ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the key concepts such as "popular liberalism", "Catholic rural bourgeoisie", "voluntary association", "marginality" and "subculture", and locates them in the particular conditions of the Greater Swabian region. It focuses on the success of popular liberalism in rural Catholic south Germany in the period between the 1860s and the years before 1914 and the early 1930s. The chapter explains why and how it happened, and to examine the people who supported these parties, their beliefs and the degree to which the latter corresponded to the reality. In general, until the 1980s, interpretations of the rise of National Socialism tended to emphasize some continuity from the mid nineteenth century to 1933. Two cultural elements played a significant role in German popular liberalism: the German bourgeoisie and the German voluntary associations. The chapter suggests that radical-liberal culture in Germany, as well as other political cultures including Nazi culture, originated in the local and regional rather than the national context.
