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Contention with Civility: the State and Social Control in the German Southwest, 1760–1850*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Karl H. Wegert
Karl H. Wegert
Affiliation:
Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Quebec
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Extract

‘Western history since 1800,’ Charles Tilly has written, ‘is violent history.’ And so it is, though the German southwest – by which I understand Nassau, Hesse-Darmstadt, the Rhenish (Bavarian) Palatinate, Baden, Wüirttemberg, as these polities emerged after 1815 – constitutes an anomaly so striking as to tax historical imagination. I realize that I risk resurrecting a caricature of ‘the German’ – the obsequious and officious Spiesser, the kowtowing burgherpedant – or at least of appearing to lend credence to that image by suggesting that German social strife was contention with civility.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , June 1991 , pp. 349 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 ‘Collective violence in European perspective’, in Graham, H. D. and Gurr, T. R. (eds.), The history of violence in America (New York, 1969), p. 7Google Scholar.

2 These events are examined in greater detail in my German radicals confront the common people: revolutionary politics and popular politics, 1989–1849, forthcoming in the series Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte. Louise, Charles and Tilly, Richard, The rebellious century, 1830–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), p. 210Google Scholar, identify 138 violent events for this region between 1816 and 1849, excluding the Palatinate.

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11 LASP, J1, no. 158, 14.

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13 Zehr, , Crime and the development of modern society, pp. 87–8Google Scholar.

14 These contrasting patterns of violence may reflect exceptional French contentiousness. Were that true, it would not invalidate an analysis of the southwestern experience because the number of deaths during popular confrontations was so low as to be anomalous in its own right.

15 On the significance of capitalist development, see the discussion of Elias, Norbert by Hutton, Patrick H., ‘The history of mentalities: the new map of cultural history,’ History and Theory, XX (1981), 248–51Google Scholar; Mayer, John A., ‘Notes towards a working definition of social control in historical analysis’, in Cohen, S. and Scull, A. (eds.), Social control and the state (New York, 1983), pp. 17–38Google Scholar; Tilly, , The contentious French, p. 5Google Scholar.

16 Bayley, David, Social control and political change (Princeton, 1985), esp. pp. 16–44Google Scholar, provides a useful discussion of a subject about which historians could stand to be better informed. I shouldlike to acknowledge the stimulus to my own ideas about state dirigisme provided by Jonathan, Sperber's article, ‘State and civil society in Prussia: thoughts on a new edition of Reinhart Koselleck's Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution’, Journal of Modern History, LVII (1985), 278–96Google Scholar.

17 That is the subject of Raeff's, Marc, The well-ordered police slate: social and institutional change through law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven, 1983)Google Scholar; Sperber, , ‘State and civil society’, pp. 290–1Google Scholar.

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19 Nipperdey, Thomas, Deutsche Geschichte 1806–1866. Bürgerwelt und starker Staat (Munich, 1983). P. 345CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gall, , Liberalismus, p. 5Google Scholar.

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21 Following Heclo, Hugh, Modern social politics in Britain and Sweden: from relief to income maintenance (New Haven, 1974), p. 4Google Scholar, I understand ‘policy’ to mean ‘a course of action or inaction pursued under the authority of government’.

22 Nipperdey, , Deutsche Geschichte, p. 322Google Scholar.

23 The process is examined for Baden by Lee, Loyd E., The politics of harmony: civil service, liberalism, and social reform in Baden 1800–1850 (Newark, 1980)Google Scholar; see also Sperber, , ‘State and civil society’, p. 7Google Scholar.

24 Gall, , Liberalismus, p. 44Google Scholar.

25 This is the argument developed for Prussia by Koselleck, , Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution. Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Stuttgart, 1967)Google Scholar; also Lee, , Politics of harmony, p. 214Google Scholar.

26 Tilly, Charles, ‘War making and state making as organized crime’, in Evans, P. B., Rueschemeyer, D., Skocpol, T. (eds.), Bringing the state back in (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 169–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft. Institutionelle Autorität und mentaler Wandel in Bayern während des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen 1982)Google Scholar.

