Junkrarna i tysk historia

det tyska riket 1871-1918, karta från wikipedia

Var det de gamla agrara eliternas dominans över det tyska samhället decennierna runt 1900 -- när implicit en liberal borgerlighet tog över styret i länder som Storbritannien eller USA -- som satte Tyskland på en särskild väg i moderniteten, en "Sonderweg" som ledde till den nazistiska katastrofen? Detta var en mycket inflytelserik tes i tysk socialhistoria på 1970- och 80-talen, associerad med namn som Hans-Ulrich Wehler. Mot denna Sonderweg-tes om de förindustriella eliternas fortsatta dominans argumenterade på 1980-talet bland andra Geoff Eley och David Blackbourn i deras briljanta polemik The Peculiarities of German History (1984). Eley och Blackbourn ifrågasatte bland annat att borgerlig dominans obligatoriskt skulle leda till demokrati, och ifall den preussiska adeln verkligen dominerade det tyska samhället under 1900-talets första hälft. Den amerikanska historikern och Tysklandsexperten Shelley Baranowski påpekar i ett debattinlägg från  1987 att Sonderweg-argumentet i hög grad bygger på kontinuitet medan Eley och Blackbourn tvärtom betonar tillfälligheter eller "contingency". Eleys titel på en artikel i tidskriften Politics and Society från 1983 säger en del: "What produces fascism: preindustrial traditions or the crisis of a capitalist state".

Baranowski vill dock revidera revisionisterna. Hon menar att de agrara eliterna ändå var väldigt mäktiga i Tyskland ca 1890-1933:

"Despite the challenges of advancing capitalism and the encroachment of mass politics, the corporate influence of East Elbian estate agriculture remained formidable until 1945. Until 19I8, when the Kaiserreich collapsed, Prussia's supremacy in the imperial constitution, the independence of the emperor, army and bureaucracy from parliamentary control, gerrymandering advantageous to rural districts and the Prussian three-class franchise combined to award agrarian elites disproportionate political weight. Even after military defeat and revolution prohibited the survival of that protection, the landed interest assured its place at the top of Weimar political agendas by its diffuse, if declining, status in the army and administration, its relentless interest representation and, after 1925, its leverage upon the presidency. Although the Third Reich restricted its autonomy, and even eliminated many of its leaders after the 20 July I944 plot against Hitler, estate agriculturer eachedi ts terminuso nly with Soviet land reform."
In the realm of popular politics, the landed interest's ceaseless demands for subsidies and tariffs which the unending economic problems of East Elbia provoked, its demagoguery directed especially to farmworkers and peasants, and its frenetic hostility toward socialism, liberalism, urbanism, exportcapitalism and parliamentarism, significantly abetted the explosion of right radicalism in the years before the First World War and during the final hours of the Weimar Republic. Agrarian belligerence stalked the corridors of power at critical moments; with the Kaiser's entourage and military high command near the outbreak of war in 19I4, and around President Hindenburg as the Weimar Republic collapsed. (s 287)

Baranowski menar också att den kulturella och sociala prestige som fanns kring det adliga stärkte junkrarnas position.

Referens

Shelley Baranowski (1987) "Continuity and Contingency: Agrarian Elites, Conservative Institutions and East Elbia in Modern German History", Social History, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Oct., 1987), pp. 285-308. 

* * * Richard Evans recenserar Baranowskis bok Nazi Empire: Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (2010) i LRB här.