CHAPTER 2
Partisanship rising
Beginnings
Liberalism in Sweden and Prussia both originated in the same ideas that toppled l’ancien regime in France. It was fuelled by the same kind of challenges that were raised against monarchies all over Europe during the subsequent wars. The effects did, however, differ greatly if we compare the countries. In the case of Sweden the result was not only lost territory and border adjustments. Other outcomes included the introduction of a constitutional monarchy–albeit on the basis of the traditional, corporate bodies of the Estates–and a mode of liberalism that, although diffuse, started to play a role in political life.1 In a similar manner the reformed Prussian state machinery of Frederick William III, which emerged after the defeats at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, helped to trigger the ‘Vormärz’ and radical liberalism as a political force. At the same time, though, absolutism prevailed and the corporate institutions of pre-revolutionary Prussia retained a stronger position compared to Sweden. Despite promises made, Prussia remained without either constitution or parliament (except provincial ‘Landtage’). Differences such as these proved decisive to the patterning of liberalism in both our two regions.
In Sweden, radicalism framed the introduction of constitutional monarchy in 1809, but it was not until the 1820s that the concept of ‘liberalism’ became more widely used in public debate. If not the sweet smell of far-reaching reform (because there was none to be had at this stage), a certain amount of optimism nevertheless scented the air, somehow signalling that opportunities were at hand. This change of mood was present in Värmland, too. Henrik Lilljebjörn, former captain of the light infantry, reminisced about his native region some fifty-odd years later. He remembered how ‘the freer form of rule made society brighten up in matters great and small –What was good by tradition had not yet faded, whereas change and novelties sprouted vigorously’ (Lilljebjörn 1912 [1867–1874]: 3–4).2 The catalyst of political modernization in Northern Europe was the upheavals brought about by the Napoleonic Wars. Following the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, Tsar Alexander had invaded Finland in February the following year. Finland, which represented more than a third of the pre-war territory of the Swedish state, was permanently lost when the peace treaty with Russia was finally negotiated in September 1809. At that stage King Gustav IV Adolf, by many in governing circles considered the principal architect of the disaster, had already been forced to abdicate in March 1809. He was succeeded by his uncle in June, at the same time as a new constitution was adopted, one main feature of which was the division of legislative power between the Estates and the monarch.
The loss of Finland did not, however, mean that the country succumbed to national paralysis. Traumatic as the defeat was, it also resulted in a sharpening of focus in domestic debates on social, economic, and political reform. The 1809 peace treaty was a final conformation of the fact that Sweden was no longer a great power, but it also coincided with a long period of dynamic changes. Since the mid-eighteenth century the country had experienced a rapid growth of population and development of the agricultural sector, but also increasing social stratification among the rural population (Gadd 2000). In Värmland the first decades of the nineteenth century were also the heyday of the regional iron industry. As modern nationalism simultaneously began to emerge, a concern for the ‘national interest’ was regularly used as a fitting motive by the many reform societies and civic associations that now formed. These societies played a part in replacing, at least to some extent, old and crumbling corporatist modes of social and political association (cf. Jansson 1985). A new public sphere began to emerge, and with it debates on citizenship gained momentum; in effect, some of these organizations performed functions of interest aggregation and issue structuring, but before the advent of political parties proper.
A different logic applies to the case of Swedish–Norwegian relations. Norway, following negotiations with Russia and Great Britain, had been ceded by Denmark, and forced into union with Sweden in the 1814 peace treaty of Kiel. Decades later, when nationalistic sentiments in Norway surged, and paved the way for the dissolution of the union (1905), the country served as a model for the Swedish left with respect to parliamentarism, the breakthrough of which occurred much earlier there, in the mid-1880s, but thirty years later in Sweden (Stråth 2005).3
In 1820, however, all this lay in the future. Once constitutionalism had prevailed, radicalism accepted the monarchy, but in combination with a strongly anti-bureaucratic element. Also, liberalism could still imply almost any form of political radicalism. As Kahan (1992: 145–49, quote at 146) has stressed, it would certainly be simplistic to depict nineteenth-century liberalism simply as ‘the representative political movement of the ascendant middle classes’. For instance, both Värmland and Schleswig-Holstein illustrate that it had far greater reach than that. Yet, in terms of ideology the watershed in Sweden was without doubt the formation of a liberal middle-class movement in the 1830s. It was supported by urban intellectuals and merchants, but also by industrialists from the Swedish mining districts (‘Bergslagen’), which included the eastern parts of Värmland.
Newspapers such as Aftonbladet (1830), but also Göteborgs Handelsoch Sjöfartstidning (1832), played important roles in advancing ideas of extended political rights, parliamentarism, freedom of the press, and deregulation of the economy. Filtered through and, occasionally, put into practice on a small scale in various civic associations and reform societies, such commonly dispersed ideas were slowly moulded into liberal ideology. Importantly, the struggle for political rights, in combination with anti-bureaucratic motives, also opened up the way for cooperation with the peasantry, the fourth Estate, in the early 1840s; indeed, as early as 1834, Per Ericsson, a farmer from Nysäter in Värmland, had presented a motion in parliament (Riksdag) for the introduction of a single-chamber system, precisely on the grounds that the interests of the traditional Estates and the bureaucracy hampered reform (Christensen 1997: 148; for Ericsson, see also Olausson 2007). As Christensen (1997) stresses, though, the peasants were at this stage driven less by middle-class individualism, and more by arguments based on what they considered to be their ancient liberties, and by concern for their large share of tax contributions to the state. Differences such as these meant that the liberal–agrarian alignment rested on fragile ground. It did not survive the negotiations at the 1844–45 Riksdag.
At the heart of the problem were also divided views on the issue of political reform among the liberals themselves. The gradual deconstruction of corporatism opened up society for the modern individual as a political agent. Importantly, though, modern individualism had also to be qualified for the tasks and responsibilities involved with political freedom. In addition to this philosophical dimension, there were, as among the peasantry, numerous economic issues and other interests to be considered. It is possible to distinguish between radical, or left-liberal, and moderate lines of argument in the debates, although notions such as these are by no means mutually exclusive, nor do they signal an absolute difference in relation to conservative opinion. (For example, moderate and more restrictive proposals of political reform sometimes ran close to conservative views on the matter in the 1840s. At the same time not all conservatives were hostile to economic reform and, hence, found themselves closer to a liberal position in that respect. (Christensen 1997: 13–15)). In principle, however, ‘economic individualism’ meant putting self-interest, and the freedom for economic enterprise, in the forefront. At the same time the linchpin of ‘political individualism’, as in connection to issues of constitutional reform and civil liberties, was that the individual agent, proper grooming provided, was, indeed, capable of making rational decisions extending beyond the limits of mere self-interest (Andrén 2005: 25–31).
In the end, therefore, the problem reduced to the matter of precisely how inclusive a future reform of political representation would have to be. Where, indeed, was the line to be drawn between citizens and the rest of society? That the new middle classes were somehow the vanguard of reform was beyond dispute–but would extensive rules of suffrage make them or break them as the leaders of modernization (Christensen 1997: 8–9)? The peasantry and the growing agrarian proletariat represented a troublesome group from a perspective of social representation, but it was the same case with the slowly emerging working classes. Since differences in opinion on these matters involved diverging conceptions of citizenship, they also, as I will demonstrate later, implied different conceptions in regard to the role of voluntary association and collective action in political modernization.
The context of Prussian liberalism looked entirely different. From the moment the word ‘liberalism’ became firmly rooted in the political vocabulary (at the same time as in Sweden, in the 1820s), issues of constitutional reform were enmeshed with the problem of German identity and unification. Basically, those who aimed at transforming the German ‘Volk’ into a ‘Nation’ faced two options. One alternative meant following a strand of argument which, ever since Samuel Pufendorf ’s reading of Hobbes in the seventeenth century, had influenced political thinking heavily in Central Europe; i.e. that the state constituted the primus motor of progress. This argument led to the conclusion that the monarch was, in effect, the ‘guarantor of the state’s collective interest’ (Clark 2006: 240).4 In Prussia this idea found a particular and immensely influential expression through Hegel but, importantly, different to Pufendorf. By rejecting Pufendorf ’s conception of the state as a mere machine, an instrument, and by instilling it with a will and rationality of its own, the state thus defined became a leitmotiv in German political thinking and nation-building.
Another alternative was represented by the middle classes, according to which the middle strata of society, and especially the ‘Bildungsbürgertum’, should play an essential role in educating but, at the same time, also restraining the masses. The task was to mould the latter into becoming responsible citizens. However, the Prussian state represented one of the leading elements from this perspective as well, as illustrated by the ideas first put forward in Immanuel Kant’s famous 1784 essay, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung’. An enlightened ‘Öffentlichkeit’, to be sure, was the key to modernity but, as Kant had also stressed, this public sphere was possible only under the rule of law; that is, under the authority of the state. Influential as this view remained, it was still difficult to reconcile it with the new, Hegelian conception of state.
Treading the path towards political modernization meant that liberals were somehow forced to strike a compromise between appearing as loyal ‘Untertanen’ (subjects) and, at the same time, of being enlightened ‘Staatsbürger’ (citizens). Because of the lingering uncertainty about the precise relationship between nation, state, and citizenship, this also meant that the moral and ethical responsibilities implied by political individualism remained blurred: did individual fulfilment belong to the realm of civil society, or was it, ultimately, possible only through the life of a purposive state? As this dilemma was never satisfactorily resolved, we also see one important factor which helps to explain the characteristic features of Prussian and German liberalism in the nineteenth century. However, at the same time as the role of Prussia proved decisive to German unification, the traits of Prussian liberalism became problematic when applied to conditions in Schleswig-Holstein.
An important part of the problem faced by liberalism was the regional and political fragmentation of the Germans lands. As in Sweden, the press, and certain publications such as the famous Staatslexikon,5 played an important role in disseminating liberal ideas. Local-level voluntary association was a prominent feature as well. Yet, the geopolitical fragmentation of Germany swamped, or in any event, complicated communication and cooperation between liberals in different states and regions. Offermann’s analysis (1988) of Cologne and Berlin has already been offered, in the previous chapter, as an example of how liberalism retained regional peculiarities on critical issues, including organization. Liberalism in Hamburg (Breuilly 1994; Hurd 2000), or in Schleswig-Holstein are other cases in point. Particularly the latter case amply illustrates the much more apparent regional cleavage in German political life compared to Sweden. Similarly to conditions in the eastern borderlands or, after 1871, the situation in Alsace-Lorraine, this particular case reveals the ethnic divisions that were also embedded in German political modernization. In the same way as, for instance, the Catholic Poles in Prussia were considered problematic from the point of view of Berlin, so too were the relations between the German and Danish populations in Schleswig-Holstein (see Baier 1980; Suval 1985; Wolff 2003; Åberg & Sandberg 2003; Gross 2004). In addition, Schleswig-Holstein had a disputed but nevertheless centuries-long tradition of relative autonomy, symbolized by the fact that the duchies had retained an administration separate from that of the kingdom of Denmark proper. This story, in turn, had a long and complicated background.
From the late fourteenth century onwards, the fates of the Duchy of Schleswig and the county of Holstein (from 1474 the Duchy of Holstein) had been intertwined. Entangled in a complicated web of competing dynastic claims, rooted in the feudal past of Europe, the region represented a problem both from the perspective of the Danish state as well as, increasingly, from the point of view of Prussia. After the ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ had collapsed, Holstein entered the German Confederation in 1815 (together with Lauenburg, which, after the Prusso-Danish war, passed to Prussia and, from 1876, was included as part of the province of Schleswig-Holstein). At the same time Denmark claimed sovereignty over both Schleswig and Holstein. Emerging liberalism in the region played a critical role in these conflicts, whether its followers opted for or against a closer relation to Denmark.
As was the case in Prussia and Sweden, liberalism in Schleswig-Holstein started out as an urban middle-class movement. And as in Prussia, Denmark also, on the verge of the nineteenth century, represented a case of absolute monarchy. Despite limitations and censorship, new newspapers such as Kieler Correspondenz-Blatt (1830), and small, hitherto non-political local newspapers such as, for instance, Eckenförder Wochenblatt and Itzehoer Wochenblatt, became important to the formation of political radicalism. Later on the Kieler Zeitung (1864), established by banker Wilhelm Ahlmann, became the leading, liberal newspaper in the region. At the same time the peasantry held a weaker social and political position compared to Sweden. Only in 1805 had they been relieved from servitude (albeit two years earlier than their counterparts in Prussia, following the famous ‘October Edict’ of 1807). When consultative, provincial diets were introduced in 1831, the peasants in Schleswig-Holstein were represented, although the reform did not as such spell an end to absolutism. Also, similarly to what may be noticed in the case of Sweden, the peasants and their interests did not readily fit into any conventional left-right political spectrum. Considering the provincial diets of the 1830s, where intra-parliamentarian factions first started to appear, Schultz Hansen (2003: 432) simply remarks that the peasants ‘held true to the King and Constitutional status quo, but with a critical eye to the bureaucracy’.6
From this point onwards, however, liberalism and nationalism started to mutually reinforce each other. This resulted in a polarization of Danish and German interests. A small group of autonomists acting in 1830, the ‘Lornsenbewegung’,7 challenged the Danish monarchy by stressing the unique, but also German character of Schleswig-Holstein. This, in turn, triggered a Danish counter-movement which later was formalized as the so-called ‘Ejder programme’ of 1842. The programme won the support of the Danish national liberals, and came to serve as the official government policy on Schleswig-Holstein well into the 1860s. In essence it implied splitting the whole region, since the ambition to integrate Schleswig more closely with Denmark went hand-in-hand with separation from Holstein and Lauenburg. From the 1840s, too, the provincial diet became an arena for Danish–German strife. This shift was symbolized by the succession of leading radical liberal Peter Hiort Lorenzen, a merchant from Hadersleben, to the pro-Danish movement. At the same time the majority of radicals among the ethnic Germans in Schleswig-Holstein moved closer to a pro-German, national liberal position. In March 1848, the notion of a Danish ‘helstat’ (‘Gesamtstaat’), that would also include Schleswig, was finally shattered when a provisional government for both duchies was declared in Rendsburg. War followed, including intervention by the German Confederation and Prussia (Bjørn 1998; Schultz Hansen 2003). The conflict spluttered on for the next twenty years and included, firstly, a final showdown between Danish and Prussian interests in 1864 and, secondly, the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 and the formation of the North German Confederation: Whereas Schleswig-Holstein had been put under joint Austrian-Prussian administration in 1864, the cross-cultural region of Schleswig-Holstein became a Prussian province in 1867.
The issue of how to manoeuvre in relation to Prussia remained of critical importance to how the Schleswig-Holstein liberals factionalized after 1867 (see later in this chapter). Autonomy from Denmark was certainly achieved, but it was replaced by Prussian supremacy. Indeed, neither before nor after 1848 did the latter option attract any widespread support in the region. Most importantly, the combination of separatist traditions and suspicion towards Prussia explains why liberalism in Schleswig-Holstein–unlike Värmland –long maintained autonomous party organizations in relation to the emerging Prussian and German party system. However, as events turned out, culminating with the proclamation of the German Empire in 1871, there was also political reality to consider. As Schultz Hansen (2003: 460) put it, the encounter between the old and sluggish administration of Schleswig-Holstein with the new, Prussian civil service initially resulted in somewhat of a ‘clash of cultures’. Still, many leading politicians, including the left-liberal Albert Hänel, associated themselves with the Bismarckian project of unity by ‘revolution from above.’
As leader of the ‘Schleswig-Holsteinische Liberale Partei’ (1867), which emanated from the ‘Schleswig-Holsteinische Landespartei’ (1863), Hänel played an important role in this process, which was reflected in, among other things, the subsequent changes of party label: in 1870 the name was changed to ‘Liberale Partei Schleswig-Holsteins’ (LPSH), signalling a careful but deliberate shift towards the Prussian Progressives. At the same time there were obvious differences between the left-liberals–and in particular the so-called Democratic and Particularistic factions, who left the party in 1868–70–and the national liberals (Kiehl 1966; Schultz Hansen 2003). Whereas the national liberals were ready to trade off democratic reforms in favour of national unity and, as during the preparations for the 1874 elections, appealed to ‘all those national-minded and true to Kaiser and Reich’,8 Hänel entered the post-1867 situation with a different agenda. He was neither discarding the need for extended political rights and social reform, nor rejecting the historically speaking unique position of Schleswig-Holstein. Hence the framework for liberal political association and campaigning had been set.
Sweden–liberalism on the verge of mass politics
The liberal–agrarian alignment of the early 1840s had rested on motives too diverse for making any long-term cooperation feasible. Yet the decade did turn out to be a progressive period. For instance, reforms in 1842 resulted in the introduction of elementary schools and, in 1846, the old guilds were abolished. Hence a chief impediment to the advancement of industry was removed. In addition, the first steps towards reformation of local self-government were taken. The many ‘civil associations’, to follow Tocqueville, that were formed in Sweden during the first decades of the nineteenth century played an important role in the public debates around issues such as these.
Associations and reform societies were enthusiastically introduced as the remedy for almost any social and economic ailment. There emerged associations for the improvement of the economy and agriculture, associations for religious, educational, and cultural purposes, associations for poor relief and temperance, and later on, in the 1850s and 1860s, workers’ associations and rifle clubs. Similarly to Hegel’s conception of the civil society, too, voluntary association in the Swedish context also included economic organizations of various kinds, such as companies and banks. Whether formed by state inititative, such as, for instance, the Swedish Temperance Society (‘Svenska nykterhetssällskapet’, 1837), or by private initiative, such as many local educational societies and workers’ associations, they shared a concern for the improvement of the national standard within their respective fields. Self-interest played a role, but it was self-interest in the guise of national interest (Jansson 1985). As indicated, some of the organizations were close to being virtual ‘political parties’, in a manner in which the interests of the middle classes were mobilized, but without being recognized as such, not even by their own members. Considering both Tocqueville, as well as for instance Erik Gustaf Geijer, who was well aquainted with Tocquevilles’s work, the very meaning of ‘political’, as well as of ‘citizenship’, remained a matter of dispute.
Civic life centred on the activities of these, usually rather small, associations, although their outward appearance would often indicate otherwise, such as in the case of the Temperance Society, in which the clergy played a leading role as organizers. By the mid-1840s the movement claimed to have collected 100,000 vows of temperance all over the country. In actual fact, as Jansson (1985) points out, the number of active members did not exceed 120 in the whole of the country by 1845. Part of the confusion regarding the numerical strength of early voluntary associations is explained simply by the uncertainty surrounding the notion of ‘membership’, similar to the confusion over ‘politics’, or ‘citizenship’. Another prominent association, the Swedish Bible Society (‘Svenska bibelsällskapet’, 1815), also had a national scope of interest, but had only 55 permanent members. Many associations and reform societies during the first half of the nineteenth century were not only small but also overtly local in character and outlook, as had been the case with early civic association in the German states. The Friends of Destitute People (‘Sällskapet De nödlidandes vänner’), a Stockholm poor-relief society, which had also formed in 1815, may be used as an illustration. It had 127 permanent members in 1816–17, which, indeed, was a small number, yet larger compared to the organization of the Swedish Bible Society (Jansson 1985: 130, 139, 143–54). Associations such as the Temperance Society and others therefore resemble the kind of closely-knit organizations that were at the core of Ostrom’s analysis (1990) of the foundations of social cooperation, or the principles outlined by Hume. Of course, this does not mean that the associations of the early nineteenth century were always successful. On the contrary, internal conditions often included factional competition similar to what would later become typical of liberal and other political parties. At the same time, though, the very size of these associations, despite their internal weaknesses, suggests a potential for building organizational trust, and thus also a potential for mobilization, interest aggregation and close, face-to-face interaction around shared issues.
