World politics

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World politics particularly refers to German foreign and colonial policy in the age of imperialism . In a general sense, it can also include all political processes in international politics as a whole and the attempt to exert a decisive influence on all of these processes.

German world politics around 1900

In the age of imperialism, world politics was primarily understood to mean the German Reich's claim to be allowed to participate in all decisions of the great powers that concerned the acquisition of colonies . This claim was formulated programmatically on December 6, 1897 during a session of the Reichstag , when the new State Secretary for Outer Bernhard von Bülow declared: "We don't want to overshadow anyone, but we also demand our place in the sun ." World politics was seen by broad circles in Wilhelmine society as a continuation of the founding of an empire : after Otto von Bismarck's work of creating German unity and securing it through a more defensive foreign policy, the second step now seemed to be the establishment and expansion of a German colonial empire to be on the agenda. In 1895, the economist Max Weber stated at his inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg :

"We have to understand that the unification of Germany was a youthful coup that the nation committed in its old days and which, for the sake of cost, would have been better off if it was the conclusion and not the starting point of a German world power policy."

In contrast to the German colonial agitation of the 1880s, the demands for a German world politics were less focused on specific economic, social or missionary aspects, but rather on questions of national prestige and self-assertion in a social Darwinist understanding of competition between the great powers: Germany as a "laggard" had to now claim the share due to him.

The political expression of this world politics was not so much the acquisition of new overseas territories - in the years after 1896 the German Empire was only able to add Kiautschou and New Cameroon to its colonial empire in addition to a few South Sea islands . Rather, it manifested itself in a demanding and researchy appearance to the outside world, such as the Krüger telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1896, the two Moroccan crises in 1905 and 1911 and the naval battle with Great Britain . The German Reich thereby contributed significantly to its isolation from the circle of colonial powers. At the latest with the advent of the British dreadnoughts from 1906, which relegated the Imperial Navy to second place, as well as the Russian-British alliance treaty of 1907 and the completion of the Triple Entente , German world politics had failed.

Research has disputed why the German Reich pursued this world policy. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gregor Schöllgen see the cause in the pressure of public opinion , which increasingly influenced the foreign policy course of the Reich government. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, on the other hand, explains German world politics as social imperialism , as a "coolly calculated instrumentalization of expansion policy for domestic political purposes": External successes should have distracted from the internal contradictions of the Wilhelmine class society , brought the revolutionary workers closer to the state and thus avoided the necessary modernization . As the election success of the SPD in the Reichstag election in 1912 shows, this calculation also failed.

Other uses of the term

World politics as the inner connection of all political processes in the world only emerged in the course of modern times . It manifested itself in the two world wars and in particular in the formation of blocs in the Cold War from 1947.

World politics as an attempt to create a new world order was started by Great Britain with its empire , in particular by Woodrow Wilson in the First World War through his commitment to a world peace order that was only very imperfectly created in the League of Nations without the USA, after 1945 by the two Superpowers USA and Soviet Union operated by the formation of the United Nations and after 1990 by the USA when it decoupled from the UN.

See also

literature

  • Ernst-Otto Czempiel: World politics in upheaval. The international system after the end of the East-West conflict. 2nd, revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37827-7 .
  • Werner Link: The Reorganization of World Politics: Basic Problems of Global Politics on the Threshold of the 21st Century. CH Beck, Munich 2001.
  • Rudolf A Mark : In the shadow of the Great Game . German world politics and Russian imperialism in Central Asia 1871-1914 . Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77579-5 .
  • Volker Rittberger, Andreas Kruck, Anne Romund (ed.): Principles of world politics. Theory and empiricism of world governance. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-16352-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johannes Penzler (Ed.): Prince Bülow's speeches along with documentary contributions to his politics. , Vol. 1, Georg Reimer, Berlin 1907, pp. 6-8 ( in Wikisource ), quoted by Michael Fröhlich: Imperialism. German colonial and world politics 1880–1914 . dtv, Munich 1994, p. 73.
  2. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society, Vol. 3: From the “German double revolution” to the beginning of the First World War 1845 / 49–1914 . CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 1140.
  3. ^ Winfried Speitkamp : German Colonial History . Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 35 f.
  4. ↑ Winfried Speikamp: German colonial history . Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, p. 36 f.
  5. ↑ Michael Fröhlich: Imperialism. German colonial and world politics 1880–1914 . dtv, Munich 1994, p. 116 fuö.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang J. Mommsen : Driving forces and objectives of German imperialism before 1914 . In: Klaus Bohnen, Sven-Aage Jørgensen and Friedrich Schmöe (eds.): Culture and society in Germany from the Reformation to the present. A series of lectures. Fink, Copenhagen and Munich 1981, p. 118 foot; quoted by Gregor Schöllgen : The Age of Imperialism . Second edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 1991, p. 134.
  7. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: German history of society, Vol. 3: From the “German double revolution” to the beginning of the First World War 1845 / 49–1914 . CH Beck, Munich 1995, pp. 1138-1145, the quotation p. 1139.