democratic and the Soviet-communist versions of mod-
ernity, represented by the US and the USSR. The allied occupation ended German
sovereignty in June 1945 and dissolved the military, putting all power into the Allied
Control Council meetings in Berlin. Opinions clashed as to whether the Germans
were such ingrained militarists that they ought to be suppressed with force or whether
Nazism had merely been a disease which could be cured with the right policies. The
14 Konrad H. Jarausch
hours, and lengthening vacations, many of these technological advances became avail-
able to ordinary people (König, 2000; Carter, 1997).
Although some traditionalists remained sceptical, the majority of the West Germans
accepted modernity as a benign development during the post-war era. No doubt the
proliferation of rock ’n’ roll music and shallow Hollywood movies seemed to members
of the elite as a loss of cultural standards. But when efforts to save youths from such
American influences generally failed, Cold War conservatives learned to live with the
arrival of popular culture as a passing phase in the process of growing up that did not
fundamentally threaten Western civilization. Similarly, many traditionalists who found
Western styles strange were never completely sure of the reliability of NATO or the
advantages of integration in the Common Market. But during the various Cold War
crises in 1948, 1953, 1958, 1961, 1968, and so forth, it was clear that the Federal Republic
needed the American nuclear umbrella in order to retain its independence (Poiger,
2000; Granieri, 2003). Since the liberal version of modernity was associated with posi-
tive experiences, it finally carried the day.
Socialist Modernity
In East Germany it was the communist version of modernity, represented by the Soviet
Union, that ultimately seized control. Many intellectuals proudly believed that they were
carrying on the Enlightenment project of creating a more equal society according to ra-
tional standards. Moreover, apparatchiks could claim that they finally had a chance to
implement the progressive reforms long advocated by the labour movement in order to
free workers and peasants from want. Drawing a positive lesson from the Nazi debacle,
many activists also greeted the merger between the Social Democratic and Communist
parties in the Socialist Unity Party (SED) during the spring of 1946 as an overdue
step that would finally give the proletariat the majority in elections. At the same time
Communist party members were able to draw on the prestige of having been the only
consistent anti-fascists in the resistance against the Third Reich. With this moral cap-
ital the Eastern leaders could claim to be building a better and more modern Germany
(Ross, 2002; Hillaker, 2020).
In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Soviet Union provided the positive
blueprint according to which a new socialist society ought to be built. The smashing
victory of the Red Army over the Nazi Wehrmacht showed even to bourgeois sceptics
who resented the accompanying atrocities that Russia must have done something right.
Moreover, the revolutionary transformation of a still somewhat backward country
into one of the superpowers, equipped with nuclear weapons and sending satellites
into space, also impressed many Germans. Since the GDR lacked heavy industry, the
strategy of labour-intensive ‘smokestack industrialization’ appeared plausible, even if it
came at the expense of providing consumer goods. One of the clichés regarding ‘the
friends’ was therefore ‘to learn from the Soviet Union is to learn how to be victorious’.
16 Konrad H. Jarausch
With the overthrow of communism in the East, the Berlin Republic finally arrived in
the West, defined as liberal-democratic modernity. According to many criteria united
Germany had become a fairly ‘normal’ nation-state like most of its neighbours: In con-
trast to Weimar’s crises, it was a parliamentary democracy whose government proved
to be an anchor of stability in Europe. Its export-oriented economy was the largest on
the continent, making the Euro, the European common currency introduced in 1999,
a coveted currency and racking up large foreign trade surpluses. Though somewhat
pruned by the Schroeder government’s Agenda 2010, its welfare state was still one of
the most elaborate, offering ample benefits. Its intellectual life no longer sought to dis-
tinguish itself from Western civilization, but rather embraced its fashions with a ven-
geance. And finally, its foreign policy was peaceful and multilateral, embedded in the
European Union (EU) and NATO. Only in memory culture did Germans still carry the
double burden of the Nazi (NS) and SED dictatorships (Winkler, 2006; Jarausch, 2013).
