Fisherman controversy

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The Fischer controversy is a controversy that lasted from 1959 to around 1985 - in the narrower sense from 1962 to 1970/71 - in West German and foreign historians about the political strategy of the German Empire before and during World War I , and the German responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914 and the problem of the long-term continuity of German hegemonic politics . It was created through research by the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer , especially through his 1961 book Griff nach der Weltmacht . The controversy was of enormous importance in terms of memory and history, and in its heyday was also intensively accompanied by journalists from outside the scientific community. On the side of Fischer's opponents, influential politicians repeatedly intervened, including Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard , Franz Josef Strauss and Bundestag President Eugen Gerstenmaier .

The controversial subject was already debated as a war guilt issue during the Weimar Republic under apologetic and propagandistic auspices, but initially resigned after 1945. Fischer's book sparked renewed debate. The controversy permanently changed the historical assessment of the causes of war from 1914 and the research focus and methods of the First World War. It is therefore considered to be the most important historical debate in the Federal Republic of Germany, alongside the West German " Historikerstreit " ( historians ' dispute) that flared up in 1986 .

Volker Ullrich wrote in 1999 in the time : "It [the book] abolished the national-conservative interpretation sovereignty, the German historians brought up to the international research and gave up her new issues, including after the continuity of elites between Empire and Third Reich '. ”In 2011, John CG Röhl wrote in Die Welt that Fischer's“ work, which was controversial 50 years ago ”, had“ proven to be astonishingly long-lived and fruitful ”.

background

Until 1960, the presentation of the academic history of the Federal Republic of the role of Wilhelmine foreign policy in the development of the First World War and its role in the course of the war was based on three axioms :

  • German responsibility for triggering the First World War in the summer of 1914 did not exist, no responsible politician or military man wanted or even consciously brought about this war, it was "tragedy" and "fate"; There is therefore no direct connection between the war and Wilhelmine "world politics", the war was subjectively started and (at least in the first years) honestly as a defensive war
  • During the war there was a fundamental and irreconcilable contrast between Pan-German expansionism around the III. Obersten Heeresleitung (OHL) and the civil Reichsleitung, which had been gradually disempowered by the military, existed; There can be no talk of a continuity or even homogeneity of the war target concepts
  • there was no continuity between the German war policy from 1914 to 1918 and the foreign policy line of the Nazi regime

As early as the 1950s, essential elements of these assumptions, which followed the extensive work of Hermann Oncken (1932), Erich Brandenburg (1924) and Alfred von Wegerer (1939), could only be achieved by consciously ignoring sources and suppressing foreign-language monographs support. Hans Herzfeld , for example, discovered the September program in the Reichsarchiv as early as 1942 , but kept it quiet. The account of Luigi Albertini , who had critically discussed German politics in the July crisis on the basis of a thorough study of the available printed sources and the memoir literature, and the study by the German-American historian Hans Wilhelm Gatzke , who in 1950 for the first time between " conservative " and " liberal imperialists ”and the differences of opinion between these currents were assessed as merely tactical, had neither been published nor received in the Federal Republic. The first Marxist works on this topic were basically not taken into account anyway. In the first phase of the controversy, this all-too-obvious connection between academic history and political and historical-pedagogical considerations of expediency proved to be a heavy burden on Fischer's critics and gave Fischer's theses - which their opponents often treated as a political problem rather than a historiographical problem - one above the mere one scientific discussion of scientific-political significance.

Fischer's main theses

Fischer's work was based on meticulous research and thorough evaluation of new sources, while maintaining the traditional methodology of analyzing government decisions in the leadership of the major powers involved. As a result, he came to pointed positions that differed significantly from the research consensus that had been valid in Germany up to that point and questioned it. This triggered a violent and persistent controversy that also received international attention.

German war targets

As early as 1957, Fischer had begun systematically to search through the files in the national archives for the war aims of the Central Powers . As one of the first German historians, he was able to evaluate the files of the Foreign Office and the Reich Chancellery, which had been kept under lock and key by the Allies, and, with the permission of the GDR government, was also able to view the Potsdam Central Archives. The first result of his research was his essay “German War Targets. Revolutionization and Separate Peace in the East 1914–1918 ”, which he published in 1959 in the historical journal (HZ). In it, he described the war aims of the Reich government under Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg as setting the purpose - hegemony in Europe and thus establishment as a world power - largely congruent with those of the annexationists and as a continuation of Wilhelmine world politics before the war. In addition, Bethmann Hollweg's war policy was supported, at least in the first years of the war, by an informal alliance that extended from the conservatives to the right wing of the SPD . This article was critically registered by many observers and discussed negatively by Hans Herzfeld, but was not yet seen as a declaration of war, as Fischer only seemed to have made an unorthodox but still debatable contribution to the processing of the discussion about the war aims. Gerhard Ritter , soon after Fischer's bitterest opponent, wrote in a private letter that the essay could turn into “a very interesting argument”.

