The Rise of Popular Antimodernism in Germany: The Urban Master Artisans, 1873-1896

by Shulamit Volkov

Overview

Antimodernism, a popular movement growing out of fear and hostility toward an emerging new world, became a central ideological trend in late nineteenth-century Europe. Shulamit Volkov explains its development in Germany by providing a biography of one group—the urban master artisans—whose political attitudes came to be dominated by antimodernist feelings.

As small, independently employed practitioners of traditional crafts, the master artisans possessed a special social identity. The author focuses on their character as a group, their public behavior, and the formation of their ideas and political allegiance. She contends that between 1873 and 1898—a period often called the "Great Depression"—this group underwent a crucial change in attitude reflecting a growing sense of social isolation and political homelessness. To understand the complexities of their outlook, Shulamit Volkov considers changes in their economic and social position during industrialization and the Great Depression, comparing the German experience with that of England. Her analysis of economic, social, cultural, and political history uncovers the forces that led to the emergence of popular antimodernism and helped attract part of the German populace to prefascist ideas.

Originally published in 1978.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691642420
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1695
Pages:	412
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

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The Rise of Popular Antimodernism in Germany

The Urban Master Artisans, 1873-1896

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By Shulamit Volkov

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1978 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05264-9

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CHAPTER 1

THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

Demarcating the Task

It is important to bear in mind that the economic position of the small independent master artisans in Germany was often unsatisfactory, even before the onset of industrialization. Recent historical work has shown conclusively that the celebrated prosperity of craftsmen during the late medieval period came to an end as early as the sixteenth century. Thereafter members of the guilds and other artisans, both masters and wage-earning craftsmen, experienced a continuous, though uneven decline in material well-being. A rough estimate of the real income of artisans in various regions of Germany over a long period has shown that the average income of a skilled craftsman declined by about two-thirds between the late fifteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Naturally, the figures vary from craft to craft and from one region to another. Moreover, the overall decline in income, and its various social consequences, no doubt affected master artisans and hired hands unequally, although often the available data make it impossible to distinguish between the two categories. Local studies invariably confirm the general statistical impression: segments of the master-artisan population were among the poorest elements in Germany many decades before the beginning of effective industrialization. In the first half of the nineteenth century a great number of masters were hardly better off than their impoverished wage-earning assistants, and were frequently recipients of poor relief and charity

The poverty of artisans during the pre-March years was correctly identified by contemporaries as one of the many distressing aspects of the much-discussed problem of "pauperism." Indeed, the prosperity of the craft economy was then still directly dependent on the fluctuations of agricultural prices. It was the crisis of the preindustrial, and primarily agricultural, economy that caused the impoverishment of so many master craftsmen during the first half of the nineteenth century. The large-scale unemployment, underemployment, and unprofitable employment throughout the country had little to do with the slow and as yet mostly localized changes in the industrial sector. But even at that early period the prevalent economic hardships were not entirely unrelated to the approaching industrial revolution. They clearly showed the inability of the economy to cope with at least one aspect of modern economic growth — the rapid and continuous increase of population. Within the area of the future Reich the population grew from 25 million to over 34 million between 1817 and 1845. The annual increase between 1818 and 1825 was more then 1.3 percent, a rate achieved again only in 1890. This rate of growth in turn gave rise to an increased movement of population and to a steady, though at first slow migration into the towns. Free migration, made possible by new liberal legislation, was almost invariably accompanied by new trade laws, which were experimented with in most of the German states at the time, and which provided for free entrance into the various crafts and professions. As a result, the entire urban economy underwent far-reaching structural changes, which naturally also affected the traditional crafts.

During the first half of the century, the increase in the number of handicraftsmen kept pace with, or surpassed, that of the general population. But while the number of master artisans grew by 58 percent between 1816 and 1843, the number of wage-earning handicraftsmen grew by 140 percent. The ratio between masters and men was rapidly changing, most clearly after 1830 and especially during the 1840s. The easy availability of labor was particularly advantageous to prosperous, enterprising master artisans, who were thus put in a favorable position vis-à-vis their workers and did not hesitate to exploit it. But for the majority of small and individual self-employed master artisans, the growing number of workers merely meant sharper competition under increasingly harsh economic conditions.

The 1840s were particularly bleak for the handicraftsmen. At a time of crop failures and trade crises, overcrowding in the crafts appears to have been truly catastrophic. The liberalized industrial regulations were repeatedly accused of generating and aggravating the crisis, while in fact the changing rate of population growth, the ongoing process of urbanization, and the slow development of a new market economy were probably responsible. With economic conditions improving after mid-century and with spreading industrialization, the material well-being of a growing segment of the population slowly improved. Poverty among artisans remained common, but their difficulties no longer aroused the same public concern. The "social question" in Germany acquired a new meaning. People were now increasingly preoccupied with what seemed the blatant consequences of industrialization, leaving relatively unheeded the more familiar difficulties of the traditional sector.

