CHAPTER 22

The German "Miracle"

Why did Germany develop later than northwestern Europe? Why did it catch up so rapidly at the end of the nineteenth century? Why is it the leading economic power in western Europe today?

Germany uniquely straddled East and West. Its "Eastern" characteristics — Brandenburg is a model — were relative freedom for peasants in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries but refeudalization in the sixteenth and seventeenth. Its "Western" characteristics — in, say, the duchies of the Rhine and the southwest — embraced contract feudalism, political action by peasants, and the estates as bargaining agencies with princes. Saxony combined "Eastern" and "Western" traits. While for the most part "Eastern" characteristics were found in the east and "Western" in the west, nevertheless both sets permeated Germany to different degrees and in different combinations, so no strict geographical division is possible.

Weakened towns and docile guilds reflected "Easternness," while Hanseatic and Rhineland towns, trading internationally, testified to "Westernness." Easternness gained when the Hanseatic towns failed to develop institutions of banking and accountability comparable to those of northern Italy; when the princes dominated the towns and the peasantry; when wars of religion lasted a century longer than in France; and when the estates declined in the eighteenth century, making way for the "enlightened" absolutism of Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, and the princes.

Yet in other dimensions Germany was always a "Western" pluralist society. Her history is replete with compromises that belie the stereotype of Prussian curt command. In the Estates General bourgeois and nobles negotiated taxes with their dukes and princes, just as British and French did with their kings. Multiple princedoms were pluralist by definition, with negotiation and compromise as well as wars among them. The Holy Roman Emperor was sometimes a skilled diplomat (though often not), mediating quarrels among the princes and between princes and estates. Bourgeoisie and princes occasionally (but not often) sided with peasants in their revolts. The Concordat of Worms in 1122 and the religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555 were masterpieces of compromise equal to any in Europe. By refusing taxes for the princes' wars, the estates promoted peace and, incidentally, economic development.

Germany serves admirably to facilitate comparisons with both the "Easternness" and the "Westernness" of the other regions we have discussed. Easternness inhibited the power-diffusion process; Westernness promoted it.

German Openness before the Sixteenth Century

In the High Middle Ages, Easternness and Westernness vied with each other. Vertical alliances, pluralism, and leverage among power groups (Westernness) began with the dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire in the ninth century and the formation of German dynasties in the tenth. Easternness predominated during the ensuing era, and the operation of the power-diffusion process was delayed. For example, contract feudalism was weak. "In Germany . . . the dukes threatened the direct royal administration of the counts and under feudal law accepted the privileges but not the obligations of vassalage" [1] (italics mine). In defense, the monarchy allied itself with the church against the dukes: [2] In the tenth and eleventh centuries, "in return for ecclesiastical support, the crown lavished much of its wealth on and delegated the exercise of many of its prerogatives to the church," [3] hence the Holy Roman Empire.

Yet this grant of power allowed the church to challenge the monarchy, just when the latter was also threatened by dukes. To protect himself in the ensuing civil war, Henry IV (r.1056-1105) depended on dukes, princes, lesser nobility, and the towns. He even called briefly for support by the peasantry. In that vertical alliance, he was either desperate or before his time. Probably his "policy of increased reliance on and co-operation with the rising towns, and even with the peasantry, was too revolutionary for his son [who overthrew him]. Henry V (r.1105-25) determined to come to terms with the aristocracy, intending thereby to secure the backing of a united Germany for the struggle with the papacy." [4] Had he succeeded in unifying the upper classes, he would have closed one route toward vertical alliances with lower groups — hence delayed the power-diffusion process.

He did not succeed. In the investiture controversy, Henry IV had tried to depose Pope Gregory VII but was in turn excommunicated and forced to do penance at Canossa in 1077. After bitter civil war, with some dukes favoring the pope and others Henry, and even with shifting alliances, the final solution was engineered by the princes: a landmark compromise of 1122, in which powers were divided between emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II. [5] The princes gained power in the process, including the right to elect the emperor [6] — a classic case of vertical alliance and leverage. Some towns took advantage of the controversy also to form vertical alliances and exert leverage. "[T]he people of Worms formed a conjuratio in 1073 and were granted liberties by emperor Henry IV, to keep them on his side. Mainz followed suit in 1077. Other charters were granted by princes, to keep towns on their side." [7]

Despite these early exercises in leverage and compromise, over the longer haul the princes forced the emperor into policies inimical to the cities. [8] Towns and the peasantry were ultimately losers. As power became concentrated in the princes, there was no alternative authority strong enough for the peasants and bourgeosie to seek a vertical alliance. Easternness was winning.

Why did towns in Germany submit to the authority of the princes, while those in the West were gaining concessions from their lords and while in England the bourgeoisie was becoming vertically allied to one or another faction, as in the fights between Edward I and his barons? Why was the peasantry only a bit player in Germany, whereas in the West it was bargaining its way upward on the manor?

Again land abundance may be an answer. The openness of eastern land may have had two consequences: first, vast estates conducive to powerful princes and free-roaming peasantry, and second, the Drang Nach Osten [9] (drive to the east) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. [10] The lands to which Germans moved were thinly populated, by Slav peasants who were living in "oppressed serfdom without either fixed standards of dues and services or protection against arbitrary ejection, and [who] had no incentive to undertake work which could only benefit their lords." [11] These are the conditions I have described as "Eastern."

The German colonists had contract and freedom. Indeed, looking back from the twentieth century one might have predicted that this new era would enhance peasant power and promote democracy, efficient production, trade, and entrepreneurship. Instead, it led to new serfdom and the landlordism of the Junkers (eastern lords over vast territories).

In the Drang Nach Osten, the German peasants had all the opportunities that modern economists associate with development, but they were geographically removed from power elites other than those who had engineered the settlements. Although free and industrious, they gained no experience in vertical alliances or bargaining with leverage. Without the experience of bargaining, these peasants of the east were easy prey to the refeudalization of the sixteenth century. Unexposed — not inoculated — to the disease of feudalism, they succumbed massively when it hit. They were in an analogous position to Chinese peasants today, to whom "superior" powers have conceded freedom in land and market but have denied the right to negotiate for their rules. Also analogous is the position of nationals of less-developed countries upon which international agencies are imposing economic freedom for which they have not bargained.

In sum, Germany before the sixteenth century manifested some elements of the power-diffusion process, including group formation and compromise. But these were outweighed by liberal individualism, mainly in the east, in which the basis for contract feudalism was avoided. The peasants did not learn how to form alliances, bargain, or exercise leverage. By being free, they missed learning how to become free.

Beginnings of the Power-Diffusion Process: Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries

Westernness crept in about the fifteenth century, however, not with peasants, but with the estates. These included clerics, nobility, and upper-level bourgeois, who gained power by classical leverage until the seventeenth century. First, they intervened in succession disputes among princes. In exchange for ruling in favor of one or the other, they exacted privileges for themselves. Second, German princes did not have the power to collect taxes by military action, as (for example) sultans did in the Middle East. Instead, they depended on the estates to vote payment. This the estates would do only if they sensed a mutual interest, for example in defense against the Turks. Often they refused to finance military adventures whose only benefit would be to the prince. Thus they unwittingly contributed to five of the characteristics of durable economic development: vertical alliances (or ability to refuse them); negotiation and compromise; accountability for the use of resources; promotion of peace; and dispersion of power. This occurred in both west and east, but more so in the west. (The same was happening in England as Parliament learned to hold the king's wars in check.)

The concessions by princes to the estates included participation in budget preparation, foreign policy-making, and declarations of wars; regulation of princely borrowing and terms of repayment; settlement of religious disputes; determining the size of the army; trying law cases; and auditing the prince's accounts. Accountability for the use of resources as a cultural attribute was promoted in these interchanges. While the princes could incur debts without the consent of their subjects (provided they could find willing creditors), for redemption they needed taxes, which only the estates could provide. [12]

Emperor Maximilian I (r.1493-1519) was faced with some German states, such as the Swiss, that did not want to belong to the Holy Roman Empire at all. Others wanted to enhance their power relative to that of the emperor. Maximilian's Great Committee of the Reichstag was the forum where he or his advisors "could present secret or delicate information, such as an audit of the income from the Common Penny (tax) in the king's hereditary lands, information that had been demanded by the estates as a prerequisite for the release of funds from the Frankfurt treasury. [13]

Many more examples of the increasing power of the estates, relative to princes and emperor, are available in the historical literature. [14] Far from being exceptions, they reflect the generality of a changing balance of power. More historical references to vertical alliances, pluralism, and leverage during the high period of the estates appear in Appendix 22.1. References to the accountability demanded of the princes and dukes are listed in Appendix 22.2.

Interest Groups Before the Nineteenth Century

In the thirteenth century, the road toward pluralism in Germany paralleled that of the West. [15] Not only were estates forming, but also guilds. The statutes of the clothiers of Cologne in 1247, one of the earliest, hinted at a much longer prior history. [16] Unlike in the West, German guilds did not rule cities. But a sharp distinction is not possible: "Recently admitted members from the craft guilds soon became patricians themselves, eager to defend their special rank and interests." [17]

The Hanse, recognized as a single unit by England in 1281, was "a confederation of merchant guilds, though in fact not all of the member towns had such guilds. The authority of the towns remained dominant over the Kontore [permanent trade settlements of the Hanse] and the individual merchant guilds." [18]

The Hanse was not the only league of cities. In the fifteenth century, smaller estates that could not attend the Reichstag because of the expense formed "regional federations which facilitated the provision of services and prevented domination by more prominent neighbors." [19] The League of the Rhine and the Swabian League were among these. In addition, Kreise (Circles) were formed by provincial political entities. "[T]he principle of association, already operative in the corpora of the Reichstag, appeared in the Empire at large." [20]

All of the princes and representatives [at the Reichstag of 1497-98] were persons with long experience in negotiation and consultation in the context of various assemblies and corporate bodies. Political federations, alliances, coinage leagues, judicial unions, clerical assemblies, territorial assemblies, even ad hoc groupings for the arbitration of single cases: all these combinations were familiar to virtually any fifteenth-century German estate. [21]

The Reformation also gave rise to interest groups. Originally noted for preaching obedience to secular authority, nevertheless "Calvinism took root in countries in which corporate ideas were represented by politically conscious classes who were willing to fight for their way of life." [22] In the Peasants' War of 1524-26 "peasants formed regional organizations or 'groups,' such as the 'lake group' around Lake Constance (Seehaufe), and these groups formed a 'fraternal union.' A corresponding military organization was created; colonels and captains were elected. . . . The peasants built up some sort of central organization but continued to deal with the individual governmental authorities of the territories." [23]

But the Peasants' War was brutally suppressed. While the peasants did negotiate with their lords, and while their demands were for specific improvements in their condition rather than a change in the over-all system, nevertheless their interaction with "superiors" did not advance to the same degree as in northwestern Europe and Japan.

The Period of Absolutism: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

About the seventeenth century, Easternness once again prevailed. The balance of power among estates, princes, and interest groups did not persist, nor did power extend downward to the peasantry. Instead, the dukes, princes, and ultimately the king of Prussia wrested power from towns, estates, guilds, and other interest groups in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed, the estates were essentially moribund before the end of that period. The process was gradual, with reverses and different timetables among principalities. On balance, however, it seemed that the power-diffusion process was running backward.

Towns in the east were first subordinated to princes in the fifteenth century; in the sixteenth they lost in competition with Poles and Russians in the Baltic as well as with British, Flemish, and Scandinavian merchants. [24] One reason was that in their quarrels they did not receive the same support from lords and royalty, either military or economic, as had their northwestern competitors. Also, "there was a constant menace of private war or brigandage in many parts of Germany and towns suffered severely from the persistent hostility of the nobles. To the ordinary expenses of municipal administration were thus added the costs of conducting an independent foreign policy and of maintaining urban armies." [25] Wars accelerated the decline of the towns and the estates, not only by the physical destruction of resources but mainly by the panic that forced estates to vote defense money for the princes and the emperor, thus depriving themselves of bargaining power. [26]

Even in southern and western Germany, peasants had not gained the leverage enjoyed by their counterparts in France or, more so, in England. They were especially weakened by the destruction of farmland and population in the wars of the seventeenth century. [27] "The immediate effect [of the Thirty Years' War] was . . . a dramatic deterioration of agricultural practices. . . . The average herd size plummeted." [28]

Yet the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wars cannot be the leading cause of the decline of towns and estates relative to the princes, or even of the loss of bargaining power, if only because the decline had begun earlier. Furthermore, other wars have not had the same effect elsewhere. Surely the Wars of the Roses and the Hundred Years' War derailed the economic development of England and France respectively, but they did not lead to absolute monarchies (only royal attempts at them); they did not reverse the growth of urban commerce; and they did not slow the evolution of parliaments or parlements. Why should the Thirty Years' War do those things in Germany?

The East-West Divide

Historians frequently have cited the Elbe River as the line in the historic East-West divide. The Elbe marked the boundary where the Drang Nach Osten began. Nevertheless, all assert that "Western" characteristics gave way gradually to "Eastern" as one moved from the Atlantic to the Urals. Even the German frontiers, western and eastern, were fuzzy dividers.

Land tenure was the most salient feature of the divide. Princes of the west tried to prevent the consolidation of great estates under the euphemism Bauernschutz (peasant protection), whose real purpose was to tax peasants directly rather than through noble lords. [29] The nobility of the east, on the other hand, accumulated vast estates and enserfed the peasants.

A second difference lay in the more extreme subordination of towns in the east than in the west. It might be argued that proximity to western trade gave western towns an edge. The margraves of Brandenburg and other princes broke the political resistance of towns in the east, while western towns — powerful because of the Rhine trade — could resist. [30] Yet geography cannot be a major explanation of the East-West divide. In earlier centuries, Lübeck had been a thriving head city for the Hanseatic League, whose prime trading routes had extended as far east as Novgorod. The obstacle of sailing around Denmark was surmounted. The geography remained unchanged as eastern cities declined relative to western.

As a third difference, the power of princes in the west increased relative to that of the nobility while that of their eastern counterparts declined. For example, in the mid-1550s, the towns of Cleves-Mark (in the west) pressured their duke to tax the nobility, who had been traditionally exempt. [31] The same occurred in other western principalities. Carsten contrasts the Saxon nobility (Saxony is considered mainly "western" despite its central location) with northern and eastern territories in this respect. [32]

The East-West divide is much discussed in historical literature, but no explanation for it is proffered. One might be that because of the land abundance and Drang Nach Osten, easterners did not form vertical alliances leading to the institutions of negotiation, accountability, compromise, and leverage between lower (peasants and bourgeois) and upper (nobles, princes, and clerics) classes to the same degree as occurred in western Germany. Therefore, these classes did not perceive the positive-sum gains that would have been possible by greater cooperation. The eastern bourgeois did not hold the nobility and princes in check to the same extent as did their counterparts in the west.

In the west, the stronger organizations of the bourgeoisie and estates shifted political weight to the surviving princes in exchange for privileges for the middle classes. The nobility gained through its membership in the estates, but relative to the east its victory was diluted by power-sharing with princes and bourgeoisie. Thus the power-diffusion process worked more strongly in western Germany than in eastern.

With towns weaker, guilds probably did not develop so strongly in the east as in the west. I find no historical evidence of this (or of the contrary), however, other than the demise of the Hanseatic League in the seventeenth century. Historians do not usually write about what did not happen.

With such divisions, Germany was not ready to join western Europe in the eighteenth century. On the contrary, the westward creep of Brandenburg-Prussia, with its assimilation of other German states and the absolutism of Frederick the Great (r.1740-86) brought Easternness toward the west. The inefficient state control of industries that this entailed, along with agricultural serfdom, trade restrictions and tariffs among German states as well as with the outside world, and the proliferation of wars, all caused German backwardness before 1815.

Law

Like law in northwestern Europe, German law sprang first from the customary laws of tribes. In the thirteenth century it was developing along pluralist lines similar to northwestern Europe. Merchant-determined law is exemplified by the Hanseatic League, which established its own courts and its own law in the Kontore cities, by agreement with the urban governments. [33] As was the case farther west, the ruler in Germany had to abide by his own laws. [34]

But after the thirteenth century, the influence of princes and the emperor seems greater than that of independent scholars, businesspersons, and interest groups. Historical references tell more about princes interpreting customary law or disputing the emperor's jurisdiction than they do about merchants crafting their own laws in the towns. This is especially so in the east.

In the Drang Nach Osten, laws were promulgated by rulers, such as Charles IV, Casimir III, and Louis of Hungary. Royal courts were established to subject the nobility to the king. "The Statutes of Casimir the Great (1347) and the Majestas Carolina are a monument to their efforts; Stefan Duchan also promulgated a code of laws, the Dusanov Zakonik, in 1349." [35] Often these rulers brought their laws with them. "The urban law of Magdeburg was adopted by hundreds of towns not only in eastern Germany but far into Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, establishing everywhere trial by jury and the right of appeal to Magdeburg." [36]

The princes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries also wanted to codify custom. Unlike in France, however, where tribes had been melded for centuries by Frankish rule, in Germany "the different peoples, or 'stems', had their own distinctive legal codes." [37] This would seem to make for pluralism. By selecting among diverse customs, however, rulers seized the opportunity to define law in their favor, mainly by establishing Roman law.

From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the development of law was mainly a contest of jurisdiction among the estates, the princes, and the emperor's Aulic Council. The possibility of shifting cases from one jurisdiction to another provided leverage similar to that described in Chapter 6 for the West and Japan. For example, litigants who would lose in the duke's courts might take their cases to the Aulic Council. But the courts did not necessarily recognize each other's verdicts; the Aulic Council usually (but far from always) upheld the prince; and implementation often depended more on relative power or political favor than it did on law.

The differences with northwestern Europe are subtle, for rulers from that part also put their royal stamp on the law and also ruled from power or politics. However, from the melding of different sources a distinctive "French law" and "English law" did emerge apart from the royal patrons. Partly because of the demise of the estates and the weakness of towns, on the other hand, German law turned out to be mainly that of the different princes and the emperor.

This evolution did contain elements of custom, negotiation, compromise, and leverage. The verdicts often were founded on concepts of humanity, justice, and tribal custom, and the judges were usually legal scholars, albeit not independent of rulers. These benign considerations do not allay the paternalism, however, which helped sanction the absolute monarchy of the eighteenth century.

Money and Credit

The historic East-West division extends also to banking, although the boundaries are not so clear. Until the nineteenth century, the German banking system was systemically more primitive than that of the Netherlands and England. But its evolution in the south and west was similar to that of Western Europe, while farther north and east the Hanseatic League actively discouraged both banking and credit. Indeed, "there was a general distrust of credit among the Hansa." [38] A bank founded in Lübeck in 1410 was at first successful, but it closed upon the death of its founder in 1449. A new bank went bankrupt in 1472, and thereafter no further attempts were made. [39]

Yet banks were growing in the south in the same century. Just as in northern Italy, "banking firms had a marked family character. Almost all consisted of a small number of associates, who were close relatives or members of the same family clan — witness the Medici in Italy and the Welsers in Germany." [40]

Bergier argues that banking initiative shifted from Italy to southern Germany in the fifteenth century, for three reasons: (1) an agricultural surplus in southern Germany had fostered urban growth; (2) a location equidistant from Europe's great trading centers, and (3) the presence of metals. [41] These reasons are valid, but one wonders why the banking initiative did not also shift to the north and east, where each reason had its counterpart. Surplus products were also traded; heavy goods might have matched the agriculture of the south; the rivers and the Baltic provided trade arteries perhaps as useful as the central location of the south; and lumber and furs were a source of wealth analogous to the metals of the south. Yet banking did not grow in the north and the east as vigorously as it did in the west and the south.

Lacking a satisfactory answer from historians, one may speculate that the deficiencies of banking in the north and east have the same explanation as those in law and governance: that land abundance and the ability to escape negotiation, compromise, and accountability had created greater suspicions of trading and financial partners than had occurred in the south and west. This contrasting evolution was part of the differing relationships between estates and princes. In all of Germany, the monetary system was controlled not by commercial bankers but by princes and the emperor, both of whom debased coins to their own profit. [42]

The multiplicity of currencies of different Kreise and princedoms hampered trade but opened possibilities of gain for those who could manipulate. "All territories saw in their local mints a source of quick profit from cheap coin, whilst claiming that their colleagues and neighbors were even greater villains." [43] Coinage manipulation is a zero sum gain, however: as princes gained, merchants and consumers lost. Presumably the merchants of the west — with their greater influence in the estates — were better able to protect themselves from princely and imperial manipulations than were those of the east.

Why was there no common currency for the German principalities, comparable to the pound in Britain? Surely the advantages of monetary cooperation must have been seen by both princes and merchants. Probably the answer lies in the unwillingness or inability of the princes to trade their power over money for the commercial advantages increasingly available in the West. (The same reluctance faces European countries today, in the European Monetary Agreement.) Before the nineteenth century, the shift in the nature and role of power was not so far advanced in Germany as it was in the West. The creation of a national currency and central bank in the nineteenth century is explained only in the larger scope of freedom of trade and the consequent political unification.

The Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth century marked the fulfillment of all the forces we have discussed. Westernness moved to the east. Many new interest groups were formed; old ones (like guilds) disappeared. The new political-economic complex resulted from the bargaining among the new interest groups. Old-line autocrats, like Metternich, passed on.

The biggest struggle occurred between the eastern Junkers and the Western businesspeople, who sometimes had interests in common and sometimes did not. But Junkers were ultimately reconciled with the businesspeople, as were also employers with workers, and politicians with the nascent socialist and union movements. A modern banking system was assembled, mainly by copying the West, [44] in much the same way that Japan would copy Germany at the end of the century. The Western banking system succeeded because Germany (like Japan later on) was ready for it, in ways the Third World, Russia, and China are not yet ready today.

Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck breathed the next-to-the-last gasp of Easternness. His authoritarianism excluded Austria from the German union when its presence would have provided a wider trading area conducive to economic development. He preferred his own power to a socially advantageous move for all Germans. But Bismarck did have the intelligence to give way when he could not win. Compromising with the workers, quite against his own will he introduced the most advanced social welfare system in Europe of his day. He also gave way when the kaiser discharged him in 1890. The final (we hope) gasp of authoritarianism was reflected in the two World Wars.

Germany has surged as the industrial dynamo with all the elements of the power-diffusion process: negotiation, accountability, and capabilities of institution-building. With examples ("reflection") from the West, the nineteenth century became the historic time when these cultural attributes coalesced in internal free trade and unification, which in turn sparked rapid development. History has overemphasized Bismarck as leader and Prussian wars with Denmark, Austria, and France as unifier.

When the stubborn localism of the princes abated, and the intransigence of the Junkers toward free trade, land reform, and peasant liberation [45] finally gave way, the floodgates of economic liberalism and durable development were opened. The east resumed its Easternness after World War II, with the Democratic Republic, but in 1990 it returned to the West. Germans now face the immense task of absorbing the east, but the essential elements are in place.

Conclusion

Although the Easternness of early centuries diminished the power of both peasants and towns, nevertheless the shifting alliances among power groups — nobles, princes, ministeriales (who were the bureaucrats of the princes), dukes, and the church — supplied practice in pluralism and leverage in both parts of the country. Therefore intergroup negotiation did not need to be "invented" when it was extended by vertical alliances of these groups with craftspeople and peasants, weakly from the sixteenth century and strongly in the nineteenth.

Nineteenth-century progress is explained by western and southern Germany's long experience with Western characteristics; by a nudge from Napoleon that assisted the land and administrative reforms of Prussian civil servants Stein and Hardenberg; by a rise in the power of nonguild merchants, promoting the Zollverein (free trade area) and other reductions in trade barriers; and finally by Bismarck's being reluctantly pushed from his cherished absolutism (Easternness) toward compromise and negotiation (Westernness). The revolutions of 1848 and unification of 1870 were reflections of change rather than driving forces.

The two World Wars were a throwback toward Easternness: the paternalism and absolutism of earlier centuries. The Iron Curtain was no political accident but a reenactment of ten centuries of geographic division between east and west. Shorn of its eastern half, Germany fully joined the West only after World War II. In 1990, it laid claim once more to its eastern territories, but the fate of that experiment lies yet in the balance.

Notes