koselleck nacionalismo

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State and Civil Society in Prussia: Thoughts on a New Edition of Reinhart Koselleck's"Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution"Author(s): Jonathan SperberReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 278-296Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1877554 .

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Review ArticleState and Civil Society in Prussia: Thoughts on a NewEdition of Reinhart Koselleck's Preussen zwischenReform und Revolution1Jonathan SperberUniversity of Missouri-Columbia

Reinhart Koselleck's Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution spans twoperiods of German historiography.The book's emphasis on the role of thePrussian bureaucracy in promoting economic development and socialchangetakes up, albeitin a novel and sophisticatedway, a themefirstproposedin the classic accounts of GustavSchmollerand Otto Hintze around he turnof the century,while its discussion of thesocial consequencesof bureaucraticaction was one of the first examples of a renewed interest in the study ofsocial history in the Federal Republic of Germany. Since the work's firstpublication in 1967, this interest has producedan ever-increasing body ofscholarlyliterature,andtheappearanceof a thirdedition of Koselleck's bookin 1981, a remarkable eat for a lengthy scholarly monograph,provides anopportunityto compare his account with the conclusions of more recentwork.Briefly stated-and such a statement can hardly do justice to all the intri-cacies of a lengthy and complex study-Koselleck argues that the Prussianbureaucracy, socially homogeneousandintellectuallyclosely aligned group,possessing through its collegial organization a strong sense of collectiveidentity, realized toward the end of the eighteenthcentury that the continuedexistence of the Prussian state requireda series of deep-reachingreforms.Prussiawould have to adoptby peaceful means manyof the violent accom-plishmentsof the French Revolution: more liberal, self-governing politicalinstitutions, a more flexible andopen social structure,and a growth-orientedcapitalisteconomy.Followinga not overly successful dryrun n this direction,dominatedby the judicial bureaucracyand culminating in the AllgemeinesLandrechtof 1794, the crisis of the Prussian state after its defeat at the handsof Napoleon's armies in 1806 allowed reform-mindedofficials, this timeprimarilyfrom the administrativebureaucracy, to carry out their program.

1 Unless otherwise indicated, page references are to ReinhartKoselleck, Preussenzwischen Reform und Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltungund sozialeBewegung von 1791 bis 1848, Industrielle Welt:Schriftenreihedes ArbeitskreisesfurmoderneSozialgeschichte, Band 7, 3d. ed. (Stuttgart:Klett-Cotta, 1981), pp. 739,DM 88.

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State and Civil Society in Prussia 279Yet the results of the subsequent Reform Era-and this is a key point inKoselleck's work-showed the program's inherent contradictions. Socio-economic modernization and liberalization-abolition of serfdom, noble

privilege, and feudal relations of production n agriculture; he creation of afree landmarket; he parallelcreation of a free labor marketby the abolitionof compulsory guilds and of restrictionson the freedom of movement, set-tlement, and occupation;encouragementof industrial-capitalistenterprise-were vigorously resisted by the existing corporate social bodies, the estates(Stdnde). The nobility used the experimentalrepresentative institutions ofthe Reform Era to demanda returnto serfdom, the urban master artisans areinstatementof compulsory guilds. Seeing their socioeconomic programthreatened y theirpolitical one, thereformingofficials decidedon the former'spriority, and after 1815, ratherthan granta constitution and representativeparliamentary nstitutions, they set themselves up as the representativesofsociety. This "intraadministrative onstitutionalism"(p. 264) was based onthe collegial organizationof the administration,with its constant debate andreexaminationat different levels of proposedlaws or decrees, allowing thebureaucracy o articulate the interestsof different social groupsandguide astill backwardsociety on its journey towardmodernity.The successful ap-plication of this program produced over several decades two new socialgroups:a capitalistbourgeoisie,consciousof its economicinfluence, impatientwith bureaucratic utelage, the leadingelementin an emancipatoryiberalism,and a propertyless proletariat, unprotectedby the abolishedpatriarchal uralsocial orderor the urbanguilds, ready for violent action. The opposition ofthese two social groups,culminatingin the revolution of 1848, broughtdownthesystemof bureaucratic, uthoritarianule-"The state of theadministrativebureaucracysuccumbed to its own creation" (p. 587)-but the Prussianconstitution emerging from the revolution sanctioned the results of the bu-reaucracy'sreformprogram.2I feel a certainreluctanceto criticize such an elegantly dialectical thesis-within the book, Koselleck uses Hegel's ideas as a running commentaryonhis empiricalresearch-but, allowing analyticinterestto overcomeaestheticreserve, I would suggest three ways in which the work can fruitfully beconsidered. To start, it is an accountof class formation, one which stressesthe role of the state in shaping social structures. The book is also a socialhistoryof the Prussianbureaucracy,takingit up, as Koselleck notes (p. 16),fromHansRosenberg'sportrayal f the group'srise to powerin the eighteenthcentury, and examining it at the height of its power and influence. Finally,the work can also be seen as anattempt o explaintheuniquenatureof Prussiaamong the various Germanstates and, more broadly, among the European

2 Besideshis massivebook,Koselleckhasalsoprovided short ketch fhisideas,"Staatund Gesellschaft nPreussen1815-1848," inStaatundGesellschaft mdeutschenVormdrz815-1848,ed. WernerConze Stuttgart, 962), pp. 79-112. Anyseriousconsiderationf Koselleck'sworkmust takeinto accountJurgenKocka'scriticalreviewof the 1 t ed. of Preussen zwischenReformundRevolution, n Vierteljahrschriftfar Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte57 (1970): 121-25.



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280 Sperberpowers, emphasizing in its explanation the interrelationship between thestate and the economy.ISeemingly one of the strongest points in Koselleck's argumentconcernstherelationshipof bureaucracyo capitalism, as the role of the statein promotingeconomic development in Prussia, starting in the eighteenth century andcontinuing onward,has long beenregardedas empiricallywell proved.Morerecent work, however, has cast the Prussian authorities'policies in quite adifferent ight, emphasizingthe obstacles they placedin theway of economicdevelopment. Senior bureaucratsopposed incorporation aws andrefusedtograntpermission or the formationof joint stock companies.Patent egislationwas neglected, and credit policies designed to funnel money into agriculturemade mobilizationof capital for industrydifficult. State officials in the closelyregulated mining industry consistently refused to allow innovations either inminingmethodsorin the utilizationof the minedcoal and ore. The authorities'policies toward railroad construction, the leading sector of the German n-dustrial revolution, was particularlyburdensome. Alone among the Germanstates, the Prussiangovernmentprovidedalmost no assistancefor the creationof a railroad network, and the authorities' skeptical and at times downrighthostile attitude toward dealing in railroad company shares -their procras-tination over or refusal of requestsfor right-of-way-was no small obstacleto the task of raising the unprecedentedamounts of capital needed to buildthe railroads.3The very officials responsible for these policies simultaneously attemptedto further the growthof industry. They used state-owned establishments toexperimentwith new industrialechniquesandoffered inancial,administrative,andtechnical assistance to newly foundedbusinesses-policies closely as-sociated with PeterChristian Beuth, for decades director of the Division ofTradeandIndustry,andChristianvon Rother, presidentof the Seehandlung,the Prussianstatebank. Suchpolicies haveoftenbeendescribed,but a certainskepticism about their success seems in order. State foundries built steam

3 A convenient summaryof the older scholarshipis in William Henderson, TheState and the Industrial Revolution in Prussia, 1740-1870 (Liverpool, 1958). Morecritical voices include RichardTilly, Financial Institutionsand Industrialization inthe Rhineland 1815-1870 (Madison, Wis., 1966), and "The Political Economy ofPublic Finance and the Industrializationof Prussia," Journal of EconomicHistory26(1966): 484-97; FriedrichZunkel,"Die Rolle derBergbauburokratieeim industriellenAusbau des Ruhrgebietes, 1815-1848," in Sozialgeschichte Heute: Festschrift farHansRosenbergzum 70. Geburtstag,ed. Hans-UlrichWehler Gottingen, 1974), pp.130-47; Dietrich Eichholtz, Junker undBourgeoisie vor 1848 in der preussischenEisenbahngeschichteEastBerlin, 1962);RainerFremdling,EisenbahnenunddeutschesWirtschaftswachstum840-1879 (Dortmund, 1975), esp. pp. 123-29; Paul Martin,"Die Entstehungdes preussischen Aktiengesetzes von 1843," VierteljahrschriftfiirSozial- undWirtschaftsgeschichte 6 (1969): 499-542; FrankTipton, Regional Vari-ations in the EconomicDevelopmentof Germanyduringthe NineteenthCentury Mid-dletown, Conn., 1976), pp. 68-72.



