Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800-1850

Description

The age of revolution challenged the ancien regime's political world, introducing Europeans to fresh ideals of citizenship. German society was no less affected. Following the Napoleonic era, a political culture of partisan choice undermined the official restoration of absolutism. Bourgeois and popular classes took part in the political landscape of civil society, producing an impressive social base for participatory politics by the 1830s. Because of severe restrictions on speech and assembly, ordinary Germans formed political opinions in irregular ways. This book looks at the sites and forms of culture that facilitated political communication. With chapters devoted to reading, singing, public space, carnival, violence and religion, James Brophy argues that popular culture played a critical role in linking ordinary Rhinelanders to the public sphere. Moving beyond conventional explanations of opinion formation, he exposes the broad cultural infrastructure that enabled popular classes to join the political nation.

James Brophy is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830-1870 (1998) and is co-editor of the primary source reader, Perspectives from the Past: Readings in Western Civilizations (3d edition, 2005).

Reviews of the hardback: 'Throughout the book, the author demonstrates the interconnectedness of bourgeois and plebeian worlds in the formation of opinion. How did common people come by political information, learn to grasp post-revolutionary ideas and ideologies, and become part of civil society? What was the process by which they became citizens in the classical political sense? An impressive array of archival and published material from the formerly French Rhineland has been marshalled ...' Journal of Central European History 'This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in expressions of public culture in the decades leading up to the 1848 revolution. ... It is a well presented book with illustrations and photographs and, most usefully for an international readership, all German quotations translated into English.' Song and Popular Culture '... impressively combines social and political theory with empirical research, ably weaving and organizing the results of years of work in the archival trenches into a well-crafted monograph ... This is certainly an informative case study that should be read and studied by all scholars of modern Germany ...' Journal of Modern History 'The study, deeply embedded in the many appropriate strands of scholarship and painstaking archival research, is divided into six substantive and mesmerizing chapters. ...The author rounds out the book with absorbing chapters on the roles of singing, carnival, tumult, and religion. ...An eminently readable treat for most German and many European historians ...' The Historian