Wilhelminism and Its Legacies

Download or read book Wilhelminism and Its Legacies written by Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was distinctive--and distinctively "modern"--about German society and politics in the age of Kaiser Wilhelm II? In addressing this question, these essays assemble cutting-edge research by fourteen international scholars. Based on evidence of an explicit and self-confidently "bourgeois" formation in German public culture, the contributors suggest new ways of interpreting its reformist potential and advance alternative readings of German political history before 1914. While proposing a more measured understanding of Wilhelmine Germany's extraordinarily dynamic society, they also grapple with the ambivalent, cross-cutting nature of German "modernities" and reassess their impact on long-term developments running through the Wilhelmine age.