Red Saxony reappraises Germany's prospects for democratic governance from the mid-nineteenth century to the collapse of the Second Reich, asking: how was Germany governed in the era of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II? How did fear of revolution push liberal and conservative parties together? How did Germany's leaders see their nation's future?
Red Saxony argues that election battles were fought so fiercely in Imperial Germany because they reflected two kinds of democratization. Social democratization could not be stopped, but political democratization was opposed by many members of the German bourgeoisie. This book asks: how was Germany governed in the era of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II? How did fear of revolution push liberal and conservative parties together? How did Germany's leaders seetheir nation's future?
[A] combination of exhaustive archival research, complete mastery of the existing body of secondary scholarship, and writing that is engaging, erudite, and replete with literary references. The result is a singular accomplishment that will rank for years to come among the very best studies of Germany and the transformations of its political culture in the tumultuous period between unification and the end of World War I.
