Not so strange.

For this past week I thought that the most interesting concept was that of the polarization of German politics. Following the First World War, the German people were forced into the most degrading and detrimental forms of punishment that a warring country could imagine. Not only did they witness their own nation being divided up amongst other countries, but they were also told to repay a monetary figure the likes of which was truly impossible. These events were coupled with the humiliation of having lost the war to the very people who the Germans had believed that they were superior to. This of course led to a lot of finger pointing. The army did not believe that they had been the cause for the loss. The citizenry did not understand what had exactly happened. This confusion then began to escalate as the realities of war reparations became more tangible. As money became nearly worthless and many German workers found themselves simply laboring to pay off the debt that their country owed, people became disillusioned. And because of this disillusionment the people of Germany eventually began to see themselves as a people who were in a state of strife and desperation. As the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. Well, in Germany, the times could not have seemed more desperate, and any type of moderation (i.e. Try to pay the war debt, and as rational people others will realize that our country cannot possibly do this) became superfluous. The only logical approach appeared to be extreme action, and the political parties began to pick up on this. The SPD party split into SPD and USPD and the former eventually sent radical right wing militants to battle the “rebels” of the latter. Political assassination became rampant. The Kaiser was even overthrown. Obviously, the entities of politics had become as desperate as the people that they represented. The polarization as a result of the post WWI chaos had driven the country into radicalism and near insanity. There seems to have been an environment of almost unimaginable uncertainty. After all, most people had seen their homeland go from one of the most powerful nations on earth to one of the weakest. This must have been shocking, to say the least. And in hindsight, the rise of the Nazi party does not actually seem to be something that was truly odd. In fact, I believe that if I had been a German during this time in history, I would have supported anyone, including Adolph Hitler, just so that I could have some semblance of a hope in support of a future for my family, self, and nation.

The Right to Govern

This past week I found the article on the “kulturkampf” to be very interesting. I had always heard that throughout modern history, many people were taught to be wary of Catholics. From this, I had supposed that there were bound to be broad implications that were set into motion by this type of wariness. For instance, it was not until recently that in the United States people began to elect Catholics to powerful political offices. However, I had never really understood why it was that people did not trust Catholics, particularly in the arena of politics, until I read this article.
In the more broad sense, it seems that the people in Germany at this time did not trust Catholics for two reasons. First, they believed that because the church played such an important role in a Catholic’s life that it would serve as the predominant influence in terms of the way that he voted. The Protestants seem to have believed that every Sunday, the catholic priest would walk in front of his congregation, address them, and then instruct them on the ways that they should utilize their votes. And to many, this seemed to be an unfair advantage. The second reason for which the Protestants seem to have mistrusted the Catholics was the fact that, as a whole, the Catholics were less educated than the Protestants. This, coupled with the advent of universal male suffrage, resulted in a frightening situation for the more educated and wealthy Protestants. In the voting Catholics the Protestants saw the potential for the election of catholic politicians and clergy to the German government. And because the Catholics took their orders from the church, they believed that this constant mass-voting block would eventually result in catholic control of the German government. Furthermore, catholic children went to catholic schools and could be indoctrinated at a very young age to seek the eventual takeover of the government.
In a sense the Protestants felt that it was dangerous to allow the poor and uneducated people of the country to actually run the country. This is an example of honoratoren vs. mass politics. This is also an example of something that has existed throughout political history. Who is better suited to run the government? Which type of government works best? Obviously Germany had yet to decide what they truly believed, but it seems as if the issues at hand will provide for salacious tumult yet to come.

Too good to be true.

During this past week I found the article about the technical progress of women’s labor to be very interesting. What made it so interesting were two separate reasons. The first reason of interest was the fact that the sewing machine meant different things to different classes of women. Before reading the article, I had assumed that the advent of this machine would have been equally appreciated amongst all levels of society. However, I was surprised to learn that , for instance, a middle class woman would not be nearly as open about income supplementing activities as would a lower class woman for whom the job of mending and making clothing was entirely respectable. The reason that this struck me as odd was that it would seem obvious that any person who could add extra income to the family coffers would do so in order to provide a better and more stable life for their family. I suppose, however, that I was simply unaware of the negative connotations that came with making clothing, especially for such a low wage.
The second portion of the article that I found to be particularly interesting was the proverbial hole that was dug when one purchased a sewing machine. The fact that so many women now owned these machines coupled with the relative ease of use seems to have driven down the value of their work. As these machines were quite costly, it thus took a large collective of individual work in order to actually begin to make a profit from the investment. Worse still seems to have been the “hire purchase” system that was offered to many women who wished to earn profits with a sewing machine, but were unable to purchase one outright. For these people, after placing an initial down payment, they were forced to pay for the machine with monthly installments. However, because the wages for sewing were so low, the often could not afford to make these payments, and as a result they lost their machines along with all of the money that they had invested in to the machines. This seems to have been quite unfortunate because the very thing that these women had believed would help to make their lives easier ended up making their lives infinitely harder.

A revolution?

During this past week of classes, the topic that I found to be most interesting was the 1848 revolution. However, it was not the failure or success of the revolution that most interested me, but the revolution’s overall lukewarm nature. Beyond the fact that whatever type of revolutionary organization that existed was held together, at best, by a vague desire for change, the revolutionaries seem to have entered in to this endeavor half-heartedly. The three types of thinkers (liberals, radicals, conservatives) all had their various and individual goals, and while fighting for the same thing, upon achievement of toppling the old ways, their weak alliance dissipated and the old order slowly crept back in to the seat of power. This seems to have been the course of events surrounding 1848. And this does explain one way that the revolution managed to fail. But my question is why go through all of the trouble of having a revolution if at the end you are not willing to take what you have earned. Other revolutions in other parts of the world have shown us that it generally takes a lot to cause a people to rise up against their government. They have to have been trampled and abused in ways that leave them no other choice. And it is because of this lack of choice that they rise up, and are starving for change. Once the revolt succeeds, they typically embrace their newfound clean slate and begin to mold their society in a manner different from that of their previous state. However, the Germanic people of 1848 seem to have never have been pushed to the limit that necessitates revolt. Yet, revolt they did. It is possible that their initial lack of revolutionary spark is what caused the revolt to end with little progress. By this I mean that the vast majority of German people simply joined the revolt to initiate changes that would by themselves not be worthy of revolution. For instance, a farmer who wanted five more cents for each bail of hay would probably not care about women’s voting rights, and once the price of hay went up, it is most likely that he would abandon his revolutionary post to return to his fields. This hardly seems like the action that would be taken by a true downtrodden revolutionary. But this type of thing seems to have been the case. Assuming that revolution is only as powerful as it’s components (people/ideas/etc) the German revolution of 1848 seems to have far more weak than many other revolutions throughout history. In fact, I would posit that the events of 1848 were not so much revolutionary and were instead merely the popular thing to do that year.


-Paul Howard