Saga - 1998, Síða 78

76
PÁLL BJÖRNSSON
Summary
The author examines the debate about the Sonderweg thesis, according to
which Germany's path to modernity is seen as a deviation from "normal"
development in Western Europe and North America. Opening with a dis-
cussion of the oldest idea of the Sonderweg, the author reminds us that
many German intellectuals in the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic
were convinced that German cultural and social institutions were super-
ior to western parliamentarianism and individual freedom. The Second
World War and the Holocaust eventually discredited this idea. Scholars
started constructing more critical concepts of a German Sonderweg by
claiming the German "catastrophe" could be traced to a long tradition of
authoritarianism and the lack of liberal-democratic traditions in
Germany.
The Fischer controversy of 1961 paved the way for a sociological inter-
pretation of the critical German Sonderweg. Influenced by sociohistorical
models of modernisation, the Bielefeld School became its most eminent
representative. Developing a highly theoretical framework, they empha-
sised a continuity in terms of social structures between 1848 and 1945.
They claimed that Germany had remained backward because the Btirger-
tum, or bourgeois class, had failed to modernise the political and social
spheres.
Since the 1980s, a number of scholars have criticised the Sonderweg thes-
is. For example, a group of British historians attacked it from a neo-Marx-
ist standpoint, claiming that Germany had become extremely modern as
capitalism revolutionised the mode of production and a network of
associations came to dominate social and cultural life. The Sonderweg thes-
is has also been criticised by nationalistic historians who claimed that the
Third Reich was "normal" in comparison with the dictatorships of Stalin
and Pol Pot. Their convictions initiated the Historikerstreit, or historians
controversy of 1986. Most recently, post-modernists have criticised the
spokesmen of the Sonderweg for applying an idealised criteria of a bour-
geois civil society on Germany.
The Sonderweg debate has not only reflected methodological diffei'
ences, but also scholars' efforts to construct a political identity f°r
Germans. The proponents of the oldest Sonderweg idea and the nationalisi
opponents of the Sonderweg thesis introduced anti-democratic and
nationalistic identity - whereas the advocates of the critical Sonderive$
thesis sought to provide Germans with liberal-democratic images-
Despite the fact that the events of 1989/90 have diminished scholars
interest in the pre-1945 history of Germany, the article concludes with the
prediction that the idea of a German Sonderweg will persist into the future-