Ironically, just when it seemed that Germany had given up its special path, this rec-
onciliation was threatened from an unlikely quarter—the Right-wing turn of the US.
From the ‘Reagan Revolution’ onwards, many Republican politicians had veered in a
neo-conservative direction that reinterpreted the common values of liberal modernity
in light of American exceptionalism. In the economy this shift meant the ascendancy
of neo-liberalism, trying to throw off regulatory restraints on competition and other
economic constraints and liberating the market for the sake of private gain. In foreign
policy this turn signified an embrace of unilateralism and neo-imperialism, especially
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In military affairs this attitude sponsored two wars in Iraq
and an invasion of Afghanistan, both of which were successful on the battlefield but
failed in subsequent peace-making. In a whole host of issues like welfare support or gun
control, an increasing gap opened up between the unbridled individualism of the US
and the preference for solidarity and collectivism on the European continent (Kurthen
et al., 2006; Ther, 2016).
Somewhat unwittingly, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) found itself in the
thankless role of defending the European model of modernity against this neo-liberal
American variant. In practice that meant holding onto the compromise of the ‘social
market economy’ that tried to combine competition with solidarity. In the transatlantic
debate about a reform of the welfare state, Germany was only willing to accept modest
cut-backs coupled with an effort to retrain rather than to coddle the unemployed.
Regarding environmental protection it dared to shut down nuclear power-plants and
shift over to renewable energies such as wind or solar power. And in the highly charged
migration question, Berlin was willing to open its gates at least temporarily. Only in the
sovereign debt crisis did Germany insist on austerity in order to restore the global com-
petitiveness of the heavily indebted southern European PIIGS countries (Portugal, Italy,
Ireland, Greece, Spain) that were clamouring for soft money (Ash, 2004; Jarausch, 2021,
18 Konrad H. Jarausch
pp. 3–5, 271–82). After a century of failed searches for alternatives, the Germans had now
become a key defender of the embattled European way.
Due to these different interpretations of modernity, maintaining a liberal world order
against a nationalist US has become a difficult challenge for Germany. Because of its
historic burden and limited military, the FRG had developed a foreign policy ‘culture
of restraint’, preferring soft power to armed force. Pushed by the international commu-
nity, Berlin had gradually accepted more international responsibility, even allowing the
Bundeswehr to participate in combat missions justified as peace-keeping in the Kosovo
and Afghanistan. But the Kohl and the Schroeder governments refused to participate
in the Iraq wars, the former because of concurrent reunification, the latter because it
condemned the invasion as a preemptive war. The Federal Republic is therefore faced
with a fundamental foreign policy dilemma: On the one hand, Berlin wants to maintain
its friendship with the US for reasons of defence and trade, but on the other it feels more
and more compelled to assert its own and European interests (Sommer, 2018).
The victory of liberal modernity in the ideological competition of the past century
has had the unexpected consequence of splitting it into an American and a European
variant. As the ‘seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century’, the First World War had
produced three competing blueprints of modernity: the Bolshevik social revolution of
the Soviet Union; the Wilsonian promise of capitalist democracy; and the fascist attempt
at a radical nationalism, first enunciated by Mussolini and then adopted by Hitler. In the
bloody competition between these modernizing visions, the unlikely alliance between
democracy and communism first defeated National Socialism, while Cold War com-
petition then vanquished ‘real existing socialism’ as well. But instead of ushering in a
post-historical age of liberal capitalism, the victorious democratic ideology has begun
to fracture into American and European variants, confronted by a post-communist
Chinese challenge. Surprisingly enough, it was a chastened Germany which became
the chief champion of the continental model (Jarausch, 2015). One can only hope that
with the reforms of the Biden administration, the transatlantic gap will start to narrow
once again
German Transformations
The German encounters with modernity in the twentieth century were therefore tor-
tuous affairs, full of contradictions and dead ends. In many areas, such as science and
technology or urbanization and economic growth, the inhabitants of Central Europe
were at the forefront, due to government support for their innovations. But in other
more affective domains such as identity, values, and mores, their intellectuals often
clung to a bygone era of seemingly stable rural or small town life which was slipping
away. The authoritarian modernity of the Second Empire was therefore an ingenious
effort to combine rapid development with political tradition which failed due to a self-
centred focus on Kultur that lacked a universal appeal. The second, more radical project
ENCOUNTERS WITH MODERNITY 19
of the Third Reich, to fashion an ‘organic modernity’, was another attempt to reconcile
cutting-edge advances with a protective ‘peoples’ community’. But by excluding other
peoples and ideologies, the Volksgemeinschaft deteriorated into ethnic cleansing and
hegemonic genocide (Herbert, 2014; Jarausch, 2018a, p. 21).
