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W. E. B. Du Bois and the Kaiserreich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Kenneth Barkin
Kenneth Barkin
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Extract

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was the most influential Afro-American intellectual of the twentieth century. His accomplishments in journalism and the academic disciplines of history and sociology were pioneering, and have only recently come to be fully appreciated. His more than twenty books and over 1,000 articles should qualify him to be considered one of America’s major scholars, and certainly the leading interpreter of race relations in the U.S., although he was never offered a professorship at a major American university. In the past two decades, Du Bois has experienced a renaissance of interest in his scholarship as well as in his Pan-African politics. Although he wrote three autobiographics in his lifetime and submitted to a 180 page oral history in 1960 at Columbia University, Du Bois’s life and thought have become the subject of innumerable books and articles by historians—a cottage industry in and of itself. Du Bois’s early writings merit the attention of historians and social scientists because of their freshness even after a century and because of his openness to ideas and methods that one would not expect from his later writings.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 155 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1998

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References

1. Du Bois’s Ph.D. was a significant historical study, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870 (New York and London, 1896).Google Scholar Three years later he published a pioneering work of sociology, The Philadelphia Negro (Philadelphia, 1899). At Atlanta University he presided over the publication of a series of volumes on Blacks in the south and, subsequently, became editor of The Crisis, the journal of the NAACP.Google Scholar

2. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940).Google ScholarIdem, , The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Aptheker, Herbert (New York, 1968).Google ScholarBois, Du, “The Reminiscences of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois,” ed. Ingeroll, William, Oral History Research Office (Columbia Univ, 1963).Google Scholar The latest biography is: Lewis, David Levering, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868–1919 (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

3. Rudwick, Elliott, W. E. B. Du Bois: Voice of Negro Protest (New York, 1968);CrossRefGoogle ScholarReed, Adolph Jr, W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought (New York, 1997);Google ScholarZamir, Shamoon, Dark Voices (Chicago, 1995).Google Scholar

4. Wilentz, Sean, “The Strange Education of W. E. B. Du Bois,” The New Republic (04 4, 1994).Google Scholar

5. Wright, William is one of the few scholars to take Du Bois’s years in Germany with some seriousness. Unfortunately he did not read German and his dissertation has never been published.Google ScholarWright, W. D., “The Socialist Analysis of W. E. B. Du Bois,” (Ph.D. diss., SUNY Buffalo, 1985).Google Scholar

6. In a letter to Rutherford Hayes, dated 19 April 1891, Bois, Du added a P.S. “I omitted stating that I am, in blood, about one half or more Negro, and the rest French and Dutch,” The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Aptheker, H., vol. 1 (Amherst, 1973), 13.Google Scholar

7. In his oral history of 1960, Du Bois responded to his interviewer’s hostility to Imperial Germany, “They [the Germans] had been through the days of Louis XIV when he just walked over the German people. He had the Germans pushed down into the mud… They used to sneer at Germany… The Germans could not get together, there was no Germany, there were little bits of German provinces… and here, at last, you had them come together.” Ingersoll, Oral History 114–15.

8. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Das Neue Vaterland,” 1888. Du Bois Archive, University of Mass., Amherst 33–1–46. Subsequently Du Bois would point out that the antislavery movement was strongest in the mid-Atlantic states, where the German population was significant.

9. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Bismarck,” Commencement Speech delivered at Fisk University, 1 June 1888. Du Bois Papers, 33–04–05 Several times in his speech he made it clear that, “Bismarck [was] the most distinguished and autocratic statesman of modern times.” He also stressed that Bismarck raised a nation but forgot the people.

10. Ibid., 4. For those who believe that Du Bois’s thinking in racial terms began in Germany years later, it should be pointed out that in 1888, he pictured the Franco-Prussian war as a conflict of Gaul and Teuton.

11. Jacques Kornberg, in his recent book on Herzl points out that Herzl greatly admired Bismarck and once expressed the wish to return as a Prussian Junker if he ever was reincarnated. Herzl and Du Bois also shared a concern with dress, and both were known as dandies. Kornberg, , Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism (Bloomington, 1993).Google Scholar

12. In his valedictory address at Fisk, Du Bois mentioned the philosophy of Hegel and Schopenhauer. When he applied to Harvard, Du Bois listed five philosophy courses he had taken at Fisk. Du Bois, W. E. B., Against Racism, ed. Aptheker, H., (Amherst, 1985), 10.Google Scholar

13. Du Bois, “Early German Institutions as given by Tacitus in “The Germania” and “The Family,” Du Bois Papers, Amherst, Mass. 1–0–48.

14. Du Bois takes note of the importance of dress among the Germans and their slaves. This may be more important than it appears to be on the surface, since he remained conscious of his attire throughout his life. See Marable, Manning, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston, 1986). Marable writes of Du Bois’s concern with fashion after he returned from Germany, including the carrying of a cane and the wearing of gloves.Google Scholar

15. In 1960 Du Bois said, “at the time I could see what the Germans were thinking and feeling, and I could have a vicarious sympathy. I know how Negroes would feel, if, after a war, they had gained equality and indeed superiority in the world… I excused it [German military parades]… It can’t go on forever, but, after all, these people had been downtrodden.” Du Bois went on to say he saw the ubiquity of uniforms and parades in Berlin as a phase that would not last. Ingersoll, Oral History 119.

