Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T15:55:31.574Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About “Modernity”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Edward Ross Dickinson
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati

Extract

In recent years the outlines of a new master narrative of modern German history have begun to emerge in a wide range of publications. This narrative draws heavily on the theoretical and historical works of Michel Foucault and Detlev J. K. Peukert, and on the earlier work of the Frankfurt School, Max Weber, and the French theorists of postmodernism. In it, rationalization and science, and specifically the extended discursive field of “biopolitics” (the whole complex of disciplines and practices addressing issues of health, reproduction, and welfare) play a key role as the marker and most important content of modernization. Increasingly, this model has a function in German historiography similar to that long virtually monopolized by the “Sonderweg thesis”: it serves as a broad theoretical or interpretive framework that can guide the construction of meaning in “smaller” studies, which are legitimated by their function in confirming or countering this broader argument.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. See particularly Frei, Norbert, “Wie modern war der Nationalsozialismus?,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (1993)Google Scholar; Könke, Günter, “‘Modernisierungsschub’ oder relative Stagnation?,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 20 (1994)Google Scholar; Mommsen, Hans, “Noch einmal: Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 21 (1995)Google Scholar; and Schildt, Axel, “NS-Regime, Modernisierung und Moderne: Anmerkungen zur Hochkonjunktur einer andauernden Diskussion,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 23 (1994).Google Scholar

2. Fritzsche, Peter, “Did Weimar Fail?Journal of Modern History 68 (1996)Google Scholar and “Nazi Modern,” Modernism/Modernity 3 (1996); Detlev Peukert, “Der ‘Traum der Vernunft,’” in idem, Max Webers Diagnose der Moderne (Göttingen, 1989), 68. See also, among many others, Schwartz, Michael, Sozialistische Eugenik: Eugenische Sozialtechnologien in Debatten und Politik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1890–1933 (Bonn, 1995), 29Google Scholar and Eisenstadt, S. N., “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129 (2000): 5.Google Scholar

3. There is a convenient summary of this diagnosis of modernity in Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca, 1991), esp. 613, 38–39.Google Scholar

4. Herbert, Ulrich, “Rassismus und rationales Kalkül,” in “Vernichtunspolitik”: Eine Debatte über den Zusammenhang von Sozialpolitik und Genozid im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, ed. Schneider, Wolfgang (Hamburg, 1991), 28.Google Scholar

5. The locus classicus is Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1 (New York, 1990).Google Scholar

6. See Gilman, Sander, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness (Ithaca, 1985)Google Scholar and Sohn, Werner and Mehrtens, Herbert, eds., Normalität und Abweichung: Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte der Normalisierungsgesellschaft (Opladen, 1999).Google Scholar For good discussions see the essays in Scheider, Vernichtungspolitik; Katz, Steven T., “Technology and Genocide,” in Katz, , Historicism, the Holocaust, and Zionism (New York, 1992)Google Scholar; and Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1989).Google Scholar

7. Planert, Ute, “Der dreifache Körper des Volkes: Sexualität, Biopolitik und die Wissenschaften vom LebenGeschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000).Google Scholar

8. For a recent review of the international literature see Dikötter, Frank, “Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics,” American Historical Review 103 (1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. For the key text see Eley, Geoff and Blackbourn, David, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar

10. Fritzsche, Peter, “Did Weimar Fail?”Google Scholar; see also Fritzsche's, Germans Into Nazis (Cambridge, MA, 1998)Google Scholar; Usborne, Cornelie, The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany: Women's Reproductive Rights and Duties (Basingstoke, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hong, Young-sun, Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State (Princeton, 1998)Google Scholar; Grossmann, Atina, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Rights, 1920–1950 (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