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 281engines and locomotives to encourage private industrialists and show themthe proper techniques, but the steam engines produced no power and a lo-comotive ran for just twenty or thirty feet, and that only when workers pushedand shoved it. Large sums were offered entrepreneurs to open factories: onetook the money and fled the country, while another proved a technical in-competent who went bankrupt several times. Elaborate plans were drawn upfor state-sponsored industrial exhibitions which opened without any exhibitors.A Seehandlung steamboat service on the Elbe ran so slowly and erraticallythat it ended up with a 700,000 Thaler deficit. Totally extraneous matters,like a govemment wool warehouse, designed to rescue tenants on state domainsfrom the collapse of wool prices during the 1820s, were put on the budgetfor the promotion of industry.4

Rather more successful were the Prussian govemment's industrial educationpolicies. Some 800 industrial technicians were trained before 1850 at theBerlin Gewerbeinstitut (Industrial Institute), forerunner of today's TechnischeHochschule in West Berlin. Of course, this establishment was not uniquelyPrussian: The Technical Institute in Zurich and the Karlsruhe Polytechnic,to name just two of the more important of such institutions in Central Europe,also dated from the early years of the nineteenth century, and they, like theirPrussian counterpart, were created as imitations of the pioneering exampleof technical education, the Paris Ecole Polytechnique, founded in 1795.5 Thesuccess of the Prussian government's efforts in technical education and insuch related policies as financing trips abroad to gather information on thelatest industrial techniques may well have reflected not a state-sponsored

4 All these examples are from Ilja Mieck, Preussische Gewerbepolitik in Berlin1806-1844 (West Berlin, 1965), pp. 63-67, 126-32, 141-49, 164-69, 180-81,186-93. It is a testimony to the weight of scholarly stereotypes that Mieck, aftercataloging this long list of fiascos against a much smaller number of modest successes,notes the growth of Berlin industry and attributes it to state assistance (p. 225ff.). Amore balanced judgment on these sorts of state policies can be found in the works ofthe GDR historians Horst Blumberg ("Manufaktur, Staat und beginnende Industri-alisierung in Deutschland," Jahrbuch far Wirtschaftsgeschichte, pt. 4 [1967], pp.409-44) and Karl Larmer ("Maschinenbau in Preussen: Ein Beitrag zur ProblematikStaat und Industrielle Revolution," ibid., pt. 2 [1975], pp. 13-32).5 Peter Lundgreen's Techniker in Preussen wdhrend der friuhen Industrialisierung(West Berlin, 1975) is a detailed and insightful history of the origin and activities ofthe Berlin Gewerbeinstitut and the careers of its students. In spite of its title, it is nota history of engineers and industrial technicians in Prussia, because it has nothing tosay about the still undetermined number of those trained outside the Gewerbeinstitut(a point made by Ulrich Troitzsch in his review of Lundgreen's book in Vierteljahrschriftfar Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 64 [1977]: 243-45). For some very fragmentaryfigures on the training of engineers, see Lars Ulrich Scholl, Ingenieure in der Fruh-industrialisierung: Staatliche und private Techniker im Konigreich Hannover und ander Ruhr (1815-1873) (Gottingen, 1978), pp. 329, 363, 375, 393, 422. The lower-level and less successful Prussian provincial industrial schools are studied by ChristianeSchiersmann, Zur Sozialgeschichte der preussischen Provinzial-Gewerbeschulen im19. Jahrhundert (Weinheim and Basel, 1979). On industrial education outside Prussia,see Wolfram Fischer, Der Staat und die Anfdnge der Industrialisierung in Baden1800-1850 (West Berlin, 1962), pp. 161-72.



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282 Sperbercreation of industry, but a cooperation of official institutions and alreadyexisting capitalist enterprise. An importantpart of a student's education atthe Gewerbeinstitutas a period spent gathering practical experience in acooperating factory, and government assistance for information-gatheringforeign travel encouraged entrepreneursto continue something they werealready doing on their own.6Possiblythe mostimportant ontribution f Prussian tatepolicy to fosteringeconomic growth, although still a surprisingly little-investigated one, wasthe authorities' stubborn nsistence on retainingfreedom of occupation, res-idence, and mobility, an adherence to laissez-faire unmatchedby the otherGerman tates before 1850. Abolitionof compulsoryguilds, while best known,was probablynot the most significantaspect of this policy. Differing egislationseems to have hadvirtuallyno effect on thesocial and economic developmentof the artisanate, and early industrial initiatives were almost exclusively intextiles and metalworking, two trades that were largely nonguilded by theeighteenth century. Rather, preservation of freedom of mobility gave earlyindustrial entrepreneursaccess to cheap labor, which could be attractedtoindustrialcenters in boom times and let go back to the countryside duringdownturns n the business cycle. Master-artisan-dominatedown councils insouthernGermany, on the other hand, often exercised their legal power torefuse residencepermitsto factory workers,fearing thatin slumpstheworkersmightbecome a burden on municipal poor relief, and thus created problemsfor industrialists seeking to staff their factories.7In discussing the effects of state policies on industrialization t is easy toforget the actual course of economic development in the first half of thenineteenthcentury. Industrialization n this period was sporadic, tentative,andregionally imited:most of Prussia'ssteamengines,factories,and railroadswere located in the two western provinces, the Rhine province and, to alesser extent, Westphalia. Capitalist industryin these-regionsdid not beginwith their complete incorporation nto the Prussian state in 1815 but datedback to the mid-eighteenth centuryand haddeveloped, albeit erratically, inthe intervening period, including especially thepost-1800 eraof Napoleonicrule. Given thebackgroundo this key industrialarea,it is difficult o perceive

6 Lundgreen, pp. 156-65; MartinSchumacher,Auslandsreisendeutscher Unter-nehmer1750-1871 unter besondererBeriicksichtigungvon RheinlandundWestfalen(Cologne, 1968).7 Friedrich-WilhelmHenning, "Die Einfiihrungder Gewerbefreiheitund ihre Aus-wirkungen auf das Handwerkin Deutschland," in Handwerksgeschichtein neuerSicht, Wilhelm Abel et al. (Gottingen, 1970), pp. 142-72, shows that legislationconcerningthe guilds had little influence on either the developmentof the artisanate

in differentpartsof Germanyoron theprocessof industrialization.JiirgenBergmann,Das Berliner Handwerk n denFriihphasenderIndustrialisierungWest Berlin, 1973),pp. 45-54, offers a useful local studyof how little influence abolitionof compulsoryguilds had on the Berlin artisanate.Heilwig Schomerus, Die Arbeiter der Maschi-nenfabrik Esslingen (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 103-5, discusses the difficulties strictlyenforced residencelaws made for south German ndustrialists,while Steve Hochstadt,"Migrationand Industrialization n Germany, 1815-1977," Social Science History5 (1981): 445-68, points out the extraordinarypopulationfluctuations n accordancewith the business cycle in the early industrialRhineland.