16. Du Bois Papers, (Amherst, Mass.), Report on the German Railway System.” His German source was Sax, Emile, Die Eisenbahnen (Vienna, 1879).Google Scholar His French source was, Müller, Paul, “Chemins de fer du Royaume de Prusse,” Journal des Economistes 36.Google Scholar

17. Among scholars who had studied in Germany would be Adams, Henry, Ely, Richard and Patten, Simon. In his German Universities (New York, 1874), James Morgan Hart wrote, “In Germany, the Catholics have their own universities or, in Protestant countries, their peripatetic faculties. Among the professors are not a few Jews, men of the widest reputation.” 324. He contrasted this with the backwardness of British universities.Google Scholar

18. On 25 May 1891, Du Bois wrote to former President Hayes, Director of the Slater Fund, “You will pardon me if I add a few words of explanation as to my application. The outcome of the matter is as I expected it would be. The announcement that any agency of the American people were willing to give a Negro a thoroughly liberal education…was to say the least rather startling… I find men willing to help me use my hands before I have got my brains in working order.” Bois, Du, Correspondence, 1:14.Google Scholar

19. Du Bois Papers, (Amherst, Mass.), Vorlesungsverzeichnis for the University of Berlin (1892–1893).Google Scholar It is certain only that he heard lectures by Schmoller, Wagner, and Treitschke. In 1959, when he received an honorary doctorate from the Humboldt University in East Berlin, he mentioned, for the first time, hearing lectures by Gneist and Lenz. It is remarkable that Du Bois, who gave a lecture on Bismarck at the age of twenty at Fisk, wound up four years later listening to Germany’s leading Bismarck scholar. In a letter to the Slater Fund in 1893, Du Bois mentioned Lenz as well as Wilhelm Dilthey. Bois, Du, Correspondence, 1:24.Google Scholar

20. Years after he returned to America, Du Bois was asked about Berlin and said that he was quite privileged being a German student and getting into the doctoral seminars of Wagner and Schmoller, although they were oversubscribed. He went on, “Usually foreigners did not get a chance, you know, but I suppose on account of my unusual coloring and so forth, I got into the seminars both semesters.” Ingersoll, Oral History, 77.

21. These authors are all listed in an economics notebook in the Du Bois Papers with other German writings. Whether he read all of the authors he noted is unclear, but there is some evidence that he read Marx because he referred to him several times while at Berlin and used the phrase, “class consciousness”, in the essay on socialism following this introduction.

22. Du Bois’s manuscript on European museums, “The Art and Art Galleries of Modern Europe,” (1896), is reprinted in Du Bois, Against Racism, 33–43. Du Bois also developed a lifelong love affair with Wagner’s operas while in Germany. See Berman, Russell, “Du Bois and Wagner,” German Quarterly 70, no. 2, (Spring, 1997).Google Scholar

23. Du Bois Papers, Letter of 1 February 1894.

24. Du Bois, W. E. B., “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom,” in What the Negro Wants, ed. Logan, Rayford, (New York, 1944), 40.Google Scholar

25. Du Bois mentions joining the Verein in an entry for 10 March 1893. Du Bois Papers, (Amherst, Mass) Sketches, 1892–1894. The impact of the Verein and Du Bois’s Kathedersozialisten professors on his thought and scholarship in America has not been explored in the depth that it merits.

26. Du Bois often said that he did not receive a Ph.D. from Berlin because the university would not recognize his two years of graduate work at Harvard. Since Harvard had not fully recognized his three years at Fisk, Du Bois delighted in telling audiences that he had studied at a university (Berlin) that would give no credit for graduate study at Harvard. In reality six semesters of residence was required for a doctorate at Berlin and Du Bois had enrolled for three semesters. The rector was willing to overbook two semesters but not three. If the Slater Fund had renewed his fellowship in 1894, Du Bois would have received a Berlin doctorate.

27. Du Bois, Papers, (Amherst, Mass.), Sketches, 1892–1894, 31.Google Scholar

28. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Socialism of German Socialists,” Du Bois Papers, Amherst, Mass., He was, in this regard, ahead of Max Weber who doubted the revolutionary character of the SPD, after attending one of their conventions in 1905. Mommsen, Wolfgang, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik (Tübingen, 1959).Google Scholar

29. James Kloppenberg wrote, “To Du Bois and to others of his generation, Germany no longer appeared to be the bastion of attractive precapitalist values that American students could contrast to their own culture of laissez-faire liberalism. Instead it had become something very different, something unattractive.” Kloppenberg, , “The Reciprocal Vision of German and American Intellectuals: Beneath the Shifting Perceptions,” in Transatlantic Images and Perceptions, ed. Barclay, David and Glaser-Schmidt, Elisabeth (Cambridge, 1997).Google Scholar Evidently Kloppenberg was unaware that Du Bois applied for a third year in Germany and, after being turned down, wrote, “As a student in Germany, I built great castles in Spain and lived therein. I dreamed and loved and wandered and sang; then, after two long years, I dropped suddenly back into nigger-hating America.” Du Bois, Autobiography, 83.

30. Ingersoll, Oral History, 76 ff. He came back to this point later in the oral history when he said, “[In Germany] my whole attitude toward the world and toward the white people began to change” 103.

31. Rosenberg, Arthur, Die Entstehung der deutschen Republik (Berlin, 1928).Google ScholarEpstein, Klaus, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy (Princeton, 1959).Google Scholar

32. It is interesting that Du Bois viewed the Germany of 1892 as poor by comparison with the U.S. He was not alone. Earlier, Henry Mayhew, the chronicler of the London poor, wrote a volume on Saxony in 1865, in which his concluding chapter was entitled, “Why is Germany so Poor?” German Life and Manners as seen in Saxony (London, 1865).Google Scholar