11. Peukert, Detlev, Inside Nazi Germany (New Haven, 1987), 248Google Scholar; Bauman, , Modernity and Ambivalence, 29Google Scholar; Eley, Geoff, “Introduction 1: Is There a History of the Kaiserreich?”, in Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870–1930Google Scholar, ed. idem (Ann Arbor, 1996), 31, 28; Rohkrämer, Thomas, “Antimodernism, Reactionary Modernity, and National Socialism: Technocratic Tendencies in Germany, 1890–1945,” Contemporary European History 8 (1999): 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. See Weingart, Peter, Kroll, Jürgen, Bayertz, Kurt, Rasse, Blut, und Gene: Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutchland (Frankfurt am Main, 1988)Google Scholar; Weingart, Peter, “The Rationalization of Sexual Behavior: The Institutionalization of Eugenic Thought in Germany,” Journal of the History of Biology 20 (1987)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Proctor, Robert, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass., 1988)Google Scholar; Schmuhl, Hans-Walter, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie: Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’ 1890–1945 (Göttingen, 1987)Google Scholar; Müller-Hill, Benno, Murderous Science (Oxford, 1988, orig. 1984)Google Scholar; Weiss, Sheila Faith, Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmeyer (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar and “The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany, 1904–1945,” in The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Britain and Russia, ed. Adams, Mark B. (New York, 1990).Google Scholar

13. See Schwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik and idem, “‘Proletarier’ und ‘Lumpen’: Sozialistische Ursprünge eugenischen Denkens,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 42 (1994); Weikart, Richard, Socialist Darwninism: Evolution in German Socialist Thought from Marx to Bernstein (San Francisco, 1999)Google Scholar; Kappeler, Manfred, Der schreckliche Traum vom vollkommenen Menschen: Rassenhygiene und Eugenik in der sozialen Arbeit (Marburg, 2000)Google Scholar; Richter, Ingrid, Katholizismus und Eugenik in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich (Paderborn, 2001)Google Scholar; Kaiser, Jochen-Christoph, Sozialer Protestantismus im 20. Jahrhundert: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Inneren Mission 1914–1945 (Munich, 1989)Google Scholar and Kaiser, and Greschat, Martin, eds., Sozialer Protestantismus und Sozialstaat: Diakonie und Wohlfahrtspflege in Deutschland 1890–1938 (Stuttgart, 1996)Google Scholar; Nowak, Kurt, “Euthanasie” und Sterilisierung im “Dritten Reich”: Die Konfrontation der evangelischen und katholischen Kirche mit dem Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses und der “Euthanasie”-Aktion (Halle, 1977)Google Scholar; Wetzell, Richard, Inventing the Criminal (Chapel Hill, 2000)Google Scholar; Becker, Peter, Verderbnis und Entartung: Eine Geschichte der Kriminologie des 19.Jahrhunderts als Diskurs und Praxis (Göttingen, 2002)Google Scholar; Simon, Jürgen, Kriminalbiologie und Zwangssterilisation (Münster, 2001)Google Scholar; Stöckel, Sigrid, Säuglingsfürsorge zwischen sozialer Hygiene und Eugenik (Berlin, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reyer, Jürgen, Alte Eugenik und Wohlfahrtspflege (Freiburg, 1991)Google Scholar; Weindling, , Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge, 1989) — and his many other publicationsGoogle Scholar; Allen, Ann Taylor, “German Radical Feminism and Eugenics, 1900–1908,” German Studies Review 11 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferdinand, Ursula, Das Malthusische Erbe: Entwicklungsstränge der Bevölkerungstheorie im 19. Jahrhundert und deren Einfluss auf die radikale Frauenbewegung in Deutschland (Münster, 1999)Google Scholar; and the literature cited in Dickinson, Edward Ross, “Reflections on Feminism and Monism in the Kaiserreich, 1900–1913,” Central European History 34 (2001).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

14. Richter, , Katholizismus, 18.Google Scholar

15. Weindling, , Health, 610Google Scholar; Schwartz, Michael, “Konfessionelle Milieus und Weimarer Eugenik,” Historische Zeitschrift 261 (1995): 403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Schwartz, Michael, “Biopolitik in der Moderne,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (1995), 346.Google Scholar

17. There is a particularly good concise discussion of the fundamental ideas of eugenics in Weingart, , “Politik und Vererbung,” in Wissenschaft auf Irrwegen: Biologismus — Rassenhygiene — Eugenik, ed. Propping, Peter and Schrott, Heinz (Bonn, 1992).Google Scholar

18. See particularly Weiss, Sheila Faith, “The Race Hygiene Movement,” esp. 911, 33–35.Google Scholar See also Kroner, Hans-Peter, “Wissenschaft und Politik: Das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik im ‘Dritten Reich,’” in Vom Vorurteil zur Vernichtung?, ed. Geldbach, Erich (Münster, 1995), 54Google Scholar; Weingart, , “The Rationalization,” 187–88Google Scholar; Weindling, , Health, 316–18.Google Scholar

19. See particularly Schwartz, , Sozialistische Eugenik, 14.Google Scholar

20. The key text here is Schwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik; see particularly the summary on 329–33, 336.