Though starting with the bonus of anti-fascist resistance, the socialist version of mod-
ernization was not any more successful either. To be true, it could appeal to the Marxist
heritage of the labour movement, which sought to create a more equal and just society,
inspiring radicals from Bebel to Luxemburg. But it was established on the bayonets
of the Red Army that had shed too much blood during the Nazi defeat in order to be
accepted by the ‘liberated’ populace. Even after the fusion of the Social Democratic and
Communist parties, the project of social revolution by forced industrialization and col-
lectivization appealed only to a minority of the East German populace, compelling the
party to establish a Leftist dictatorship. While the effort to create ‘a better Germany’ ini-
tially appealed to intellectuals like Berthold Brecht or Victor Klemperer, in the long run
even socialist idealists were disenchanted with ‘real existing socialism’ (Jarausch and
Sabrow, 1999; Fulbrook, 1995). The GDR experiment therefore failed for multiple eco-
nomic, cultural, and political reasons.
Yet it took two attempts in order for the majority of Germans to accept the liberal-
democratic and capitalist form of modernity associated with the West. Born in defeat
and revolution, the Weimar Republic, supported by democratic, Catholic, and social-
democratic parties, sought to replace the discredited authoritarianism of Imperial
Germany. But its pathbreaking constitution, social reforms, and vibrant culture were
denigrated by anti-democratic forces of the Left and the Right (Hett, 2018). In contrast,
the ‘donated democracy’ after the second, even more complete defeat, gained more
popular support, since all the other alternatives had proven even less attractive. No
doubt, the Cold War confrontation with the dictatorial East and the material success of
the economic miracle made democracy look better by comparison. Nonetheless, it took
at least an entire generation until the majority of the West Germans internalized demo-
cratic norms sufficiently in order to be sure that ‘Bonn [was] not Weimar’ (Strote, 2018;
Wolfrum, 2006).
The history of twentieth-century Germany can therefore be read as a search for
convincing answers to the mounting pressures of modernization. The sociologist
Thorstein Veblen had already identified the underlying problem of a discrepancy be-
tween technical or economic advances and obstacles to political development. Thomas
Mann’s defence of the philosophical depth and musical creativity of German Kultur
therefore failed to persuade critics like his brother Heinrich. It took the collapse of
the Empire to make the former a ‘Republican by reason’ whose tepid support of the
Weimar Republic was insufficient to prevent the Nazi takeover. Only during the second
murderous war would Mann commit fully to the defence of democracy in his radio
addresses from exile. As the human rights engagement of later intellectuals like Jürgen
Habermas shows, Germany has become a stable, Western-oriented country in the
end. But this century-long learning process has come at a terrible cost in broken lives
(Jarausch, 2018c).
20 Konrad H. Jarausch
Further Reading
Herbert, Ulrich, Geschichte Deutschlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014).
Jarausch, Konrad H., Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
Kershaw, Ian, To Hell and Back, 1914–1950 and Rollercoaster Europe, 1950–2017 (London: Allen
Lane, 2016, 2018).
Walser Smith, Helmut, Germany: A Nation in its Time, 1500–2000 (New York: Norton, 2020).
