Artigo Revisado por pares

The end of Hamburg’s Anglophilia: Wilhelmine Hamburg attitudes viewed through school examination essays and a university lecture (1912–1914)

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 43; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0046760x.2014.941421

ISSN

1464-5130

Autores

Niko Gärtner,

Tópico(s)

Historical Education and Society

Resumo

AbstractLate nineteenth-century German–English rivalry changed attitudes in Hamburg. Previously, the once fiercely independent city and its burgeoning mercantile middle class had developed an Anglophilia that justified Hamburg being labelled a ‘London suburb’ and ‘the most British town on the Continent’. The affinity for all things English – from liberal politics to refined fashion sense – had developed on the back of close business links by seafaring merchant adventurers, Hanseatic traders and shipping magnates. Only hesitantly did the people of Hamburg join Bismarck’s Germany, but the prospect of war demanded a drastic shift towards German patriotism. Pragmatically, the Hamburg bourgeoisie complied – and severed their intellectual and emotional bond with England. This paper investigates the extent of Hamburg’s compliance by looking at essays that were produced at extreme ends of academe. The key sources are 1913 Abitur examination essays by secondary school students on the topic ‘England and Germany – two rivals’. They are assessed here alongside a 1914 public lecture from the English faculty at Hamburg’s university. The dual ambition of this study is to examine how Hamburg’s intelligentsia coped with new loyalties brought on by changing political contexts and to assess the validity of school essays and examination papers as historical sources (in so far they must be considered a niche interest). In many ways the results are sobering. While at university level Anglophilia prevailed in a strange form of nostalgia for a great Britain of peaceful gentlemen and honest workers, who should have resisted the imperial ambitions of a corrupt banking elite that provoked the war, the students’ essays almost betray Hamburg’s heritage by simply repeating the popular and one-dimensional propaganda about warmongering British imperialists attempting to suffocate Germany’s earnest ambitions for its rightful place on the world stage. On paper at least, German nationalism had thoroughly replaced Anglophilia. There are, however, indications that while teachers and students were compliant with current popular opinion, they did not expect it to last: the England-bashing essays are written in perfect English. A lot of time and effort went into the study of English, which surely would have been superfluous if Anglo-German relations were not expected to improve again soon. Seen as a whole then, students’ essays can be valuable sources – if one looks beyond their content.Keywords: school essaysHamburgFirst World WarsourcesGerman nationalism AcknowledgementsThe author is most grateful to Simon Oppermann and Katrin Schubert of the Hansa-Gymnasium Hamburg for their valuable research assistance, to Peter Cunningham of Cambridge for overall support, and to delegates at the 2013 ISCHE conference in Riga as well as attendants at the author’s seminar at the Institute of Education London for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.Notes1 ‘The most English City on the Continent’, in Helmut Böhme, Frankfurt und Hamburg - des Deutschen Reiches Silber- und Goldloch und die allerenglischste Stadt des Kontinents (Frankfurt a.M.: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1968).2 Reiner Lehberger, Collect All the English Inscriptions You Can Find in Our City: Englischunterricht an Hamburger Volksschulen 1870–1945 (Hamburg: Curio-Verlag, 1990), 9.3 Ian Buruma, Voltaire's Coconuts or Anglomania in Europe (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 15.4 Percy Ernst Schramm, Hamburg, Deutschland und die Welt – Leistungen und Grenzen Hanseatischen Bürgertums in der Zeit zwischen Napoleon I. und Bismarck (Munich: Universitätsverlag Georg D. W. Callwey, 1943), 218–19, 241.5 Peter Watson, The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 37.6 Broad research did not produce journal articles that were recent, authoritative and specific to this form of source analysis. If there are any, the author would greatly appreciate notification to the correspondence address.7 For example: Eva Bamberg, ‘Wenn ich ein Junge wär...’ Alltagstheorien über geschlechtsspezifische Berufliche Orientierungen im Historischen Vergleich (Göttingen: Hogrefe, 1996); Christine Benninghaus, Die anderen Jugendlichen – Arbeitermädchen in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1999); Andrea Jacobs, Girls and Examinations 1860–1902 (Winchester: King Alfred’s College, University of Winchester, 2003).8 With maybe the exception of the work done on unorthodox Seikatsu-Tsuzurikata elementary school essays in Japan: see Satsuki Hiraoka, ‘The Ideology and Practices of “Seikatsu-Tsuzurikata” – Education by Teaching of Expressive Writing’, Educational Studies in Japan – International Yearbook 6 (December 2011): 21–31.9 Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse, Kaat Wils, Geraldine Clarebout, Greet Draye and Lieven