21. Ploetz, A., “Bund für Mutterschutz”, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie 2 (1905): 317Google Scholar; see also Nowacki, , Der Bund für Mutterschutz (1905–1933) (Husum, 1983), 2122.Google Scholar

22. See Dickinson, “Reflections” for references to the extensive literature on the league.

23. See Dienel, Christiane, Kinderzahl und Staatsräson: Empfängnisverhütung und Bevölkerungspolitik in Deutschland und Frankreich bis 1918 (Münster, 1995), 135.Google Scholar

24. Weindling, , Health, 147.Google Scholar The organization was even smaller for most of the 1920s (318–19). See also Weiss, , “The Race Hygiene Movement,” 25.Google Scholar

25. Nowacki, Bernd, Der Bund, 56.Google Scholar

26. Borelli, Siegfried, Vogt, Hermann-Joseph, Kreis, Michael, eds., Geschichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (Berlin, 1992), 28.Google Scholar

27. Text in Kaiser, Jochen-Christoph, Nowak, Kurt, and Schwartz, Michael, Eugenik — Sterilisation — “Euthanasie”: Politische Biologie in Deutschland, 1895–1945 (Halle, 1992), 5657.Google Scholar

28. On eugenics in the Weimar period see Reyer, Alte Eugenik; Weiss, “The Race Hygiene Movement”; and Richter, Katholizismus. My summary in this and the next paragraphs is derived largely from these works. On Bewahrung see particularly Peukert, Detlev J. K., Grenzen der Sozialdiszipliniening (Cologne, 1986)Google Scholar; Wollasch, Andreas, Der katholische Fürsorgeverein für Mädchen, Frauen und Kinder (Freiburg, 1991).Google Scholar For the debate on the criminal code see Schwartz, Michael, “‘Proletarier’ und ‘Lumpen,’” 566–67Google Scholar and Richter, , Katholizismus, 230–31.Google Scholar

29. See Schwartz, , “Konfessionelle Milieus,” 418–19Google Scholar; Weiss, , “The Race Hygiene Movement,” 36.Google Scholar

30. See Weiss, , “The Race Hygiene Movement,” 3436Google Scholar and Weingart, et al. , Rasse, 241–43.Google Scholar

31. For texts from the discussion of forcible sterilization and “euthanasia,” for example, see Kaiser, et al. , Eugenik, 7994, 95–96.Google Scholar For the history of eugenics in the 1920s see particularly Reyer, Alte Eugenik; Richter, Katholizismus; Weiss, “The Race Hygiene Movement”; Weindling, Health; and Schwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik.

32. See Weiss, , “The Race Hygiene Movement,” 26, 39Google Scholar; Richter, , Katholizismus, 201, 204, 304Google Scholar; Stöckel, , Säuglingsförsorge, 55, 65–70, 88–90, 95, 309, 370Google Scholar; Schwartz, , “Konfessionelle Milieus,” 438–39 and Sozialistische Eugenik.Google Scholar

33. Weingart, et al. , Rasse, 272–73.Google Scholar

34. Grotjahn, , Die Hygiene der menschlichen Fortpflanzung (Berlin, 1926), 54.Google Scholar

35. See particularly von Soden, Kristine, Die Sexualberatungsstellen der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1988)Google Scholar and Grossmann, , Reforming Sex, 1011, 46–77.Google Scholar