29 More recently the point was stressed by Raeff, Well-ordered police state, and in a general way by Skocpol, Theda, ‘Bringing the state back in: strategies of analysis in current research’, in Evans, , Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol, (eds.), Bringing the state back in, pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

30 Radbruch, Gustav (ed.), Die Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V von 1532 (Stuttgart, 1967), pp. 113–16Google Scholar. Exemplary exacerbated punishment in the spirit of the Carolina is the subject of van Dülmen's, RichardTheater des Schreckens. Gerichtspraxis und Strafrituale in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1985)Google Scholar.

31 von Hippel, Robert, Deutsches Strafrecht (Berlin, 1925), I, 271Google Scholar; cf. Rusche, Georg and Kircheimer, Otto, Punishment and social structure (New York, 1939), pp. 82–3Google Scholar, who attribute Frederick's humanitarian reforms to a desire for more soldiers.

32 Schmidt, Eberhard, Einführung in die Geschichte der deutschen Strafrechtspflege (3rd edn, Göttingen, 1965), p. 281Google Scholar.

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35 Saam, , Geschichle d. Zuchthauswesens, pp. 46–9Google Scholar; Veith, Hermann, Disziplinarstrafrecht im badischen Strafvollzug (Heidelberg, 1947), pp. 28–38Google Scholar.

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37 Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York, 1977), pp. 16–17, 19Google Scholar.

38 De Tocqueville's comments are found in Democracy in America and reproduced in Bayley, , Social control, p. 40Google Scholar.

39 E.g. Blum, Jerome, The end of the old order in rural Europe (Princeton, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mayer, Arno J., The persistence of the old regime: Europe to the Great War (New York, 1981)Google Scholar.

40 Sperber, , ‘State and civil society’, p. 293Google Scholar, draws attention to the possible existence of socioeconomic continuities for the period 1750–1850. There is no doubt in my mind that such continuities existed.

41 Walker, Mack, German home towns: community, state, and general estate 1648–1871 (Ithaca, 1971), P. 353Google Scholar.

42 As recent studies have shown, the school system of the early nineteenth century was not, from the viewpoint of bureaucrats, a success if one takes its purpose to have been disciplining and extracting spontaneous support for the virtues of sobriety, respect for the Crown, deference to authority. See Barkin, Kenneth, ‘Social control and the Volkschule in Vormärz Prussia’, Central European History, XVI (1983), 31–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the literature cited there by Nipperdey, LaVopa, Thompson. Eighteenth-century absolutist efforts at conditioning through education also failed, as Van Horn Melton, James has shown: Absolutism and the eighteenth-century origins of compulsory schooling in Prussia and Austria (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar.

43 Evans, Richard J., ‘Oeffentlichkeit und Autorität. Zur Geschichte der Hinrichtungen in Deutschland vom Allgemeines Landrecht bis zum Dritten Reich’, in Reif, Hans (ed.), Räuber, Volk und Obrigkeit. Studien zur Geschichte der Kriminalität in Deutschland seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1984), p. 247Google Scholar.

44 Evans, , ‘Oeffentlichkeit u. Autorität’, p. 205Google Scholar.

45 HHStAW, Abt. 210; no. 6017; cf. Ignatieff, , Just measure of pain, p. 88Google Scholar, and Evans' interpretation of the privatizing of the execution: ‘Oeffentlichkeit u. Autorität, p. 245.

46 See Ingrao, Charles, ‘The problem of “Enlightened Absolutism” and the German states’, ‘Journal of Modern History, Supplement, LVIII (1986), 161–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I readily acknowledge that what I argue here represents a partial retreat from a position which I defended elsewhere (‘Patrimonial rule, popular self-interest, and jacobinism in Germany, 1763–1800’, Journal of Modem History, LIII (1981), 440–67)Google Scholar. The two pieces are nonetheless complementary, as a careful reading will verify.

