Abstract
An important element of Germany’s distinct and aberrant culture,Sonderweghistorians have argued, was the Germans’ rejection of key Enlightenment values (individual freedom, cultural pluralism, representative government, and free-market capitalism) in favour of avölkischideology (subordination of the individual to the nation, ethnic nationalism, dictatorship, and schemes for national economic self-sufficiency).Völkischthinkers forsook the West, such scholars argue, because they abandoned liberal notions of progress and instead embraced a conservative backlash against modernity. Many of the elements of this ideology shored up the power of traditional elites at the expense of an active citizenry, and much of the