36. See Reyer, , Alte Eugenik, 102Google Scholar; Grossmann, , Reforming Sex, 73.Google Scholar

37. There were only some 25–30 courses in race hygiene and related topics offered at German universities each semester through the late 1920s, with a jump to about 35–40 in 1932. See Günther, Maria, “Die Institutionalisierung der Rassenhygiene an den deutschen Hochschulen vor 1933” (Ph.D. diss., University of Mainz, 1982), 61.Google Scholar

38. For the text of the draft legislation see Kaiser, et al. , Eugenik, 100–2.Google Scholar

39. Muckermann, Hermann, “Wesen der Eugenik und Aufgaben der Gegenwart,” Das kommende Geschlecht 5, nos. 1/2 (Berlin, 1929): 30.Google Scholar

40. See “Eugenische Tagung des preussischen Landesgesundheitsrates,” Eugenik 2 (1932): 187; Harmsen, Hans, “Evangelisch-kirchliche Stimmen zur eugenischen Forderung,” Eugenik 2 (1932): 265, 266Google Scholar; “Eugenische Entschliessung des Deutschen Ärztevereinsbundes,” Eugenik 2 (1932): 233; Schwartz, , “Konfessionelle Milieus,” 435Google Scholar; Richter, , Katholizismus, 304Google Scholar; Kaiser, et al. , Eugenik, 100, 109–10, and 185Google Scholar; and Die Eugenik im Dienste der Volkswohlfahrt (Berlin, 1932), 20–21, 55–56, 59, 72, 76, 81–83, 105.

41. See Lenz, Fritz, “Zur Frage eines Sterilisierungsgesetzes,” Eugenik 3 (1933): 7475Google Scholar; Kühl, Stefan, “The Relationship between Eugenics and the so-called ‘Euthanasia Action’ in Nazi Germany,” in Science in the Third Reich, ed. Szölösi-Janze, Margit (New York, 2001), 198.Google Scholar

42. See Weiss, , “The Race Hygiene Movement,” 41Google Scholar, Reyer, , Alte Eugenik, 96Google Scholar; Schwartz, , “Biopolitik in der Moderne,” 345Google Scholar; and Kröner, , “Wissenschaft und Politik,” esp. 5556.Google Scholar Lenz replaced Muckermann as head of the eugenic section of the KWI.

43. On Stöcker and Rosenthal see Wickert, Christi, Helene Stöcker, 1869–1943: Frauenrechtlerin, Sexualreformerin, und Pazifistin: Eine Biographie (Bonn, 1991), 190–91Google Scholar; on Schwartz, Moses Michael, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland (1895–1945),” Vierteljahrshefie für Zeitgeschichte 46 (1998): 630Google Scholar; on Rüdin, et al. , Weiss, , “The Race Hygiene Movement,” 48.Google Scholar

44. Eley, , “Introduction 1,” 28.Google Scholar

45. Schmuhl, , Rassenhygiene, 20, 129, 134, 361.Google Scholar See also Weingart, et al. , Rasse, 523Google Scholar; the authors refer to eugenics as a “Bedingungsrahmen” (“condition of possibility”) for euthanasia. Even Peukert concluded that what made Nazi eugenics different from Weimar eugenics was precisely “the fact that its critics are forced into silence.” See Peukert, Detlev J. K., “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science,” in Reevaluating the Third Reich, ed. Childers, Thomas and Kaplan, Jane (New York, 1993), 244.Google Scholar

46. Peukert, , “The Genesis,” 244, 247.Google Scholar

47. Kaiser, et al. , Eugenik, xxiv.Google Scholar For a similar judgment see Schmuhl, , Rassenhygiene, 20.Google Scholar

48. Eley, , “Introduction 1,” 25, 29.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 28.

50. Ibid., 30; Quataert, “Introduction 2: Writing the History of Women and Gender in Imperial Germany,” in Society, ed. Eley, 102; for a still clearer formulation of these ideas see Eley, , “Ordinary Germans,” esp. 17.Google Scholar

51. Fritzsche, , “Did Weimar Fail?” 648Google Scholar; “Nazi Modern,” 10. For an early statement of this view see Schmuhl, , Rassenhygiene, 14.Google Scholar