I would argue that early forms of civic association were of critical importance to the organization of middle-class radicalism, although the ideological underpinnings of the various movements and associations were more often than not diffuse, excepting a commonly shared utilitarian outlook towards the world (cf. Petterson 1992). Compared to political parties proper, and in particular mass parties, ideology and statutes could not yet substitute social trust as organizational cement. At the same time the elitist composition of such associations posed a problem, if we consider functions such as societal representation and social integration. More often than not the actual members were recruited from the upper echelons and middle strata of society. In combination with the lack of any clearly defined doctrine, this circumstance created problems from the point of view of social and political legitimacy. Many of the civic associations of the early nineteenth century were pipe dreams, which never left the universe of the educated elite, or the middle-class drawing-room.
Nevertheless, these expressions of civic association corresponded closely to the ideals of the modern and enlightened middle-class citizen. United by rougly similar education, outlook, and perspective, they used their organizations to carefully tread towards reform and social improvement. Many of the individual agents involved were extremely active in promoting what they considered to be the public good, but at the same time also ensured that their own interests were favoured. A case in point was the mining inspector in Värmland, Franz Adolf von Schéele, who not only started a mining elementary school in Filipstad in 1830, but also by 1823 had also initiated one of the first savingsbanks in Sweden, also in Filipstad (actually the second one to appear in the region, since a similar bank had been established in Karlstad the previous year). At the same time he was active in establishing regional mortgage and insurance societies–all of which were considered expressions of ‘civic association’ according to the terminology of the period–and all of which were initiatives that also promoted Schéele’s own career as a public figure and entrepreneur (on Schéele, see Frostlund 2005). Simultaneously, however, middle-class radicalism failed to develop the grass-roots extensions typical to democratization. In a wider perspective, therefore, we get a mixed impression of Värmland with respect to early civic association. On the one hand Johan af Wingård, governor of the province in the 1820s, wrote appreciatively about the new ‘spirit’ of civic association, symbolized by the introduction of a savingsbank in Karlstad, and from which, he was sure, society would prosper in the future (Jansson 1985: 23); his was a picture of a dynamic social advancement as well as economic growth. On the other hand, as we approach the mid-nineteenth century, it is at the same time clear that the mobilization of local society by means of middle-class civic association had failed.
Data from the official record does not suggest that organizational life, at least not before 1850, was exceptional in Värmland compared to other regions. For instance, the activities of the Temperance Society were concentrated in the south and southwestern parts of the country, as well as in certain areas of the north, although the number of local branches in Värmland did increase dramatically in the late 1840s, from six in 1847 to 31 in 1848 (Båtefalk 2000: 319). Also, according to official estimates, only a modest number of so-called ‘pious foundations’, a label applying to both charitable institutions and self-help organizations of various kinds, appeared during the entire 1801–50 period. A total of 16 such societies were formed, compared, for instance, to 93 in the neighbouring province of Närke.9 Voluntary association, and then on a mass scale, would eventually flourish in Värmland, but not during the first half of the nineteenth century. But the seeds had been sown. Moderately liberal opinions found early expression in Nya Wermlands-Tidningen (1836).10 Gradually the newspaper turned conservative–its position in the debate on protectionism in the 1880s is a case in point (chapter 3)–but it was replaced by Karlstads-tidningen (1855)11 as the main voice of liberalism in the region.
Importantly, in his reflections on civic association, governor Wingård anticipated professor Erik Gustaf Geijer’s more analytical account, as laid down in his seminal 1844 lectures at Uppsala University. Geijer, with a chair in history, spoke out against the ‘bankruptcy’ of corporative institutions, and envisaged how, instead, voluntary associations would take the lead in the transformation of society (Geijer 1845: 35–36). In his analysis we find traits pertaining both to Ferguson’s ideas about civil society and, in particular, to Tocqueville’s analysis of civic and political association. Certainly these were ideas that were common currency at the time; for one thing, Geijer was also heavily influenced by German thinkers, and not least Hegel (Petterson 1992: 241–61). The main point, however, is that Geijer argued that the kind of civic-mindedness he saw vested in the associations found its foremost and final expression in form of the state. Citizenship and statehood were thus intimately connected, and the essence of the latter was ultimately political (Geijer 1845: 36). However, according to him, there were also grimmer future prospects to be considered. Into the political realm a new agent had recently entered–the people: the post-revolutionary situation in Europe and in Sweden had rendered the people a new and undeniably political role, but the call for emancipation and for extended civic liberties at the same time signalled a risk of outright anarchy, when cast under the spell of demagoguery (Geijer 1845: 122–23).
Although the historical background differed, the ambiguity of Geijer on politics resembled Tocqueville’s assessment of civic and political association. These were two mutally connected and self-reinforcing processes, yet they still belonged to separate spheres and the latter had a dangerous and destructive potential (Tocqueville 2003 [1840]: 12). The fear expressed by Geijer and Tocqueville alike was, indeed, incorporated within early liberalism. Without condoning parties and factions, Geijer’s interpretation of civic association and its political extensions portended a situation where interests, including class interests, the dread of many a nineteenth-century liberal, were about to crystallize and become politicized. New forms of political association, viz. the modern mass party, as opposed to the old coteries and factions of the aristocracy, were at hand. This volatile situation had somehow to be managed, something which pointed further to the critical issue of citizenship. Geijer himself had proposed to the 1840 Riksdag a model according to which women and the clergy, as well as professional teachers, should be excluded from political representation. His grounds were simply that these catgories were responsible for the crucial task of educating and fostering adolescent citizens in the family, in the religious community, and in the classroom (Geijer 1845: 37; he did afterwards concede that his proposal remained imperfect). Whether eccentric or not, Geijer’s reasoning reflected a more widespread confusion regarding the relationship between politics and citizenship.
Ambiguities such as these were perhaps most clearly brought out in the matter of local self-government, the very cornerstone of Tocqueville’s analysis of democracy. When local self-government was finally formalized and promulgated in Sweden in 1862, it was not as such considered a ‘political’ sphere, at least not in the same sense as we normally hold it to be (Norrlid 1970; Åberg 1997). Rather, politics remained a matter for parliament, whereas the local arena was supposedly the concern of motivated, knowledgeable, and unselfish individuals, not of partisanship. The manner in which the new legislation defined participation in self-government was, however, a confusing mixture of two basically different approaches to citizenship represented by economic and political individualism. On the one hand, the very idea of self-government rested on the assumption that unselfish individuals would converge on non-political decisions aimed at promoting a greater good for the community as a whole. On the other hand, the election laws made sure that only the wealthy and, therefore (implicitly), those proven as the most worthy, responsible, and conscientious members of the community should exercise the right to participate in the municipalities. One type of liberal individualism drove out the other.
As previously indicated, this flaw of middle-class liberalism had first become apperent when the extension of political representation became an issue of inconclusive parliamentary strife in the 1840s. In the 1850s political life entered a calmer phase, at the same time as issues of economic liberalism came to the fore. The problem of constitutional reform, though, was far from dead and buried. When the issue was finally resolved, in 1865–66, it turned out a success for a more cautious and conservative attitude on the matter, as had been the case when local self-government was introduced. Carefully designed by Minister of Justice Louis De Geer, the actual aim was, according to Nilsson (1969), to transfer as much as possible of the established interests of the old Estates to the new, bicameral parliament. Indeed, as a liberal of the moderate phalanx, De Geer was certainly no doctrinaire, and the reform did in effect mean that any ideas of using parliament as a tool for promoting urban middle-class interests had to be relinquished. Considering the socio-economic composition of the Swedish electorate, the limitations imposed by the reform punished the urban liberals almost to the same extent as they meant that the working class and the rural proletariat were excluded from political influence.
In a strictly formal sense, the reform did of course mean that political life broke with the ancient structure of the Estates, and with it the idea of corporate bodies as the foundation of parliamentary negotiations. At the same time new restrictions replaced old ones, analogous to the pattern typical of democratizing countries in Europe during this period. The franchise as well as the rules of eligibility were, as with local self -government, restricted by the election laws, and made contingent on the voter’s degree of wealth and income. In particular this was the case concerning ‘Första kammaren’ (the First Chamber), the purpose of which was to secure stability and continuity in parliament. Its deputies were appointed by electoral colleges, viz. by the so -called ‘Landstingen’ (Provincial Councils) and, in the larger cities, by the City Councils (‘Stadsfullmäktige’), and they were elected for terms of nine years. The First Chamber became home to a miniscule, landed elite resilient to anything that smacked of radicalism. To ‘Andra kammaren’ (the Second Chamber), the election laws were more open, but the right to vote still required ownership of property (which, again, usually meant ownership of land), or income. Candidates running for a seat were subject to the same economic requirements, and they had to be resident in their constituencies. Up to 1909 the deputies were elected in majority elections (by plurality, not absolute majority), usually in single-member constituencies (only large, urban constituencies had more than one deputy), and in direct or indirect elections: the crucial decision to choose between direct and indirect models of elections was left for the constituencies themselves to make (Jansson 1969). Hence, in a crucial dimension, the institutional conditions for party formation and elections did actually vary between different parts of the country.
In effect the make-up of the election laws, in combination with the socio-economic composition of the population, meant that the reform put the landed peasantry, rather than the urban middle classes, at the pinnacle of political power. Precisely in this respect, however, the new bicameral parliament at the same time meant that an important step towards political modernization had been taken, and it undoubtedly widened the extent of political participation in a manner unique among most other countries. Years later, in 1894, the poet Gustaf Fröding, son of a wealthy iron works owner in Värmland, lent a voice to this self-assured and confident peasantry. Written in (fake) dialect like much of Fröding’s work, it presents us with a sharply drawn and at the same time ironic image of wealthy farmers, and their ‘bushels of grain’ as the true and undisputed masters of the country.12 More now than ever before, it was among these groups that the liberals had to mobilize support in favour of their ideas–ideas that were still in many ways vague and inconsistent.