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 283the growthof factory industry, a capitalist bourgeoisie, or an industrial pro-letariatin Prussia primarily as products of state initiative.8Industrialization was not the dominant fact of the Prussian or Germaneconomy before 1850. Factory workers and machine-made products werestill outnumbered by protoindustrial outworkers, nominally independentnonguild artisanproducers,working underthe directionand de facto controlof merchant capitalists.9 This form of production was expanding from itsprevious strongholds in textiles and metalworking and moving into suchpreviously guilded crafts as shoemaking, tailoring, and furniture making.There were some 21,000 workers in the Berlin garment industry in 1849, atradeorganizedalong outworking ines, three times as many as were employedin machineand optical equipmentmanufacture, centerof factoryproduction.Both critics and defendersof the Prussian bureaucracy's economic policieshave focused their attentionprimarilyon the early factories, as they were tobe the dominant element in post-1850 developments, but to provide a morecomplete pictureof the bureaucracy'srelation to civil society in the first halfof the nineteenth century more attention needs to be paid to protoindustryand other forms of outworking. 0

8Tilly, Financial Institutions, pp. 15-16; HerbertKische, "FromMonopoly toLaissez-Faire:The Early Growthof the WupperValley Textile Trades,"Journal ofEuropeanEconomicHistory1 (1972): 298-407; id., "GrowthDeterrents f a MedievalHeritage:The Aachen-AreaWoolensTradebefore 1790,"JournalofEconomicHistory24 (1964): 517-37; id., "The Impactof the French Revolution on the Lower RhineTextile Districts: Some Commentson Economic Developmentand Social Change,"EconomicHistoryReview,2d. ser., 15(1962/63): 304-27; MaxBarkhausen,"StaatlicheWirtschaftslenkungund freies Unternehmertumm westdeutschen und im nord-undsiidniederliindischenRaum bei der Entstehungder neuzeitlichenIndustrie,"Viertel-jahrschriftfiir Sozial- undWirtschaftsgeschichte45 (1958): 168-241; KarlHeinrichKaufhold,Das MetallgewerbederGrafschaftMark m 18. undfriihen19. Jahrhundert(Dortmund, 1976); id., Das Gewerbe in Preussen um 1800 (G6ttingen, 1978), p.34ff. andpassim. Parts of the Rhineland andWestphaliahadbeen Prussianterritoryunder he old regime, but there is no reason to think that Frederician conomicpolicieshelpedthe industryof theregion andplausible grounds o think t hadnegative effects.Id., Metallgewerbeder GrafschaftMark, pp. 68-71; Gewerbe inPreussen, pp. 447-49; HerbertKisch, Prussian Mercantilism and the Rise of the KrefeldSilk Industry:Variations on an EighteenthCenturyTheme(Philadelphia, 1968).9 On the conceptof protoindustry, eterKriedte,HansMedick,JiirgenSchlumbohm,IndustrialisierungvorderIndustrialisierung:GewerblicheWarenproduktionuf demLande in derFormationsperiodedes Kapitalismus(Gottingen, 1977) (now in EnglishasIndustrialization eforeIndustrialization:Rural ndustryn the Genesisof Capitalism,trans. Beate Schemp [Cambridge,1982]). Kriedte et al. defended andelaboratedontheirviews in "Die Proto-Industrialisierunguf demPriifstandderhistorischenZunft:Antwort auf einige Kritiker," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 87-105. Anempirical regional study of the development of protoindustry s Wolfgang Mager,"Protoindustrialisierung nd agrarischheimgewerblicheVerflechtung n Ravensbergwahrendder FruhenNeuzeit. Studien zu einerGesellschaftsformationm Ubergang,"Geschichte undGesellschaft 8 (1982): 435-74. Koselleck's figureson the numberoffactoryworkersin Prussiain 1846 areexaggerated, as they include large numbersofjourneymenmillers andprotoindustrialoutworking spinnersand weavers (p. 698).10 FiguresarefromOttoBusch, "DasGewerbe n der Wirtschaftdes RaumesBerlin/Brandenburg1800-1850," in Untersuchungenzur Geschichte derfriihen Industri-alisierungvornehmlich mWirtschaftsraumerlin/Brandenburg,d. OttoBusch(Berlin,



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284 SperberGustav Schmoller's thesis of a state-directeddevelopment of industryinPrussiaseems ever less convincingwith theprogressof historical nvestigation.The thesis fits the first half of the nineteenth century especially poorly, sincethe development of factory industry was not the main economic trend, andstate efforts hamperedsuch development that did occur as much as theyhelped it. A comprehensive reinvestigation of the problem would involveconsideringhe strangeblendof pro-andanti-industrialolicies, often espousedby the same state officials. Did these reflect the conflicting pressures ofdifferent economic interest groups Rhineland capitalists and East ElbianJunkers, or instance-or did they exemplifya conscious bureaucratictrategywhose goal, although called "industrialization," might havebeen somethingquite different from the industrial economy which emerged after 1850? Therelationshipbetween the motivationsof officialpolicy, copiously documentedin the archives, and the effects of state action, often moreobscure and hardto analyze, also need to be considered, especially in the light of the actualdevelopmentof theeconomy in the firsthalf of the nineteenthcentury.Perhapsit would be more helpful to stress the continuitieswith theyears 1750-1800,bothin state policy and in economic development, hanto search or precursorsof post-1850 trends.11

IIThroughout he first half of the nineteenth century, agricultureremainedthemost importantbranch of the Prussian economy: farm prices continued todominate economic cycles, most investment was placed in the land, and amajorityof the populationcontinued to earn ts living there. Socially decisiveconsequences of state action shouldbe most apparent n the agrarianworld,andthe importance of the liberationof the peasantry from serfdom andtherelatedagrarianeforms or futureeconomic,social, andpoliticaldevelopmentslong have beenrecognized. In spite of the enormous iteratureon the Prussianagrarianreforms, perfectly clear answers have not emerged to such crucialquestions as the state of agriculturebefore the reforms, the motives of theauthorities n planningthereforms,the attitudesof lords andpeasantstowardthem, the way they were carried out, and their effects on agricultural pro-ductivity and the distributionof rural property.Published sources are con-

1971), pp. 4-105; on outworking, see Bergmann(n. 6 above), pp. 280-91; furtherinformationon outworking can be expected from FriedrichLenger's forthcomingDusseldorf dissertationon the Dusseldorf artisanatein the nineteenthcentury. Ongeneral trends in the first half of the nineteenthcentury, Karl Heinrich Kaufhold,"HandwerkundIndustrie1800-1850," in Handbuchder deutschenWirtschafts-undSozialgeschichte, ed. HermannAubinandWolfgang Zorn, 2 vols. (Stuttgart,1971-76), 2:321-68." Differentinterpretationsof official policies are discussed by JiirgenKockain hisilluminatingessay, "PreussischerStaat undModernisierungm Vormarz:Marxistisch-leninistische Interpretationenund ihre Probleme," in Sozialgeschichte Heute, ed.Hans-UlrichWehler(Gbttingen, 1974), pp. 211-27.



