ABSTRACT
The idea of transcendence occupied a central place in the ideology of the Pan-German League. Not only were the pioneers to transcend the flaws thought to reside in the German national character, but the ethnic community of which the League spoke was to transcend parochial loyalties among Germans, be these social, political, regional, or confessional in character. Mildred Wertheimer noted more than a half century ago that the Pan-German League drew most of its members and its cadres of local leaders from a narrow social pool. The evidence makes conclusions more tentative about the rank and file than about the cadres of local leaders, the Pan-Germans were recruited predominantly from those strata of the German middle class whose distinguishing marks were Bildung or Besitz. The pioneers were the men whose academic education or participation in public office entitled them in fact to custodial roles over culture or authority in Imperial Germany.
