TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH VON

TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH VON (1834–1896), German nationalist.

Born on 15 September 1834 in Dresden, the future champion of Prussian-led German unification Heinrich von Treitschke grew up in the aristocratic, conservative, and provincial atmosphere of the capital of the kingdom of Saxony. The son of an army officer who eventually rose to the rank of general and a mother who descended from a venerable Saxon noble family, Treitschke became interested at an early age in German nationalism, convinced as early as 1848 that only the Prussian monarchy could unite the Germans states. Prevented from becoming an officer due to a childhood ear affliction that eventually resulted in total deafness, Treitschke graduated in 1851 from the elite Holy Cross secondary school and went on to study history, political economy, and state administration in Bonn, Leipzig, Tübingen, Freiburg, and Heidelberg before taking a teaching position at the University of Leipzig in 1859.

As a university professor and a contributor to the journal Preussische Jahrbücher, Treitschke initially promoted German unification from a classically liberal standpoint. Prussia's current authoritarian nature, Treitschke believed, hindered unification because it represented a foreign-influenced perversion of the ideal traditional Prussian state, one based on collaboration between the monarchy and a civil service dominated by the educated bourgeoisie. Events in the 1860s caused Treitschke to revise his opinions. Prussia's victories over Denmark in 1864 and Austria in 1866 convinced him to overlook Otto von Bismarck's role in the conflict between the Prussian state and its parliament and to begin to believe that Bismarck could succeed in forging a centralized nation-state in central Europe. The founding of the German Empire in 1871 largely fulfilled Treitschke's wishes, despite reservations concerning, among other things, Germany's weak federalist structure.

Although he served as a deputy in the national parliament until 1884, Treitschke exerted his influence primarily through his writings and lectures. His five-volume, unfinished monumental German History in the Nineteenth Century, begun in 1879, chronicled political, economic, theological, philosophical, and cultural developments in the period up to 1848. Like his other writings, this work wedded his deeply felt political convictions with his interest in historical events; the first two decades of the century were characterized as a blossoming of the national ideal that was crushed after 1815 by the triumph of small-minded German particularism and the unnatural and pernicious domination of central Europe by the Habsburg Monarchy. Clear to contemporary readers was the implicit glorification of Prussia's role in creating a unified nation-state.

In his published essays, Treitschke engaged many of the pressing issues of the day. He supported Bismarck in the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf of the 1870s, and he railed against socialism and its proponents within academe. Treitschke also played an important role in making respectable and thereby spreading anti-Semitism within German society. Although he claimed to abhor the violent manifestations of anti-Semitism, Treitschke attacked Germany's Jews in print, accusing them of undermining traditional German values and thereby weakening the German state. Generations of anti-Semites would thank him for the infamous slogan "the Jews are our misfortune."

By the mid-1880s, Treitschke was calling for Germany's acquisition of overseas colonies. "All great nations in history felt the urge to impress the stamp of their authority on barbaric countries while they felt strong enough to do so," Treitschke wrote. "He who does not take part in this gigantic competition is destined to cut a poor figure one day. … It is therefore a vital question for the [German] nation to show colonial drive" (quoted in Winzen, p. 160). A consequence of his growing interest in the issue of German expansion was a growing hatred of Great Britain. For Treitschke, Great Britain represented a "reactionary power" that would have to be dealt with if Germany were to realize the goals of Weltpolitik. Moreover, Treitschke believed that military conflict with England or other powers was not only inevitable but also legitimate and often beneficial.

Although most historians believe Treitschke contributed very little to the discipline of history, scholars recognize his enormous impact on the many Germans who attended his lectures or read his articles. Lecturing to overflow crowds at Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm University, Treitschke helped to instill imperialistic, chauvinistic, and anti-Semitic values in a generation of young men, many of whom later occupied important positions in the Wilhelmine state and its society. Men such as Carl Peters, Alfred von Tirpitz, Bernhard von Bülow, and Helmuth Johannes von Moltke learned from Treitschke of the positive effects of war, the essential foreignness of Jews and non-Germans, and the deficiencies of parliamentary democracy. Whether such teachings laid the foundation for National Socialism remains a subject of debate among scholars.

See alsoAnti-Semitism; Imperialism; Nationalism; Ranke, Leopold von.

bibliography

Bussmann, Walter. "Heinrich von Treitschke 1834–1896." In Die Grossen Deutschen. Deutsche Biographie, edited by Hermann Heimpel, Theodor Heuss, and Benno Reifenberg. Berlin, 1957.

Dorpalen, Andreas. Heinrich von Treitschke. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957.

——. "Heinrich von Treitschke." Journal of Contemporary History 7, nos. 3–4 (1972): 21–35.

Iggers, Georg. "Heinrich von Treitschke." In Deutsche Historiker. Band II, edited by Hans-Ulrich Wehler. Göttingen, 1971.

Kupisch, Karl. Die Hieroglyphe Gottes. Grosse Historiker der bürgerlichen Epoche von Ranke bis Meinicke. Munich, 1967.

Langer, Ulrich. Heinrich von Treitschke. Politische Biographie eines deutschen Nationalisten. Düsseldorf, 1998.

Loftus, Ilse. "Bismarck and the Prussian Historians." In Imperial Germany. Essays, edited by Volker Dürr, Kathy Harms, and Peter Hayes. Madison, Wisc., 1985.

Winzen, Peter. "Treitschke's Influence on the Rise of Imperialist and Anti-British Nationalism in Germany." In Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany Before 1914, edited by Paul Kennedy and Anthony Nicholls. London, 1981.

Charles Lansing