Obedient Germans? - A Rebuttal - New View of German History (Paperback)

Drawing on his broad knowledge of medieval and early modern German history, Peter Blickle demonstrates that Germany was one of Europe's most intensive areas of local self-governance from 1300 to 1800. Arguing against the traditional image of a passive lower class, Blickle shows that the peasantry actively participated in a continuous struggle for political autonomy.

In German cities and villages from the fourteenth century on, burghers and peasants commonly established their own political institutions characterized by elected magistrates, a responsibility to householders, and a belief in the common people's fight to resist unjust authority. Urban and rural revolts unparalleled in other European nations were common in early modem Germany when peasants felt their fights had been violated. Blickle argues that only in the eighteenth century -- and then under the strong influence of foreign conceptions of absolutist rule -- did the term "subject" begin to assume the negative meaning it has had since the Enlightenment.

Obedient Germans? A Rebuttal presents a radically revisionist view of German history that explains how deeply rooted cultural beliefs in a communal political system could eventually be pushed aside authoritarian, centralist practice.