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 285tradictoryor unreliable;unpublishedones are not always easily accessibleto historians from Western countries.12Besides empirical problems, thereareconceptualones, for terms like "lib-eration of thepeasantry"or "agrarianreforms" cover a variety of social andeconomic changes: (1) the liberation of the peasants from their feudal obli-gations, whether in cash, kind, or laborservices, andthe compensationpaidthe lords for this in money or land; (2) the division of the common landsandthe cultivationof formerwasteland; 3) theconsolidationof formerlyparcelizedagriculturalproperty;(4) the introductionof new crops andmethodsof cul-tivation and stock raising. These developments overlappedand influencedeach other, but did not occur simultaneously. Separatingout the strandsofcausality is a difficult task.It does seem that rising agriculturalprices in the late eighteenth centuryled to experiments in EastElbian Prussia with moreproductiveformsof croprotation,the cultivation of root crops, improved stock breeding, and the stallfeeding of animals. Still far from determined are both the extent of thesenew practices and the identity of the rural social groups employing them.However widespread this new market-oriented, abor-intensiveagriculturemay have been, its furtherexpansionwas limited by the collective natureofthree-field agricultureand the feudal relations of production-that is, thelord's obligation to provide his serfs with their own farms and the latter'sextensivelabor-services,which tookupan enormousportionof theireconomicresources.13The changes initiated by the agrarianreforms, begun in 1807 after somepreliminary nitiatives and largely completed in Prussian East Elbia (exceptfor Silesia) by the 1830s, created a morefavorable environment or capitalist

12 East Germanhistorianshave, with apparent ustification, accused the Prussianauthoritiesof manipulatingofficial statistics to minimize the extent of peasantlandloss. HartmutHarnisch,"StatistischeUntersuchungenum VerlaufderkapitalistischenAgrarreformen n den preussischen Ostprovinzen (1811 bis 1865)," JahrbuchfiurWirtschaftsgeschichte,t. 4 (1974), pp. 149-82. Contradictionsn the official statisticsare pointed out by Robert Dickler, "Organizationand Change in Productivity inEasternPrussia," in EuropeanPeasants and TheirMarkets,ed. William ParkerandEric Jones(Princeton,N.J., 1975), pp. 269-92. The recentattemptof HannaSchissler,PreussischeAgrargesellschaftmWandel Gottingen,1978), to offera syntheticaccountof the Prussian agrarianreformsrunsinto problemsprecisely becausethe authorhadto rely on unclearsecondaryliteratureandpublishedsources.

13 A leading studentof eighteenth-centuryEastElbianagricultures Hans-HeinrichMuller (see his MarkischeLandwirtschaftvor der Agrarreformin 1807: Entwick-lungstendenzendes Ackerbaues n derzweitenHdlftedes 18. Jahrhunderts Potsdam,1967], andamonghis many articles, "Das Bodennutzungssystemunddie SeparationinBrandenburg or denAgrarreformenn 1807," JahrbuchfiirWirtschaftsgeschichte,pt. 3 [1965], pp. 82-126; "Entwicklungstendenzender Viehzucht in Brandenburgvor den Agrarreformenvon 1807," ibid., pt. 2 [1966], pp. 137-89; and "Bauern,PiichterundAdel im altenPreussen," ibid., pt. 1 [1966], pp. 259-77). Schissler, pp.59-74, provides a summaryof the literatureon eighteenth-centuryEast Elbianagri-culture. On the (overwhelming)extent of feudal burdenson the peasantry,there isthe important tudyof Friedrich-WilhelmHenning,Dienste undAbgabenderBauernim 18. Jahrhundert Stuttgart, 1969).



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286 Sperberagricultureas serf laborwas abolished, the commons divided, ruralpropertyin partdeparcelized,andcollective cultivationended. However,thesechangesincluded a majorredistributionof ruralproperty:Junker andownersreceivedsizable amounts of land from the peasantryas compensationfor abolishedfeudal obligations. Largerpeasants' holdings declined slightly, in numbersas well as landowned, butpeasantswere in partcompensatedfor theirlossesto the nobility by gains from the division of the commons. And the numberof both landless laborers and smallholders possessing plots insufficient tosupporta family, and thus dependent on income from working for estateowners and larger peasants, increased sharply. Capitalist agriculturehadtriumphedandagriculturaloutput grew, although t is still debatablewhetherthis increase reflected a growth in productivity or just in the area undercultivation, but this triumphwas also one of the landed nobility.14FromStein's OctoberEdict of 1807 to the supplementary rovincialdecreesof the 1820s and 1830s, the bureaucracyvigorously pursuedthese reformsagainstthe embitteredopposition of noble landowners. Given the favorableoutcomes of the reforms for the landed nobility, it seems worth ponderinghow this result came about. Did the authorities, in planning and executingthe reforms, intend to strengthenthe position of the large landowners?Andif they did, why were the nobles so hostile to measurestakenin theirbehalf?Koselleck's insistencethatChancellorHardenbergndhis leadingcoworkerssaw the introductionof a capitalist economic order in the countryside as abasic necessity for the survival of the state has recently been supported inan impressiveessay by BarbaraVogel.15Yet supportingprocapitalistagrarianreform-abolition of feudal obligations, division of the commons, consol-idation of parceledproperty-did not necessarily imply supportingpoliciesin favor of noble large landowners. There were officials who saw peasantfarmersas the most efficient producers;even some who did not agree withthis estimationlooked to reforms as a way of improving peasantproductivity

14 The two best-known studies of rural propertyredistribution n the wake of thereforms, GunterIpsen, "Die preussischeBauernbefreiungals Landesausbau" Zeit-schriftfiirAgrargeschichteundAgrarsoziologie2 [1954]:29-54) andDietrichSaalfeld,"ZurFragedes biuerlichen Landesverlustes m Zusammenhangmit derpreussischenAgrarreform" ibid., 9 [1963]: 163-71), the former rathermore sanguine than thelatteraboutthe effects on thepeasantry,havebeensupersededby Harnisch.A detailedregional study can be found in Rudolf Berthold, "Der sozial6konomische Differen-zierungsprozessder Bauernwirtschaft n der Provinz Brandenburgwahrendder in-dustriellenRevolution (1816 bis 1878/82)," Jahrbuchfiir Wirtschaftsgeschichte,pt.2 (1974), pp. 13-50. All this subsequentresearch has fully confirmed Koselleck'saccountof the transformationof East Elbian ruralsociety (p. 487ff.) and it remainsoneof the mostimpressiveaspectsof his book. Schissler, pp. 153-59, offersa summaryof research results on the growthof agriculturaloutput.15 BarbaraVogel, "Die 'allgemeine Gewerbefreiheit' als biirokratischeModerni-sierungsstrategie n Preussen," in Industrielle Gesellschaft undpolitisches System,ed. Dirk Stegmann,Bernd-JiirgenWendt,and Peter-ChristianWitt (Bonn, 1978), pp.59-78. See also herintroductory ssay, "Die preussischenReformen als GegenstandundProblemderForschung," nPreussischeReformen1807-1820, ed. BarbaraVogel(K6nigstein, 1980), pp. 1-27.



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 287and strengtheningthe peasantry'sposition on the land. Internaldifferenceswithin the bureaucracy,of which the exact natureis not well understood,combined with actions of the nobility to create the specific outcome of thePrussian agrarianreforms.16The attitude of the landowning Junkers toward the agrarianreforms haslong been understoodas purelynegativeand reactionary,a stubbornnsistenceon the retention of feudal-patriarchalnstitutions, anda denunciationof bu-reaucratic eformeffortsas the resultof a conspiracyof Jews and subversives.However, theEastGermanhistorianKlausVetter has shownthat thenobilityof the Mark Brandenburgwas by no means hostile to the economic reformprogram.Most nobles were quite willing to free their serfs, providedtheyreceived the maximum possible compensation. To secure their economicpositionin the transition o capitalistproductive elations,they bitterlyopposedany attempts to weaken their political position, successfully maintainingtheir patrimonial udicial and police powers, as well as their controlover theoffice of the Landrat. The gendarmerieedict of 1812, which would haveplaced the countrysideunderthe direct controlof the centralBerlin bureau-cracy,remaineda dead etter. 7 Brandenburgobles had,in the Berlinconsumermarket, a major incentive to engage in capitalist agriculture.It remainstobe seen how typical was theirposition amongthe East Elbian Junkers-theSilesian nobility, by contrast, stubbornly clung to their feudal rights untilthe revolution of 1848-but the attitudesand activities of the Brandenburgnobility providean important lue to understandingheoutcomeof the Prussianagrarianreforms.18A look at the agrarianreformselsewhere in Germanymay help elucidatefeatures of the Prussian development. Unlike their Prussiancounterparts,eighteenth-centuryWest Elbian nobles (as well as most of the nobility ofEast Elbian Saxony) were a rentierclass, receiving cash andkind paymentsfrom their peasants ratherthan running their own large estates with serf

