Download Article: Mitteleuropa, From List to Naumann

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European Journal of Social Theory 11(2): 171–183
Copyright © 2008 Sage Publications: Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
Mitteleuropa
From List to Naumann
Bo Stråth
AC A D E M Y O F F I N L A N D , H E L S I N K I , F I N L A N D
Abstract
This article compares the Mitteleuropa visions of Friedrich List and Friedrich
Naumann, two liberal thinkers from two different centuries. Their conceptualizations demonstrate how fragile the connection is between free trade
and democracy. Friedrich List was a liberal thinker in pre-revolutionary
Germany who was very interested in the question of how to create a
political economy based on a strong nation state. List stretched the concept
of Mitteleuropa to include an area from the Baltic and the North Sea to the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the South. List was a typical liberal of
that time with a belief in the combination of free trade, democracy and
nationalism. Friedrich Naumann’s goal was to reconcile the categories of
state and economy, the Emperor and the working class, German and Slavic
populations, understood as opposites by many in the debate of his time. The
task he set himself was to reconcile these opposites and connect them to
liberal thoughts about constitution and democracy. His utmost goal was to
unify the national and the social, the Kaiser and the Volk. On this point,
Naumann failed, as we know. As we also know, other forces then took up
his search for ways to unite the national and the social.
Key words
Central Europe ■ Friedrich List ■ Mitteleuropa ■ Friedrich Naumann
■ political economy
■
The concept of Mitteleuropa is closely related to German nation-building and
identity construction. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, German
unification had been a major topic in intellectual and political debates. In those
debates, Mitteleuropa was a central as well as a contested concept. The unification
became a long process, not least because of the fact that various political groups
could not agree on what had to be included in a new second Reich after the demise
of the medieval Holy Roman Empire which ended in 1806. The debate dealt
with the conflict between Austria and Prussia, Habsburg and Hohenzollern, with
their grossdeutsche versus kleindeutsche proposals of what should be in and what
should be out. The two perhaps most prominent proposals for Mitteleuropa in
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DOI: 10.1177/1368431007087472
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the early nineteenth century came from Friedrich List with his idea of a mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftszone and Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Bruck, who advocated
the expansion of the Zollverein.
In this historical light, it is no wonder that the concept of Mitteleuropa became
topical again after German reunification in 1990. The Mitteleuropa orientation
has been a central dimension in German foreign policy from Bismarck until the
present (Brechtefeld, 1996: 2, 13). German history since Frederick the Great
has been interpreted as a continuous drive for German expansion and control of
Central Europe, where imperial aspirations were integrated in national selfunderstandings. In the debate over Germany’s future configuration, the notion
of Mitteleuropa was advanced as one possible scenario to ease the tensions between
Prussia and Austria and to provide a comprehensive solution to the German
question of gross- or kleindeutsch. What was interpreted during the First World
War as a long, continuing struggle for Mitteleuropa was little more than an
attempt to unify the German Reich.
J.G. Herder, the philosopher, and Freiherr von Stein, the great social reformer
of the beginning of the nineteenth century, had argued that there was a close
connection between Mitteleuropa and German nation-building in a worldview
that saw in Austria a natural part of a future German nation-state. The connection they had established between the German nation and Mitteleuropa underpinned the later conflict over who should dominate the German Reich in the
making, Austria or Prussia. The debate ended with the war of Prussia on Austria
in 1866 and the victory of Bismarck’s kleindeutsche solution which excluded
Habsburg from German unification.
There were, however, other dimensions to the term Mitteleuropa as more or
less synonymous with Germany than the dynastic, territorial or geopolitical ones.
The economic dimension of a German-dominated area was prominent in the
debate, the point of departure of which was the German Zollverein, the customs
union established in 1834, without Austria. The customs union was a child of
Prussia much more than of the German Confederation, the Deutscher Bund,
established as part of the Peace of Vienna in 1815. The point of departure was
the Prussian tariff system. The dominant role played by Prussia in German
economic integration is obvious. For nineteenth- century Prussian historians, the
customs union was proof of the historical and national mission of the Hohenzoller
dynasty. The history of the customs union was written as a success story initiated
by the grosse Staatsmänner in the Prussian service who founded the Zollverein and
who later developed it and mastered its crises (Hahn, 1984).1 In the economic
realm, the customs union offered the possibility of creating a German-dominated
Mitteleuropa.