Neither were the election campaigns to the new parliament modelled on nationwide organizations, or outright political parties. Campaigning remained local and personalized, as an effect of the new electoral system: an electoral system based on single-member constituencies and majoritarian elections is usually considered detrimental to the emergence of strong, centralized parties and coordinated election campaigns (Sartori 2001). Thus the nomination of candidates, interest aggregation, and issue structuring were tasks that were managed locally or, at best, regionally, rather than nationally under the aegis of organized parties. This feature was enhanced further by the stipulation that candidates had to be recruited among the residents of each constituency. As a result the system favoured parochialism and the prevalence of local elite factions. It did not facilitate the emergence of a nationwide party system.
When, therefore, radical liberals in Stockholm (‘Nyliberalerna’) tried to launch a coordinated, nationwide campaign in the 1869 elections, the response was lukewarm. The strategy followed a two-pronged approach. Since the liberal programme aimed at radical social and political reform, including universal suffrage, the intension was to extend popular involvement in the election campaign. A number of mass meetings were held throughout the country in order to mobilize public support, but these met with any real success only locally, in the capital city itself (Esaiasson 1990: 70–71). In Värmland, little debate was heard on the attempts to stir opinion. Although the appeal from Stockholm was published in the press, more attention was paid to emigration from the province to America, which had then started to gain impetus, and to the regional economic situation, as was the case at one rally held in the district of Nordmark in late August.13 Indeed, Värmland was on the verge of major social and economic transformations precisely because of factors such as emigration, but also a drastic decline of the regional iron industry, due to technological change and restructuring; and these were not issues covered by the liberal programme.
Consequently, when the nuclei of modern political parties began to emerge in the Second Chamber, they did so mainly on basis of intra-parliamentarian factions based in the capital. The first, most influential and longlasting of them were the agrarians, acting under the name of ‘Lantmannapartiet’, founded in 1867. It was based mainly on the support of the farmers, but also of the landed proprietors. Ideologically speaking the party contained both conservative and liberal elements. In a wide sense it was still considered oppositional and, up to its split into two factions in 1888, exercised a major influence on domestic political life; the party was later reunited in 1895, but then with a more right-wing orientation (Thermænius 1933). Other ‘parties’ appeared as well. Among these were the ‘Ministeriella’ (which reformed in 1873 into a centre faction, and usually acted in support of the government), and the above-mentioned liberal faction ‘Nyliberalerna’. The latter, however, only lasted between 1868–71. Among the early factions, only the ‘Lantmannapartiet’ came closest to resembling a political party proper, although it never created a formal, nationwide organization.
As for the liberals, when a national campaigning organization (‘Frisinnande landsföreningen’) was eventually created in 1902, one of its first measures was to try to sway local opinion in a number of constituencies in favour of direct elections to the Second Chamber. This was considered a way of wrestling power from the hands of local elites, and at the same time increasing the liberal turnout.14 The Liberal Party as such–‘Liberala samlingspartiet’–had formed two years earlier. One of its main roots led back to another intra-parliamentarian group, the ‘People’s Party’, which had come into being in the mid-1890s, but only with the formation of ‘Frisinnade landsföreningen’ did an actual party organization along the lines of mass mobilization appear. From the very outset, though, the relation between the Liberal Party and the ‘landsföreningen’ was fraught with complications. The Liberal Party consisted mainly of moderate liberals, whereas the national organization was considered more inclined to left-liberalism. This situation automatically created tensions (Johansson 1980). However, alongside emerging party structures other organizational tools were utilized as well.
Liberalism in Värmland and the rise of popular movements
The manner in which the rules of political participation were extended piecemeal, first in 1865–66 and, later on, in the early twentieth century, corresponds well to what has long been a common interpretation of Swedish political modernization as a gradual and negotiated process, characterized by consensus rather than rapid change and conflict. According to conventional wisdom, the more horizontal nature of social power relationships in Sweden relative to most other countries, and the prominent role played by the peasantry, were an important part of this picture. Thus explained, the path taken towards a political culture of consensual bargaining was later successfully replicated by the labour movement and the social democrats once industrialization had paved the way for class-based divisions. Part of the same picture is also a weakly developed middle-class and a relatively speaking weak liberal movement (see, for instance, Therborn 1989 and 1994; Stråth 1990b). From this perspective, the reformation of parliament in the 1860s may well be interpreted as a confirmation of a particular set of social power relationships as much as a restructuring of them. From a longer perspective this interpretation does, however, tend to exaggerate the historical ‘inevibility’ of the ‘Swedish model’ (cf. Andrén 2007).
It should be noted that, in some respects, the Swedish pattern was far from unique. Rather, Sweden belonged to a group of countries, including Belgium, Spain, Austria, and Germany, in which regimes that were, at least formally, constitutional monarchies none the less facilitated modest moves towards parliamentarism and more inclusive rules of participation. (This monarchical path to democratization should be distinguished from the republican–presidential path typical to France, the US or, in the twentieth century, countries such as Finland and Czechoslovakia (Åberg & Sandberg 2003: 255–275)). To recognize such general commonalities does not necessitate embracing a squentialist reading of democratization; which, by the way, is illustrated by the immense differences that also existed between countries such as Sweden and Germany. Therefore, whereas those common properties of democratizing countries which undoubtedly existed must be accepted, exactly the same examples referred to, but to different ends, suggest great variation in terms of political modernization. Variation between countries, although governed by a similar type of regime, also challenges any assumptions of the inevibility of the Swedish path.
Another case in point is Duverger’s classification of party lineages (1967 [1954]), according to whether parties have intra-parliamentarian or extra-parliamentarian roots (see the previous chapter). In its original form it is readily applicable to the ‘Swedish model’ interpretation: step-by-step reformation of the electoral system facilitated the reproduction of traditional elites in parliament and, up to a point, created conditions which were unfavourable to the formation of political mass movements. Indeed, against that background a group such as the ‘Nyliberalerna’ could only emerge as a mere parliamentarian group, since it lacked a wider socio-economic base. Only by the victory of class rethoric, and the rise of a clear-cut left–right spectrum, was the emergence of modern mass parties, such as most notably the social democrats, facilitated, and by this the introduction of universal suffrage. The formation not only of the Liberal Party, but also the Conservative Party (in 1904, see Stenlås 2002; Nilsson 2004), is often considered to be mainly a reaction to this process, and not as independent features of democratization and party systems formation. Yet, as I have pointed out, at least with respect to the liberals it is also possible to identify a number of important, extra-parliamentarian arenas, and an alternative mode of political association. In effect this pattern deviates from the pattern suggested by Duverger. It provides not only certain interesting parallels to early nineteenth-century association, but also renders support to the hypothesis of organization by means of proxy.
More to the point, the popular movements became extremely important to grass-roots mobilization in Sweden during the late nineteenth century. This was the case not only in regard to liberalism –especially considering certain nonconformist religious and organized temperance movements–but also with respect to socialism (most notably the temperance movement would soon enough host a tug of war between liberals and social democrats, see chapter 3). This feature illustrates both the importance of grass-roots activism on the local and regional level, at the same time as it highlights the role played by regional, liberal elites, since these groups were among the leadership of the popular movements. It indicates the importance of linkages between intra-parliamentarian factions and extra-parliamentarian organization.
In general terms, the political culture of nineteenth-century liberalism can, as Kahan (2003) has pointed out, be described as one of limited suffrage. Where Sweden was concerned, even after 1866 voices were still heard in favour of a step-by-step introduction of the franchise, rather than a single, all-out reform. To an increasing extent, however, Swedish liberals embraced the idea of universal suffrage (Vallinder 1984: 21), and they did so under the pressure of mounting demands voiced from all around the country. The contacts that were made with the popular movements, then, meant that liberalism was infused with a kind of radicalism that it had supposedly lost by the 1850s, and it led to a revitalization of liberal politics (but also to a renewed tension between moderate and more radical strands of liberalism, and between cities and the countryside, see chapter 3). Consequently, it would be wrong to depict Swedish liberalism as a mere tool of of bourgeois interests by the turn of the twentieth century. Well into the new century, liberals, including those in Värmland, considered themselves as representatives for a cross-class, left-wing option in politics.15
As far as the regional level is concerned, Värmland belonged to those parts of the country in which both nonconformism and organized temperance had developed strongly by the turn of the twentieth century (Lundkvist 1977: 72–74). Among other things we should note that areas with high levels of liberal voting turnout, and localities in which popular movements were firmly established, were often overlapping. For instance, in the Visnum, Väse, and Ölme districts in southeastern Värmland, the liberal candidate received a turnout ranging from 55.8 per cent (Ölme) to 73.2 per cent (Väse) in the 1911 elections.16 At about the same time some 6 per cent of the overall population in Värmland were affiliated with a nonconformist church, whereas about 7.3 per cent were teetotallers, according to official records.17 But these are average estimates. Roughly one-fifth of all registered nonconformists in the whole of Värmland, including baptists, methodists, and the Mission Covenant Church, and one-fifth of all registered members in various temperance organizations, were to be found precisely in the above districts by 1905. The latter included the IOGT (International Order of Good Templars), but also the Blue Ribbon, which was particularly closely associated with nonconformism.
Although the party records, admittedly, are scanty, they nevertheless suggest strong connections between liberalism, nonconformism, and teetotalism by the early twentieth century. By 1922 the local branch of ‘Frisinnade landsföreningen’ in Ölme reported 30 members. Of these, 16 were organized teetotallers and 14 were members of the Mission Covenant Church. A similar pattern was also typical for other local-level liberal associations. Thus another case in point, pertaining to the same area, were the liberals in Väse, at the same time as this particular association, although considerably smaller, also included a larger proportion of women among the members (5 of 16).18
Structures with similar historical roots to a varying extent evolved across the entire region. For instance, western Värmland also had an early and strong tradition of nonconformism, which was later boosted by the temperance movement and, at the same time, the populace’s liberal political inclinations. The proximity to Norway–from which many of the early lay preachers travelled into Värmland –as well as connections southwards, to areas in western Sweden that had been touched by early religious revival, was one part of the explanation.19 Another place of interest from our perspective is Munkfors, an industrial enclave in the central section of Värmland (Furuskog 1924), where, similary to the Visnum, Väse, and Ölme districts, the popular movements played important parts in social life. Venues such as nonconformist chapels and, in particular, temperance lodges, gradually became used for political meetings throughout the region, both for campaigning as well as for appointing candidates to the parliamentary elections. It seems this practice developed first in the towns and cities, such as in Filipstad and Karlstad, during the 1887 elections.20 It then spread across the countryside and became part of the campaigning process, for instance during the 1893, 1896, 1908, and 1911 elections.21
Map 2. Värmland’s parliamentary constituencies by 1890.