16 A striking example of a propeasantofficial is provided by BogdanWachowniak,"Die Entwicklungder LandwirtschaftHinterprommernsn den ReiseberichtendesRegierungsratesHaese aus den Jahren 1835 und 1837," Jahrbuch ulr Wirtschafts-geschichte, pt. 4 (1977), pp. 127-37. See also Schissler, pp. 115-23, althoughherattribution f differencesof opinionwithin thereformbureaucracyo personalrivalries,intrigue, and confusion seems insufficient.17 KlausVetter,KurmdrkischerAdel undpreussische Reformen(Weimer,1979); asummaryof the conventional view of the nobility is in Schissler, pp. 123-30. OneBrandenburgnobleman, FriedrichAugust Ludwig von der Marwitz, was such anuncompromisingopponentof the agrarianreformsthat a frustratedChancellorHar-denberghadhim imprisoned n a fortress. Von derMarwitz'spapers,publishedby a

descendant,have become a primesource for historiansstudyingnoble attitudes(seeJeromeBlum, The End of the Old Orderin RuralEurope [Princeton,N.J., 1978], p.401, wherehe appearsas the spokesmanof the entirePrussiannobility), butas Vettercan show from unpublishedsources, von der Marwitz's extreme attitudes were notsharedby the majorityof his fellow Brandenburg unkers.18 On the situationin Silesia, see HelmutBleiber,ZwischenReformundRevolution:Lage undK2mpfeder schlesischen BauernundLandarbeiter m Vormarz1840-1847(EastBerlin, 1960).



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288 Sperberlabor. Such a group had little interest in the dissolution of feudal obligations:lacking boththeir own large estates andeasy access to urbanmarkets,eitherdomestic or in WesternEurope, they had no incentive to engage in capitalistagriculture. Consequently, the agrarianreformsin Saxony, Bavaria,Baden,Wiurttemberg,ndtheNapoleonicGrandDuchyof BergandKingdomof West-phalia were carried out slowly andreluctantly. Attempts by reform-mindedbureaucrats o abolish feudal obligations were quickly halted, both by thehostility of the nobles andby official reluctance to undermine he economicposition of thenobility. Whetherabolishingorpreservingfeudalobligations,encouragingor hinderingmarketagriculture, agrarianreform in almost allof Germany was shaped by the interests and influence of the landowningnobility and usually occurredto the disadvantageof the peasantry. 9More than in industry, the Prussianbureaucracyplayed a leading role inthe creation of capitalist productive relations in agriculture, initiating theagrarian eforms anddeterminingtheirlegal forms. The social andeconomiccontent of the reforms, in Prussia as well as elsewhere in Germany, wasdecided less by bureaucratic nitiative thanby the power and influence of theaffected social groups. Even when they wantedto-and at least sometimesthey didnot-officials wereunableto protect peasant interests in the processof providingcompensationforabolished feudalobligations. Peasant nterestswere best protected by peasant actions, and the rustic uprisings of 1830 inSaxony or 1848 in Wurttembergbrokea legal and administrativeparalysis,leading to the redemptionof feudal obligations on termsrelatively favorableto the peasantry.20Althoughtherewere repeated agrariandisorders in some partsof Prussia,the absence of a widespreadruraluprisingmeant that the Prussianagrarianreform was shaped by the interaction of bureaucratic ntentions and nobleinterests. Researchers have concentrated on portraying the effects of theseinteractions on the decision-making process at the ministerial level, and

19On agrarianreforms outside of Prussia, see the monographicstudies of ReinerGross,Die burgerlicheAgrarreformn Sachsen n der erstenHalftedes 19. Jahrhunderts(Weimar, 1968); FriederikeHausmann,Die Agrarpolitikder RegierungMontgelas(Frankfurt mMain, 1975); Wolfgangvon Hippel,Die BauernbefreiungmKonigreichWurttemberg, vols. (Boppard, 1977);HelmutBerding, NapoleonischeHerrschafts-und Gesellschaftspolitik im Konigreich Westfalen (Gottingen, 1973), esp. p. 76ff.;and ElisabethFehrenbach,TraditionelleGesellschaft undrevolutionares Recht: DieEinfuhrungder Code Napoleon in den Rheinbundstaaten Gottingen, 1974), esp. p.79ff. The contrast between the Prussianand West Elbian agrarianreforms is wellbroughtout in id., "Verfassungs-undsozialpolitischeReformenund Reformprojektein Deutschlandunterdem Einflussdes napoleonischenFrankreichs,"Historische Zeit-schrift 228 (1979): 288-316. ChristofDipper,Die Bauernbefreiung n Deutschland1790-1850 (Stuttgart, 1980), is a useful synthesisof much recent work which pointsout the need for furtherstudy of the relationship among liberation from feudal obli-gations, other agrarianreforms(division of the commons, deparcelization),and thedevelopmentof agriculturalproductivityoutside of East Elbian Prussia.

20 See the works of vonHippeland Gross cited in theprevious note. The two earliestand most radical agrarianreforms in Germany,those in Schleswig-Holsteinand onthe left bank of the Rhine, carriedout undervery differentpolitical auspices andfromequally differentsocioeconomic startingpoints, have still not been well studied.



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 289although much remains to be learned there, it might also be useful to seehow these centrally determined policies were executed. The Generalkom-missionen, special state agencies which fixed compensationrates for feudalobligations and directed the division of the commons and the consolidationof parcelized property,have yet to find their historian, and a study of theiractivities might well provide a new insight into the extent and nature of thebureaucracy's role in reshapingruralsociety.21IIIMore than his accountof the bureaucracy's nfluenceon social and economicdevelopments, Koselleck's discussion of its political role has been subjectto criticalscrutiny.One important bjectof criticism has been his explanationof the Prussiancentral authorities' refusal to granta promisedconstitutionin the decade after 1815. HerbertObenaus has shown that it was not liberalofficials motivatedby fear of a possible dismantlingof their socioeconomicreform programwho sabotaged a constitution, but a reactionary group ofnobles and senior bureaucratswho enjoyed the king's confidence and sawtheir restorationist political programas a means of increasingthe power ofthe Stdnde and limiting the effects of liberal social and economic reform.Obenaus has also cast doubt on the notion of an intra-administrative onsti-tutionalism by pointing out that the reactionary clique was able to set up aspecial commission-the Immediatkommissionur die stindischen Angele-genheiten-which, as its name implies, reported directly to the king andsimply ignored all the memorandaand proposals in favor of a constitutionand representativeassembly so carefully gatheredby the liberal authorities.Like other versions of constitutionalismexisting in Prussia later in the nine-teenth century, intra-administrativeconstitutionalism was a pseudoconsti-tutionalism, in politically decisive questions limited by the finalauthorityofa monarchpromptedby his aristocratic close advisers.22As was noted above, developments in Prussia's westernprovinces fit Ko-selleck's thesis poorly, and this is especially trueof constitutionalquestions.From 1815 onward, a considerable body of middle-class public opinion inthe Rhineland-representing merchantsandindustrialists as well as lawyersand notaries, experts in the still legally valid Napoleonic Code, and rentierpurchasersof church property secularized in the revolutionaryera-wasstrongly n favorof both aconstitutionwith statewiderepresentativenstitutionsand a liberal social andeconomicsystem. The Rhinelanders'wishes, expressed

21 Koselleckhas somesuggestivecomments n these institutions, sp. pp. 493-98.22 HerbertObenaus,review of Koselleck's Preussenzwischen undRevolution,Got-tingischeGelehrteAnzeigen 22(1970):55-67, and"Die Immediatkommissionurdiestandischen ngelegenheitenlsInstrumenterPreussischeneaktionmVormarz,"FestschriftifurHermannH,eimpel,ed. Mitarbeiterdes Max-Planck-Institutsur Ge-schichte,3 vols. (Gottingen, 971), 1:410-46. Koselleckacknowledged benaus'scriticismsn thepreface o the 2d ed. of hisbook,whichappears s anunpaginatedintroductionn the 3d ed.



