The demands of the Buergertum: Secondary school reform, liberalism, and the growth of the middle class in Baden, 1806--191

This dissertation addresses two issues central to nineteenth-century German (and European) history--(1) the role of modern (realistisch) secondary education in the process of class formation, specifically the emergence of the middle classes, and (2) the tensions between community, state, and national interests in the development of modern education. I argue that the socioeconomic upheaval that accompanied industrialization led to the fragmentation of the middle class. Consequently, bourgeois pressure groups organized at the community level and demanded that the state create new secondary schools and modify old ones to meet the "demands of the present." This community-state nexus became central to the process of secondary school reform for most of the nineteenth century.;By the 1880s the community-state model of reform became problematic as secondary school reform emerged as a national issue. National issues played a role in educational reform before 1871, but the rush to German unity provided added impetus for the standardization of educational institutions. Baden embraced the uniquely Prussian system of entitlements as the key to creating a German system of education. The Prussian model combined secondary education, military service, and professional accreditation into a comprehensive system. As public pressure for access to these national issue in its own right. States like Baden now faced a multitude of national interest groups, each representing fragments of the middle class. A "school war" erupted, and the question of educational equality became not only one of class but of gender. The focus of educational reform had shifted from community pressure groups to national interest groups.;This study is based upon the examination of the petitions, correspondence, and reports found in the Generallandesarchiv in Karlsruhe. Research reveals a level of bourgeois German politics, which challenges the notion of the nineteenth-century "unpolitical German." The study also moves beyond the Prussocentric focus of German education to explore the interaction between German states before unification. Lastly, this work is the first systematic study of modern secondary schools, which contributed to the emergence of Germany as an industrial, scientific, and military power in the nineteenth century.