This chapter explores why the idea of abstinence received considerable attention among medical doctors and the public alike in Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on the plural and at times ambiguous semantics of the terms ‘alcoholism’, ‘addiction’ and ‘temperance’. The chapter maps how debates on alcohol were imbued with ideas about the irrationality of the ‘masses’, the nature of alcoholism as a process and the link between the body and the body politic, in other words between the health of individuals and the health of the nation. The varied impact of discourses of physical, mental and moral degeneration on medical views of alcohol consumption and on ideas pertaining to the creation of a ‘New Man’ is explored. In these discourses it became apparent that alcoholism contradicted the expectations of a rational society. It will be argued that increased interest in alcoholism was based on the idea of rationalisation as a society-changing process.¹ The anticipated realisation of reason was regarded as an unavoidable, almost natural process which, at the same time, encapsulated the potential for human action. Science offered such potential by promising to reduce alcoholism. It was feared that alcoholism would lead to inheritable degeneration, resulting in considerable economic loss to the wealth of the nation. Last but not least, alcohol was considered an obstacle to the global competition with other nations, especially during the period preceding World War I.

The chapter embraces previous research from social and cultural history on the scientification and medicalisation of alcoholism.² It also explores conceptual history perspectives by examining the semantics of the discourse on alcoholism, revealing recurrent elements in the debate.³ These recurring themes require an assessment of continuities and ruptures, particularly in regard to earlier debates on alcohol. Temperance campaigns against hard liquor in early nineteenth-century Germany had focused on the miserable living conditions of the working classes and combined religious concerns with temperance values; drinking was conceived of as a sin. In the later decades of the century, the temperance movement was dominated by physicians and scientists. For them, ‘alcoholism’ was a disease. This view relied no longer on religious ethics, but on scientific explanations and statistics. Moreover, the alcohol problem became everyone’s problem, because even small amounts of alcohol were perceived as causing devastating damage to the individual and therefore to public health. According to medical experts, alcohol in general ought to be avoided. The call for temperance turned more and more into a call for complete abstinence.

From the 1880s onwards, numerous abstinence associations were founded in Germany. Most popular were the Guttempler (1883), the Blaues Kreuz (1885) and the Kreuzbund (1896).⁴ The Guttempler alone, which was based on the US association of the same name, had 50,000 members before World War I.⁵ In 1883 the Deutscher Verein gegen den Mißbrauch geistiger Getränke (German Association against the Abuse of Spiritual Drinks), which was committed to moderation, was founded.⁶ By the end of the century, the number of abstainers among members of temperance associations was three times as high as that of those favouring moderation. Popular support for these associations was in general relatively low.⁷ However, these movements had a lasting influence on drinking culture in Germany; for example, while alcohol was not prohibited at the workplace, its consumption did become less common. During the 1880s, quantities of spirits consumed in factories lessened, and after 1900 the same could be said for beer.⁸ From the 1880s, special coffee halls were opened, and in the 1890s, abstainers also considered producing other non-alcoholic beverages such as soda water and lemonade.⁹ Furthermore, the naturopath Friedrich Eduard Bilz created a lemonade drink that has since 1907 been marketed worldwide under the name ‘Sinalco’.¹⁰

The sources for this chapter mainly consist of popular scientific literature, such as public lectures, guidebooks and educational pamphlets. The social historian Heinrich Tappe uses similar sources in his comprehensive study of alcohol production, drinking behaviours and the abstinence movement in Germany. He attributes the emergence of abstinence associations to economic problems during the financial crisis of the 1870s, when social problems returned to the public eye. Although Tappe focuses on economic factors, he points out that social movements and cultural issues may have been influential as well.¹¹ In contrast, Hasso Spode pursues a cultural-historical approach in his history of alcohol in Germany. He shows that the rise of the abstinence movement was partly due to biopolitical factors and linked to ideas of ‘racial hygiene’.¹² However, Spode interprets the debate on alcoholism with recourse to Max Weber’s concept of rationalisation as part of modernisation.¹³ Weber’s work was contemporaneous with and underlay the views held by the main protagonists investigated in this chapter, and hence is considered a primary source rather than used as a theoretical framework for the chapter. In contrast to previous research, the conceptual history approach employed here sets out to reveal the connection between the alcohol problem on the one hand and the idea of rationalisation, as framed by Weber and others, on the other. It facilitates a better understanding of why the discussion about abstinence of the 1870s became prominent in the first place.