52. See Fritzsche, , “Nazi Modern,” esp. 11, 12, 15.Google Scholar

53. For the classic instance of what might be called racial characterology in the late 1920s, see Fritz Lenz's chapter of Baur, Erwin, Fischer, Eugen, and Lenz, Fritz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre (Munich, 1927), 519–83.Google Scholar

54. See for example von Ehrenfels, Christian, “Rassenproblem und Judenfrage,” in Ehrenfels, Metaphysik, ed. Fabian, Reinhard (Munich, 1990), 339Google Scholar; Grotjahn, Alfred, Geburten-Rückgang und Geburten-Regelung im Lichte der individuellen und der sozialen Hygiene (Berlin, 1921), 153Google Scholar; Meyer, Bruno, “Etwas von positiver Sexualreform,” Sexual-Probleme 4 (1908).Google Scholar

55. Schwartz, , “Konfessionelle Milieus,” 408.Google Scholar

56. Fritzsche, , “Did Weimar Fail?” 648.Google Scholar

57. Wetzell, , Inventing the Criminal, 11, 289–90.Google Scholar

58. Fritzsche, , “Did Weimar Fail?,” 649, 632.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., 647, 631,656.

60. For an example using specifically this language, see Grossmann, , Reforming Sex, 136–37.Google Scholar

61. Betts, Paul, “The New Fascination with Fascism: The Case of Nazi Modernism,” Journal of Contemporary History 37 (2002): 541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. Eley, , “Introduction 1,” 30.Google Scholar

63. Domansky, “Militarization and Reproduction in World War 1 Germany,” in Society, ed. Eley, , 462.Google Scholar

64. Quataert, , “Introduction 2,” 103.Google Scholar

65. Peukert, , “Der ‘Traum,’” 69.Google Scholar

66. Peukert, , Grenzen, 21, 307, 309, 311.Google Scholar

67. Ibid., 293, 309, 19, 67, 309, 307, 295.

68. Peukert, , “Genesis,” 236, 241.Google Scholar

69. Peukert, , Grenzen, 77.Google Scholar

70. Sachsse, and Tennstedt, , Der Wohlfahrtsstaat im Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart, 1988), 274, 275, 276, 277.Google Scholar

71. Otto, Hans-Uwe and Sünker, Heinz, “Volksgemeinschaft als Formierungsideologie des Nationalsozialismus: Zur Genesis und Geltung von ‘Volkspflege’,” both in Politische Formierung und soziale Erziehung im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Otto, Hans-Uwe and Sünker, Heinz (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), esp. 65, 68Google Scholar; see also Sünker, Heinz, “Sozialpolitik als ‘Volkspflege’ im Nationalsozialismus: Zur faschistischen Aufhebung von Wohlfahrtsstaatlichkeit,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 23 (1994).Google Scholar

72. Schnurr, Stephan, “Die nationalsozialistiche Funktionalisierung sozialer Arbeit: Zur Kontinuität und Diskontinuität der Praxis sozialer Berufe,” in Politische Formierung, ed. Otto and Sünker, 138, 139.Google Scholar See also Prinz, Michael, “Wohlfahrtsstaat, Modernisierung, und Nationalsozialismus: Thesen zu ihrem Verhältnis,” in Soziale Arbeit und Faschismus ed. Otto, Hans-Uwe and Sünker, Heinz (Frankfurt am Main, 1989).Google Scholar

73. Gräser, Marcus, Der blockierte Wohlfahrtsstaat: Unterschichtsjugend und Jugendfürsorge in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 1995), 158, 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74. Hong, , Welfare, 276.Google Scholar

75. Naumann, Friedrich, Neudeutsche Wirtschaftspolitik (Berlin, 1902), 1112.Google Scholar

76. Schlossmann, , “Über die Organisation des Vereins für Säuglingsfürsorge im Regierungsbezirk Düsseldorf,” Concordia 15 (19098): 242.Google Scholar On Schlossmann see Weindling, , Health, 200–2.Google Scholar

77. Klumker, Christian Jasper, Fürsorgewesen (Leipzig, 1918), 1518.Google Scholar

78. On Klumker see Lerner, Franz, “Klumker, Christian Jasper,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie vol. 12 (Berlin, 1986), 144–45Google Scholar; Rever, , Alte Eugenik, 7374.Google Scholar

