ABSTRACT
The 1990s are a good time to reconsider the course of German history after the reunification of a divided nation. Much has been made in this Pamphlet of the paradox of the German Empire: the incongruity of a modernizing industrial economy overlaid by an authoritarian, semi absolutist state. This was Germany’s so called peculiarity. It has been argued that because she failed to modernize her political structure, denying the new social classes effective political representation and incorporating the bourgeoisie into the state, Germany travelled a different path from her western European neighbours, a Sonderweg, which ultimately led to the catastrophe of the Third Reich.
