Red Saxony
Election battles and the Spectre of Democracy in Germany, 1860-1918
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2020
- Category
- General
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780199668786
- Publish Date
- May 2017
- List Price
- $195.00
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780198866565
- Publish Date
- Aug 2020
- List Price
- $65.00
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Description
Red Saxony throws new light on the reciprocal relationship between political modernization and authoritarianism in Germany over the span of six decades.
Election battles were fought so fiercely in Imperial Germany because they reflected two kinds of democratization. Social democratization could not be stopped, but political democratization was opposed by many members of the German bourgeoisie. Frightened by the electoral success of the Social Democrats after 1871, anti-democrats deployed many strategies that flew in the face of electoral fairness. They battled socialists, liberals, and Jews at election time, but they also strove to rewrite the electoral rules of the game. Using a regional lens to rethink older assumptions about Germany's changing political culture, this volume focuses as much on contemporary Germans' perceptions of electoral fairness as on their experiences of voting. It devotes special attention to various semi-democratic voting systems whereby a general and equal suffrage (for the Reichstag) was combined with limited and unequal ones for local and regional parliaments. For the first time, democratization at all three tiers of governance and their reciprocal effects are considered together. Although the bourgeois face of German authoritarianism was nowhere more evident than in the Kingdom of Saxony, Red Saxony illustrates how other Germans grew to fear the spectre of democracy. Certainly twists and turns lay ahead, yet that fear made it easier for Hitler and the Nazis to win elections in the 1920s and to entomb German democracy in 1933.
About the author
James Retallack is a professor of History and German Studies at the University of Toronto. His most recent book for the University of Toronto Press was The German Right, 1860–1920.
Other titles by
German Social Democracy through British Eyes
A Documentary History, 1870-1914
Germany's Second Reich
Portraits and Pathways
Germany's Second Reich
Portraits and Pathways
The German Right, 1860–1920
Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination
Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place
German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860-1930
Imperial Germany 1871-1918
The German Right, 1860–1920
Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination
The German Right, 1860-1920
Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination