Germany never developed liberalism as class-consciousness of a leading class

Evidence

Lowenthal continued by arguing that despite the patrician elements in Meyer’s background, he was closer in some ways to the mentality of the National Liberal industrial magnates. In fact, the patrician-bourgeois mixture in his writings mirrored the actual alliance of the German ruling classes in the Second Reich. “In Germany,” Lowenthal wrote, “there was never an actual liberalism as the expression of the class-consciousness of a leading class, but rather a union of large agrarians, businessmen, and the military originating in certain economic and political conditions and extraordinarily susceptible to a heroic irrationalism.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 444

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: German Orientalism needed no colonies to exhibit colonial thought structures; German liberals, not conservatives, championed imperialist and racial doctrines — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2232; Ideological elements like racism and nationalism have no necessary class belonging

Broader Connections

• German liberals, not conservatives, championed imperialist and racial doctrines #complicates (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2232
• Ideological elements like racism and nationalism have no necessary class belonging #expands (0.78)
• German Orientalism needed no colonies to exhibit colonial thought structures #corroborates (0.72)