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HEINRICH AUGUST WINKLER, Der lange Weg nach Westen, vol. 1:
Deutsche Geschichte vom Ende des Alten Reiches bis zum Untergang der
Weimarer Republik (Munich: Beck, 2000), 652 pp. ISBN 3 406 46001 1.
DM 78.00; vol. 2: Deutsche Geschichte vom ‘Dritten Reich’ bis zur Wiedervereinigung
(Munich: Beck, 2000), x + 742 pp. ISBN 3 406 46002 X. DM
78.00
The question this monumental history of Germany from the Middle
Ages to the 1990s poses is: was there a German Sonderweg which distinguished
Germans from other Western nations? Although most of
Winkler’s detailed descriptions relate to the period after 1806, he
argues that the Sonderweg question cannot be answered with reference
to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alone, but must be
traced back to the Holy Roman Empire, the confessional divisions
among the German people created by the Reformation, and the rivalry
between Prussia and Austria which emerged in the eighteenth
century. He claims, convincingly, that the revolutionary changes
which affected Germany in the nineteenth century did create a constitutional
nation-state similar to others in that era, but with a deficit
in political freedom. �urthermore, German nationalism was influenced
by a quasi-religious fervour connected with the enduring myth
of the Reich, which gave the German intelligentsia the idea that their
nation could claim a God-given mission to dominate Europe, or even
mankind. He argues that this was a very un-Western viewpoint, and
that its only parallel in Europe lay in the claim of the Russian
Orthodox Church to be the heir of Byzantine Christendom.
So far as the ideology of the Reich is concerned, a major leitmotiv
which runs through the first two thirds of the book is the way in
which this concept proved enduringly seductive to the German mind
and distracted German élites from the objective of creating a viable,
stable nation-state. The Reich ideal was initially a religious one, rooted
in the notion that the mission of the Germans was to prevent the
reign of anti-Christ in Europe. The victory of Lutheranism in the
Reformation encouraged a new version of this vision; Protestant zeal
was turned towards the achievement of eternal grace whilst accepting
secular authority without question on earth. Later on, in a more
secular age, nationalism could be adopted by revolutionaries as a
surrogate religion, with the ideal of the German Reich being adapted
to the new circumstances. Winkler points to �ichte as an early pro-
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