Friedrich List’s ‘mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftszone’
Friedrich List was a liberal thinker in pre-revolutionary Germany who was very
interested in the question of how to create a political economy based on a strong
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nation-state. His interest in the economy made him turn his attention to the
Scottish political philosophy which developed around the work of Adam Smith.
As an ardent advocate of Smith’s principles of free market and trade, in 1819, List
founded the Union of German Merchants and Manufacturers. The goal of the
union was to establish a free-trade zone among the German states, which since
the Vienna Congress in 1815 had been joined together in the German Bund. In
a memorandum to the Austrian Emperor in 1820, List stated that it was necessary to promote a free-trade zone and continued trade relations with the Levant,
in the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire, through Austria’s Adriatic ports.
(Later, Hamburg and Trieste became the principal ports in a German customs
union when List had stretched the Mitteleuropa concept from the Baltic and the
North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the South.)
List was a typical liberal of his time, believing in the combination of free trade,
democracy and nationalism, a combination, which was not necessarily to the
taste of the ruling monarchs in the German-speaking territory. After being
accused of revolutionary activities, List emigrated to the United States, where he
was deeply impressed by the thriving American economy. As a result of this
experience, when he later returned to Europe, he critically revised his view of the
theory of Adam Smith, which earlier had served as a major source of inspiration
for him. Although Smith’s masterpiece was The Wealth of Nations, List found
Smith’s approach and economic theory, after his American sojourn, to be too
focused on the individual. Despite the title of the book – The Wealth of Nations
– the emphasis was on individuals instead of nations. The ‘popular theory’, as
List called Western political economy, ignored nations and paid attention only
to the entire human race, on the one hand, and to individuals, on the other.
Nations were different and they differed from one another because they were at
different stages of development (Szporluk, 1988: 115–16).
For List, after his American experience, it was an axiomatic belief that between
the individual and humanity there stands the nation. Every nation has its language
and literature, its history and customs and it was through the nation that the
individual obtained mental culture, productive power, security and prosperity.
List replaced liberal methodological individualism with methodological nationalism, to put it bluntly. A strong nation required a strong economy and vice versa.
The nation-state’s task was to protect the economy, and through the economy the
national interest. Nations were built through protectionism. Within the nation,
List saw a space for Smith’s free trade theory, however. Medieval customs and
other barriers of trade within the German-speaking territory had to be abolished
in the struggle for national unification.
Seen as a domestic issue, free trade would make the nation strong. Seen as an
issue of external relations, protectionism would do the same. List’s suggestion
was as follows: external protectionism and internal free trade, through a customs
union, among the German states were seen as crucial instruments to promote
the idea of a German nation-state, including Austria. In his later drafts he
extended the proposed customs union to include Central Europe. He advocated
the whole of Central Europe as a free-trade zone for the fair and free exchange
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of agricultural products, raw materials and manufactured goods among the
region’s developing nation-states. His mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftszone was an
extension of his views on the economic limitations of the nation-state, as derived
from his American experiences, combined with his republican, liberal political
convictions (Brechtefeld, 1996: 16).
In List’s conception of history, change and development were the key factors
determining the relations between states, cities, empires, and nations, some of
which were more advanced than others. It was a rule of history that one nation
should at any one time have a dominant role. He found support for such a view
in the work of Hegel. England, not Prussia, came closest to List’s ideal of a great
nation in an assessment that is reminiscent of Marx’s assessment of the bourgeoisie.
In continental Europe, liberty had traditionally been found in self-governing
and economically developed cities. Fears of losing their freedom made the cities
unwilling to submit to the rising monarchies. In England, however, the rise of the
state and the growth of the economy had not led to the elimination of liberties.
A strong nation-state went hand in hand with freedom. The English case was an
alternative model to continental Europe, that attracted the interest of List, as did
the USA.
Despite this, List also emphasized that fact that history is not pre-determined
and he did not promise the Germans anything. For him, the problem was more
complicated than just a matter of simply copying the American or the British
models.