In October 1961, the book Griff nach der Weltmacht followed. The war policy of imperial Germany 1914/18 . In it, Fischer emphasized the importance of Bethmann Hollweg's “ September program ” from 1914, which he came across in the Potsdam archive. Bethmann Hollweg expected a quick German victory and planned extensive annexations in France and the Benelux countries as well as colonial occupations in Central Africa. Fischer classified this document as follows:

“On the one hand, the program did not represent isolated demands by the Chancellor, but instead represented ideas from leading figures in business, politics and the military. On the other hand, [...] the guidelines laid down in the program were in principle the basis of the entire German war target policy until the end of the war, even if individual modifications arose from the overall situation. "

Fischer then interpreted these war aims as a logical consequence of the German imperialist “world politics” before 1914: According to this, the Kaiserreich strived for German hegemony in Europe even before the war . As a straggler of the European colonial powers, it tried to reach for "world power". As a political concept, this “grab for world power” also goes beyond the First World War. In the foreword, Fischer described his work as a “contribution to the problem of continuity in German history from the First to the Second World War”. This conceptual connection, which Fischer's research results implicitly suggested throughout, was felt by almost all established modern historians as an unheard of taboo break - shortly after the book was published , Theodor Schieder spoke to Johannes Ullrich of a "national catastrophe" - because Fischer is not just the usual ones Linguistic regulations of the debate about the First World War, but the historically politically even more important and carefully cultivated formula cast doubt that the Nazi regime and its foreign policy were, as it were, an unconditional break, an " industrial accident" essentially linked to the person of Hitler German history acted. Fischer was initially completely alone with this thesis in the Federal Republic. Ludwig Dehio , who had presented some comparatively critical studies of the hegemony and continuity problem since the late 1940s and who had initially expected Fischer to support him, immediately set himself apart from him and insisted on a "defensive core" of Bethmann Hollweg's war policy.

The July crisis

Not only with regard to imperialist foreign policy, but also with regard to its concrete behavior in the July crisis of 1914, Fischer made the Reich government largely responsible for the world war. He interpreted Bethmann Hollweg's unreserved backing for the Austro-Hungarian government on July 5, 1914 as a " blanket power of attorney " for their action against Serbia and, using documents and quotations, showed that the assassination attempt in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 was welcome for the German Reich leadership Had given rise to their far-reaching goals. Berlin practically urged Vienna to declare war quickly against Serbia and - contrary to official declarations - systematically prevented a peaceful settlement or at least containment of the conflict. Of all the major European powers, the empire was most likely in a position to achieve effective de-escalation.

Fischer later described the origin of his portrayal in grip on world power as follows:

“The brief sketch of the July crisis in this book was largely based on the description of the Italian Luigi Albertini, whose three-volume work was published in 1942/43 and has been translated into English in 1953, but not into German to this day. Above all, by emphasizing the events in Berlin, at the beginning of July at the so-called Hoyos mission, the responsibility of the German government at the outbreak of war was strongly underlined in the 'Reach for World Power', quite differently from the language regulation that has become common in 1951. "

In his detailed analysis of the decision-making processes in July / August 1914, Fischer refrained from referring to other previous German foreign policy, such as the conduct at the Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907): an agreement there might have prevented the war, but the German one Insistence on naval armor caused the conferences to fail. He concluded:

“Given the tense world situation in 1914, not least as a result of German world politics; - which had already triggered three dangerous crises in 1905/06, 1908/09 and 1911/12 - every limited (local) war in Europe in which a great power was directly involved had to inevitably bring the danger of a general war close. Since Germany wanted, wished for and covered the Austro-Serbian war and, trusting in German military superiority, deliberately let it come down to a conflict with Russia and France in 1914, the German Reich leadership bears a considerable part of the historical responsibility for it General war breaks out. This is not diminished by the fact that Germany tried at the last moment to stop the disaster: for the action on Vienna happened exclusively because of the threatened intervention of England, and even then it was only undertaken with half, belated and immediately revoked steps. "

This explicitly contradicted the prevailing opinion among West German historians until then that the Reich had initially been defensively oriented in July 1914 and tried to avoid war.

War decision from 1911

Under the impression of the professional criticism that had taken place in the meantime - in some cases also personal attacks - Fischer reiterated his two central theses of the long-term striving for hegemony and the conscious acceptance of war and intensified them. In the 800-page book War of Illusions. The German Politics from 1911 to 1914 (1969) he presented further archival finds that document the aggressive German foreign policy before 1914. With them, he justified the thesis that Wilhelm II and his military advisers had decided at the latest at a secret war council on December 8, 1912 , to consciously start a major war by the summer of 1914 in order to exploit their own military superiority in good time. The meantime should have been used to prepare the population for this "solution" through propaganda. It is likely that this was also intended to prevent the third Hague Peace Conference planned for 1915 from taking place, which was in the preparatory phase and at which binding international arbitration would have been established by majority decision and negotiated via an international executive.

From 1970 onwards, Fischer published only shorter essays in order to underpin his theses on the war course, megalomania and political failure of the Reich government in detail. He also took part in the discussion about the authenticity of the diaries that the private secretary Bethmann Hollweg Kurt Riezler had kept during the July crisis. Above all, however, he advocated the thesis of the “ German Sonderweg ” in the 20th century. Following Hans-Ulrich Wehler's theory of social-imperialism , Fischer increasingly emphasized domestic political motives: the government wanted to channel tensions with the war and integrate opposition forces. The essay July 1914 (1983) summarized his argument for the last time.

