Clio and Class Struggle in Socialist Histories of the Nation: A Comparison of Robert Grimm’s and Eduard Bernstein’s Writings, 1910–1920

Abstract

Why was there no socialism in the national histories of German-speaking countries? The ruling paradigm of ‘scientific’ history writing in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Germany remained exclusively focused on nation building ‘from above’ and featured a narrow statesman- and state- centred spectrum of narratives. The methodological layout of German history, called ‘Historik’, moreover, proved ignorant of the social transformations that had accompanied the belated, but swift process of industrialization. Furthermore, its hegemony in the discipline prevented some form of positivism striking roots in the field, which would have allowed for the formation of a genuine ‘social history’ by way of specialization. Instead, social issues and the big theme of ‘class conflict’ were crowded out into the adjoining fields of sociology and ‘political economics’.¹ The isolation of the Social Democratic ‘milieu’ added its weight as socialist intellectuals suffered persisting exclusion from the German academic establishment. There was neither an equivalent to the British Fabians who had infused a socialist tradition of social history into the national narrative of the United Kingdom, nor a counterpart for the American ‘New Historians’, most notably Charles A. Beard.