Even if nothing was pre-determined, there was an inner principle at work in
List’s history, a driving force that provoked change. This driving force was the
interaction between cities, states, nations and empires. Collective actors interacted with each other at a horizontal level in space, and at a diachronic level in
time, by learning from history. As opposed to Marx’s hierarchical perspective,
List told a horizontal history about the diffusion of knowledge from one city to
another, from states to other states where one nation learnt from another while
striving for power. On this point, List’s thought links up with Herder’s argument
that German progress was due to its learning from other peoples (Szporluk,
1988: 124).
However, List also introduced a hierarchical dimension into his theory. In the
relations between the nations of the temperate zone, including Europe and North
America, and those of what he called the ‘torrid zone’ of the globe, the idea of
the equality of nations was lacking. He thought that an international division of
labour, like the division of labour within a nation, was basically determined by
climate and by nature itself. The most favoured nations were those in the temperate zone where manufacturing power particularly prospered and where the
nations attained the highest level of mental and social development of political
power, which allowed the tropical countries and inferior civilizations to be tributaries (Szporluk, 1988: 126).
In this scenario for North–South relations, the North would produce and
export manufacturing goods, and the South would forever remain the producer
and exporter of agricultural products and the importer of industrial goods. List
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did not attribute this unequal relationship to any alleged inferiority, for example,
racial, of the peoples of the ‘torrid zone’. He argued that the decisive factor
resided in the climate. List demanded that England stop trying to exclude the
large nations of Europe from joining in the growing trade between the North
and the South. Before these nations could do so, they had to develop their own
industry, merchant marine and naval power, however. If England were then to
oppose them, they would have to unite to bring that nation to reason. List was
ambiguous as to the question of how second-ranking nations like France, Russia
or the United States should influence England to reduce its unreasonable pretensions. At times he seems to favour a confederation or a federal union of major
European nations, albeit one with an outstanding role for Germany. At other
times he thought that Germany should secure for itself a place in the world
through its own efforts. At all times he was firm in his conviction that England
must be challenged in order to allow every ‘manufacturing nation . . . to establish direct intercourse with tropical countries’ so no nation would be permitted
to monopolize colonial possessions in tropical countries (Szporluk, 1988: 126).
Friedrich List’s idea of a mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftszone was embedded in a
comprehensive global framework of power relations.
List was aware of the obstacles to a European alliance but failed to clarify why
the other major nations of Europe should support German national ambitions.
He simply thought that those nations shared a common interest with Germany
in ‘the Eastern question’ and that a united Europe might take the whole of Asia
under its care and tutelage. His conception of the dissolution of Asian nationalities under the impact of Europe bears a clear resemblance to Marx’s view on the
impact of British rule on India and his concept of a particular Asian, as opposed
to Western, mode of production. The Asian ambitions of the European nations,
according to List, made necessary a conflict with England and at the same time,
inasmuch as those ambitions required the freedom of the seas for their realization, they established a common interest between Europe and the United States.
The earlier attempts to unify Europe, such as Napoleon’s continental system, had
brought about not only French continental supremacy but also the humiliation
and destruction of the other nations of Europe. A real continental system would,
according to List, have to be built on the equality of all nations, meaning that
Britain might reconsider its hostility towards Europe and join it in a European
coalition against American supremacy (Szporluk, 1988: 127). The global position
of Central Europe constituted a variable geometry in List’s reasoning: coalition
with or against Britain, with or against USA, the pattern changed with the circumstances and with List’s viewpoint being in a state of flux.
However, when he talked about a European coalition of nation-states, by
nation, he referred to the Great Powers. His conception of Germany included
Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland, even though they were
nations in their own right, since they were small and had no right to exist. On
the other hand, his German-European project should not be understood exclusively through the retrospective perspective imposed upon us by the experiences
of Nazism. List’s German Gross-Deutschland was conceived as a liberal and
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constitutional state. His idea of a Greater Germany had, moreover, been a radical
idea before 1848 formulated among others by Friedrich Engels, who in this
respect came close to the views of List:
Perhaps in opposition to many whose point of view I share in general, I am still of
the opinion that the re-conquest of the German-speaking left side of the Rhine is an
affair of national honour: that the Germanisation of Holland and Belgium, which
have been wrenched away, is a political necessity for us. Shall we continue to let the
German nationality be oppressed in those countries while in the East the Slavs are
emerging ever stronger? . . . Without doubt it will come to another war between us
and France, and we will then see who deserves to have the left bank of the Rhine.
