The rise and demise of German statism

by Gregg Owen Kvistad

German statism as a political ideology has been the subject of many historical studies. Whereas most of these focus on theoretical texts, cultural works, and vague "traditions," this study understands German statism as a functioning logic of political membership - a logic that has helped to determine who is "in" and who is "out" with regard to the German political community. Tracing statism from the early nineteenth century through German unification and into the 1990s, the author argues that, with its central concern for a political loyalty, statism historically served the function of stabilizing the political order and containing democratic mobilization. Beginning in the 1960s, however, a mobilized German democratic consciousness gradually rejected statism as anachronistic, and German political institutions began to respond in kind.