The controversy

Historical debate

Fischer's research was recognized by most of the reviewers of his first two publications. Hans Herzfeld's moderate response to Fischer's 1959 essay in the Historisches Zeitschrift (HZ) opened the Fischer controversy. Herzfeld initially focused on the Chancellor's stance: Bethmann Hollweg had by no means unreservedly supported the war aims of the annexationists, but tried to establish a certain consensus among the many uncoordinated decision-makers without fully sharing their position. Fischer's sources actually did not show a continuation of world politics by other means, but only a permanent crisis of the political system.

Fischer's interpretation of the July crisis moved into the center of the controversy. This was initially vehemently rejected by a majority in the Federal Republic. This also reflected a certain shock at the breaking of a taboo by a single historian who, with conventional sources, opposed the post-war consensus that all major European powers were more or less equally responsible for the development of the world war, but nobody wanted war. Abroad, on the other hand, Fischer's position was rather supported.

Gerhard Ritter , a representative of the national-conservative historiography of the interwar period and spokesman for the West German Association of Historians , made a name for himself as Fischer's sharpest critic . That is why Ritter, who was associated with the resistance against the Nazi dictatorship, was branded “ultra right” by the Fischer camp in a remarkable reversal of the fronts, according to Herfried Münkler . Fischer, on the other hand, “of all people, a former member of the SA and the NSDAP, became the spokesman for a left-liberal view”. In July / August 1914, as before 1933, Ritter continued to assess German politics as fundamentally defensive:

“In terms of foreign policy, it [the Reich Government] got caught up in a whole chain of dangerous 'crises' and an increasingly threatening isolation: in that 'encirclement' by entents and military alliances, which every political thinker since 1911 at the latest has felt as a severe oppression. Only a government of adventurers, in such a situation, could have thought of provoking a war to 'reach for world power' to achieve hegemony. "

Right-wing conservative authors such as Giselher Wirsing even accused Fischer of falsifying history . Erwin Hölzle defended the thesis of Russian war guilt against Fischer. In 1976 he denied a German main responsibility for the outbreak and course of the war and saw Great Britain and Russia as the main responsible:

“The origin of the war is essentially due to the hardening of friend and enemy in the European alliances and intensified by their involvement in world political contradictions and changes, as well as by the revolutionary drive of the nationality principle. The other and more serious cause in terms of power politics has turned out to be the contractual closure of the ring by the two real world powers England and Russia, which has become known through betrayal of Germany. "

Other important opponents of Fischer were Egmont Zechlin , Karl Dietrich Erdmann and Andreas Hillgruber . They modified their attitudes in part as the controversy progressed. At the 1964 Berlin Historians' Day, Fischer prevailed over his discussion partners for the first time in his basic thesis in a speech battle lasting several hours in front of many listeners. Hillgruber now also interpreted the behavior of the Reich government in July 1914 as a "conception of a calculated risk for the implementation of limited power-political changes taking advantage of international crisis situations". So, contrary to Fischer, he did not assume that the war aims documented in September 1914 had been pursued beforehand, but admitted the Reich Chancellor's willingness to take risks and thus shared responsibility for the outbreak of war:

“In Bethmann-Hollweg's conception of the calculated risk in the July crisis of 1914, the questionable is obvious. Even if the political leadership of the Reich in 1914 is unable to see any willingness to expand power extensively, [...] the joint responsibility of the German Reich leadership for the outbreak of the great war is clearly evident. "

Hillgruber went on from the assumption that the Reich leadership had not aimed for war directly, but instead sought a political - and only if necessary military - offensive out of the feeling that Germany had become untenable on the defensive. Hillgruber and others attempted, according to the Marxist-Leninist GDR historian Fritz Klein , to stabilize the "shaky front" of West German historical studies on a middle line. Fischer involuntarily worked towards these endeavors by continually radicalizing his statements. In this way he gave his opponents the opportunity to adopt parts of his original theses and to organize a “new consensus” against Fischer, which then prevailed until the debate died down after 1970.

Fischer's opponents also emphasized the political decisions and goals of the other great powers in the July crisis. For example, the mobilization of the Russian army was seen as just as important an escalating factor as the German “blanket power of attorney” for Austria-Hungary on July 5, 1914. Fischer's work has also been criticized for its methodology. Fischer had dealt intensively with a supposed German striving for world power, but without placing German politics in the overall context of the politics of the other major European powers. Without such an analysis, Fischer's far-reaching conclusions about the overall war guilt could not be drawn.

Despite a majority rejection, some historians agreed with Fischer in the further course of the controversy, according to his student Imanuel Geiss in the Federal Republic, in Great Britain John CG Röhl. In 2011, Röhl wrote in retrospect: "By no means an 'sole fault' of Germany, which Fischer never represented, but the 'considerable' responsibility of the Berlin Reich leadership for starting the war in the summer of 1914 was unmistakably evident."