(Friedrich Engels, quoted in Szporluk, 1988: 129)
List combined beliefs in liberal democracy, based on a constitution, and a strong
economy, based on state power and nationalism. The semantic field in the years
around 1848 – constituted by concepts like democracy, liberalism, socialism,
nationalism, progress, and so on – offered endless possible combinations where
various concepts of different provenance were mixed up in the one discourse of
liberty and progress. The positions and the viewpoints shifted constantly in this
discursive field. The revolution of 1848 meant a kind of condensation of the
liberal, socialist, and national languages into one imagined future of equality and
liberty. However, it was not difficult to feel the implicit hierarchy in the equality
language used in the St Paul’s Church of Frankfurt where the Slavs after all were
seen as inferior to the Germans. In a Mitteleuropa led by a unified Germany, the
‘1848ers’ saw a bulwark between Slavs and Romance peoples, a bulwark that
would play a world-historical role. Austria’s Germans would thereby provide a
bridge between the German core territories and the South-east European
peoples. Few of the revolutionaries realized that a federal grossdeutsche new order
with Austria as an equal member would imply the dissolution of the Donau
monarchy, or at least its reduction to the status of secondary power. At the same
time as they dreamt of European bridges, they ignored the explosive force of the
question of nationality. Notwithstanding the liberal enthusiasm for the fate of
Poland, most adherents of the left considered the Slavs as being more or less
subordinate to the German majority (Mommsen, 1995: 6–7). The contempt for
the Slav in comparison to the German was clear in the thoughts of Friedrich List,
but in this respect he was far from unique among thinkers who took progress as
their motto and credo. Having said this, it should also be emphasized, however,
that List’s perception was not built on race and ethnicity. He imagined another
Germany than Fichte, for instance, based on a national economy and political
democracy rather than the Volk in an ethnic sense.
In 1846, shortly before his suicide, List proposed the formation of an AngloGerman alliance which would have a dual purpose. Britain would help protect
Germany from Russian or French aggression, while Germany would protect the
flank of Britain’s routes to India when the Empire had been extended to Egypt
and the Near East. Russia coveted Constantinople and might champion the cause
of the Slavs in the Balkans, while the French fleet might threaten British interests
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in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Eastern section of the Ostend–Bombay railway,
which was another of List’s projects, would be operated by German, Austrian and
Hungarian officials. The precondition for balance in the pact with Britain was
that Germany would dominate the Balkans and Central Europe. How this was
to be achieved was the main preoccupation of List for many years. He believed
that when the corrupt rule of the Turks in the Balkans collapsed, as it was bound
to, the Habsburg Empire would step in and fill the vacuum with the introduction
of an efficient administration. Future economic power over the region would
necessitate close cooperation between Germany, Austria and Hungary. Since
Germany lacked a strong central political authority, List suggested that close cooperation between the Zollverein and the Habsburg dominions should be established as first steps towards eventual political cooperation. The Habsburgs, as
custodians of the traditions of the Holy Roman Empire, he regarded as the
natural leaders of the German states (Henderson, 1983: 104–5).
The weakness of this argumentation for a strong Mitteleuropa in Europe, and
the role given to the Balkans, was its failure to recognize that the so-called Eastern
or Balkan Question about the future of the Ottoman Empire affected the
European balance of power and was a matter in which all the Great Powers were
interested. It was naïve of List to think that the Austrians could simply seize the
Balkans when the Ottoman Empire fell. The Russians, the French and the British
were all keenly observing the developments and the Crimean War 1853–1856
was a clash between these three powers.
List proposed that close economic collaboration between the Zollverein, Austria
and Hungary might be achieved in stages. First, the German customs union should
be extended to include the free cities of Hanover, Hamburg and Bremen, while at
the same time the customs frontier between Austria and Hungary should be abolished. In the next step these two large customs areas should be united to secure
freedom of internal trade throughout central Europe. Then, since Hungary was
the key to Turkey and the whole of the Levant, the German element in Hungary,
and later in the Balkans, would have to be strengthened though the promoting
of migration by farmers, peasants and craftsmen from south-western Germany
to the lower Danube, a region which would one day have to be incorporated in
an enlarged Austro-German customs union. The lower Danube area was understood as stretching from Pressburg (Bratislava) to the mouth of the river in the
Black Sea. The role of Hungary as an immensely valuable market for Austria’s
manufacturing industry would be reinforced through migration. List thought
that Hungary could absorb 500,000 immigrants every year. The peasants in
South-Western Germany faced an economic crisis in the 1840s as in so many
other European regions. Many Germans had emigrated in the 1840s to the United
States. A problem for List was the fact that the emigrants to America faced great
hardship, then lost their national identities and became Americans. A similar
view had in the early 1840s been formulated by Helmut von Moltke who had
been the military adviser of the Sultan in the late 1830s and suggested German
settlements not only in the Balkans but in Palestine as well (Henderson, 1983:
105–6). One should note here that it was a matter of economic consideration
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with the aim of securing markets and providing an outlet for a perceived surplus
of labour, rather than ethnical and racial arguments, that motivated German
expansion towards the South-east.
List advocated his plans not only in the press. He developed contacts at the
highest political level to secure support for his suggestions for the agrarian and
industrial expansion of Hungary and for the future Austro-German domination
of the Balkans. He explained his ideas to Metternich, for example (Henderson,
1983: 110–11). In those political entretiens to promote his ideas he was the
predecessor of later entrepreneurs for European economic cooperation such as
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi and Jean Monnet.
Mitteleuropa after List
After List’s death, his plans for a central European customs union as the spearhead
for German and Austrian expansion in the Balkans and the Near East were revised
from time to time. Ludwig Karl Bruck, the Austrian Minister of Commerce, advocated the establishment of such a union in 1849 but subsequent negotiations
failed owing to Prussia’s opposition. Thirty years later similar proposals were put
forward by the Magyar politician Guido von Baussnern and by the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari. In the 1890s, the Pan-German League proposed the
Berlin–Baghdad railway as a symbol of Germany’s policy of peaceful penetration
in the Ottoman Empire.
Once the Deutsche Bund had been re-established in 1851 during the attempt
to stabilize the situation after the revolution of 1848, Bismarck became Prussia’s
envoy to the Frankfurt Assembly. His primary goal was to give ‘Prussia its own
voice in the European concert of nations’, independent of the Confederation
and, in particular, of Austria. Both restrained Prussia in Bismarck’s view. His goal
was not a confederation of states but a German nation-state under Prussian
hegemony. Bismarck’s Europe was a ‘Europe of the Fatherlands’. Therefore, as
early as 1858, Bismarck warned Wilhelm I of the dangers resulting from Prussia’s
close alliance with Austria. Bismarck’s European politics was perceived in terms
of Prussia’s expansion in Central Europe not with, but against, the Habsburgs.
He often referred to Frederick the Great whose expansion into Posnania and
Silesia was directed eastward into the heart of Central Europe. He considered the
German Confederation as a timid and weak construct that offered Prussia little
scope for manoeuvre in matters of European politics. The ability of the Deutsche
Bund to respond to external aggression depended on the Prussian and Austrian
armies. Bismarck’s problem was that Austria which dominated the Confederation
did not accept Prussia as primus inter pares. Prussia had, according to Bismarck,
become a vassal to the Confederation. He categorically rejected the idea that the
German Confederation could or should perform an Ordnungsfunktion as regulator of the power balance in Europe, as its role had first been envisaged by the
founders in Vienna in 1815. The Deutsche Bund as a surrogate for the Holy
Roman Empire under Habsburg leadership was unacceptable to Bismarck. His
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goal was political independence for Prussia and then German unification under
Prussia (Brechtefeld, 1996: 26–7).
Bismarck’s policy represented a crucial shift towards Realpolitik in the wake of
the 1848 Revolution. The national and Central European question was no longer
discussed in terms of reviving the good old days of the Holy Roman Empire, but
rather in terms of power politics, defined in military, economic and geopolitical
terms. On this point there was a clear continuity with the thoughts of Friedrich
List. Bismarck’s contemporary, August Rochau, described the new scenario in his
Grundsätze der Realpolitik in 1853. He discerned the new principles of foreign
politics in their demarcation from the romantic conservatism prominent among
leading Catholic politicians, but also in their dissociation from arguments for
military autocracy. In Rochau’s view, Bismarck’s Realpolitik had to be seen against
the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution and the emerging insight that the old
conservatism was doomed, incapable as it was to translate rapid social and economic changes into new political institutions. Bismarck was caught between the
demands of his conservative clientele of landowners and the new economic liberalism and libertarianism of the urban middle classes. In domestic politics as well,
Bismarck’s instrument was Realpolitik. He realized that Prussia could not fight a
long-lasting constitutional struggle with the liberals. His economic policy was a
tool to achieve the ultimate goal of Prussian dominance over the Bund. Free trade
and customs liberation from the South German states in the Confederation, in
particular Austria, as called for by Prussian Minister of Commerce, Rudolf von
Delbrück, were the preconditions of the expansion of Prussian diplomacy and
politics. Jörg Brechtefeld cites Werner Conze: ‘Bismarck did not have a rigid aim.
The guideline for his actions was, always, and above all, the interests of the
Prussian monarchy’ (1996: 27).
Bismarck considered Prussia’s destiny to be a Kulturmacht in Central Europe,
economically as well as culturally. His motto in this respect was that whoever is
the master of Bohemia is the master of Europe. Upon this motto he built his image
of Prussia’s destiny and his perception of a European balance of power. Mitteleuropa was Prussia’s sphere of interest and the instrument in Bismarck’s politics
for leading Prussia out of its ‘state of inactivity’, and for the creation, in the spirit
of Frederick the Great, of a German nation-state in the heart of Europe. In 1848,
all of the politically influential forces assembled in St Paul’s Cathedral strove to
unite Mitteleuropa in one way or another, with the reconciliation of Prussia and
Austria and have it stretch from the North Sea and the Baltic to the Adriatic and
the Black Sea under German hegemony. Friedrich List also had this dream before
the revolution. At the end of the 1850s, Bismarck transformed that goal into
German unification under Prussian opposition to Austria (Brechtefeld, 1996: 28).
However, Bismarck met with resistance. One of the most prominent advocates
of a confederate Central Europe was Constantin Frantz, a Prussian historian and
constitutional lawyer. He opposed Bismarck’s nationalist Realpolitik and tried to
build an alternative approach to the visions of the 1848ers in Frankfurt. His goal
was a Central European federation. The point of departure for the alternative
view of Frantz was the prediction of a bipolar global order between the United
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States of America and Russia where only a federally organized Central Europe
would be able to withstand the pressures of the two Great Powers. Federal principles were the only conceivable form of government for a unified Germany also,
whether under Prussian leadership or not, since German cultural diversity would
never permit a centralized state nor survive within it. Frantz suggested that Europe
be divided into three federations cooperating closely in a Central European peace
union: Prussia with Russia, Poland and the Baltic provinces; the Habsburg
Empire with the Balkans; and the remaining German states. Eventually the Low
Countries, Denmark and Switzerland were to join in. Frantz’s argument for a
German-led Mitteleuropa was derived from his analysis of Germany’s delicate
geographical and political position in Europe after 1848. In contrast to Bismarck,
who wanted to solve the ‘German question’ by creating a more or less homogeneous nation-state embedded in an international order of treaties, Frantz opted
for a more globally-oriented approach suggesting the establishment of a strong
Central European confederation that would unite the disparate and heterogeneous
Central European states under the one umbrella. He justified his concept historically and ideologically through references to the Holy Roman Empire of the
German nation, which he considered more suitable for unifying the various ethnic
and cultural groups than a modern nation-state (Brechtefeld, 1996: 29–30). On
this point Frantz’s ideas foreshadowed the recent critique of the nation-state. He
also built a bridge to the past, however. The continuity with the thoughts of List
is obvious in crucial respects.
In contrast to Frantz, Bismarck had no clear Mitteleuropa concept. Disregarding Europe as a cultural or political phenomenon, Bismarck’s primary goal was
to secure the position of the German nation-state in the fragile European balance
of power. He refused to think in terms of Europe as a united power in some
form of federation. He conducted politics as a German, not as a European. Mitteleuropa was seen only as an instrument of German security.