Importantly, the very same modus operandi, i.e. using the venues of nonconformists and teetotallers as meeting spots, was replicated by ‘Frisinnade landsföreningen’, once a regional organization had evolved. In 1907 a regional office sprang to life (‘Värmlands frisinnade länskommitté’). During the following years local branches also appeared, although a few of these, such as the one in Munkfors, actually preceded organization at the regional level; the Munkfors liberal association had started as early as 1904.22 At the same time the party continued to draw heavily on established principles of political association, as laid down during the previous period. In connection with the 1917 general elections, 70 rallies were organized by the liberals in the northern constituency of the province. Even at this late stage, one-fourth of the campaign meetings were held either at IOGT lodges or in nonconformist chapels.23
The integration of grass-roots civic and political association also involved and, indeed, drew heavily on criss-crossing, inter-organizational ties on an individual level. The rank and file of the popular movements have traditionally been depicted as the ‘salt of the earth’. In the case of local-level liberal organizations, data for Värmland suggests similarities in this respect, although strong and often dominating elements were recruited from the rural middle strata, viz. the farmers. Importantly, the latter also provided the province with many of its parliamentary deputies, such as Olof Andersson, who was at the same time a devoted member of the Mission Covenant Church in his constituency (chapter 3). Middle-class groups from the cities, small towns, and industrial hamlets scattered across the region played important parts in both spheres as well, in particular as activists, and campaign and administrative staff. Examples include supervisor Anders Henrik Göthberg in Munkfors, former sergeant major Carl Björling, son of a farmer and later ombudsman for the liberals in Värmland, and August Lindh, director of the Provincial Council. All of them had a background in either nonconformism or organized temperance, or, as in the case of Göthberg and Björling, both movements (Svenska folkrörelser, I, 1936: 248, 450, 691). Furthermore, elementary schoolteachers and journalists were important categories. Editor Mauritz Hellberg from Karlstad was the most prominent example from the 1890s onwards. Unlike Göthberg, Björling or Lindh, Hellberg was not personally affiliated with any of the above-mentioned popular movements, but nevertheless was a zealous civic activist and organizer. He represented a kind of urban and intellectual liberalism that was similar to that of Albert Hänel in Schleswig-Holstein, only much more radical in orientation.
Altogether, the case of Värmland indicates that the liberals, at least up to a point, were relatively successful at organizing grass roots support, and that this process was a bottom–up as much as a top–down process. This conclusion does, however, also raise a number of questions. Most importantly, it begs the question of why the liberals became so heavily involved with organizational proxies in the shape of the popular movements. In one sense the answer is obvious. As would later be the case with the social democrats, the members of the popular movements represented large and, before the introduction of universal suffrage, potentially influential groups of voters. Their extensive organizational network was simply too important to be neglected as a means by which to reach out to people and prospective voters, particularly so in the countryside. It should also be stressed that this development, from the 1890s onwards, coincided with the mobilization of the Swedish franchise movement. This, in turn, had been preceded by increased voter mobilization on the issue of protective duties in the 1880s–an issue which resulted in an emerging left-right polarization of political life (see chapter 3).
Moreover, the very idea of operating through voluntary civic organizations, rather than by outright organization in terms of a party, appealed as an appropriate solution to managing public opinion. Society certainly became more politicized by the end of the nineteenth century, yet ‘partisanship’ and ‘party’ in many ways remained tainted. In that respect the popular movements provided the liberals with a suitable set of officially ‘non-political’ proxies, similar to those of the civic associations of the early nineteenth century. Some among the liberal leadership, such as Hellberg, recognized the need for firm organization along party lines, yet seemed uncertain as to how to bring this about. All contingencies duly considered, organizing political interests on the basis of non-affiliated civic associations turned out to be a more natural way of going about business.
In this sense the popular movements could easily be interpreted as a logical extension of voluntary associations in the first part of the nineteenth century (Abelius 2007). To begin with, topographical data seems to suggest that such a pattern was present in some localities. By way of illustration, the above-mentioned Visnum, Väse, and Ölme districts were among those in Värmland which had been touched during the first wave of civic association in the 1840s; in all three areas the IOGT and Blue Ribbon lodges of the 1880s had precursors in terms of local branches established by the Swedish Temperance Society in 1847 (Mannström 1912: 233–35). Individual effort also occasionally connected the two waves of association. For instance, tailor and typographer Carl Forssell, a leading figure of the 1848 popular radicalism in Värmland (Forsell 2005), was also the man who first started Karlstads-tidningen, and laid the foundation for its subsequent leading position among the regional press. Finally, ideological affinities between the two waves of civic association have been proposed. One case in point is the relationship between temperance and teetotalism. In fact contemporary accounts, such as that by Mannström (1912), secretary of the Swedish Temperance Society, suggest a generic relation between the two movements. If scrutinized more closely, however, his account rather indicates an ambition among the old temperance advocates to adapt to the new ideas of prohibition proposed by the teetotallers. Indirectly, Mannström himself provided the best illustration of this by referring to an 1876 appeal signed by, among others, reverend Peter Wieselgren, originally one of the founding fathers of the Society. On the matter of drinking and its cause, alcohol–was it not, as laid down by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, best simply to ‘cut it off, and cast it from thee’? (quoted in Mannström 1912: 203–204).
Therefore, if we compare civic association before and after 1850 in greater detail, we face more differences and fewer similarities, but differences of a kind that were by no means self-evident to contemporary liberals themselves. Firstly, the popular movements, as opposed to civic association in the early nineteenth century, were also mass movements. This was the case, if not in respect to all of the local branches and separate associations themselves, then at least to the organizational framework which they gradually developed on the national level. Analogous to Ostrom’s assessment (1990) of voluntary social cooperation, this feature also contained a two-edged problem of scale that was both different and more difficult to manage compared to that of the pre-1850 scenario. The problem of scale soon became appearent considering the many, and often conflicting interests represented by liberalism, by nonconformism, and by organized teetotalism respectively. On the one hand, performing concrete functions, such as societal representation and social integration (Gunther & Diamond 2001), is not feasible in organizations with a narrow social base, such as the case was with pre-1850 associations. On the other hand, conditions for generating mutual trust, with the aim of increasing organizational efficacy, also become more difficult once the overall organizational context is large, diffuse, and extends beyond that of known faces and shared acquaintancies. This became increasingly typical of the liberal popular movement networks. Any clear-cut agenda, with clearly defined issues and strategies, around which liberal proxy organizations could have united, was lacking from the late nineteenth century onwards.
Secondly, in part as a consequence of the latter situation, the two waves of Swedish civic organization depicted drew on different expressions of modern individualism, which pointed ultimately towards two conflicting conceptions of citizenship. Indeed, Mannström’s attempt (1912) to harmonize temperance and teetotalism touches upon this problem. Up to a certain point both nonconformism and teetotalism did undoubtedly correspond to the liberal credo of individualism: nineteenth-century nonconformism emphasized the awakening of the individual and the personal relationship between the individual and God; this had also been the case with some of its precursors, such as various pietistic movements which in some Swedish regions, if not Värmland, had paved the way in the previous century.24 This individualism was, however, interpreted primarily from the perspective of the community. Individual enterprise became highly appreciated, but as a means of serving the needs of the congregation (interestingly, this feature was noticed not least among early observers close to the liberal movement, such as Rönblom 1929: 27). Likewise, teetotallers often held abstinence to be the greatest of all individual liberties.25 The important thing, though, was the capacity of the individual to submit himself/herself and his/ her decisions to the better of the community in order to achieve this freedom. This perspective translated into a strong inclination towards monitoring the public demeanour of the members, and of their temperance vows.
This had far-reaching implications. Whereas liberalism never really succeeded in resolving the classic tension between ‘economic individualism’ and ‘political individualism’, the popular movements in a sense embraced ‘political individualism’ more coherently. In analogy to Tocqueville (2003 [1840]), one could also say that the ideological and organizational tenets of the popular movements served as a necessary restraining force in relation to (political) self-interest and its potential excesses. Precisely because of the difference in relation to mainstream, liberal conceptions of individualism and citizenship, though, organization by proxy also carried the seed of its own destruction when liberalism faced the demands posed by emerging mass politics. Yet the dilemma of Swedish liberalism was not unique. We need only to consider liberal political association and its historical roots in northern Germany and Schleswig-Holstein.
Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia, and the new Germany–region and nation
As in Sweden, Prussian liberals before 1850 usually organized themselves in clusters of social and cultural clubs, professional and educational associations, and ‘Bürgervereine’, in which political interests were more or less successfully cloaked as social and cultural issues. A flurry of civic and for all practical purposes political association during the ‘Vormärz’ preceded the formation of actual parties. Ususally local, and often small-scale, some relatively speaking large civic organizations were also established, such as the ‘Königsberg Bürgergesellschaft’, which allegedly had 1,000 members by the 1840s, or, if we extend the perspective beyond Prussia, the ‘Bürgerliche Lesegesellschaft Harmonie’, formed in Freiburg, Baden, in 1835 by Karl von Rotteck–one of the editors the Staatslexikon, i.e. the ‘textbook’ of early German liberalism: this particular society claimed to have 340 members by the time the Frankfurt Parliament was summoned in 1848 (Sheehan 1978: 23; Hartmann et al. 2001 [1992]). There were, of course, numerous cultural and choral societies named ‘Harmonie’ across the German states, many of them older than the one in Freiburg; yet the very choice of name is fitting, if we consider the propensity of middle-class liberalism to stress consensus, rather than social conflict. However, as was also the case with early Swedish civic association, some circumspection is warranted in regard to the number of active members in such organizations. Although the German ‘Mittelstände’ was numerically speaking much larger compared to in Sweden, the combination of a still narrow socio-economic base, and the simultaneous voicing of universal values, was confusing from the point of view of social representation.