Wolfrum, Edgar, Die geglückte Demokratie: Geschichte der Bundesrepubik Deutschland von
ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2006).
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Burleigh, Michael and Wolfgang Wippermann (1991), The Racial State, 1933–1945 (Cambridge:
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Carter, Erica (1997), How German Is She?: Postwar West German Reconstruction and the
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profound constitutional disturbance, and of the more characteristic
local symptoms of these which are seldom altogether awanting,
though often greatly modified.
Lesions. Beside the thick covering of mucopurulent and alimentary
matters, the pharyngeal mucosa, when washed, shows redness,
ramified or reticulated, more or less swelling amounting at times to
œdema, a soft friable consistency, which like the œdema may in bad
cases extend into the submucous tissue, granular elevations, and raw
abrasions caused by the destruction and removal of the epithelium.
In some instances the ulcers may become quite extensive.
In the more specific inflammations (tubercle, glanders, rabies,
aphthous fever, contagious pneumonia, anthrax, actinomycosis), the
lesions will vary according to the specific nature of the disease.
Prevention. Avoid the various thermal, chemical, mechanical, and
unhygienic causes already referred to, and the exposure to such
infectious diseases as are liable to localize themselves in the throat.
Treatment. A piece of blanket or sheepskin placed round the
throat with the wool turned inward, a moderately warm stall with
pure air, and a diet composed of soft, warm or tepid mashes, (all
hard or fibrous food, oats, hay, etc. being withheld) are important
conditions.
If costiveness exists a dose of Glauber salts for the larger animals,
and of jalap for the small, may be useful. Or pilocarpine or eserine
may be given hypodermically. Following this, mild saline diuretics
will serve at once to eliminate offensive products of the disease and
lower the general temperature.
The most important resorts however, are the local applications of
dilute acids, astringents and antiseptics to the pharyngeal mucosa,
mouth and nostrils. In severe cases benefit may be derived from
inhalation of water vapor, but this is rendered far more effective by
the addition of vinegar, carbolic acid, creolin, camphor, tar, or
sulphurous acid. The last may be obtained by the frequent burning of
a carefully graduated quantity of sulphur in the stall, the others by
mixing them with hot water, saturating cloths hung in the stall, or
sprinkling them on sand laid on the floor.
Chlorate of potash or borax may be dissolved in the drinking
water, care being taken not to exceed the physiological dose.
Mercuric chloride (1:2000) may be used to wash the lips and
nostrils, but cannot be safely injected into mouth or nose. Powdered
alum or tannic acid may be used by insufflation.
As a mouth wash and general medicament a saturated solution of
chlorate of potash in tincture of muriate of iron, diluted by adding
thirty drops to the ounce of water, may be given every hour or two.
Or a solution of chlorine water diluted so as to be non-irritating, may
be substituted with somewhat less effect. Even a weak solution of
hydrochloric acid may be employed.
Borax may be used in a solution of 2 per cent., or carbolic acid in
one of 1 per cent., or bisulphite of soda in the proportion of ½ oz. to
the pint, or salicylate of soda ½ oz. to the pint of water. The same
agents may be made into electuaries with honey or molasses and
smeared every hour or two on the tongue or cheek. In such cases the
addition of powdered liquorice, and, if the suffering is acute, of
extract of belladonna will serve an excellent purpose.
The danger of infection of the stomach and bowels may be met by
combining with the above or administering separately salol in doses
of 2 to 3 drachms or naphthol in doses of 4 to 5 drachms to the larger
animals. For sheep or swine one-fourth of these doses may be given,
and for a shepherd’s dog one-sixteenth to a twentieth.
As alternate antiseptics may be named, boric acid, permanganate
of potash and salicylate of bismuth. These from their comparative
absence of taste are especially useful in carnivora.
Counter-irritants to the throat are useful. For the horse, sheep, dog
and cat, use equal parts of strong aqua ammonia and olive oil. For
the solipeds a cantharides blister. For cattle or swine equal parts of
strong aqua ammonia and oil of turpentine with a few drops of
croton oil, or grains of tartar emetic.