Alcohol as a problem of modern society

Although alcohol over-consumption had been considered as a threat to good health within German folklore and the Graeco-Roman and other medical traditions even before the rise of modernity, the transformation of ‘drunkenness’ from a sin to a disease in its own right occurred with the increased focus on the medicalisation of alcohol use and the ‘discovery of addiction’.¹⁴ In 1802 the German physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland described alcohol as a ‘narcotic poison’.¹⁵ In 1819 the German-Russian physician Constantin von Brühl-Cramer framed the term ‘addiction to drink’ (Trunksucht) as a new disease pattern that could be treated rather than being relegated to the realms of morals.¹⁶ Translating Brühl-Cramer’s concept, Hufeland subsequently coined the technical term ‘dipsomania’.¹⁷ Following the Swedish physician Magnus Huss’s suggestion, the term ‘alcoholismus chronicus’ emerged in the mid-nineteenth century.¹⁸ By the end of the century, ‘alcoholism’ had become the dominant term used in public discussions in Germany.¹⁹ German encyclopaedias increasingly replaced the term ‘drunkenness’ (Trunkenheit) with ‘addiction to drink’ (Trunksucht) and ‘alcoholism’ (Alkoholismus).²⁰

Many popular publications on alcoholism relied on the work of Abraham Adolf Baer (1834–1908), a prison doctor in Berlin, who also wrote on ‘prison hygiene’ and the ‘anthropology of the criminal’.²¹ In 1878 he published a book on alcoholism and its prevention, which was considered the ‘beginning of a modern scientific discussion of the alcohol question’.²² He called on the state to lead the ‘fight against drunkenness … through energetic and rational preventive and repressive measures’.²³ Above all, Baer identified irrationality and ignorance among the population as the cause of the problem. Knowledge and rationality would, according to him, become the antidote to alcoholism. ‘The greatest enemy of this vice … is a culture based on knowledge, cognition and morality; the more these spread among the people, the more surely the heavy curse of alcoholism will be wiped out and exterminated along with all the other bad habits.’²⁴ Baer’s statement fitted squarely into the emerging discourse on what was referred to as the ‘rationalisation’ of society. In 1896 the sociologist and ethnographer Alfred Vierkandt wrote on the ‘rationalisation of life’ in modern society.²⁵ Werner Sombart used the same term in 1911 to describe modern society as shaped by capitalism.²⁶ Furthermore, rationalisation came to be seen as a defining characteristic in various areas: working life, birth control and modern culture in general.²⁷ It was thought that the spread of rationality was part of an unstoppable cultural development. However, as Eley et al. argue in German Modernities (2016), contemporaries considered the future as open, rather than being subject to the unfolding of traditional beliefs. It had to be actively shaped.²⁸ Some held the advance of civilisation itself responsible for the rise of alcoholism. In this view, the alcohol problem was understood as an inherent part of cultural progress.

In 1912, inspired by progressivist and new medical frameworks, the paediatrician Helene Breitung (later known as Helene Greeff, 1881–1951) developed teaching material to educate young people on abstinence. In her publication, which was published by the Guttempler Association, she claimed that ‘drinking had never before been as much of an everyday habit as it is in today’s civilised countries’.²⁹ She blamed breweries and distilleries for the increased consumption, as they produced ever-larger quantities of alcohol. Although she held that alcoholism had never been a social problem before the rise of the modern alcohol industry, she also claimed that society should heed the lessons from the histories of ancient cultures, which declined when they succumbed to drink ‘at the peak of their power’.³⁰ The narrative of an impending decline of culture appeared in contemporary discourse once the euphoria of entering the new century had faded. Because progress had been anticipated, the fear of regression became typical of the rationalisation discourse. This fear seemed to justify increased intervention in the process of the perceived impending civilisationary decline. In his The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, Anson Rabinbach outlines a similar narrative in regard to the working body in the widely used metaphor of the ‘human motor’. This metaphor expressed confidence in science, but also led to a vague fear: the fear of ‘fatigue’ in the sense of losing energy and the strife for entropy, which Rabinbach sees as characteristic of the turn from the nineteenth century to the twentieth.³¹

The idea of cultural decay was not only influential to Breitung’s thinking, but could also be found in other contemporary writing. The physiologist Gustav von Bunge (1844–1920) said that although drunkenness might be as old as history, alcoholism was not. Only modern production processes and ‘perfectionised agriculture, progressing physics and chemistry combined with large capital’ made large-scale production and distribution of alcohol possible.³² The German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) agreed with Bunge that technical progress in regard to the efficiency of distilleries and breweries had increased to hitherto unknown heights.³³ Not only production, but also the alcohol content of beer had been optimised. Economic efficiency, scientific innovations and cultural change were increasingly suspected to cause the alcohol problem. Indeed, the rate of beer consumption doubled between 1870 and 1890, while liquor consumption reached its peak between 1885 and 1887 but declined after taxes on spirits were raised in 1887.³⁴ Less liquor was drunk, and beer became more popular. Thus drinking became more moderate in the 1890s.³⁵ At the same time, contemporaries began to perceive alcoholism as a new phenomenon, for it contradicted their expectations of a progressive future. For many, progress meant not just technological but also moral progress in the sense that people would become more attuned to the power of reason. Conversely, drinking alcohol was considered irrational behaviour that would hinder society’s progress.

