ABSTRACT
German historians formerly tended to base their definition of democracy upon constitutional forms, and to consider the principle of popular sovereignty as decisive. Hand in hand with civil reform went reorganization of the military forces by Scharnhorst. Mark the failure of the Enlightenment to have any political effect in Germany comparable with that in the West. Anti-Westernism in Germany has roots in the abysmal Francophobia which developed under foreign rule. The Hambach Festival of 1832 has epochal importance in the history of the civilian spirit in Germany. At last democracy became self-confident. The democratic forces in Germany found support in political Catholicism. One may look on political Catholicism in Germany as the core of an ‘old German conservatism west of the Elbe’, which sometimes supported and sometimes opposed ‘old Prussian conservatism’. In South-western Germany, upon the soil of Hambach, liberalism remained more something of the people’s.