47 Bleek, Wilhelm, Von der Kameralausbildung zum Juristenprivileg. Studium, Prüfung und Ausbildung der höheren Beamten des allgemeinen Verwaltungsdienstes in Deutschland im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1972), pp. 194–219Google Scholar; Wunder, Bernd, ‘Die Reform der Beamtenschaft in den Rheinbundstaaten’, in Weis, Eberhard (ed.), Reformen im rheinbündischen Deutschland (Munich, 1984), pp. 181—92Google Scholar, and the same author's book, Privilegierung und Disziplinierung. Die Entstehung des Berufsbeamtentums in Bayern und Württemberg (1780–1825) (Munich, 1978)Google Scholar.

48 The literature here is enormous. I have drawn on Raeff, , Well-ordered police state, pp. 11–42Google Scholar; Liebel, Helen P., ‘Enlightened bureaucracy versus enlightened despotism in Baden, 1750–1792', Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S., LV (1965), 21–32, 100–12Google Scholar; Demel, Walter, Der Bayerische Staatsabsolutismus 1806/08–1817. Stoats- und gesellschaftspolitische Motivationen und Hintergründe der Reformära in der ersten Phase des Königreichs Bayem (Munich, 1983), pp. 132–57Google Scholar; Walker, Mack, ‘Rights and functions: the social categories of eighteenth-century German jurists and cameralists’, Journal of Modem History, L (1978), 234–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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50 ‘Absoluter Staat, korporative Libertät, persönliche Freiheit’, Historische Zeitschrift, CLXXXIII (1957), 79–80Google Scholar. The totality of absolutism is also examined by Oestreich, Gerhard, Geist und Gestalt des früodemen Staates (Berlin, 1969), pp. 179–96Google Scholar.

51 Ross, E. A., Social control (New York, 1970 [1901]), p. 411Google Scholar, distinguished between ethical and political instruments of control. To my mind, this represents a distinction between primary and secondary-level controls. Gibbs, Jack P., Norms, deviance, and social control: conceptual matters (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, provides an exhausting though illuminating analysis of the social control question.

52 ‘Property, authority and the criminal law’, in Hay, Douglas (ed.), Albion' fatal tree: crime and society in eighteenth-century England (New York, 1975), p. 55Google Scholar.

53 Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart [HStAS], E 3; Abt. 7, Bü 58.

54 Schmidt, , Einführung i.d. Strafrechtspflege, pp. 247, 281Google Scholar. The one seems inconceivable without the other. Harris, Marvin, Cultural materialism: the struggle for a science of culture (New York, 1979), p. 110Google Scholar, has a relevant observation: ‘The stratified nature of state-level structures and superstructures means precisely that nothing that significantly benefits the lower strata can endure unless it benefits the upper strata even more.’

55 Hay, , ‘Property, authority, criminal law’, p. 44Google Scholar.

56 HStAS, E 3; Bü 55.

57 Krämer, , Mord u. Todesstrafe in Hessen, p. 140Google Scholar.

58 GLA, Abt. 240 (Oberlandesgericht).

59 Punishment and social structure, passim.

60 Soman, Alfred, ‘Deviance and criminal justice in western Europe, 1300–1800: an essay in structure’, Criminal Justice History, I (1980), 20–1Google Scholar.

61 Useful insights are contained in the volume of essays edited by S. Cohen and A. Scull, Social control and the state, esp. in the essay by Ignatieff, Michael, ‘State, civil society and total institutions’, PP. 75–105Google Scholar.

62 Liberalismus, p. 56; also, Krieger, Leonard, The German idea of freedom (Chicago, 1957), p. 144Google Scholar.

63 HHStAW, Abt. 245, no. 48.

64 Cf. the similarity between this admonition and those recorded by anthropologists among New Guinea natives: Colson, Elizabeth, Tradition and contract: the problem of order (Chicago, 1974), p. 40Google Scholar.

65 The point is made and developed by Bayley, , Social control, pp. 30–1Google Scholar.

66 Mead, Margaret, Writings of Ruth Benedict: an anthropologist at work (New York, 1966), pp. 386–98Google Scholar; Maslow, Abraham, The farther reaches of human nature (New York, 1971), pp. 202–3Google Scholar.