Around 1964, i.e. a few years after the publication of Fischer's findings and in the course of the supplementary research by Imanuel Geiss, the part of the diary of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg's secretary , Kurt Riezler , was recorded between the war council of December 8, 1912 and the The July Crisis lay, destroyed by strangers. Fischer still has the work July 1914 for this episode 1983 : We did not slide into it. The state secret about the Riezler diaries was written.

Media debate

The appearance of Griff nach der Weltmacht (Reach for World Power) triggered a long series of reviews in the national daily newspapers. Most of them paid tribute to Fischer's meticulous source work, and many saw Fischer's reinterpretation of war guilt as proven. Particularly explosive was also the contextual classification of the continuity problem from the First to the Second World War, described by Fischer - even if only in a single sentence. The detailed investigation was thus moved into a larger historical perspective, aimed at the conditions under which the Third Reich came into being. This dimension of Fischer's work subsequently triggered an emotional public debate in which historians, journalists and politicians took part.

After a phase of reviews from 1961 to 1963, in which the authors recognized the explosiveness of Fischer's work for the question of continuity many times, the high phase did not follow until 1964. This year, both the eruption of the first (50 years) as well as the Second World War (25 years). This allowed the media to take up the debate more intensely. In addition, the political culture in the Federal Republic had changed since 1959. The coming to terms with the Nazi past was increasingly being discussed in the mass media. This created a positive frame of reception for Fischer's theses.

The public controversy was mainly carried out in the national daily newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Die Welt , Süddeutsche Zeitung , in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and in the news magazine Der Spiegel . Its editor, Rudolf Augstein , took an active part in the discussion and, with a preprint of the second edition of Griff nach der Weltmacht, left no doubt that he was on Fischer's side.

Politicians also got involved in the historical debate. Both Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and Bundestag President Eugen Gerstenmaier took a firm stance against Fischer in speeches on the anniversaries. A lecture tour planned by Fischer through the USA in 1964 at the invitation of the Goethe Institute was prevented by the cancellation of the initially approved funding. In the following storm of public protests, including from American historians, it turned out that Gerhard Ritter had achieved the rejection with petitions to the then Federal Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder (CDU) .

Konrad Jarausch explained the excitement at that time from the special contemporary historical situation:

“Fischer's theses were a shock. Adolf Eichmann was on trial in Jerusalem, and the Auschwitz trials began in Frankfurt . All Germans were shown the terrible things that had happened in the Third Reich. And now they should also be to blame for the First World War. [...] The confrontation was intensified by the Cold War . The harsh judgments with which East German scholars condemned the politics of the empire also made the question of war guilt taboo among German historians. "

Consequences in History

Since around 1970, Fischer's work has increasingly stimulated research on socio-economic causes of war, such as the orientation towards a war economy , the imperial monarchy's domestic political reform inability, domestic political distribution struggles. Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, archives from the former GDR and Soviet Union have also been scientifically evaluated. Initiated by Fischer's theses, researchers such as Horst Lademacher, Lilli Lewerenz, Winfried Baumgart , Peter Borowsky, Horst Günther Linke also increasingly devoted themselves to German politics in the states occupied by the German Empire.

Wolfgang J. Mommsen identified concrete plans for the forced evacuation or resettlement of Poles and Jews. This is considered an indication of the implementation of expansive war aims aimed at annexations and the establishment of satellite states . The Russian Empire pursued similar goals for Poland and parts of Prussia.

In 1981, Mommsen made the nationalism of important interest groups responsible for government action: the "responsible statesmen" had too little support in the Reichstag for a policy of understanding because they had lost control of the officers' corps , court society and the Prussian bureaucracy. They therefore did not dare to “effectively counter the rising flood of nationalist expectations.” Therefore, in July 1914 the German government decided “actually against its own convictions for a political course”, “which, according to Bethmann-Hollweg's admission, a leap into the dark 'and made the outbreak of the First World War inevitable. ”Elsewhere he emphasized:

“With some willingness to conciliate, the other powers would still have been able to avert the First World War. In fact, diplomatic differences of a relatively small magnitude, which under other circumstances could easily have been settled without a major war, set a world ablaze [...]. "

On the other hand, Wolfgang Steglich has used foreign archive material to emphasize the German and Austrian efforts to achieve a mutual or separate peace since 1915.

Thomas Nipperdey contradicted socio-historical explanations in 1991 with his view that the “war, the German readiness for war and the crisis policy” were not a consequence of the German social system. He slightly modified David Lloyd George's thesis of "slipping into" and referred to disastrous military plans and war decisions by the executive, including in parliamentary states:

“Everyone believed they were on the defensive and everyone was ready for war. All overestimated their own existential threat, all underestimated the coming war. […] The war came because everyone or some desperate for peace, not because all or some were determined to go to war under all circumstances. And if you consider the leeway, the freedom of decision of those involved, everyone has a share in the escalation of the crisis, albeit differently in the failure of the crisis management, in the end of peace. That is why we speak of the outbreak, not of the unleashing of the First World War. "

With the shift in the focus of research, the Fischer controversy also gained importance as a discussion about the theoretical foundations of German historical studies. While traditional political history emphasized the importance of the actions and decisions of “great men”, a new generation of historians emphasized the relevance of social structures for historiography. The previously prevailing apologetic view, which was based on the decisions of individual leaders, took a back seat to a sober event analysis. In this way, Fischer's questions were taken up and expanded with regard to the social history of the German Empire, the social upheavals in the course of the war and the continuity of the leadership elites and war aims in both world wars. This contributed to the fact that non-German historians also emphasized the individual responsibility of their states for the First World War in a more differentiated manner.