A similar pattern to that of Prussia extends to Schleswig-Holstein under Danish reign. ‘Bürgervereine’ first appeared in the 1830s. Under liberal supervision they fulfilled a triple purpose of mobilization, interest aggregation, and issue structuring, which made them vaguely resemble parties. They took part in the struggle for extended public influence over local government; they organized campaigns in connection to the elections for the provincial diets; and they coordinated reform petitions. Associations of this kind formed in Flensburg (1835), as well as in Husum and Hadersleben (both in 1838) (Schultz Hansen 2003: 433). On the one hand, civic organizations such as these were, in the words of Sheehan (1978: 14), important as ‘training grounds’ for the early liberals. On the other hand, they had only limited reach at the grass-roots level, although associations in which middle-class liberals and the working class interacted to some extent did exist. One of these was the Flensburg Workers’ Association (‘Verein zur Förderung der Geselligkeit’, 1857, later renamed ‘Flensburger Arbeiter-Bauverein’).
From the outset, the ambition of this association was to improve the cultural standing of the local working class, and to provide the workers and their families the opportunity to athletic exercise. As an effect of industrialization and urbanization, social issues, and most importantly housing, came to the fore, and in 1878 a workers’ building society was created (Festschrift 1978: 30–32, 60–63; Heldt 1991: 144). Also, individuals appeared who, as in the case of Peter Christian Hansen, embodied the social accomplishments possible if only the liberal credo of individualism and entrepreneurial spirit was strictly abided by. Hansen had been born in a working-class family in Flensburg, in 1853, but later became a journalist for the Kieler Zeitung, and a secretary to the Chamber of Commerce in Kiel, only to advance, finally, to the position as social insurance commissioner to the Royal Provincial Government. Striving to improve the conditions of the Flensburg workers, he was heavily involved with the above-mentioned association. At an early stage Hansen had declared himself a national liberal. Typically for the time, he operated through a large, personal network, the natural habitat of many a nineteenth-century liberal, and was engaged in a number of different spheres and acitivties. For instance, he also participated in the German temperance movement as well as supporting the efforts of the Good Templars when this organization established itself in Schleswig-Holstein. Among his last efforts was to join in the creation of a German–Swedish society for Schleswig-Holstein, together with the Swedish seamen’s chaplain at Kiel, C. G. Lagerfelt, in 1921 (Festschrift 1978: 45–58; Sievers 1979; Hansen 1982 [1928, manuscript]: 344). Yet, as for the workers’ associations and other expressions of middle-class civic organization, the agendas of these organizations as a whole remained characteristically orientated towards the ‘domestication’ (metaphorically speaking) of the workers (Hurd 2000).
Apart from such general similarities to Värmland, voluntary association in Schleswig-Holstein followed a specific pattern. One circumstance that contributed was the harsher restrictions imposed on the press and public activities, both under Danish26 and, in particular, under later Prussian rule. Pro-Danish and, above all, socialist campaigning were targeted. The Amtsblatt, the official government medium, posted decrees banning this and that publication in the newly acquired province. Before the Anti-Socialist Laws were lifted in 1890, censorship was enforced, particularly during election years.27 To be sure, many leading liberals, such as Albert Hänel, were opposed to collaborating with the Danes, let alone with the social democrats. However, as far as Berlin was concerned the liberals were also among ‘the usual suspects’.28
An important factor was that demands for civil liberties and political rights mixed with the ever-present problem of national identity. Basically this problem consisted of two components as far as Schleswig-Holstein was concerned–one ethnic dimension, and one regional dimension. Initially, mounting Danish–German tensions were of importance to political association in the region. For instance, ‘Bürgervereine’ emerged across the whole of Schleswig-Holstein during the first half of the nineteenth century, but it should be noted that all of the early examples previously mentioned in the above relate to northern Schleswig and, except Flensburg, pertain to localities today situated in Denmark (cf. Map 2.2); and that it was precisely in the northern parts of the region that the Danish movement mobilized, and entered the post-1867 general elections on the basis of separate lists. This geographical cleavage in terms of electoral behaviour by and large remained intact up to the First World War and the transfer of northern Schleswig to Denmark in 1920.
Ethnic conflict varied in intensity across time, though, as well as depending on locality. For instance, in the ethnically mixed environment of Flensburg, the Dane Gustav Johanssen became widely appreciated also among German voters (Kretzschmer 1955: 268). Generally speaking, however, tensions in the region gained momentum from the 1880s onwards, although they culminated only during the last years before the First World War. The growth of German nationalism was a crucial factor in this process, but nationalism in Schleswig-Holstein must also be considered in relation to simmering ideas of regional autonomy. In fact, rather than ethnicity, regionalism was decisive in the overall structuring of liberal political movements and parties in the province. Furthermore, to appreciate this situation correctly, the constitutional framework must also be included in the picture.
In the same manner as in Sweden, but unlike the US or Britain, German mass politics developed prior to parliamentarism, although formal, institutional arrangents allowed for it. In fact, the formation of all-German political institutions, as well as the emergence of modern political parties, were intertwined with each other, only in a more condensed manner and, in regard to party systems formation, at an earlier date than Sweden. Similarly to Sweden, too, the new German Reichstag that was assembled in 1871 left the deputies with only limited influence concerning the executive (see below): Constitutional reform and more extensive rules for political participation thus preceded the implementation of parliamentarism proper. At the same time it would, however, be wrong to consider the formation of party organizations in Schleswig-Holstein as a mere mirror image of the Prussian and, eventually, national German party system. The spirit of 1848 and the struggle for autonomy, or, as in some cases, even the idea of outright independence, were still very much alive in the province. These features had originally provided the ideological basis for Hänel’s ‘Schleswig-Holsteinischen Landespartei’ in the 1860s, and in the years to follow they were echoed in a reluctance to merge formally with the ‘Deutsche Fortschrittspartei’ (the Progressive Party), which, in 1861, had been the first actual party to appear in the Prussian Landtag. The reason was simply that the Progressives had approved of Prussia’s annexation of Schleswig-Holstein (Schultz Hansen 2003: 465–67).
Map 3. Schleswig-Holsteins parliamentary constituencies by 1876.
The relationship with Prussia remained a critical issue at least up to the 1880s. Parallel with the emergence of a national liberal branch, as well as conservative factions in the region, the Schleswig-Holstein liberals split, mainly because of divided opinions on the status of the region: first the left wing left the party in 1868 on the grounds of a more radical federalistic agenda, based on the Swiss case, and in April 1870 the Augustenburg Particularists seceded (viz. those supporting the claims of the House of Augustenburg to Schleswig-Holstein. In effect this meant supporting the idea of turning the region into an independent state). The main body of the party, though, remained under the leadership of Albert Hänel. He sided with the ‘Fortschrittspartei’, consequently adding an ‘F’ to its name (LPSH/F), and continued to try to strike a balance between regionalism and German nationalism. Importantly, the dilemma was reflected in terms of party organization. The statutes of the Progressives had been formally accepted by the ‘Liberale Partei Schleswig-Holsteins’ in 1878, but at the same time this decision was not considered binding by the local leadership and the parties remained formally independent of each other. Also, on the basis of the collaboration of LPSH/F with the Progressives–and despite initial resistance from Eugen Richter, the leader of the Progressives in the Reichstag–Hänel managed a merger of the left-liberals with national liberal dissidents (‘Liberale Vereinigung’). From 1884 these joined together, forming the ‘Deutschfreisinnige Partei’, but the alliance broke up again in 1893. Only in 1910 were the left-liberal factions united again, this time more firmly, and under the label of the ‘Fortschrittlichen Volkspartei’ (Kiehl 1966: 111; Schultz Hansen 2003: 465–67; Ibs 2006: 144–45, 149–53).
Hence the challenges posed by regionalism were reflected in the loosely integrated organization of the party (cf. Panebianco 1988). In turn there developed strands of radical liberalism suitable for everybody and nobody. How, then, were regionalism and national identity accommodated within one and the same conceptual and ideological framework? Firstly, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, regional modes of identification found particular expression through the notion of ‘Heimat’. Established far earlier in the German language, it was only after 1815 and the gradual emergence of a new political landscape that ‘Heimat’ became inscribed with the meaning we now usually attach it to. It conceptualized a reaction to the rapid modernization of German society, and came to be used as an expression of profound attachment and deeply felt identification with one’s native locality or region (Applegate 1990; cf. Jefferies 1992). With it a whole new genre of literature, the so-called ‘Heimatkunst’, developed. Often nostalgic and slightly sentimental in outlook, it was, in Schleswig-Holstein, represented by among others Gustav Frenssen and Theodor Storm. Being at the heart of the scholarship of concerned intellectuals, such as Max Weber, or Ferdinand Tönnies, who had been born in the province as the son of a wealthy farmer in Oldenswort on the Eiderstedt peninsula, the enigma of German modernization was to remain unsolved. But from an ideological vantage point the construction of ‘Heimat’ turned out to be a useful tool with which the cultural clashes and identity issues caused by industrialization, emerging mass society, and nation-building, could be managed.29
Secondly, although Wilhelmine Germany lacked any equivalent to the myth-making, and even cult, which had been associated with the persona of Frederick II, the empire did undoubtedly strike a popular chord (Clark 2006: 587–96). Importantly, the notions of ‘Heimat’ and ‘Nation’ respectively were by no means exclusive in relation to each other within this federalistic context and its institutions. Rather, to the people in regions such as Schleswig-Holstein, ‘Heimat’ and ‘Nation’ helped reinforce each other. This alignment opened the way for cultural autonomy in a situation where, conversely, political and administrative autonomy could not be expected. At the same time it created a bond with the idea of the new Germany and its promise of splendour. Ferdinand Tönnies himself later admitted, when he recorded his youth and upbringing in 1935, that he, although cuffed by his father, had cried out: ‘I want to join in!’ at the news of the French declaration of war in 1870. At that time he was fifteen years old (quoted in Polley 1980: 203–204).30
Consequently, it would seem that the compromise between Schleswig-Holstein and Prussia/Germany, envisaged by the left-liberals, gradually became confirmed by a shift in political culture. However, a federalistic solution could still be criticized, from a particularist as well as a national liberal point of view. Hänel became one of the main targets in these attacks, since he was among the most staunch advocates of détente in the struggle between autono-mism and the central authorities in Berlin. His was, according to the Schleswiger Nachrichten during the 1884 elections, a liberalism that was too lofty and simply ‘not practical’, but also something that was alien to the particular corner of the world that was Schleswig-Holstein. Defending national liberal policies, and promoting a truly ‘German’ mode of liberalism, the newspaper criticized Hänel’s ‘foreign’ conception of the state–informed, among other things, by French stereotypes, as the newspaper saw it.31 The critique did not only strike at what was considered Hänel’s outlandish ideas (a critique which, possibly, also included a joke about the fact that Hänel had been born in Saxony and thus lacked proper roots in the soil of Schleswig-Holstein). It also hit at the heart of the dilemma of German liberalism, more specifically the difficulty of extending beyond the limits of highbrow urban, middle-class theorizing. The matter of citizenship and of the relationship between citizens and the state were at the heart of this problem.
Whereas federalism provided a favourable institutional environment for the amalgamation of regional and national identities, it did at the same time pose legal difficulties from the point of view of citizenship. As late as in 1867 and the emergence of the North German Confederation, there were no less than eight different systems for deciding a person’s status in relation to ‘Staatsangehörigkeit’ in Prussia. Also, in German the notions used were ‘Staatsbürgerschaft’ and ‘Staatsbürger’, rather than ‘Mitbürger’, as opposed to ‘citoyen’, ‘citizen’, or, in Swedish, ‘medborgare’ (Andrén 2005: 55–60). In linguistic as well as ideological terms, this meant that greater stress was placed on vertical citizen–state relations. Only to a lesser extent were the extensions of citizenship into civil society recognized, various expressions of civic and political association included. The notion of being an ‘Untertan’, a subject, was more easily reconciled with political realities than the Enlightenment legacies of modern, political individualism. The lingering suspicion towards party and partisanship therefore had a particular meaning in German political philosophy and public discourse.
Political parties were certainly established at an earlier stage compared to Sweden, but feelings were still ambiguous as regards the kind of partisanship they represented. In this respect Albert Hänel, for example, was very precise. In an address to the voters in the Kiel-Rendsburg constituency in 1883,32 he firmly declared himself an enemy of ‘factional politics’ and hoped for a merger between all the competing liberal parties (reprinted in Kiehl 1966, Appendix: 47). Although his statement primarily served as a preparation for the liberal alliance in the forthcoming1884 elections, it also reflected a traditional, liberal uneasiness when faced with dangers of factional strife. Since, following Hegel, the state was an embodiment of historical progress, by its very definition, factionalism, and division in terms of partisanship were detrimental to the public good. Put simply, the ‘reason of state’ (cf. Viroli 1992) was always superior to the interests of parties. This particularly became the case once the state and the nation had been firmly allied after 1871. As Hänel stressed a decade later, in his 1892 inaugural speech as rector of the University of Kiel, the empire–Das Kaisertum–and the ancient idea of a federalistic state did, indeed, stand as the ultimate symbol of the fatherland, and, in line with the political and philosophical rhetoric of the time, as the fulfilment of a thousand years of historical development (Hänel 1892: 16). Anti-party sentiments, therefore, had fertile soil in which to grow.
Neither was the electoral system as such favourable to the formation of parties. Certainly the election laws were democratic enough. In the legislative work in which the parliament of the North German Confederation and, a few years later, the all-German Reichstag was grounded, the right to vote had been given to all male adults from 25 years of age (Diederich 1969). Direct elections were held in single-member constituencies. An absolute majority was required. In the event that no candidate received a majority, a second ballot (‘Stichwahl’) was held. Elections were held every third year up to 1888, and every fifth year from then on, but there were irregularities. At the same time, though, the demand for an absolute majority posed a problem most notably for the socialists. In constituencies where social democrats made it as far as the second ballot, they were often met by pre-planned countermeasures, not least from the conservatives and their support organizations. On occasion, such as with the Schleswig-Holstein ‘Preussischer Landes-Kriegerverband’ in connection to the 1912 campaign, these strategies were blatantly communicated to the official authorities well in advance of the elections.33 In addition to the appearance of such organizations–formally independent but in actual fact operating under the auspices of the government–the system also opened up for unholy alliances between conservatives and liberals in order to prevent the election of social democratic deputies. Many voters would also opt for a liberal, rather than socialist candidate for purely pragmatic reasons (see, for instance, Beyer 1968). This made party alignments volatile, perhaps mostly so among the left-liberals, uneasily positioned between left and right as they were.
At the same time the system did not facilitate the formation and control of government policies through the elected parliament and its factions. In reality much of the actual power rested with the president of the parliament, i.e. the King of Prussia cum German Emperor, and with his chancellor. Although the Reichstag had legislative and budgetary powers, throughout his career Otto von Bismarck successfully manoeuvred to dismantle any attempts to implement rules of governmental responsibility. Finally, as in Sweden, the forms and possibilities of participation in local self-government were extremely limited in Prussia and its provinces due to the restrictive ‘Dreiklassenwahlrecht’.34
Alltogether, and once again analogous to the case of Sweden, the design of the electoral system was rooted in a society and a political culture with lingering parochial features, and in which local elites constantly held the upper hand. Similarly, campaigning rested on individual performance and, in the words of Thompson (2000: 292), ‘last-minute improvisation’. Yet, there were also differences. Individual performance, for one thing, implied different outcomes depending on the precise nature of the institutional setting. In contrast to Sweden, candidates running for a seat in the Reichstag were not required to be resident in their constituencies. As much as this feature had the potential to make election campaigns somewhat less localized compared to Sweden, it did however also lead to further alienation between parties and the voters, especially in rural areas. In the long run, Schultz Hansen argues, (2003: 473–74), it led to a widening of the urban–rural divide within liberalism in Schleswig-Holstein.
If we return to Duverger’s model of party systems formation, then, the intra-parliamentarian roots of German parties, including those in Schleswig-Holstein, would seem more prominent compared to the case of Sweden. And by comparison, liberal parties in the German context did undoubtedly to greater extent retain traits of so-called ‘Honoratiorenparteien’, rather than mass parties (or, perhaps, at least in the case of Schleswig-Holstein left-liberalism, a ‘professorial party’, considering the number of academics on the leadership roster).35 Yet, to make the picture complete, some important features must be added. In Sweden, early forms of middle-class civic and political association by and large belonged to the past as we approach the late nineteenth century. As a specific, small-scale form of–albeit elitist–expression of social cooperation, this kind of organization survived longer in Schleswig-Holstein. Similarly to the situation regarding Swedish popular movements, they continued to operate as proxies of political associations long after the establishing of political parties proper.
Local ‘Bürgervereine’, but also for instance workers’ associations and women’s organizations, were continuously used throughout the second half of the nineteenth century as instruments for mobilizing political opinion and the nomination of candidates. This was the case in the town of Schleswig in the 1871 elections, where the merchant Theodor Reinke, a national liberal from Altona, and his Particularist opponent, Count Baudissin, ran against each other for a seat.36 During the same period new associations modelled on the old ones also formed, such as the ‘Friedrichsberger Bürgerverein’, which was established in the Friedrichsberg district of the town in 1883. Like the pre-1848 associations, it was devoted to promoting its members in matters of local and public interest, at the same time as it served as an arena for leisure and spiritual activities; similarly to pre-1848 associations, it was also a rather small organization, initially having 102 members.37 Other situations involving proxies that operated parallel to regular party organizations pertain, for instance, to Bordesholm (1907 elections),38 and to Itzehoe, the latter traditionally a left-liberal stronghold. There the local branches of the ‘Alldeutscher Verband’, the ‘Reichsverband gegen die Sozialdemokratie’, and the ‘Evangelischer Bund’ all served as electoral platforms, also in connection with the 1907 elections.39
In addition, it was often with some irregularity that the various ‘Wählervereine’, which formed as local level extensions of the parties, advertised their ideological label. This contributed further to blurring the distinction between party and proxies. Examples include Flensburg (1898 elections), and Steinburg (1907 elections).40 Among left-liberals and national liberals alike, local branches and a nucleus of full-time appointed officials emerged, but only slowly, particularly so in the countryside, and largely by emulation of the Social Democratic Party. The administrative staff were kept to a minimum. Only by the beginning of the twentieth century did the left-liberals and the national liberals employ two party secretaries, stationed in Hamburg and in Schleswig-Holstein. ‘As elsewhere, Schleswig-Holstein left-liberals had to compensate by relying on informal structures’ (Thompson 2000: 284–92, quote at 286); and, one is tempted to add, by involving the help of organizational proxies. However, certain other traits in the regional environment also contributed to political mobilization and association in Schleswig-Holstein.
The dual roots of political individualism
Structures corresponding to those of the Swedish popular movements were lacking in Germany. The pattern of the German temperance movement is a striking example. Emerging in the north German states, which, like Scandinavia, had a strong tradition of producing and drinking spirits, it lost momentum after 1848, together with many other expressions of ‘Vormärz’ civic organization. Thirty-five years later it was succeeded by the ‘Deutscher Verein gegen den Missbrauch geistiger Getränke’ (DV, 1883). Contrary to the first wave of German temperance prior to 1848 or, as had become the case among Swedish teetotallers by the end of the century, the DV did not consider the issue of drinking connected to political reform. Rather, the efforts of the DV were directed more at collaboration with the state and the local authorities. It aimed at limiting the effects of drinking primarily by lobbying for administrative and legislative measures. In effect this meant rejecting electoral politics, and less stress was put on popular activism and voluntary association (Roberts 1984). In addition the IOGT struck root in the region in the 1880s; in fact Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg both became strongholds of this movement. However, the IOGT did not, in any event not in Schleswig-Holstein, become a mass movement or a political platform in the same sense as in Sweden (chapter 4).