67 Thompson, E. P., ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, L (1971), 76–136, esp. p. 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tilly, Charles, From mobilization to revolution (Reading, Mass., 1978), pp. 3–4, 17–18Google Scholar.

68 Nisbet, Robert A., The sociological tradition (New York, 1966), pp. 47–106Google Scholar, provides a good summary of the development of thought about the community. For the German tradition, see Bowen, Ralph H., German theories of the corporative state (New York, 1947)Google Scholar.

69 E.g. Tilly, , Tilly, and Tilly, , Rebellious century, pp. 4–6, 290Google Scholar; Zehr, , Crime and society, pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

70 Blickle, Peter, Deutsche Untertanen. Ein Widerspruch (Munich, 1981), pp. 24, 31–2, 35Google Scholar; also, Steinbach, Franz, Geschichtliche Grundlagen der kommunalen Selbstverwaltung in Deutschland (Bonn, 1932), pp. 18–19, 55–7Google Scholar; and, for a general, comparative discussion, see Blum, Jerome, ‘The internal structure and polity of the European village community from the 15th to the 19th Century’, Journal of Modern History, XLIII (1971), 541–76Google Scholar.

71 Deutsche Untertanen, pp. 46–7.

72 For an example of local tenacity, drawn from Hohenzollern-Hechingen, see Volker Press, ‘Von den Bauernrevolten des 16. zur konstitutionellen Verfassung des 19. Jahrhunderts‘, in Weber, Hermann (ed.), Politische Ordnungen und soziale Kräfte im Alten Reich (Wiesbaden, 1980), p. 105Google Scholar.

73 As cited in Walker, , German home towns, p. 41Google Scholar. Though Seidenberg was located in east-central Germany, its constitution was fairly typical of what was found among southwestern communities.

74 Valuable material on this topic is available in Sabean, David Warren, Power in the blood: popular culture and village discourse in early modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), e.g. p. 12Google Scholar, and Griessinger, Andreas, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollektives Bewusstsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1981)Google Scholar.

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79 As e.g. the Württemberg Armen-Anslalten examined by Liebel-Weckowicz, Helen, ‘The politics of poverty and reform: modernization and reform in eighteenth-century Württemberg’, in The consortium on revolutionary Europe proceedings (Athens, Ga., 1981), pp. 76–85Google Scholar. Relief programmes were found at various levels of the social system: state, town, village, guild. See e.g. Ponfick, Wilhelm, Geschichte der Sozialversicherung im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Dresden, 1940)Google Scholar, who examines guild and miners' associations. Potlatch largesse among North American Indians aimed at system maintenance and status enhancement through the redistribution of wealth. ‘Beneficent’ state intervention in the lives of the lower social orders in the eighteenth-century German southwest served a similar purpose. For a summary examination of Wohlfahrtspolizei see Tennstedt, Florian, Sozialgeschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland. Vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 1981), pp. 13–24Google Scholar.

80 Koch, Lotte, Wandlungen der Wohlfahrtspflege im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Erlangen, 1933), pp. 205, 260–6Google Scholar.

81 As outlined e.g. in Ingrao, Charles W., The Hessian mercenary state: ideas, institutions, and reforms under Frederick II, 1760–1785 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 201, 213Google Scholar, and Liebel, Helen, ‘Enlightened bureaucracy vs. enlightened despotism’, pp. 88–100Google Scholar.

82 Vann, James Allen, The making of a state: Württemberg 1593–1793 (Ithaca, 1984), p. 280Google Scholar e.g. refers to the ‘deep-seated loyalty that eighteenth-century Germans still felt for their hereditary rulers’.

83 Nipperdey, , Deutsche Geschichte, p. 345Google Scholar; Blessing, , Staat u. Kirche, pp. 75–82Google Scholar.

84 I have in mind Foucault, Elias, and Diamond, Stanley, In search of the primitive: a critique of civilization (New Brunswick, NJ., 1974), pp. 17, 25, 48Google Scholar.

85 This is the Weberian paradigm, as examined by Raeff, Well-ordered police state; also, Cohen, Ronald and Service, Elman R. (eds.), Origin of the state: the anthropology of political evolution (Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 5–7Google Scholar.