Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Burger in die Verwaltung! Burokratiekritik und Burgerbeteiligung in Baden. Zur Geschichte moderner Staatlichkeit im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts

2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/gerhis/ghr024

1477-089X

Margaret Crosby‐Arnold,

Rüdiger von Krosigk's book contributes to a growing body of scholarship that raises questions about the strength of the so-called ‘Restoration’ following 1814, and the purported retreat and/or weakness of the liberal movement in German-speaking Europe. Offering a local study of the history of administration (Verwaltungsgeschichte) in Baden, von Krosigk shows that despite repeated, short-term setbacks and ideological divisions between republican-minded and democratic-leaning participants, liberal reforms in modern governance progressed steadily over the course of the nineteenth century. While there is some concentration on the first third of the century, the main period examined is the early Vormärz through to 1884, when liberals focused their attention on sharp criticism of administrative absolutism (fürstlicher Beamtenstaat) and the attainment of legal reforms that would install local self-govermnent (Gemeindeselbstverwaltung) in its place, even if only incrementally. Von Krosigk identifies the years between 1842 and 1847 as a liberal mental horizon (Denkhorizont), characterized by both confrontation and dialogue, and a period when liberal political ideology was refined in the writings of liberal-minded thinkers. Adding to what other scholars have suggested, he finds that the liberal reform agenda was fixed before 1848, especially in various conferences held in 1847, such as the Offenburger Volksversammlung, attended by between 200 and 250 people, including Friedrich Hecker and Gustav von Struve. It was here that Hecker called for a ‘popular state administration’ (‘volkstümliche Staatsverwaltung’) and a thirteen-point programme. This was soon followed by the publication of a fourteen-point programme published by the Karlsruher Zeitung. It was following the September conference that von Struve published one of the early works of the German political science (Staatslehre) tradition, Grundzüge der Staatswissenschaft (1847). Programmatic calls for a republican constitution, with specific demand for a mixed constitution, came out of the Offenburger Volksversammlung. Krosigk argues, persuasively, that the catalogue of liberal political reforms demanded at Frankfurt in 1848 had, in fact, been developed in the Volksversammlungen held in prior years. Thus, despite the unsuccessful moment of 1848/1849, in the long term, the success of the liberal opposition programme marked a critical political ascendance of the bourgeoisie. A critical moment in this political ascendance in Baden came with the successful introduction of the administrative law (Verwaltungsgesetz) of 1863, which instituted much of the 1847 agenda and laid the critical foundation for the growth of the liberal state under the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) later in the century. Reforms at the local level in Baden ultimately shaped legal reforms after German unification in 1871, especially legislated judicial reforms in 1877 and 1879 and administrative reforms in 1882 and 1884.