Finally, neither did organized nonconformism play a crucial part in the mobilization of liberalism. The number of nonconformists (‘Freireligiöse’) in Schleswig-Holstein was modest, amounting in fact to fewer than 5,000 people among a total population of over 1.6 million in 1910 (Lorenzen-Schmidt 2003: 415). This gave a proportion equivalent of 0.3 per cent of the total population, i.e. much less in comparison to the above-mentioned figures for Värmland. The concept of political association by proxy, therefore, prevailed among German liberals, but not on the basis of the kind of far-reaching organizational structures that developed in Sweden during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Viewed in a somewhat longer perspective, however, there was undoubtedly a feature of the local environment which, similarly to the popular movements in Värmland, stimulated modern individualism and individualistic political behaviour. And as in the Swedish case, it was individualism of a kind that was not primarily rooted in the enlightenment experience, nor bore the imprint of the dualism between ‘economic’ and ‘political individualism’.
The legacy to which I am referring belonged to the realm of religious beliefs but, unlike German liberalism as a whole, it did not relate to the divide between Catholicism and Protestant anti-clericalism. (Not even as the ‘Kulturkampf ’ unfolded in the 1870s, and pushed liberalism further into the arms of Bismarck, does this division readily apply to conditions in Schleswig-Holstein. Catholics made up only a small part of the population in the region, making them, as Schmidt (1985: 188) has it, a ‘diaspora’ more than a main group for political association. Instead, it should be emphasized that the north German states and Schleswig-Holstein had traditionally been at the centre of Pietist activity. Pietist revivalism first surfaced in Saxony and Prussia, in the seventeenth centrury, and then spread further north, both to Denmark and Sweden. Flensburg, Schleswig, Tondern, and Husum early on became important centres in the 1705–30 period; as was, during the next stage, the northernmost part of the region, and in particular the so-called Herrnhut colony at Christiansfeld, outside Hadersleben (Jakubowski-Tiessen & Lehmann 1984; on Flensburg specifically, see Hejselbjerg Paulsen 1955).
In essence, not only the personal relationship between man and God was stressed by the Pietists, but–similarly to the gospel of the Enlightenment–also the ethic and moral responsibilities of the individual. However, whereas Pietism, in the case of Prussia, in part fused with the state (Clark 2006), this connection was less obvious in the case of other north German states and Schleswig-Holstein. Importantly, too, Jakubowski-Tiessen & Lehmann (1984) stress that, because of the multifaceted nature of Pietism, it played a part in promoting pluralism in society with respect to confessional matters. Neither was its influence limited to the burghers of the cities and towns. Many peasants and artisans were included, too (Jakubowski-Tiessen & Lehmann 1984: 315, 323). Importantly, the impact of Pietism was not limited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A new wave of Pietist awakening swept across the north German states in the early nineteenth century, and added an important dimension to emerging civic association, most notably, as pointed out by Roberts (1984), in connection with the formation of the early temperance movement.41
Parts of the Pietistic legacy found outlets through the Enlightenment, whereas in other instances impulses were channelled through the Lutheran Church. In the first case, a particularly emotional, or sentimental, strand of German literature was influenced by it (‘emp-findsame Aufklärung’), such as in the widespread works of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. For instance, in the 1930s Ferdinand Tönnies recorded still having a copy of Gellert’s Moralische Vorlesungen (1770) that had been handed down to him from his mother’s side of the family (Polley 1980: 194). Regarding the principles of morality and character, Gellert’s mixture of voluntarism and self-restraint were certainly not incompatible with the individual pursuit of happiness along the lines of liberalism; it was only that the final arbiter of right and wrong was neither the market, nor the community of citizens but, rather, God. Political individualism could find support in Gellert’s first rule of virtue–self-reflection aiming at insight into one’s own duties42–whereas economic individualism among men was accepted, but only insofar as it did not violate their ‘responsibility towards God and fellow men’.43
In the second case the Pietistic legacy was transmitted to the so-called ‘Innere Mission’/‘Indre Mission’. Whereas at least the German variety of this movement, formed by Johan Hinrich Wichern, bore the hallmark of conservative Protestantism, at the same time it informed the work of the second wave of the German temperance movement, viz. the DV, in the late nineteenth century. Although religious awakening often led to an initial rejection of the material world, in the long run it could also provoke precisely the opposite effect (Weitling 1992). This is illustrated by the close relationship between nonconformism and liberalism in Sweden as well as, arguably, the case of Schleswig-Holstein. Indeed, this is most clearly demonstrated by the Danish in northern Schleswig, where, according to Weitling, the ‘Indre Mission’ became a catalyst of political activism, as Danish–German relations polarized in the years shortly before the First World War. By way of conclusion, the individualizing effects of religious revival allowed for a range of seemingly contradictory perspectives when applied to civic life: ‘German, Danish, liberal, orthodox, religious, and confessional, as well as the tactics and purposes of other interests’ (Weitling 1992: 19).44
Certain features of the regional, social environment therefore seem to have made people susceptible to liberalism in nineteenth-century Schleswig-Holstein and, perhaps, particularly so within the framework of a traditionally conservative, rural environment. This feature touches upon a problem which, since the studies conducted in exile in the 1940s by Rudolf Heberle, sociologist and son-in-law of Tönnies, has been pondered by analysts of liberalism in the region (see, for instance, Heberle 1944). On the one hand, Tilton (1975) argued that the rapid shift from liberalism to totalitarianism and Nazism in the 1920s and early 1930s could in part be explained by the traditionalism and conservatism of the farmers. On the other hand, Thompson (2000: 303) proposes the same logic of explanation, but in reverse. According to him, the success of left-liberalism in Schleswig-Holstein was largely due to its appeal to ‘rural pride and independence’.
Under pressure from the social democrats among urban voters at the turn of the twentieth century, left-liberalism deliberately latched on to the socially conservative environments in the countryside, and thereby succeeded in reflecting a more deeply rooted trait of individualistic, political culture. ‘Ironically’, Thompson points out, ‘a left liberal political tradition was itself part of the social conservatism of the Schleswig-Holstein countryside’ (2000: 303). I do not dispute the fact that the farmers were conservative. In fact, the same was often the case in Sweden and Värmland. The same kind of conservative individualism and attachment to the land which, in the long run, could promote right-wing extremism was, indeed, at some point congenial to liberalism as well. Whether this strand of argument validates the ‘Sonderweg hypothesis’ with respect to Schleswig-Holstein is however a different matter.
Rural communities in transition
I will return to this issue at some length in chapter 4, but some contingencies are worth bringing up here, since they point in the direction of the problem of organization and, ultimately, election campaigning. Most importantly, the difference between Sweden and Germany was that the farmers in Schleswig-Holstein organized independently, outside the ranks of parties and the liberal movement, at an earlier stage than was the case in Värmland. By the turn of the twentieth century the farmers in Schleswig-Holstein certainly were not alien to the idea of voting for the liberals. But they preferred to organize separately, in professional and trade organizations, rather than on basis of outright parties (Schultz Hansen 2003: 473–74). We may also add Denmark to this comparison, in order to widen the perspective somewhat. In this case, contrary to both Sweden and Germany, the liberal movement was by and large defined in agrarian terms. The urban–rural cleavage, typical most notably of Swedish liberalism but also of liberalism in Schleswig-Holstein, was a less prominent feature in Denmark (cf. Thomas 1988). German civic and political association was simply ‘compartmentalised’ to a greater extent than in any of the two Scandinavian countries. With or without proxies, presumably this made mobilization and issue structuring, not to speak of societal representation and integration, a more difficult task in Schleswig-Holstein compared to Värmland. Yet, among these differences with respect to historical setting, ideological background conditions, and institutional framework, certain basic similarities in terms of liberal political association do at the same time appear, once we put the two regions side by side.
First of all, ideas on formal organization shared a common root in the ubiquitous hostility towards ‘factionalism’, and in the uncertainty with respect to the distinction between ‘civic’ and ‘political association’. In the case of Prussia/Germany the importance attached to the state added further weight to the suspicion towards mass politics, factionalism, and, ultimately, political parties and partisanship. Secondly, notwithstanding the obvious differences in terms of organizational basis, there were, indeed, similarities precisely with respect to organization. In both Sweden/Värmland and Prussia/ Schleswig-Holstein, liberalism emerged on basis of small-scale urban, middle-class forms of civic association. Whereas this pattern was, in a sense, congenial to contemporary ideas celebrating the role of individual performance, it did at the same time prove ineffective as a means of social cooperation and mass organization although, appearently, for somewhat different reasons. In part this pattern of organizational behaviour was due to the unresolved tension between ‘economic’ and ‘political individualism’ which, particularly before 1850, prevented the formation of more inclusive conceptions of citizenship.
A third common feature which adds up to an explanation of what still turned out as the relative success of liberalism, and to our understanding of liberal political association, is to be found in the regional social, economic, and cultural environment of Värmland and Schleswig-Holstein. These regions illustrate how the sources of modern individualism were not restricted to urban and middle-class environments. In the case of Värmland the popular movements of the late nineteenth century, and most notably organized nonconformism and teetotalism, played an important part in advancing such ideas. This was particularly important in the countryside, which up to then was often untouched by modern forms of civic association. Similarly, such ideas were crucial also to the Pietist movement which, in waves, provoked changes in the social and cultural environment of Schleswig-Holstein. Although perhaps ultimately conservative in outlook, this was also a kind of individualism which could be appreciated among the farmers and rural population, and arguably it served as a link to urban liberalism. As the subsequent split of the Swedish liberal movement or the tensions of liberalism in Schleswig-Holstein illustrates, this urban–rural alliance however proved impossible to sustain in the long run.