Verschaffel, ‘Making the Constructed Nature of History Visible: Flemish Secondary History Education Through the Lens of Written Exams’, International Review of History Education, forthcoming autumn 2014.10 John Issitt, ‘Reflections on the Study of Textbooks’, History of Education 33 (2004): 683–96; William Edward Marsden, The School Textbook: Geography, History and Social Studies (London: Woburn Press, 2001); Anon., ‘Textbooks Round the World – It Ain’t Necessarily So’, Economist, October 13, 2012, 29–32.11 Christine Benninghaus calls this the ‘dialogische Qualität’ of school essays where the young authors consider the examiner in their writing. Benninghaus, Die anderen Jugendlichen, 3212 Bamberg, ‘Wenn ich ein Junge wär…’, 86.13 Economist, ‘Textbooks Round the World’, 29.14 Gary McCulloch, ‘Publicizing the Educational Past’, in History of Education for the Twenty-First Century, ed. David Crook and Richard Aldrich (London: Institute of Education,Bedford Way Papers, 2000), 12–15.15 Andrew Francis Bell, Anglophilia – the Hamburg Bourgeoisie and the Importation of English Middle Class Culture in the Wilhelmine Era (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services – Bell & Howell, 2001).16 Ibid., 30.17 Böhme, Frankfurt und Hamburg, 245.18 Bell, Anglophilia, 52–60.19 Stuart Cooke, ‘Strong Merchants and Strict Lutherans’, in Extending a Welcome – 400 Years Anglican Church in Hamburg, ed. Diocese in Europe – The Church of England (Hamburg: Anglican Church of St Thomas Becket, 2012), 8.20 John Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War – the British and the Germans since 1890 (London: Little, Brown, 2006), 25.21 Mary Lindeman, ‘Dirty Politics or “Harmonie”? Defining Corruption in Early Modern Amsterdam and Hamburg’, Journal of Social History 45 (2012): 595.22 Thomas Biskup, ‘A University for Empire? The University of Göttingen and the Personal Union 1737–1837’, in The Hanoverian Dimension in British History 1714–1837, ed. Brendan Simms and Torsten Riotte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 128.23 Bell, Anglophilia, 37–8.24 Ibid., 42.25 Böhme, Frankfurt und Hamburg, 288.26 Schramm, Hamburg, Deutschland und die Welt, 214.27 Ibid., 453–4.28 Buruma, Voltaire’s Coconuts, 15.29 Thomas Geber, ‘“Cosmopolitan Nationalists”: German Students in Britain – British Students in Germany’, in Wilhelmine Germany & Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity, ed. Dominik Geppert and Robert Gervarth (London: German Historical Institute London/Oxford University Press, 2008), 25830 Ramsden, Don’t Mention the War, 60.31 Christoph Nuebel, ‘Bedingt Kriegsbereit. Kriegserwartungen in Europa vor 1914’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte – Beilage zur Wochenzeitung das Parlament 63, no. 12 (2013): 22–7, 23.32 Bell, Anglophilia, 525–6.33 Originally a lecture held on 2 October 1914 by Hamburg University professor Wilhelm Dibelius (1876–1931), subsequently published in ‘Deutsche Vorträge Hamburgischer Professoren’ at L. Friederichsen & Co., Hamburg (available at Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, S X/433:2EX1). All page numbers in this section refer to this source; the author of this paper is responsible for the translations of the quotes.34 Peter Hühn, ‘Die ersten Hundert Jahre: Anglistik in Hamburg seit 1911’, Universität Hamburg, http://www.uni-hamburg.de/iaa/IAA_Geschichte.html (accessed July 28, 2012).36 Essays by former students Paul Gross (PG), Kurt Lorenzen (KL), John Möller (JM), Walter Ragel (WR) and Hermann Sahs (HS). Selection is non-representative of year group, selection criterion has been the high mark awarded for the essays. Deposit: Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 362-2/8 280.37 Hans-Georg Herrlitz et al., Deutsche Schulgeschichte von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart – Eine Einführung (Weinheim: Juventa, 2005), 81.38 Bell, Anglophilia, 252.39 Friederike Klippel, Englischlernen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Die Geschichte der Lehrbücher und Unterrichtsmethoden (Münster: Nodus-Publikationen, 1994), 309.40 Lehberger, Collect All the English Inscriptions, 21–3, 40–53.41 Nuebel, Bedingt Kriegsbereit, 22.42 Jennifer Drake Akey, Good Girls, Good Germans: Girls’ Education and Emotional Nationalism in Wilhelminian Germany (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 17.43 Nuebel, Bedingt Kriegsbereit, 26.44 Claus Conrad, Krieg und Aufsatzunterricht: Eine Untersuchung von Abituraufsätzen vor und während des Ersten Weltkrieges, Vol. 856 og Europäische Hochschulschriften (Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag Peter Lang, 1986), 24.45 Gertrud Lütgemeier, Deutsche Besinnung 1911–1971: Hundert Reifeprüfungsaufsätze als Spiegel ihrer Zeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang GmbH – Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2008), 23.46 For considerations of the relationship between lesson content and examination papers see: Van Nieuwenhuyse et al., Making the Constructed Nature of History Visible, 5.47 John A. S. Grenville, The Jews and Germans of Hamburg: The Destruction of a Civilization 1790–1945 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 27.

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