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290 Sperberin newspapers, magazines, and a lively pamphlet literature, were often, ifnot always, supportedby the provincial authorities, but with the triumphofreaction in the 1820s, the whole political debate was stifled by impositionof arigid censorship. Rhineland iberalism, by the 1840s the leadingelementin the liberal movement in Prussia, was, like the Rhinelandcapitalism withwhich it was closely connected, an outgrowthof thedevelopmentof regionalsociety, not theproductof bureaucratic nitiative. Althoughelements withinthe bureaucracy were sometimes allied with their movement, must of theimpetus of the Rhinelanders' liberalism, from its very beginnings in 1815-20, stemmed rom its effortsto defend the area'spolitical institutions,productsof the French revolutionaryand Napoleonic rule, against the Prussianau-thorities' attempts to abolish them.23

The workings of anotherRhineland nstitution call into questionthe pictureof abureaucracyarticulating he interestsof society. Rhinelandbusinessmencould, through heirchambersof commerce,collectively voice theiropinionsand deal with the authoritiesandwere thus in no way dependenton the latterto express their interests. Whereas the Rhineland chambers of commercewere a legacy of the Napoleonic era, the Prussian reformershad created asimilar institution in the Merchants'Corporationsof Berlin and other largeEast Elbian cities. These latter seem to have taken a less aggressive stancetoward the authorities during the Vormarz, but it is unclear whether thisreflecteda greaterrespect for the authorities' ability to representcapitalists'intereststhan was present in the Rhineland, or simply the lesser willingnessof the East Elbian officials to listen to the opinions of businessmen.24In some ways Koselleck's picture of a bureaucratically ed civil society isless appropriate o Prussia than to the south German states Bavaria, Wiirt-temberg, Baden, Hessen-Darmstadt, andHessen-Kassel. SouthGermanbu-reaucracies were morelikely to be a closed, self-recruiting groupthan theirPrussian counterparts,and the effects of this greater internal cohesion were23 OnRhinelandpolitics, see theimportantworkof Karl-GeorgFaber,Die RheinlandezwischenRestauration und Revolution(Wiesbaden, 1966), esp. pp. 110-304. Themore recentstudyof RudigerSchutz,Preussenund die Rheinlande:Studienzurpreuss-ischenIntegrationspolitikmVormdrzWiesbaden,1979), adds ittleto Faber'saccount.Koselleck's argument hat western industrialists' demandsfor protectivetariffs werecomparable o demands or a reinstatementof serfdomorcompulsoryguildsand hencean additional reasonfor liberal bureaucrats o oppose a constitutionin the 1820s (p.323) is unconvincing,especiallyas thebureaucracytself was thencomingto recognizetheeconomicimportance f protective ariffs. TakeoOhnishi,ZolltarifpolitikPreussensbis zur Grundungdes deutschenZollvereins(Gottingen, 1973), p. 229.24 Jeffry Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland 1789-1834

(Princeton,N.J., 1980), pp. 289-333; HartmutKaelble,BerlinerUnternehmerwahrendderfruhen Industrialisierung (Berlin, 1972), pp. 197-216, 236-78. Kaelbleargues,supportingKoselleck's thesis, that until the 1840s Berlin businessmenacceptedtheauthorities' claim to speakon theirbehalf, buthis own accountshows the Merchants'Corporationoffering suggestionson economic questionsanddoubtingthe authorities'competence in this area as early as the 1820s (p. 253ff.). It would be interestingtoknow more about the Merchants'Corporations n Magdeburg, Stettin, Breslau, orKonigsberg (see Eichholtz [n. 3 above], pp. 27-29).



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 291complemented by the different social structures existing in southern andsouthwesternGermany.Neither the numerous ndustrialbourgeoisof Rhine-land-Westphalianor the affluent merchant class of Berlin and other largeEast Elbiancities could be found there. While the south Germannobles werecertainly accomplished frondeurswho fought tenaciously to retaintheir priv-ileges, they lacked both the economic influence provided by the PrussianJunkers' large estates and the latter's monopoly of political power at thelocal level in the countryside. Smallholding peasants andsmall-town masterartisans, major features of the southern and southwesternGerman sociallandscape, were able to resist or sabotage bureaucratic nitiatives but couldnot offer an alternativesocial policy.25Officials played a major role in the political life of the region, leading inthe 1820s and 1830s both progovernmentaland oppositionalgroups. Baden,theGerman tatemostfamedforits liberalbureaucracy, eems to fitKoselleck'spolitical schemabest. Measurestaken by the administrativeuthoritiesduringthe 1820s and 1830s to encouragethe growthof an independentbourgeoisieresultedbythe 1840s in the creationof anantibureaucratic,iberalopposition.26Administrative efforts to shape social and economic developments tookdifferentpoliticalformsin southernGermany rom those in Prussia.Organizedalongbureaucratic-hierarchicalines, southGerman tateadministrationsdidnotengage in the same internaldebatesascharacterized hecollegial Prussianbureaucracy. They did, however, possess anotherpolitical arenalacking inPrussia, namely, statewideparliaments,a majorityof whose deputiesduringthe Vormdrzwere usually state officials. A statewideparliamentand consti-tution outlining its powers was seen in southernGermanyas a complementto a reorganized bureaucracy, a means of increasing its influence, and aweaponagainstparticularist ndstdndisch nterests.AlthoughPrussianofficialsdid not have to worry aboutobtainingvoter approvalfor their actions, they

25 On society andeconomy in southernand southwesternGermany n the firsthalfof the nineteenthcentury, Mack Walker,German Home Towns:Community,State,and General Estate 1684-1871 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971), pp. 185-353; HeinzGollwitzer,Die Standesherren(Gottingen, 1964) (a studyof a largely, but notexclusively, southGerman noble group);Wolfgangvon Hippel, "Bev6lkerungsentwicklungund Wirt-schaftsstrukturm K6nigreichWurttemberg1815/65," in SozialeBewegung undpol-itische Verfassung,ed. Ulrich Engelhardt,VolkerSellen, and Horst Stuke(Stuttgart,1976), pp. 270-371; ManfredBulik, Staat und Gesellschaft im hessischen Vormdrz(CologneandVienna, 1972), pp. 18-42 (disappointing); ischer n. 5 above);WolfgangZorn, "Gesellschaft und Staat in Bayern des Vormairz," n Staat und Gesellschaft,ed. WernerConze (Stuttgart, 1962), pp. 113-42. Statistics on the social origins ofstate officials are not easy to come by, but comparethe over 80 percentof pre-1850Badenese higher officials who were sons of state officials with the fewer than 50percent of their Prussian counterparts. Figures from Loyd E. Lee, The Politics ofHarmony:CivilService, LiberalismandSocial Reform n Baden 1800-1850 (Newark,Del., 1980), p. 251; John Gillis, The Prussian Bureaucracyin Crisis, 1840-1860(Stanford, Calif., 1971), p. 26. On the originsof the southGermanbureaucracyas asocial group, there is the detailed workof BerndWunder,Privilegierungund Diszi-plinierung:Die EntstehungdesBerufsbeamtentumsnBayernundWurttemberg1780bis 1815) (Munichand Vienna, 1978).26 Lee.