Following Bismarck’s dismissal, things changed in this respect. Bismarck’s
limited Central European ambitions changed into a colonial and imperial vision
of Mitteleuropa. Self-restraint was replaced by more aggressive politics. Advocates of Mitteleuropa who favoured economic integration joined forces with the
proponents of German political hegemony in the region. These proponents
argued that France and Great Britain had hampered Germany’s development
following the wars of liberation against Napoleon and the Revolution of 1848.
In order to compensate for these set-backs and in order to push colonial imperialism further and harder, the view emerged that Germany needed to form a larger
territorial unit in Europe, in conformity with the dictates of economic geography.
In other words, Mitteleuropa was conceived as the base for Germany’s aspirations
overseas. In its existing form Germany could not withstand pressures from the
two Flankenmächte, Russia and France. A strong Mitteleuropa under German
hegemony was perceived as a precondition for overseas colonial expansion.
Although German overseas expansion created tensions with France and Britain,
and the continental expansion created tension with Russia, both forms of expansion were seen as mutually constitutive of German security. The economic elites
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in organized capital intertwined continental Mitteleuropa politics with colonial
overseas politics. The argument of German superiority in the Mitteleuropa debate
entangled economic programmes with increasing cultural and/or racial views.
The most prominent and influential Mitteleuropa advocate during this period
after Bismarck was Paul de Lagarde, a specialist in Oriental studies, a philosopher
by profession, and an ultra-conservative by conviction, whose views were diametrically opposed to those of Constantin Frantz. Lagarde developed a scheme
for Central Europe as a grossdeutsches Reich, incorporating Austria-Hungary and
Germany. He combined his strong nationalism with virulent anti-Semitism. His
whole tone and vocabulary were precursors of the language used by the Nazis
(Brechtefeld, 1996: 32–3).
Friedrich Naumann’s Mitteleuropa
In 1915, during the First World War, Friedrich Naumann published his book
Mitteleuropa, which became a bestseller and was translated into French and
English during the war. Even today it still remains the most cited book in the
discussion on the subject. His political thoughts were a typical product of war
times, full of inner tensions and contradictions in the search for mediation
between opposites. At first glance, Naumann’s work seems to be yet another
imperialist publication typical of the time, full of war propaganda, but on closer
reading his ideas and suggestions run rather in an opposite direction. On the
surface, Naumann argues for a Central European union in order to secure
resources. But his arguments reach beyond the immediate needs of the war. He
states that after the war the world would be divided into two economic superregions, an Anglo-American and a Russo-Asiatic one. The subsequent development of Mitteleuropa was for Naumann the next logical step on the path towards
larger economic entities, something Germany had been pursuing since the
Zollverein and the subsequent creation of the Reich. His views on economic
cooperation were oriented towards a customs union between the two German
Empires plus Romania. In sharp contrast to the adherents of an imperialist
Mitteleuropa, Naumann, with his Christian-socialist-liberal thought, did not
suggest large-scale annexations or the evacuation of ethnic groups. Rather, he
supported a confederate system in which all nationalities would be independent
and protected (Brechtefeld, 1996: 45). There was in the connection of economy
to nation, understood in its grossdeutsche version, a clear continuity with Friedrich
List’s conceptions.
In Naumann’s view, the German nation would naturally dominate the confederation culturally and economically. Nevertheless he was far from advocating
Germanization of the region. On this point he disagreed with List. He was aware
of the nationality problem in Central Europe. He wanted to visualize Mitteleuropa not only for the Germans in Austria but for all the different peoples of
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and to develop a friendlier understanding
among the Reich-Germans of the Magyars and the West Slavs. Furthermore, he
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perceived Mitteleuropa as a tool that could be used to improve the Empire’s
domestic situation. Since the 1890s, Naumann had concentrated his intellectual
and political activity on the Empire’s social problem and the tensions between
democracy and dynasty, the working class and the Kaiser. Naumann’s idea was
that as a leading power in central Europe, Germany could overcome those tensions
and unite the German people behind the Kaiser and the goal of a German
Mitteleuropa (Brechtefeld, 1996: 46).
