Wilhelminism and Its Legacies

Download or read book Wilhelminism and Its Legacies written by Geoff Eley and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 280 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.