Großstadtfeindlichkeit und Kulturpessimismus als Stimulans für Politische Geographie und Geopolitik bis 1945

Abstract

During the first decades of the 20th century political geography and geopolitics boomed in German sciences and society. After1945 political geography became rather insignificant and geopolitics almost disappeared from German universities and politics. The close and unreflected connections between these two geo-disciplines and the practise of political action during the twenties and thirties led to a still unmastered historical heritage. Inspecting the rating of urban lifestyles, it is possible to show that the rise of geopolitics and the growing importance of political geography up to 1945 mainly were caused by non-scientific factors. After 1918 in Germany important social forces existed which conjured up the danger of cultural decay and national self-destruction. Rejecting the symptoms of industrialisation, people were looking for timeless and generally accepted moral and ethical values. Anti-parliamentarism, the glorification of agrarian lifestyles, and anti-Semitism were the fundamental thoughts and ideas of these theories, which were developed in geopolitics and political geography between the two world wars. Large cities were supposed to be static, the realm of evil. Opposed to that, there was the idealised image of rural and village society. The metro polis was reputed to be the centre of mass culture, industrial production, emancipation, and social mixing. Traditional elites were under pressure to legitimate their social position to the rising social classes. All these elements of hostility against large cities were parts of political geography and geopolitics up to 1945. The new discipline geopolitics simply took up some reflections and ideas already stated by other disciplines - among them geography - several years earlier. Respected geographers, engaged in the 'science' of geopolitics, just disseminated old ideas under the cover of a new term, which got some public appreciation. Mainly promoted by cultural pessimism in sciences and politics, geopolitics was more suitable for daily political discussion. It was not scientific innovation but its fundamental ideological orientation and political utility which caused the success of geopolitics.