79. Grassl, , “Die Bekämpfung der Kindersterblichkeit vom Rassenstandpunkt”, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie 7 (1910): 190Google Scholar; Schlossmann, , “Über die Organisation,” 239.Google Scholar

80. Kaup, Ignatz, “Was kosten die Minderwertigen dem Staat?,” Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie 10 (1913)Google Scholar; Lenz cited in Stöckel, , Säuglingsfürsorge, 86.Google Scholar

81. See Reichsgesetzblatt 1919, no. 152, 11 August 1919; English in Hucko, Elmar M., ed., The Democratic Tradition: Four German Constitutions (New York, 1987), 185–86 and 176.Google Scholar

82. See for example Tober, Holger J., Deutscher Liberalismus und Sozialpolitik in der Ära des Wilhelminismus (Husum, 1999), here 403Google Scholar; Holl, Karl, Trautmann, Günther, and Vorländer, Hans, eds., Sozialer Liberalismus (Göttingen, 1986)Google Scholar; Thompson, Alastair P., Left Liberals, the State, and Popular Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Palmowski, Jan, Urban Liberalism in Imperial Germany: Frankfurt am Main, 1866–1914 (Oxford, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83. Otto, Hans-Uwe and Sünker, Heinz, “Nationalsozialismus, Volksgemeinschaft und soziale Arbeit,” in Soziale Arbeit, ed. Otto and Sünker, 10.Google Scholar

84. Greg Eghigian, review of Gräser, Marcus, Der blockierte Wohlfahrtsstaat (Göttingen, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and of Weichlein, Siegfried, Sozialmilieus und politische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in Central European History 31 (1998): 461.

85. Buchanan, Tom and Conway, Martin, “The Politics of Democracy in Twentieth-Century Europe: Introduction,” European History Quarterly 32 (2002): 8, 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86. See particularly Eley, Geoff, “Cultural Socialism, the Public Sphere, and the Mass Form: Popular Culture and the Democratic Project, 1900 to 1934,” in Between Reform and Revolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990, ed. Barclay, David and Weitz, Eric (New York, 1998)Google Scholar; Eley, Geoff, “The Social Construction of Democracy in Germany, 1871–1933,” in The Social Construction of Democracy, ed. Andrews, George Reid and Chapman, Herrick (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; and Eley, Geoff, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford, 2002).Google Scholar

87. Cary, Noel, The Path to Christian Democracy: German Catholics and the Party System from Windthorst to Adenauer (Cambridge, Mass., 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88. See Eley, , Forging, 45, 186–87, 194, 197.Google Scholar

89. Sachsse, Christoph and Tennstedt, Florian, “Sicherheit und Disziplin,” in Soziale Sicherheit und soziale Disziplinierung,Google Scholar ed. idem (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), esp. 11–14.

90. For a study characterizing Stalinism as one extreme of the European welfare state, see Kotkin, Steven, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995).Google Scholar

91. Foucault, , History of Sexuality, 100–2Google Scholar; S. N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple.”

92. See for example Usborne, The Politics and Grossmann, Reforming Sex.

93. Mitchell, MB. R., European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970 (New York, 1975), 130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar By 1969 it had fallen to 2.3 percent (132).

94. See David Crew, “The Ambiguities of Modernity: Welfare and the German State from Wilhelm to Hitler”, in Society, ed. Eley; Crew, David, Germans on Welfare: From Weimar to Hitler (New York, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eghigian, Greg, Making Security Social: Disability, Insurance, and the Birth of the Social Entitlement State in Germany (Ann Arbor, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95. Examples include Horn, Margot, Before It's Too Late: The Child Guidance Movement in the United States, 1920–1945 (Philadelphia, 1989)Google Scholar; Krieken, Robert van, Children and the State: Social Control and the Formation of Australian Child Welfare (Sydney, 1992)Google Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880–1960 (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; Labrum, Bronwyn, “Family Needs and Family Desires: Discretionary State Welfare in New Zealand, 1920–1970” (Ph.D. diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 2000).Google Scholar

96. See Abel, Hedwig, “Die rechtlichen Grundlagen der körperlichen Züchtigung im Deutschen Reich und in den deutschen Ländern,” Archiv für Soziale Hygiene und Demographie 4 (1929): 358–62.Google Scholar

97. de Swaan, Abram, The Management of Normality: Critical Essays in Health and Welfare (London, 1991), esp. 156–58.Google Scholar See also Schwartz, , Sozialistische Eugenik 241Google Scholar, and the literature (Niklas Luhmann, Stefan Breuer, Norbert Elias) cited there.