Friedrich Engels' treatise on The Conditions of the Working Classes in England (1844) most powerfully established the connection between industrial development and growing urban poverty. Whether he had indeed correctly assessed the causes of poverty and social deprivation in England is still a matter of scholarly dispute. In any event, the unmistakable signs of a changing economy and society in England profoundly influenced views on the social question in Germany,, even before the actual signs of industrialization were detectable there. In England, the most tangible and impressive aspect of the process of change was undoubtedly the emergence of mechanized factories. In both countries, the general public tended to see these as the fundamental cause of the entire observable spectrum of social change. The greatest public attention was focused on the evolution of a new stratum of industrial workers, employed in the new factories, and driven into scarcely habitable urban dwellings located around them. The consequent development of a powerful economic and political working-class movement captured the interest of scholars and journalists, and forced governments and bureaucracies to concern themselves with it.

Eventually, the growth of big industry came also to be blamed for the hardship of small independent artisans. Through much of the nineteenth century, economists of different schools predicted the disappearance of handicraft production under the pressure of competition from capital-intensive, rationalized, and mechanized industrial enterprises. In the last decade of the century a large-scale study conducted by the Verein für Sozialpolitik was titled "An Investigation of the Conditions of the Handicraft Trades in Germany, with Special Reference to their Competitiveness vis-à-vis Big Industry," and the debate on the fate of the master artisans was carried on in these terms well into the twentieth century.

Even in the early stages of industrialization, however, some perceptive observers, most notably Gustav Schmoller, recognized that the causes of the alleged decline of the handicrafts were not limited to, and indeed often not closely connected with, the growth of big industry. In his Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kleingewerbe, Schmoller set the groundwork for every future investigation of small industrial business in Germany, and specifically for the study of the handicraft economy under the impact of industrialization. He put forward a view of economic growth that is admirably close to that of modern economists. Demographic, institutional, and social factors, he believed, had combined to produce a new market economy and launch a new kind of general economic development. All these factors together, and not the growth of large-scale industry alone, affected the handicraft economy, exercising a profound influence upon the material, as well as the cultural, social, and psychological development of small master craftsmen as individuals and as a group. Industrialization thus conceived was the most important and the most lasting aspect of change experienced by the small masters in Germany during the nineteenth century. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine its effect upon them in some detail.

The task is greatly complicated by the dissimilar impact industrialization made on the various crafts. No two branches were equally affected. All showed one or another idiosyncrasy, and none was entirely typical or representative. Any general statement about the economy of the handicrafts in the course of industrialization is bound to be disproven by counterexamples. Moreover, industrialization started at different times in the various regions of Germany, which often made for significant variations in the nature and consequences of the process.

The inherent difficulties are further exacerbated by the quality of the available data. By the late nineteenth century the German statistical bureau was the best of its kind in Europe. The economic information compiled, however, dealt almost exclusively with the input side of production. Employment figures were meticulously collected, categorized, and subdivided, but data on the volume or value of production or on the movement of national, sectoral, or personal income remained scanty and inaccurate. Most discouraging for our purposes is the systematic merging of data for industry and handicrafts, an indication of the ambiguity and fluidity of these concepts at the time. It is also one of the reasons for the peculiar character of research in this area. Studies of the handicraft economy have traditionally been either too general or too specific to contribute to research in social history. Treatments of the matter have either taken the form of sweeping generalizations or concentrated on minute local details of limited historical relevance. The following discussion will attempt to avoid both extremes, endeavoring to analyze the impact of industrialization upon the economy of the crafts and the well-being of craftsmen, keeping the diversity of the situation in mind without denying its overall unity.

Changes in the Volume and Nature of Demand

Initially, the most powerful pressure upon the handicraft economy came from a growing and changing consumer demand. During the economic boom, which in spite of periodic setbacks lasted from 1849 to 1873, the entire German economy expanded at an accelerating rate. Perhaps the most fundamental and lasting aspect of this change was the emergence of mass consumption or what may be conceived of as the "democratization of demand."

Between 1850 and 1873 the German population grew by more than 6 million. A large segment of the population that had previously been too poor to participate in the market economy was now drawn into it. With prosperity in agriculture, rural inhabitants, still constituting two-thirds of the total population, increased their expenditures beyond the minimum required to satisfy basic human needs. The lower urban strata too, under conditions of fuller and occasionally also better employment, joined the ranks of the new consumers. Individual households reduced their own productive activities, and bread baking as well as the making of clothes, leather, and wood articles at home ceased almost entirely. Households gradually became pure consumption units, and shared more fully and more actively in the market economy.

