West German historiography of the German Empire as an example of the implementation of historical policy

Analysis of the historiography of a particular historical period or problem allows one to say a lot not only about the topic of research, but also about the academic and political situation in which the works were prepared and published. For example, the tradition of studying the political history of Germany during the imperial period that emerged in Germany. The natural choice of topics on which most works concentrate (constitutional history, biography, history of political parties, parliamentarism, problems of authoritarianism and the theory of modernization) almost always concern the history of the German Empire, both by the majority, namely representatives of the Bielefeld school of social history and by their opponents, from the point of view of the collapse of the Empire in 1918. In the imperial period, there are tendencies, institutions, drivers that can be identified, the presence or absence of which predetermined the collapse of the Empire, made it natural and inevitable. The theory of the Sonderwegthese of German history initially interprets the “German case” as completely separate, standing apart from other states, both “progressive” Western and “backward” Eastern. This peculiarity and predetermination of the end, responsibility for which in various works is assigned to different, but always “conservative” forces, i.e. the monarchy, Wilhelm’s personal regime, the Junkers, Prussia, the Bundesrat, Catholics, etc., form the idea of the empire as anti-democratic in its nature, the tasks of which are hostile to the national and liberal movements, progressive at their core. This perception of their own past, which had a decisive influence on the historical consciousness of the Germans, became one of the factors of their deep understanding of the Anglo-American civilization as a standard one, and of their own history as something that must be overcome and not be repeated.