Verkannte Pioniere der Demokratie: die Deutsche Fortschrittspartei im preußischen Verfassungskonflikt . By Robin Simonow

A central plank of the old Sonderweg paradigm, which sought to explain the fateful German deviation from the path leading to a peaceful, democratic modernity, concerned Germany’s liberalism. It was said to have been, at best, effete and befuddled, but probably a traitor to its proper calling and all too ready to settle for a cosy abdication of power (Machtverzicht) in the slipstream of the authoritarian state. Prussia’s constitutional conflict (Verfassungskonflikt) between 1861 and 1866 marked a crucial stage in this argument. The struggle between the Prussian crown and government on the one hand and the liberal majorities in the Prussian parliament on the other constituted, as Heinrich August Winkler argued in 1979, ‘the last attempt by the German bourgeoisie [Bürgertum] to wrest political leadership from the feudal aristocracy’. But while, over the past thirty years, a wealth of new research has dramatically revised our view of Germany’s liberalism and Bürgertum, a study focusing on the main liberal force during these decisive conflict years, the German Progress Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei), remained a striking lacuna. Founded in June 1861, when the Prussian controversy over the nature and funding of military reforms was escalating, and committed to a more determined liberal agenda, the Fortschrittspartei brought together some of Prussia’s most formidable liberals, amongst them such luminaries as Max von Forckenbeck, Rudolf Virchow, Benedikt Waldeck, Theodor Mommsen, Leopold von Hoverbeck, Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch and Hans Victor von Unruh. It is a pleasure to report that, in Robin Simonow, the party has now found an equally formidable historian.