Balance sheet

The contemporary historian Klaus Große Kracht took stock:

“Despite the defensive stance of almost all leading historians in the Federal Republic of Germany, and even the involvement of political authorities, Fischer's theses, out of a grip on world power , prevailed over the course of the 1960s, especially among the younger generation, who themselves had no experience of the First World War , increasingly through. The central importance of the Fischer controversy, which can rightly be regarded as a 'key debate' in West German contemporary history research, does not lie in the renewal of the 'war guilt question', but in the fact that it put the question of continuity back on the agenda and thus the 'Contemporary history' has led back into the history of the German Empire beyond 1917. Younger historians such as Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Hans-Ulrich Wehler took up this impulse at the end of the sixties, who followed Fischer's narrow political-historical approach and the like. a. using Eckhart Kehr's early work to add socio-historical approaches and thus reopened the discussion about the German 'Sonderweg' from the German Empire to the 'Third Reich'. "

Looking back on major historical debates, Konrad Jarausch described the controversy as a “proxy debate ” for the connections with the Second World War, which have always been considered. It was about "the continuity of the historical self-image and the legitimacy of national politics in Germany derived from it" (p. 34). The merit of this "key debate" for a critical historical science and a critical historical awareness in the Federal Republic consisted "less in the exposure of the German war guilt than in the universalization of national self-criticism as a central task of contemporary history in general" (p. 36).

In the wake of the Fischer controversy, Germany's decisive contribution to the outbreak of war in 1914 was largely recognized historically, but explained in a more differentiated manner than in the case of Fischer. Jürgen Kocka summed up the research history in a lecture on the presentation of the First World War encyclopedia on November 27, 2003 in Stuttgart as follows:

“Research has modified, relativized, supplemented, but also confirmed Fischer's theses. Some of it is now part of the undisputed knowledge of textbooks. Germany's decisive contribution to the outbreak of war is widely recognized today, but it is explained more comprehensively and distantly than in Fischer, namely on the one hand from Germany's latecomer status as an imperialist power and from the mechanisms of international competition of that time, on the other hand and above all from the economic, social, constitutional and mental crises of the Wilhelmine Empire, not only from its economic interests. Germany’s European environment is much better illuminated today than it was in 1961. This has, to a certain extent, embedded Fischer’s thesis. Incidentally, historians today rarely debate war guilt and war aims. The Fischer controversy is part of the story. […] The question of guilt for the war of 1914 hardly evokes passionate answers. [...] The spell that has held the memory of the Great War for decades is broken. The Second World War and its processing made a major contribution to this. "

Heinrich August Winkler once again agreed with Fischer's main thesis in view of the current state of research:

“The aim with which the German elites entered the First World War was hegemony in Europe and the rise to world power. In the end there was a peace treaty, which the Germans regarded as blatant injustice, although it allowed the Reich to exist and gave it the opportunity to become a great power again. A self-critical examination of the German war guilt did not take place, although an internal collection of files was available as early as April 1919, which left no doubt that the Reich leadership had done everything in July 1914 to exacerbate the international crisis. In defense of the Allied thesis that Germany and its allies were solely responsible for the outbreak of war, a war innocence legend arose which caused just as much harm as its twin sister did the stab in the back . "

From his point of view, Jürgen Angelow summarized the state of research in 2010 as follows:

“In dealing with Fritz Fischer's theses, the view that prevailed in German historiography that the actions of the Reich leadership during the July crisis in 1914 resulted from a defensive position in foreign policy. The improvement in one's own position found to be necessary should be implemented with the help of a 'policy of limited offensive', while accepting a 'calculated risk'. The risk of their failure lay in being forced to wage a major war whose chances of victory were judged more and more skeptically by the relevant military from year to year. […] In fact, the terms “limited offensive” and “calculated risk” do not fully express the irresponsible and cryptic of the German position. In contrast, the term ' brinkmanship ' used by younger historians describes a daring policy of 'uncalculated risk', of walking on the edge of the abyss. "

The Australian historian Christopher Clark focused his study, first published in 2012, on the actions of the Entente and Serbia. In summary, he comes to the following conclusion from this point of view:

“The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie thriller at the end of which we catch the culprit in the conservatory bent over a corpse in the act. In this story there is no weapon used as irrefutable evidence, or more precisely: it is in the hands of every single major actor. From that perspective, the outbreak of war was a tragedy, not a crime. If you acknowledge this, it does not mean that we should downplay the bellicose and imperialist paranoia of Austrian and German politicians, which rightly drew the attention of Fritz Fischer and his historical school. But the Germans weren't the only imperialists, let alone the only ones suffering from paranoia. The crisis that led to war in 1914 was the fruit of a common political culture: But it was also multipolar and truly interactive - that is precisely what makes it the most complex event of modernity, and that is precisely why the discussion is about the origin of the World War I continued, even a century after Gavrilo Princip's fatal shots on Franz-Joseph-Strasse. "

In his book, Clark questions the thesis of a special war guilt of the German Empire and traces the mechanisms that led to the beginning of the war. The Berlin War Council of December 8, 1912 does not play a prominent role in its interpretation . In this respect, Clark ties in with the positions of Egmont Zechlin and Gerhard Ritter and their comrades-in-arms in the 1960s.

