Mark Hewitson

Professor of German History and Politics Mark Hewitson

"This study examines the interrelation between the construction of national identity and the transformation of political thought in Germany before the First World War. During the decade or so before the war, the German Empire was challenged openly by both right and left for the first time since the 1870s. Paradoxically, however, this pre-war crisis of Germany's system of government occurred during a period of increasing nationalism, which created a solid cross-party basis of support for the Empire as a nation-state. This study argues that Wilhelmine debates about the reform of the German Empire can only be understood in the context of a broader discussion and a comparison of European and American political regimes which took place in Germany after the turn of the century. In such contemporary debates about a German Sonderweg, France remained a principal point of reference because French style parliamentarism had come to be viewed as the main alternative to German constitutionalism. By analysing Wilhelmine depictions of the Third Republic, Dr. Hewitson revises accepted interpretations of German politics and nationalism."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Wilhelmine Depictions of the French Third Republic, 1890-1914

National Identity and Political Thought in Germany

Wars have played a fundamental part in modern German history. Although infrequent, conflicts involving German states have usually been extensive and often catastrophic, constituting turning-points for Europe as a whole. Absolute War is the first in a series of studies from Mark Hewitson that explore how such conflicts were experienced by soldiers and civilians during wartime, and how they were subsequently imagined and understood during peacetime, from Clausewitz and Kleist to Junger and Adorno. Without such an understanding, it is difficult to make sense of the dramatic shifts characterising the politics of Germany and Europe over the past two centuries. The studies argue that the ease - or reluctance - with which Germans went to war, and the far-reaching consequences of such wars on domestic politics, were related to soldiers' and civilians' attitudes to violence and death, as well as to long-term transformations in contemporaries' conceptualisation of conflict. Absolute War reassesses the meaning of military conflict for the millions of German subjects who were directly implicated in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Based on a re-reading of contemporary diaries, letters, memoirs, official correspondence, press reports, pamphlets, treatises, plays, and cartoons, this volume refocuses attention on combat and conscription as the central components of new forms of mass warfare. It concentrates, in particular, on the impact of violence, killing, and death on many soldiers' and some civilians' experiences and subsequent memories of conflict. War has often been conceived of as 'an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds', as Clausewitz put it, but the relationship between military conflicts and violent acts remains a problematic one.

Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792-1820

Absolute War

How did ministers, journalists, academics, artists, and subjects in the German lands imagine war during the nineteenth century? The Napoleonic Wars had been the bloodiest in Europe's history, directly affecting millions of Germans, yet their long-term consequences on individuals and on"politics" are still poorly understood. This study makes sense of contemporaries' memories and histories of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns within a much wider context of press reportage of wars elsewhere in Europe and overseas, debates about military service and the reform of Germany'sarmies, revolution and counter-revolution, and individuals' experiences of violence and death in their everyday lives. For the majority of the populations of the German states, wars during an era of conscription were not merely a matter of history and memory; rather, they concerned subjects' hopes,fears, and expectations of the future.This is the second volume of Mark Hewitson's study of the violence of war in the German lands during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It investigates the complex relationship between military conflicts and the violent acts of individual soldiers. In particular, it considers the contradictoryimpact of "pacification" in civilian life and exposure to increasingly destructive technologies of killing during war-time. This contradiction reached its nineteenth-century apogee during the "wars of unification", leaving an ambiguous imprint on post-war discussions of military conflict.

Professor of German History and Politics Mark Hewitson

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