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drawbacks. By contrast, politically reactionary views, such as those
held by Georg V’s predecessor, Ernst August, were not as damaging
if they were combined with a genial personality, as the unexpected
symbiosis between Ernst August and the head of his March ministry,
Johann Carl Bertram Stüve, demonstrated. Moreover, the unpopularity
of individual monarchs could be outweighed by increasing the
public presence of more widely admired members of the royal house.
Green then turns her attention to structural elements of statebuilding:
state culture, press policies, primary education, economic
development, and railway building. In all areas, she notes a fundamental
ambivalence. Most developments tended to work in favour of
both state integration and integration at a national level. �or instance,
states spent considerable sums of money on public or semi-public
museums, historical monuments in honour of previous rulers, and
associations for the study of the fatherland’s history and culture. The
emphasis on the history of the states was in itself highly ambivalent
because it increased awareness of the instability of Germany’s political
frontiers and of how relatively recently these states had been created
in their present form. This ambivalence becomes even more pronounced
when it is taken into account that the same governments
supported explicitly German monuments like the Hermannsdenkmal,
a central association of history societies, allowed other state monuments
such as Dresden’s Goldener Reiter to decay, and made gestures
towards national unity by putting out black–red–gold flags during
national celebrations by gymnasts or singers. However, state support
for the fatherland-agenda was more focused. It was a part of civil servants’
duties, whereas national gestures often resulted from private
initiatives being supported by the states.
The increasing number of newspapers and the abolition of censorship
presented the opposition with new chances to occupy part of
the public sphere. But it also allowed governments themselves to
pursue a more active press policy by providing papers with news, or
by operating newspapers outright, thus challenging nationalist
visions of Germany’s future. However, even official newspapers distinguished
between state news, German news, and foreign news.
Elementary education was more closely regulated by the state after
1848, in a clear attempt to prevent subversive influences from taking
root in pupils’ minds. Guidelines for the curriculum were laid down,
and teachers’ salaries were increased. Nevertheless, the obligatory
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