Gregor Schöllgen and Friedrich Kießling state in the result that

"F. Fischer's research, which grew out of intensive preoccupation with the sources, is now an integral part of any analysis of the foreign policy of imperial Germany, regardless of whether its author supports the theses of the Hamburg historian or not."

literature

Fritz Fischer:

  • Reach for world power. The war policy of imperial Germany 1914/18 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2013 (reprint of the 1967 special edition, first published in 1961, ibid; extended edition 1964), ISBN 978-3-7700-0902-2 .
  • World power or decline. Germany in the First World War . European Publishing House, Frankfurt a. M. 1968 (first 1965).
  • War of illusions. German politics from 1911 to 1914 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1998 (first 1969), ISBN 3-7700-0913-4 .
  • The First World War and the German view of history . Beck, Munich 1998 (first 1977), ISBN 3-7700-0478-7 .
  • Alliance of the elites. On the continuity of power structures in Germany, 1871–1945 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2000 (first 1979), ISBN 3-7700-0911-8 .
  • Hitler was not an industrial accident. Essays . Droste, Düsseldorf 1998 (first 1992), ISBN 3-406-34051-2 .
  • July 1914: We didn't slip into it . Rowohlt, 1983, ISBN 3-499-15126-X .
  • Twenty-Five Years Later. Looking back at the "Fischer Controversy" and its consequences . In: Central European History . 21, 1988, pp. 207-223.

Reactions

  • Egmont Zechlin: War and War Risk. On German politics in the First World War. Essays . ISBN 3-7700-0534-1 .
  • Karl D. Erdmann, Egmont Zechlin u. a .: War and Peace. Politics and History - Europe 1914 . Schmidt & Klaunig, 1985, ISBN 3-88312-021-9 .
  • Karl Dietrich Erdmann (Ed.): Kurt Riezler: Diaries, Articles, Documents . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-35817-2 .
  • Andreas Hillgruber: Germany's role in the prehistory of the two world wars . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1967.
  • Ernst Graf Lynar (Ed.): German War Aims 1914–1918 . Frankfurt a. M. 1964 (anthology of important contributions by historians and journalists).
  • Imanuel Geiss , Bernd Jürgen Wendt (Hrsg.): Germany in the world politics of the 19th and 20th centuries: Fritz Fischer for his 65th birthday . Bertelsmann University Press, Düsseldorf 1973.

On the controversy

  • Volker Berghahn : The Fischer Controversy - 15 Years Later . In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft , Issue 3/1980, pp. 403–419.
  • Imanuel Geiss: The Fischer Controversy. A critical contribution to the relationship between historiography and politics in the Federal Republic . In: Imanuel Geiss: Studies on history and historical science . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1972, pp. 108-198.
  • Klaus Große Kracht: The Fischer Controversy. From the technical debate to the public dispute . In the quarreling guild. Historical controversies in Germany after 1945 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-36280-3
  • Klaus Große Kracht: "There is a mine in the good conscience of Germans". Fritz Fischer and the Continuities of German History . In: Jürgen Danyel, Jan-Holger Kirsch u. Martin Sabrow (ed.): 50 classics of contemporary history . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, pp. 66–70 ( republication, version: 1.0 in Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte , May 30, 2011).
  • Wolfgang Jäger: Historical research and political culture in Germany. The 1914–1980 debate about the outbreak of the First World War . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1984, ISBN 3-525-35720-6 .
  • Konrad Jarausch : Breaking national taboos. Science, the public and politics in the Fischer controversy . In: Martin Sabrow, Ralph Jessen, Klaus Große Kracht (eds.): Contemporary history as a history of controversy. Great controversy since 1945 . Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49473-0 , pp. 20-40.
  • John Anthony Moses: The Politics of Illusion. The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography . London 1975 (Reprint 1985), ISBN 0-7022-1040-4 .
  • Gregor Schöllgen : reaching for world power? 25 years of the Fischer controversy. In: Historisches Jahrbuch 106, 1986, pp. 386-406.
  • Matthew Stibbe: The Fischer Controversy over German War Aims in the First World War and its Reception by East German Historians, 1961–1989 . In: The Historical Journal 46/2003, pp. 649-668.

