Dean Baranov Publishes a Monograph on German History

11:09, September 8, 2020

Dr. Nikolai Baranov studied German left liberalism, the characteristics and fates of its leaders

The publishing house of the Ural University has published a monograph in Russian by Dr. of history Nikolai Baranov, head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of the Ural Federal University. The publication Между Бисмарком и Бебелем: немецкий левый либерализм и его вожди (Between Bismarck and Bebel: German Left Liberalism and Its Leaders) is dedicated to one of the most important pages in German political history. The author analyzes the presentation of German political liberalism in historical research; gives a thorough overview of the assessments of this phenomenon in domestic and foreign historiography.

“The expression 'German liberalism' can be perceived as an oxymoron; often, even in the views of professional historians, German liberalism appears as terra incognita. Nevertheless, Germany has developed its own liberal tradition, which, despite the crushing blows suffered in the first half of the twentieth century, has proven its viability, ”the author of the monograph states.

Nikolai Baranov characterizes the life path and worldview of the outstanding leaders of left-wing political liberalism in Kaiser's Germany, Eugen Richter and Friedrich Naumann. This is the only study that presents historical portraits of both leaders of German liberalism in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

“At the first comparison, sharp differences in their characters and fates are striking. Richter is an almost forgotten contemporary and uncompromising opponent of Bismarck. At the head of the party of progressives, later - free-thinkers, Richter all his life fought on two fronts - against the conservatives and against the social democrats. Naumann is to this day some of the most revered "secular saint" of German liberalism. A man of the Wilhelminian era, Naumann went from a Lutheran pastor to a liberal imperialist, the author of the original project “Central Europe”, a champion of German “world politics” who wanted to combine liberalism with the mass labor movement, democracy with empire," Nikolai Baranov explains in the monograph.

Nevertheless, both leaders were united in their desire to formulate and implement a liberal alternative to the imperial state based on the recognition of the unconditional value of freedom.
The chronological framework of the study is 1858–1918. The lower border is associated with the beginning of the regency of Crown Prince Wilhelm and the onset of a "new era" in Prussia. The upper border is the time of the abdication of William II, the collapse of the Hohenzollern empire and the collapse of the entire political party system of the Second Reich.