Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity(Harvard Historical Studies)

About the Book

In a unique blend of political, intellectual, and cultural history, Brian Vick explores the world of German nationalism during the first half of the nineteenth century. Vick first presents an original investigation of German conceptions of nationhood in these decades before moving on to analyze the efforts of deputies at the Frankfurt Constituent National Assembly to construct a German national state based on the ethnically diverse German Confederation. He examines debates over fundamental issues that included citizenship qualifications, minority linguistic rights, Jewish emancipation, and territorial disputes, and offers valuable insights into nineteenth-century liberal opinion on the Jewish Question, language policy, and ideas of race.

Contrary to the often invoked dichotomy between cultural and political types of nationalism, in which the German case is usually seen as prototypical of the xenophobic, exclusionary cultural form, this study reveals how German nationalists at Frankfurt interwove cultural and political strands of the national ideal so finely as to sanction equal citizenship status in the proposed state for both the German-Jewish minority and the non-German-speaking nationalities within its boundaries. Yet deputies also contentiously defined Germany's borders so as to incorporate the latter, often unwilling groups, thereby hoping to dominate them both culturally and politically. Conflict was thus as much a part of this "culture of nationhood" as inclusion.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Map: The German Confederation Introduction Part I. The Vormarz Culture of Nationhood 1. Defining National Boundaries 2. The Nation as Historical Actor Part II. Nationhood and Revolution in Germany, 1848-1849 3. The German Nation and the German Jews 4. Citizenship and Nationality Rights: The Paradox of the Non-German German 5. Setting Boundaries for the New Germany 6. National Honor, National Conflict: Germany's International and Historical Role Conclusion: The German Culture of Nationhood in Comparative Perspective Notes Index

About the Author :
Brian E. Vick is Associate Professor of History at Emory University.

Review :
A richly contextual account that breaks down many of the received teleologies regarding the formation of German nationalism. Brian Vick examines a broad range of opinion among major and minor thinkers as well as parliamentarians of the Frankfurt assembly, producing a detailed picture of the political culture of the German middle class. The overall effect of the book is to emphasize the plasticity of nationalism and to re-embed the German case within a wider European framework. This makes a major contribution to the debate on liberalism and nationalism, furthering a more differentiated understanding of their aspirations and weaknesses. Even on such well-studied issues as the contrast between the little German and greater German plans for national unification, Vick finds something new and insightful to say. The accounts of the pre-1848 discussions of the nature of the nation and national honor-notably on German racial thought in the 1840s and the extent to which it upheld ideals of human equality and common humanity, and the relationship between nationalism and the classical republican tradition-are especially good, breaking intellectual new ground.