For historiography

  • Helmut Böhme: "Primacy" and "Paradigm". On the development of a West German contemporary history using the example of the First World War . In: Hartmut Lehmann (Ed.): Historikerkontroversen . Wallstein, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-413-7 , pp. 89-139.
  • Christopher Clark : The Sleepwalkers. How Europe went to War in 1914 . Allen Lane, London (inter alia) 2012, ISBN 978-0-7139-9942-6 (German: Die Schlafwandler. How Europe moved into World War I. Translated from English by Norbert Juraschitz. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978 -3-421-04359-7 ).
  • Gerhard Hirschfeld : The First World War in German and International Historiography . In: From Politics and Contemporary History B29-30 / 2004, pp. 3–12 ( PDF ).
  • Gregor Schöllgen (Ed.): Escape to War? The foreign policy of imperial Germany . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1991 (anthology with controversial contributions).

Web links

Wiktionary: Fischer controversy  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Volker Ullrich: Reach for the truth. On the death of the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer . In: Zeit-Online from December 9, 1999.
  2. ^ A b John CG Röhl: Germany's “considerable responsibility” for 1914 , Die Welt, October 21, 2011. Retrieved on July 6, 2014.
  3. ↑ See Oncken, Hermann, Das Deutsche Reich and the prehistory of the world war, 2 volumes, Leipzig 1932.
  4. ↑ See Brandenburg, Erich, Von Bismarck zum Weltkriege, Berlin 1924.
  5. ^ Wegerer, Alfred von, The outbreak of the world war 1914, 2 volumes, Hamburg 1939.
  6. ↑ See Gutsche, Willibald (et al.), Germany in the First World War. Volume January 2, 1915 to October 1917, Berlin 1968, p. 32.
  7. ↑ See Albertini, Luigi, Le origini della guerra del 1914, 3 volumes, Milan 1942–1943.
  8. ^ See Gatzke, Hans Wilhelm, Germanys Drive to the West. A Study of Germanys Western War Aims during the First World War, Baltimore 1950.
  9. ↑ Exemplary Jerussalimski, AS, The foreign policy and diplomacy of German imperialism at the end of the 19th century , Berlin 1954.
  10. ↑ Ewald Frie: The German Empire . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1st edition 2004, ISBN 3-534-14725-1 , pp. 86-87.
  11. ^ Gerhard Ritter to Fritz Fischer, September 19, 1960, quoted from Cornelißen, Christoph , Gerhard Ritter. History and Politics in the 20th Century , Düsseldorf 2001, p. 599.
  12. ^ Fritz Fischer, Griff, special edition 1967, p. 95.
  13. ↑ Fischer, Fritz, Reach for World Power. The war target policy of Imperial Germany 1914/18, 3rd, improved edition Düsseldorf 1964, p. 12.
  14. ^ Theodor Schieder to Johannes Ullrich, December 6, 1961, quoted from Cornelißen, Gerhard Ritter, p. 601.
  15. ↑ Quoted from Große Kracht, Klaus, Die Zankende Zunft. Historical controversies in Germany after 1945, Göttingen 2005, p. 52.
  16. ^ Fritz Fischer: War of Illusions: German Politics from 1911 to 1914 . Düsseldorf 1970, 2nd edition, p. 672.
  17. ^ Luigi Albertini: Le origin della guerra del 1914 . 3 vols. Milan 1942/43; engl. Ed .: The Origin of the War of 1914 . 3 vols. London (inter alia) 1952/57.
  18. ↑ Note: In 1951 a Franco-German historians' conference took place, which came to the conclusion that in 1914 no people or government could be ascribed the 'conscious will' to go to war; see. Fritz Fischer: War of Illusions: The German Politics from 1911 to 1914 . Düsseldorf 1970, 2nd edition, p. 664.
  19. ^ Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht , Düsseldorf 1961, expanded 1964, p. 97.
  20. ^ Fritz Fischer: German War Aims, Revolutionization and Separate Peace in the East 1914–1918 . In: HZ 188, 1959, pp. 249-310 ( doi: 10.1524 / hzhz.1959.188.jg.249 ).
  21. ↑ Herfried Münkler in an interview with Joachim Käppner and Christian Mayer, Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 4, 2014, weekend supplement, p. 10.
  22. ^ Gerhard Ritter: Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk. The tragedy of statecraft , Volume 3, Munich, 1964, p. 15.
  23. ↑ Giselher Wirsing: … also to blame for the First World War? In: Christ und Welt , May 8, 1964.
  24. ↑ Erwin Hölzle: Reach for world power? In: HPB 1962, quoted from Günther Schödl on fkoester.de (Freimut Köster, teaching material) .
  25. ↑ Erwin Hölzle: The self-deprecation of Europe, Volume 2 , Musterschmitt, Göttingen 1976, ISBN 3-7881-1694-3 , p. 11.
  26. ^ For example, Egmont Zechlin published his essay Germany between Cabinet War and Economic War in response to Fritz Fischer ( Weltpolitik, Weltmachtstreben und deutsche Kriegszielen . In: HZ 199, 1964, pp. 265–346) . Politics and Warfare in the First Months of the World War 1914 . In: HZ 199, 1964, pp. 347-458 ( doi: 10.1524 / hzhz.1964.199.jg.347 ).
  27. ^ Andreas Hillgruber: German Great Power and World Policy in the 19th and 20th Centuries , Düsseldorf 1977, p. 92.
  28. ↑ Andreas Hillgruber: Germany's role in the prehistory of the two world wars . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 3rd edition, 1986, ISBN 3-525-33440-0 , pp. 56-57.