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292 Sperberalso lacked the supportof potential allies from civil society provided by aparliamentary ystem and found it more difficultto avoidbecomingthe toolsof areactionary-aristocraticliquedominatinghehighest evels of government.Neither south Germannor Prussian officials could, in the end, do muchagainstnobleprivilegesand nfluence,buttheydirected heirefforts n oppositedirections. In Prussia, the authoritieswere sometimes ableto dissolve feudaland seigneurial relations in agriculturebut could do nothing to shake thenobles' hold on local government, while in southernGermany, the stateauthoritieswere sometimesvictorious n theircountlessbattleswith thenobilityfor local political power in the countryside, but had enormous difficultiesbefore 1848 in arrangingfor the redemptionof feudal obligations. SouthGermanofficials, although theoretically in favor of laissez-faire, hesitatedto engage in a broadside attack against guild privileges or residence andmarriagerestrictions,so threatening o thenumerousclass of masterartisans.Prussianofficialssimply decreed aissez-faire and the mastercraftsmen ackedboth the numbers and the political influenceto reverse this decision.27Justas forms of bureaucraticrule differed in the Germanstates during theVormdrz,so did the nature of oppositional liberalism. Opposition to bu-reaucraticutelage n politicallife was amajor eatureof at least one importantstrandof southGerman iberalism, but such opposition was frequently com-binedwith a hostility towardor at least suspicionof laissez-faireand industrialcapitalism, both regarded as socially retrogradeproducts of bureaucraticinterference with the natural workings of society. Rhenish and Westphalianliberalism,althoughequallyhostile to bureaucraticpoliticaldomination, sawits negative socioeconomic effects precisely in its actions againstthe naturalorder of laissez-faire capitalism.28It certainly seems ironic that the southGermanbureaucrats,o carefulandgradualn theirapproacho guild privilegesandrestrictions on freedomof movement andsettlement, should have beendenounced as rabidly procapitalist while their Prussiancounterparts, whogave the guilds short shrift, were condemnedfor their hostility to businessinterests. These varyingforms of antibureaucraticiberalism, however, re-flected themore autonomousposition of thebureaucracy n Vormdrz outhern

27 This comparison s based on the importantessay of Fehrenbach,"Verfassungs-und sozialpolitische Reformen."28 James Sheehan, "Liberalismand Society in Germany, 1815-48," Journal ofModernHistory45 (1973): 583-604; id., "Partei, Volk and Staat:Some Reflectionson the Relationshipbetween LiberalThoughtandAction in the Vormarz," in Sozial-geschichteHeute, ed. Hans-UlrichWehler Gottingen, 1974), pp. 162-74; id., GermanLiberalism in the NineteenthCentury Chicago, 1978), pp. 19-50; LotharGall, "Lib-eralismusund'burgerlicheGesellschaft':Zu Charakter ndEntwicklungderliberalenBewegung nDeutschland,"HistorischeZeitschrift220(1975):324-56; HelmutSedatis,Liberalismusund Handwerk in Sudwestdeutschland(Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 9-118.Muchof thisrecentworkwasanticipatedn theremarkable ndstill notfullyappreciatedstudy of LeonardKrieger, TheGerman Idea of Freedom (Chicago, 1957), pp. 280-325. The perception of liberalism as exclusively a laissez-faire movement of thecapitalistbourgeoisiefound in TheodoreHamerow,Restoration,Revolution,Reaction:Economics andPolitics in Germany1815-1871 (Princeton,N.J., 1958), pp. 63-64,seems insufficient to graspthe complexities of Vormarzpolitics andsociety.



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 293Germanythan it possessed in Prussia. Even the modest steps takentowardoccupationalfreedomby the southGermanauthoritiesappearedshockingina social environment argely lacking n capitalistentrepreneurs,whileRhenish-Westphalian iberals opposed the Prussian authorities because their actionsseemedto discriminate againstbusiness interests, notjust outof bureaucraticarbitrariness,butfor theprofitof anothersocial group-namely, East Elbianlarge landowners.By the 1840s, liberalism n Prussiawas by no meansrestricted o its westernprovinces, but had strongholdsin Berlin, Silesia, and East Prussia as well.It would be of interest to ascertain whether these liberals held a "Rhenish-Westphalian"or "south German"opinion of the relationshipbetween stateandsociety, or whethera thirdanddifferentpatternprevailed.An investigationof this question might help to elucidate furtherthe political role played bythe Prussianbureaucracy.IVThe general tenor of much recent research has been to break many of thelinks suggested by Koselleck: those between bureaucratic ntention or or-ganizationand bureaucraticaction, between such action and socioeconomicor political change, or between the development of the Prussian state andthe growth of a capitalist social and economic order. I make no pretensionsof being able to reforge these brokenlinks in a new alignment, but I wouldlike to conclude by discussing some avenuesof currentresearch which havethe potential for leading to a new understandingof the interactionbetweenstate and civil society in Prussia and Germany during the first half of thenineteenthcentury.One possibility involves a reorientationof historical periodization. Thefirsthalf of the nineteenthcenturyis often studiedas a precursor o the socialand economic forms of the second, with historians straining, for instance,to analyze every early form of factory industry. In doing so, they oftenneglect the continuities with the preceding fifty years: the breakdown ofprecapitalistormsof productionandtheirreplacementnotby factory ndustrybut by outworking, an increasingly proletarianizedartisanate,a commercialagriculture, ndagrowingrural ower class. Theseprocessesplayedthemselvesout against a very different political backgroundbetween 1800 and 1850,however,from thatof 1750-1800. In sucha context,thebureaucratic oliticalinitiatives of the first decades of the nineteenth century may be seen as aninterventionn anongoing processof socialchangeratherhanastheoriginationof a new socioeconomic order. Such a perspective, if not necessarily thisparticularperiodization, is a familiar one in English history, given its post-1688 political continuity, but it has been appliedto the studyof the FrenchRevolution as well, suggesting its applicationto the history of the Germanresponse to that event.29

29 Thispointof view, implicit n theAnnales choolcritique f the Marxistnter-pretationf theFrench evolutione.g., Frangois uret,"Lecatechismeevolution-naire,"AnnalesESC26 [1971]:255-89; or Emmanuel eRoy Ladurie,"Revoltes



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294 SperberMoving from temporalto spatial orientation, the importanceof region inthe study of early nineteenth-centuryGermanymight also be fruitfullycon-sidered. Given the still considerable limitations on transportation,commu-

nications, and the market, aswell as the verydifferent historicalexperiencesof theareasunited n alargeGerman tate like Prussia,a statewidebureaucraticinitiative could producewidely varyingresults.30Studiesof provincial socialstructure r of regional elites, a stapleof Frenchhistoriography, redesideratafor Prussia andelsewhere in Germany.31Relatedto regional particularity s the questionof ethnic andconfessionaldifferences. Koselleck explicitly excluded a studyof these differences fromhis book, quitejustifiably seeking to set limits on an alreadymassive work,butconflicts between ProtestantsandCatholics, GermansandPoles, orovertheemancipation of the Jews were notjust separatepolitical questions. Theyintersectedwith othersocial issues in waysrelevant o therelationshipbetweenstateadministration ndsociety.According o HartmutKaelble,half of Berlin'searly industrialentrepreneurswere Jews. Perhaps his group'srelativelydef-erent attitudetoward the state authoritiesdid not stem from economic back-wardness but from their cultural isolation and inferior legal position. Thedisproportionatelyrotestant lass of industrialistsn thepredominantlyRomanCatholic Rhineland andWestphaliamay also have had noneconomicreasonsfor cooperatingwith the bureaucracy.32Confessional and ethnic differencesalso seem to have played a role in the administrationof the agrarianreforms,et contestations uralesen Francede 1675 a 1788," ibid. 29 [1974]:6-22), is explicitlystatedbut not systematicallyexplored by PierreGoubert,L'Ancien Re'gime,2 vols.(Paris, 1969-73), 1:23-26; 2:242-52. A fascinating pioneeringventure n the explo-rationof breaksand continuitiesacross therevolutionarydivide is William H. Sewell,Jr., WorkandRevolution in France: TheLanguage of Labor rom the Old Regime to1848 (Cambridge,Mass., 1980). Fora similarperspective from a Marxistviewpoint,E. P. Thompson, "The Peculiarities of the English," in ThePoverty of Theory andOtherEssays (New York, 1978), pp. 245-301, esp. p. 257. Some of the essays inHelmutBerding and Hans-PeterUllmann, eds., Deutschland zwischen RevolutionundRestauration(Konigstein, 1981), suggest the possibilities of such an approach forGermanhistory;the remarkablemonographof Heinz Reif, WestfalischerAdel 1770-1860: VonHerrschaftsstand zu regionaler Elite (Gottingen, 1979), shows just howfruitful it can be.