Finally during convalescence a course of iron and bitters may be
useful, especially in debilitated subjects.
PHLEGMONOUS PHARYNGITIS.
Submucous inflammation and abscess. Solipeds especially. Specific, or due to
microbian pus infection. Traumatism; from foreign bodies in tonsillar and mucous
follicles, from rough, fibrous food, instruments, etc.
As a sequel of catarrhal pharyngitis. Symptoms; as in catarrhal form, with more
swelling and tenderness, glandular swelling, dyspnœa, and difficulty in
swallowing; local induration followed by fluctuation and pointing. Complications;
asphyxia, laryngeal œdema, purulent or inhalation pneumonia, pharyngeal fistula,
palsy of vagus, secondary abscesses, septicæmia. Lesions, local, general.
Treatment; General and local, fomentation—hot or cold and antiseptic.
Embrocations. Lancing. Tracheotomy.
As distinguished from catarrhal pharyngitis this is inflammation of
the submucous tissue and adjacent lymph glands, tending to abscess.
It is especially common in solipeds and rather rare in other classes
of domestic animals. As a specific infectious disease it has its type in
strangles (infectious adenitis), also in cattle in the complicated
infection of purulent tubercle, but apart from such it is often the
result of the penetration of the pus microbes from a catarrhal
pharynx into the lymph plexuses and lymph glands. Traumatism
may play an important part in causation as when vegetable barbs,
awns, chaff or seeds, or strong hairs or bristles enter the open
mouths of the mucous follicles, or the tonsillar cavities. Similarly
trouble may arise from scratches by tough, fibrous fodder, from
pricks by pointed or cutting instruments, by fractures of the hyoid, or
by bruises by probangs, or tooth rasps. An overgrowth of the last
molar, and a resulting wound and ulcer of the soft palate, and the
presence of local deposits like those of glanders and actinomycosis,
are other occasions of the entrance of the pus organisms. It will be
recognized that this affection is not necessarily due to a difference in
the infecting organism, but rather of the tissue involved, the
microbes gaining the submucous tissues and expending their
violence on these instead of confining their ravages to the surface
layers of the mucosa. For this reason the deeper or phlegmonous
affection may supervene on a catarrhal inflammation which may
have already persisted for several days.
Symptoms. Beside the general phenomena of catarrhal
pharyngitis, this form of the malady is characterized by a greater
swelling and tenderness of the throat, extending from ear to ear, and
from the trachea forward in the intermaxillary space; by nodular and
painful swellings of the pharyngeal lymph glands, by the greater
difficulty of deglutition, the muscular tissue being involved; by
wheezing breathing amounting at times to violent roaring and
threatened asphyxia. Perspiration on the throat, the ear, the side of
the head or neck, of the fore arm, or of the dorsal region is not
uncommon, and has been attributed to the compression of the vagus,
or of the superior cervical ganglion of the sympathetic by the
swelling. Fever usually runs higher than in simple catarrhal
pharyngitis, which may be partly accounted for by the implication of
the deeper and important structures but also in no small degree by
the entrance into the circulation of the ptomaines and toxins, which
in the catarrhal affection escape largely from the inflamed surface.
The resulting abscess is usually in or near a gland or group of
lymph glands. The part passes through the usual succession of
changes, of soft pitting swelling; firm, tense, painful condition in
which the exuded lymph has coagulated; and softening and
fluctuation which progresses from the centre toward the
circumference. The abscess points variously according to its seat. If
in the intermaxillary space it opens externally. If sub-parotidean or
peripharyngeal it may burst inwardly into the pharynx or outwardly
through the skin. If supra-pharyngeal (retro-pharyngeal), it may be
so thickly encapsulated in unyielding walls that it may remain long
indolent and inactive becoming a cold or chronic abscess. When an
abscess opens into the pharynx, there is a sudden and copious flow of
pus by the nose, and it may be by the mouth and a simultaneous
subsidence of the inflammation.