  29. ^ Fritz Klein: Newer publications in the FRG on the history and prehistory of the First World War , in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , Vol. 20 (1972), pp. 203-216, here p. 203.
  30. ^ Karl Dietrich Erdmann (Ed.): Kurt Riezler - Diaries, Articles, Documents. 1972; Editor's note p. 11 (in: A. Gasser: Preussischer Militärgeist und Kriegsentfesselung 1914 , 1985)
  31. ↑ Paul Sethe : When Germany grabbed world power . In: Die Zeit , No. 47, November 17, 1961.
  32. ^ First World War: William the Conqueror . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1961, pp. 54-58 ( online ).
  33. ↑ War Guilt : Rätsel am 9. 9. In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1963, pp. 40-47 ( online ).
  34. ^ Fritz Fischer: Now or Never - The July Crisis 1914 . In: Der Spiegel , 1964 (Part 1: The German blank check , No. 21; Part 2: The no to English mediation , No. 22; Part 3: The war guilt question , No. 23)
  35. ↑ "A book like an explosive device" - the historian Konrad H. Jarausch on the dispute over Fritz Fischer's research in conversation with Karen Andresen (Der Spiegel). In: Stephan Burgdorff and Klaus Wiegrefe (eds.): The 1st World War. The primal catastrophe of the 20th century . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-421-05778-8 , p. 256 and 259.
  36. ↑ Wolfgang J. Mommsen: The First World War. Beginning of the end of the bourgeois age . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-15773-0 , p. 118.
  37. ↑ Bruno Thoss: The First World War as an event and experience. Paradigm shift in West German World War II research since the Fischer controversy . In: Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): The First World War. Effect, perception, analysis . Seehamer, Weyarn 1997, ISBN 3-932131-37-1 , pp. 1012-1044, here pp. 1017 ff.
  38. ^ Wolfgang J. Mommsen: The authoritarian nation state . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 211.
  39. ↑ Wolfgang J. Mommsen : The Age of Imperialism (= Fischer World History . Volume 28). Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1969, pp. 284–287.
  40. ↑ Bruno Thoss: The First World War as an event and experience. Paradigm shift in West German World War II research since the Fischer controversy . In: Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): The First World War. Effect, perception, analysis . Seehamer, Weyarn 1997, ISBN 3-932131-37-1 , pp. 1012-1044, here p. 1021. Cf. Wolfgang Steglich: The Peace Policy of the Central Powers 1917/18 . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1964, passim .
  41. ↑ Thomas Nipperdey: German History 1866-1918 . Volume II, Beck, Munich 1992, pp. 696-697.
  42. ↑ Klaus Große Kracht: War guilt question and contemporary historical research in Germany. Historiographical aftermath of the First World War (also as PDF, there pp. 17–18).
  43. ↑ Sabine Moller: Review of contemporary history as a history of controversy (Eds .: Martin Sabrow, Ralph Jessen, Klaus Große Kracht; CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49473-0 ) on HSozKult, March 20, 2004.
  44. ^ Gerhard Hirschfeld: The First World War in German and International Historiography . In: From Politics and Contemporary History B29-30 / 2004, pp. 3–12 (PDF; 457 kB).
  45. ↑ Jürgen Kocka: Distance and insight. World War Research in Transition ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . P. 8 and 11 (PDF). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / portal.akmilitaergeschichte.de
  46. ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Germany, a question of the century . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 2007, p. 52–59 ( online - February 17, 2007 , here p. 56.).
  47. ↑ Jürgen Angelow: The way to the great catastrophe. The disintegration of old Europe 1900–1914 . be.bra, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89809-402-3 , pp. 26-27.
  48. ↑ Christopher Clark: The Sleepwalkers. As Europe moved into the First World War . Translated from the English by Norbert Juraschitz. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-421-04359-7 , pp. 716–717.
  49. ^ Andreas Kilb : The self-destruction of Europe . Book review, faz.net, September 9, 2013, accessed on September 9, 2013. Berthold Seewald: “Obsessed with German war guilt” . Article from October 25, 2013 in the welt.de portal , accessed on October 26, 2013.
  50. ↑ See e.g. B. Volker Ullrich: The nervous great power. Rise and fall of the German Empire 1871–1918 . 2nd Edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-596-17240-5 , p. 234.
    Gregor Schöllgen, Friedrich Kiessling: The age of imperialism . 5th edition. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58868-2 , p. 192 ff.
    Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich u. Irina Renz in connection with Markus Pöhlmann (ed.): Encyclopedia First World War . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76578-9 , pp. 309-310.
    Volker Ullrich: Reach for the truth. On the death of the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer . In: Zeit-Online from December 9, 1999.
  51. ^ Gregor Schöllgen, Friedrich Kiessling: The Age of Imperialism . 5th edition. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58868-2 , p. 193.