30 Koselleckraises this question n his introduction p. 18) but a specificallyregionalperspective gets lost in the body of his work. His discussion of the strength of theliberal movementduringthe 1840s in the Rhineland, Silesia, andEast Prussia, in asectionentitled "revoltof theperipheral rovinces"(p. 366ff.), attributes his strength,somewhat mysteriously, to the success of the bureaucracy n creatingan integratedstate administration.31 To mention, virtuallyat random,a few French studies: MauriceAgulhon,La viesociale en Provence interieure au lendemainde la re'volution Paris, 1970); AlainCorbin, Archaisme et modernite'en Limousin au XIXe siecle 1845-1880, 2 vols.(Paris, 1975); or Andre Tudesq, Les grands notables en France 1840-1849, 2 vols.(Paris, 1964). Reif's work on theWestphaliannobility (n. 29 above) is a fine exampleof such a studyfor Germany;otherregionsandelites, the East Elbian andednobility,for instance, call out for emulation.32 Kaelble, p. 79; FriedrichZunkel, Der rheinisch-westfalischeUnternehmer 815-1879 (Cologne andOpladen, 1962), pp. 29-33.



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State and Civil Society in Prussia 295as bureaucraticpposition o noble landownersandconcern or peasant nterestswere apparentlymost pronouncedin dealings with the Catholic nobility ofWestphalia and the Polish nobility of Poznan.33

WhileHegel's notionof the bureaucracy s "universalestate" (allgemeinerStand) may have accuratelydescribedbureaucratic elf-perception, it is nota particularlyhelpful characterizationof this group's actualsocial position.Two contrasting alternativesto this notion have been applied to the study ofGermanstate officials. One viewpoint has been to describethe bureaucracyas a social class, an autonomouselement in the ruling elite whose actionsare directed toward increasing its own power, and to describe the claim toact in the general nterestas an ideologicalveil for groupself-aggrandizement.Conversely, the bureaucracycan be seen as an instrumentat the disposal ofruling groups (or one fought over by opposing elites) andthe administrativereforms of the early nineteenth century as leading not to the consolidationof a socially independent bureaucratic class but to the creation of a newinstrumentthrough which the absolute monarch andtraditional noble elitescould rulemoreeffectively. JiirgenKocka has compared hese two viewpointsin considering actions of the Prussian bureaucracywhich hampered ndus-trialization. Both East GermanMarxist-Leninistand liberal Americanhis-torians, he points out, have regardedsuphpolicies as proof that the stateapparatuswas controlledby antibourgeoisEast ElbianJunkers,buthe suggeststhey should be understoodas expressions of a bureaucratic trivingfor socialpower, a desire by the authorities to keep the pace and nature of industrialdevelopmentundercontrol. Although certainly quitedifferent n intent, thesetwo explanations are not necessarily mutuallyexclusive, since the politicaland social position of officialdom may have differed in different Germanstates with different social structuresor in the same state at differentpointsin its social and political development.34A study of the bureaucracy n action might provide a way of testing thesetheses, or at least of specifying them more concretely. Although there is alargeliteratureon the activitiesof the state administration,mostof it consists,in effect, of transcriptionsof interoffice memos preservedin the archives, asingularlyunimaginative recapitulationof official correspondence,with noattemptmade to pose any critical questions of the sources. Two welcomeexceptions to this trend are Alf Luidtke'sstudy of VormdrzPrussianpolicepolicy and WernerBlessing's account of state and church in nineteenth-centuryBavaria. While Blessing presentsBavarianofficialdomas an auton-omous group and an importantagent of social change, Liidtke's Prussianbureaucratsact to preserve noble privilege against bourgeois challenge and

33 Reif, pp. 383-91, 561n. 74;Koselleck,p. 543.34 Intermsof theworksconsideredn thisessay,Kocka "PreussischertaatundModernisierung"),ogel,andLeeargue or the firstapproach,whileWunder, eh-renbach"Verfassungs- nd sozialpolitischeReformen"),Obenaus"Die Imme-diatkommission"), all,Tilly(FinancialInstitutions),andEichholtzake hesecond.Gillis(n. 25 above)suggests hat he Prussian ureaucracy, relatively utonomousruling roupn the1840s, developed ythe1860s ntoapliantnstrumentn thehandsof themonarchyndreactionarygrariannterests.



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296 Sperberto protectall propertiedgroups againstthe unrulylower classes, the generalsocial intereststhe authorities maginethey areserving turningout on closerexamination to be those of the possessors of propertyand privilege. Bothauthorsdevelop explicit and detailedtheoretical frameworks Ludtke's de-rived from French structuralistMarxism, Blessing's from a variant of mod-ernizationtheory-which at times threaten o overwhelm the results of theirempirical research,but both works offer important nsights into bureaucraticaction andhave the virtue of discussing institutions, thechurch n Blessing'scase, the armyin Liudtke's,not often considered in this context.35An additionalvirtueof Ludtke'sworkis his explicit comparisonof Prussianpolicies with those of England and France, although regrettablynot withother Germanstates. The readermay well be weary by now of historians'constantcalls forcomparativestudies, but therelationshipbetween stateandsociety is an area particularlywell suited to this, and possibilities aboundfordiscovering unexpected parallelsorsignificant differences.36A less prac-ticed form of comparison, applying the method used by historians of onecountryto study a similar topic in another,is also worthyof consideration.French historiansin studyingstateofficialdom have emphasizedthe analysisof bureaucraticcareer patterns, the everyday life of the administration,andthe forms of interactionbetween state servants andsociety- all issues whichcouldprofitablybe considered orGermany; onversely,theGerman mphasison the bureaucracyas a separatesocial groupand a leadingelement of civilsociety could be usefully applied to the study of Frenchhistory.37In all these avenues of investigation the questions posed by ReinhartKo-selleck aboutthe relationship between state and civil society or the role ofthe bureaucracy n the creation of a capitalist socioeconomic and politicalorderremain dominant considerations. It is rare to find a book which cansynthesize the results of a long historiographical raditionyet also provideapointof departureornew work. Evenif at timesit provokesdifferentanswers,this ability to set the questions is a measure of the lasting importanceofPreussen zwischen Reform und Revolution.

35 Alf Ludtke,"Gemeinwohl,"olizeiund"Festungspraxis":taatlicheGewalt-samkeitundinnereVerwaltungn Preussen1815-1850(Gottingen,1982);WernerBlessing,StaatundKirche n derGesellschaft:nstitutionelle utoritat ndmentalerWandelnBayernwdhrend es19. JahrhundertsGottingen, 982).36 Richardson'sdescriptionof theRestorationubprefect-a provincialnoble,chosenwith the advice of large landowners,"as much local figuresas government fficials"-sounds suspiciously like the Prussian Landrat (Nicholas Richardson, The FrenchPrefectoral Corps, 1814-1830 [Cambridge, 1966], esp. pp. 92-93, 127-28).37Among examples of work on Frenchbureaucracy, ee Guy Thuillier,BureaucratieetBureaucratesnFranceauXIXe iecle (Geneva,1980);CliveChurch,RevolutionandRedTape:TheFrenchMinisterialureaucracy770-1850 Oxford, 981);BernardLe Clere and Vincent Wright, Les Pre'fetsdu Second Empire (Paris, 1973). Germanhistoriansseeking cross-nationalcomparisons have often turnedto England, but forthe first half of the nineteenth century, comparisons with France, a country whosesocioeconomic and political structures were then much closer to Germany's thanEngland's were, might prove morefruitful.

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