Among the complications of the affection are asphyxia, œdema
glottidis; abscess of the guttural pouch; rupture of an abscess into
the larynx, and the descent of pus into the lungs; the entrance of
saliva and alimentary matters into the lungs; gangrenous
pneumonia; pharyngeal fistula; pressure on the vagus and paralysis
of the pharynx or larynx; secondary abscesses; septicæmia.
Lesions. Besides the general inflammatory lesions some rather
remarkable ones have been observed. Fractured hyoid, dissection of
the mucous from the muscular coat, by aliments, for nearly the whole
length of the œsophagus (Brückmüller), purulent infiltration of the
supra-pharyngeal muscles (Wakefield), ulceration of the pharyngeal
or guttural sac mucosa, or even gangrene, purulent effusion in the
tonsils, around the hypoglossal nerve, the lingual branch of the fifth,
or the vagus, embolic inflammations, suppurations or gangrene of
the bronchia, and implication of the lung tissue and pleura. Catarrhal
enteritis and fatty liver and kidney are common.
Treatment. Beside the general measures advised for catarrhal
pharyngitis, this type demands especially measures to moderate the
intensity of the suffering, and when abscess appears inevitable to
hasten its maturation. The first demand is met by hot fomentations
persistently applied to the throat. This may be done by spongio-
piline, or simply by well washed wool or cotton bound upon the
throat and wet at frequent intervals with water rather hotter than the
hand can bear. The addition of a little carbolic acid will secure at
once some local anæsthesia and a measure of antisepsis. In warm
weather the substitution of cold water has been resorted to with
apparently good effect. If adopted it should be frequently removed so
as to keep up the constant action of cold and moisture. These have
been especially recommended in dogs injured by a tight or ill-fitting
collar.
When suppuration appears imminent as shown by the dense, hard,
circumscribed phlegmon, stimulating embrocations may be used to
hasten its progress. Camphorated spirit is suitable for carnivora and
sheep. It may be combined with tincture of cantharides for horses.
For cattle and swine, oil of turpentine may be added, the three being
used in equal proportions. A liniment of ammonia and oil may be
used more or less frequently and energetically according to the
relative thickness and insensibility of the skin of the animal affected.
When matter has formed and fluctuates, it should be at once
evacuated and the cavity treated by antiseptic dressings. In this way
secondary abscesses, septic infections, molecular ulcerations and
other injurious sequelæ may be largely obviated.
In case of threatened asphyxia the dernier resort of tracheotomy is
always available, and this often acts very favorably in improving the
æration of the blood, in restoring the flagging vital functions which
depend on hæmatosis, and in removing the friction and irritation
consequent on the passage of air through the narrowed and tender
passages.
SUPRA-PHARYNGEAL (RETRO-
PHARYNGEAL) ABSCESS.
Contagious and destructive nature of the disease. Mode of extension from the
mouth and pharynx. Causes: bacillus diphtheriæ columbarum; its characters:
pathogenesis to birds, mice, rabbits, Guinea pigs; dogs, rats, and cattle immune;
diagnosis from bacillus diphtheriæ. American disease. Incubation. Symptoms:
prostration; wheezing breathing; sneezing; difficult deglutition; false membrane on
fauces; necrotic changes in mucosa; perforations; lesions of internal organs; blood
infection; nostrils stuffed; bill gapes; lesions on eye, tongue, gullet, crop, intestine;
diarrhœa; vomiting. Skin lesions. Course, acute, chronic. Paralysis. Mortality.
Prognosis. Diagnosis from coccidiosis, from croupous angina of Rivolta, from
aspergillus disease. Treatment: isolation; destruction of carcasses; hatching;
destruction of dead wild birds and rabbits; exclusion of living; quarantine of new
birds; disinfection; locally, antiseptics by inhalation, swabbing, and internally, iron
in water.