This book inquiries into the history of democracy in Germany with comparative perspective across the 19th and 20th centuries. Politics is highlighted as a social and symbolic practice; the body, language, symbolism and routine action are examined as factors that let politics emerge as a process of communication.
Over the last two decades German political history has changed fundamentally. It has reinvented itself as cultural history and sought to apply symbolic, linguistic, and praxeological approaches.
This book brings for the first time in English, Thomas Mergel’s inquiries into the history of democracy in Germany, with comparative perspective across the 19th and 20th centuries, while offering frequent sideways glances at its Western European and American neighbors. Politics is highlighted as a social and symbolic practice; the body, language, symbolism, and routine action are examined as factors that let politics emerge as a process of communication.
The contributions in this volume have been written over the past 25 years, with two previously unpublished chapters. They are intended to make the largely German discussion more visible on an international level and to show the application of theoretical concepts. By concentrating on parliamentary politics, parties, and elections, the book not only studies political practices and forms of communication but also deciphers political mentalities in order to historicize "democracy" as a political concept. Against the background of the German experience during the 20th century, the democratic culture of the Weimar Republic occupies a special place.
Introduction: Cultural History of Politics Reconsidered
Section I - Mass Politicisation and the Political Mass Market c. 18501914
Fraud, Rioting, Vote-Buying. European Election Cultures in Transition to the
Political Mass Market, 18601914
Counter-Image, Role Model, and Specter. American Parties in the Perception of
the German Political Public, 18901920
Section II - The Weimar Republic: Democracy in a Divided Society
The Weimar Reichstag as a Social Space
Highly Esteemed Mister Colleague. On the Symbolic Dimensions of Speech in
the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic
In Search of a Good Polity. Structures of Political Expectation in the Weimar
Republic
The Failure of German Tory Conservatism. The Conversion of the DNVP into a
Radical Right-Wing Party 19281932
Section III - Political Communication and Conflict after 1945
The Unknown and the Familiar Enemy. The Semantics of Anti-Communism in the
USA and Germany, 194575
Objectivity and Fairness. Negative Campaigning, Rule-Breaking, and Rule
Discourse in German Electioneering 1949-1990
Time of Strife. Democracy and Conflict in 1970s Germany
Thomas Mergel is Professor of History at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.
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