Naumann, influenced by Max Weber, assessed the huge problems German
politics were facing, realistically and concretely. He realized that it was crucial to
gain the confidence of the other nations in Central Europe and that this would
only happen through the transition to sincere liberal policies. He committed
himself to genuine reconciliation with the Poles and to a real and not only formal
autonomy for Poland after the war. His maxim was that Mitteleuropa should not
intervene in the nationality and confessional questions and that Mitteleuropa was
inconceivable without its diversity of nationalities and religions. The small states
had no chance in the world of the twentieth century. This meant that they were
dependent on the big states which implied a special responsibility. The precondition of a world order with the Germans as the strongest population in Mitteleuropa was the abstention from any idea of Germanizing the smaller peoples. A
sine qua non step was the liberal and generous solution to the Polish question.
Despite their positive and widespread public reception, Naumann’s suggestions
had little effect on the official German political position. However, his concept
reached a broad public and sparked interest among intellectuals.
Like Friedrich List, Friedrich Naumann was in many respects typical of his
period. It is clear that the social question had a much more prominent place in
the debate in Naumann’s time than it had had during List’s time. With the social
question, the conceptualization of democracy changed. In the 1910s, democracy
involved the masses much more than in the 1830s. The earlier intellectual focus
of the concept of democracy had broadened. What List and Naumann had in
common was the belief in a strong economy through free trade and protection
as the basis for integrative nation-states. It was not individuals but nations that
were the promoters of social dynamics. List was seeking a strong German national
economy through power and control over Central Europe, where the institutionalization of democracy was not defined as the major problem. For Naumann, the
question of democracy was one of reconciling the Emperor and the people, in
order to disarm the explosive social question, and for him the question of German
control of Central Europe was one of reconciliation with the Slavic peoples.
State and economy, the Emperor and the working class, German and Slavic
populations, Naumann’s goal was to reconcile all these categories, understood as
opposites by many in the contemporary debate. The task he set himself was to
reconcile them and connect them to liberal notions of constitution and democracy. The utmost goal was to unify the national and the social, the Kaiser and
the Volk.
As we know, Naumann failed on this point. As we also know, his search for
unity between the national and the social was taken up by other forces. In the
new crisis framework of the 1930s, Mitteleuropa became a central tool in new
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Stråth Mitteleuropa: From List to Naumann
imaginary representations of national unity. The concept was now connected to
racial and ethnic discourses, which had been heralded in the rhetoric of Lagarde
and others in the 1890s. The core of the argumentation for Mitteleuropa for a
century, since List – a strong nation and a strong economy, in successful competition with other nations and economies – was supplemented by new arguments
which led in new directions.
Nationalism must not necessarily be understood in terms of racism and ethnic
purity, but can also be understood with reference to democracy as List’s and
Naumann’s conception of a Fortress Mitteleuropa show. However, their imaginary projections also tell us that an internal market and customs union are not
the guarantee of democracy, although they are argued to be the key to its existence. And our historical experiences after them tell us that the connection between
nationalism and democracy is very fragile and easily becomes overstretched.
Note
1 As a matter of fact, this Prussian historiography reveals many similarities with the early
historiography of the West European integration project one century later. There was
the same emphasis on the decisive role of a few powerful hommes politiques, visionaries and Realpolitiker alike. There was the same prospect of a success story with an
outcome known from the outset.
References
Brechtefeld, J. (1996) Mitteleuropa and German Politics, 1848 to the Present. London:
Macmillan.
Henderson, W.O. (1983) Friedrich List: Economist and Visionary 1789–1846. London:
Frank Cass.
List, F. (1841) Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie. Stuttgart: Cotta.
Mommsen, W. (1995) ‘Die Mitteleuropaidee und die Mitteleuropaplanungen im
deutschen Reich vor und während des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in R.G. Plaschka et al.
(eds) Mitteleuropa-Konzeptionen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Vienna:
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Naumann, F. (1915) Mitteleuropa. Berlin: Riemer.
Szporluk, R. (1988) Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
■ Bo Stråth
is a member of the Academy of Finland, Distinguished Chair in
Nordic, European and World History at the University of Helsinki. He was Professor
of History at Gothenburg University (1991–96) and Professor of Contemporary
History at the European University Institute, Florence (1997–2007). His research
field is Nordic and European modernity in a global perspective. The methodological focus is on conceptual analysis. He has published widely in this field. Address:
Helsinki University, Renvall Institute, PO Box 59, FIN-0014 Helsinki, Finland. [email:
[email protected]] ■
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