The growing demand posed a special challenge for the small producers. Liberal politicians and social' reformers repeatedly urged the small masters to refrain from entering the new market and to continue engaging in so-called "quality production." Although there was an absolute increase in the demand for quality goods with population growth and with an improved standard of living, this was an impractical and illusionary solution. During the years of prosperity after 1850 the number of handicraftsmen grew faster than the general population. While in 1855 masters and men constituted 5.85 percent of the total population, they made up 5.95 percent of the total population in 1858 and 6.11 percent in 1861.16 All of them could not possibly make a living from quality and artistic production. Only a fraction of the 190,000 men who in 1895 worked in small carpentry shops, or of the 320,000 small shoemakers, for example, could have been gainfully employed in producing made-to-order furniture or custom-made shoes, when half the population of 52 million still lived in rural areas, the great majority subsisting on very modest incomes. In practice, for most of the handicraft trades, the expansion of the market meant an increase in the demand for cheap, low quality goods.

The craftsmen's first instinct was to fill this new demand through minimal adjustments in their workshops and the least unsettling changes in their life styles. Shoemakers, for instance, prepared cheap, standardized shoes which took the place of much of their made-to-order quality production. It was only in the late 1860s, with the introduction of a variety of new machines and the penetration of large-scale industry into this trade, that considerable structural changes had to be made. But even in the early stages of industrialization, the pressure to produce quickly and cheaply must have forced greater division of labor, and changed much of the traditional atmosphere in the small shoemaking shops in ways that are difficult to characterize and impossible to measure.

In carpentry, to take another example, masters often preferred to restrict the range of articles produced, so as to increase productivity with a minimal shuffling of roles within their shops. Thus by 1895 big-city carpenters had developed twenty-two different specializations. Their shops often produced only one item of furniture and occasionally only one model of that item. Little vocational training was needed for this type of production, and no time was spent on giving and receiving special orders, or on designing particular features of the products. While the shops seemed to operate in the traditional manner, the drastically diminished need for ingenuity and skill and the monotony of the new production process must have changed their character in many subtle ways.

To an ever growing extent restrictions on the scope of production were dictated by the market itself. The introduction of new materials, technical innovations, and new patterns of consumption severely reduced the range of handicraft activities. Thus, for example, tin plates quickly went out of fashion, and their replacement by porcelain led to a sharp contraction of the tinsmiths' market. Cartwrights and saddlers lost a substantial number of urban customers as a result of the introduction and expansion of railroads. Coopers' products ceased to be purchased for individual household use, as patterns of food consumption changed, and smaller containers, easier to handle and clean, became available.

Still, several trades prospered under the changing structure of the market. The sheer size of the demand for new buildings, particularly in the rapidly growing towns, could only have been a blessing for the various building crafts. Between 1886 and 1894 a spectacular construction boom caused many masters from related crafts to move from shop to building site. During these years cabinetmakers often shifted to building carpentry, and urban locksmiths entered the construction business. Many small building masters enlarged their enterprises to include a variety of related crafts, thus moving away from vocational specialization and substituting for it a concentration upon supervision and management. Occasionally, a master craftsman became a building entrepreneur, engaging in a variety of subcontracting schemes and profiting from land speculation and soaring housing costs. A more lasting though less spectacular advantage accrued to town butchers from the overall prosperity and expansion of the market, as meat consumption in Germany rose rapidly during the years of the Great Depression. Between 1873 and 1896 consumption of beef, veal, and pork in Germany increased from 969,000 to 2,056,000 tons, more than doubling while the population grew by only 27 percent. Since a growing segment of the population moved from rural to urban areas, a correspondingly larger number of people came to rely exclusively on the neighborhood butcher for their fresh meat supply. Electric refrigeration, which eventually changed the patterns of the international meat market, had as yet only a limited effect on the domestic retail trade. Competition from big business in the area of meat preparation and distribution was insignificant, and the entire benefit from the growth of the market was absorbed by small, independent butchers.

Only a few general statements can be ventured on the basis of these examples. Changes in demand and the democratization of consumption affected the handicraft trades in a variety of ways and cannot be labeled either an unmitigated danger, nor an undisputed blessing for the handicraft economy as a whole. They brought about a number of structural transformations in some trades and posed a new challenge to all of them. Furthermore, the consequences of the changes in demand cannot be isolated from the effects of other economic pressures the master-artisan economy had to endure, and it is to the analysis of some of these that we now turn.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. v
• Acknowledgments, pg. vii
• Bibliographical Abbreviations, pg. ix
• Introduction, pg. 1
• 1. The Impact of Industrialization, pg. 32
• 2. The Effects of the Great Depression, pg. 61
• 3. The Break between Masters and Men, pg. 95
• 4. Mittelstand and Master Artisans, pg. 123
• 5. Apathy, Fragmentation, Disorientation, pg. 147
• 6. The Desertion of Liberalism, pg. 172
• 7. Competition for the Masters' Vote, pg. 192
• 8. The Appeal of the Extremes, pg. 215
• 9. The Isolation of Interest-Group Politics, pg. 237
• 10. Political Homelessness, pg. 266
• 11. Popular Antimodernism, pg. 297
• Epilogue, pg. 326
• Bibliography, pg. 355
• Index, pg. 387