98. Again, Baumans formulation is revealing: for him, “making things better than they are” means making them “more pliable, obedient, willing to serve.” Modernity and Ambivalence, 39.

99. Schwartz, Michael, “Eugenik und Bevölkerungspolitik,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 32 (1992): 434Google Scholar; Weindling, , Health, 343Google Scholar quoted in ibid., 440.

100. Detlev Peukert, “‘Rationalisierung’ zwischen utopischem Entwurf und krisenhafter Zurücknahme,” in idem, Max Webers Diagnose, 79, 81.

101. Bauman, , Modernity and Ambivalence, 8.Google Scholar For a similar view see Stepan, Nancy, “Race, Gender, Science, and Citizenship,” in Cultures of Empire, ed. Hall, Catherine (New York, 2000), esp. 68.Google Scholar

102. See for example Grossmann, , Reforming, 161Google Scholar; Schwartz, , Sozialistische Eugenik, esp. 1214Google Scholar; and the older discussions of British eugenics in Paul, Diane, “Eugenics and the Left,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed and Freeden, Michael, “Eugenics and Progressive Thought: A Study in Ideological Affinity,” Historical Journal 22 (1979).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

103. Möller, Hugo, “Massengesellschaft und Du-Vergessenheit,” Die Sammlung 9 (1954)Google Scholar, quotation 575. There is a useful collection of critical essays on Weber in Lash, Scott and Whimster, Sam, eds., Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity, (London, 1987).Google Scholar

104. Friedrich Rothe, “Gedanken zu einem Jugendhilfegesetz,” Archiv des Deutschen Caritas-Verbandes, Rep. 319.4 (Sozialdienst Katholischer Frauen), no. E II.7, fasc. 4. On earlier critiques of Nazi modernity, see Schildt, , “NS-Regime” 5.Google Scholar

105. Foucault, , History of Sexuality, 93, 147.Google Scholar

106. See for example Bergmann, Anna, Die verhütete Sexualität (Hamburg, 1992)Google Scholar; Hagemann, Karen, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik (Bonn, 1990).Google Scholar

107. Grossmann, , Reforming, 18, 44, 47, 61.Google Scholar

108. See Suval, Stanley, Electoral Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Chapel Hill, 1985)Google Scholar and Anderson, Margaret, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 2000).Google Scholar There is a good discussion of these issues in Geoff Eley, “The Social Construction.”

109. Eisenstadt, , “Multiple,” 5.Google Scholar For an even more positive assessment of “Western modernity,” see Taylor, Charles, “Modern Social Imaginaries,” Public Culture 14 (2002): esp. 92, 99, 103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

110. See Fritzsche, , “Did Weimar Fail?,” 638Google Scholar; also his Germans and Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (New York, 1990).Google Scholar

111. See de Grazia, Victoria, How Fascism Ruled Women (Berkeley, 1992), 3.Google Scholar

112. Peukert, , “Genesis,” 242, 236.Google Scholar

113. This is an issue addressed in Dickinson, Edward Ross, “The Men's Christian Morality Movement in Germany, 1880–1914: Some Reflections on Sex, Politics, and Sexual Politics,” Journal of Modern History 75 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

114. Weingart, et al. , Rasse, 287 (quotation), 363–64Google Scholar; Richter, , Katholizismus, 201Google Scholar; Weiss, , “The Race Hygiene Movement,” 26.Google Scholar

115. See Broberg, Gunnar and Roll-Hansen, Nils, eds., Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland (East Lansing, 1996).Google Scholar

116. Donzelot, Philippe, The Policing of Families (New York, 1979), 174–75, 187.Google Scholar