Abraham Baer believed that alcoholism inflicted damage on the individual as well as on society. He used the metaphor of a ‘social organism’ (socialer Organismus) to express the intertwined relationship of society and its individuals.³⁶ Referring to Darwin, Baer highlighted that an individual’s drunkenness posed a threat to all. This Neo-Lamarckian interpretation of Darwin led to the idea of the degeneration of society or even of mankind. Thus Baer provided an early impetus to the temperance movement that would soon re-utilise many of his arguments.³⁷ Experts, and in particular physicians and psychologists, led the German debate on alcohol, which was also raging in other countries. The Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel (1848–1931) had a major influence on German debates, as European writers’ works were distributed by German publishers.³⁸ Others, such as the Austrian bacteriologist and hygienist Max von Gruber (1853–1927), taught in Germany and settled there.

Within the context of the debates on rationalisation, the influence of scientific expertise in all areas of life was expected, and the ensuing ‘scientification’ of the discourse on society and progress was welcomed. It was also held that mechanisation and technology, being the practical implementation of scientific knowledge, would improve society. Through bureaucratisation, a rational order of society was striven for. In the realm of economics, the principles of predictable and reasonable economic management were applied to social problems. Last but not least, the idea of a reasonable cultural development was firmly placed within the progressive history of Western rationalisation. These different facets of the rationalisation thesis were connected by the expectation of an imminent and revolutionary realisation of reason. At the same time, rationalisation was perceived as ambiguous. On the one hand, the process seemed to be inevitable, but on the other hand, it appeared to be pliable and manageable. These manifold ideas of rationalisation were finally incorporated by the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) into a theoretical concept, which later formed the basis of modernisation theory.

Given the prominence of the discourse of rationalisation in Germany, it is not surprising that it also affected the way the ‘alcohol question’ was perceived. Alcoholism was understood as the result of a misguided rationalisation and as a force that brought the irrational back into the projected unfolding of social progress. The key elements of the debate on alcohol centred on, firstly, alcoholism as part of an ongoing, advancing process in society; secondly, ‘mass society’ and the ‘irrationality of the crowd’ as promulgators of drinking; thirdly, individual health as intertwined with public health; and, fourthly, the degeneration of the individual and of society as the result of alcohol consumption. Ideas about the rise of and competition between nation states and the creation of a ‘New Man’ arose alongside the abstinence movement. In the following section, these elements of the discourse will be investigated.

Alcoholism as an advancing process

Alcoholism came to be understood as the result of an evolving and ever-expanding process engendered by increased alcohol production and consumption in the wake of rationalisation. Technical improvements in alcohol production, such as Carl von Linde’s cooling machine (1876), which facilitated beer production, and Lorenz Adalbert Enzinger’s beer filter (1878), which enhanced the durability of beer, were seen to have facilitated higher alcohol consumption alongside industrialised working processes and a modern way of life. The increased rates, particularly before the 1880s, fuelled the rise of the abstinence movement, but medical perceptions of a spreading alcohol problem did not decrease with falling rates. The German-Baltic physiologist Bunge highlighted the wider, expanding impact of alcohol, which he saw as neither predictable nor manageable. In his 1886 inaugural lecture on the ‘alcohol question’ as the chair of physiological chemistry at the University of Basel, he pointed out: ‘The abuse of alcoholic beverages leads to a whole host of diseases, and no organ of our body is preserved from its destructive effect.’³⁹ According to him, the unpredictability of these damaging processes made it impossible to control the effects of alcohol consumption on an individual’s body. The consequences for society, understood as a ‘collective body’, were all the more unclear.

Emil Kraepelin used metaphors of progressive expansion to characterise the nature of alcoholism and its consequences for society.

Using the metaphor of poisoning, Kraepelin expressed the fear that society was exposed to an irreversible process of decomposition that undermined its functionality. The metaphor of the epidemic evoked associations with the recent cholera epidemic in Hamburg in 1896, when bacteriological experts such as Robert Koch had been consulted.⁴¹ However, while infectious diseases seemed to have become controllable through scientific knowledge, the alcohol problem remained diffuse and uncertain. To start with, it had to be identified and qualified as a problem. The metaphors of poisoning and epidemic helped to conceptualise the problem.

The Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel (1848–1931) described alcoholism as a slow and invisible process of intoxication. He stated that ‘these effects develop so slowly when the doses are small and can proceed with such slightly visible disturbances that society gets accustomed to them and does not notice the degeneration which they generate’.⁴² For him, the concern was that neither the individual nor society would notice the progressivity of alcoholism until it was too late. Forel symbolically transferred the physiologically describable poisoning of the individual to an alleged poisoning of society. Alcoholism became a metaphor for national disease and degeneration.⁴³ Forel regarded moderate and regular drinking in particular as a problem, as it poisoned incrementally, in small quantities, and led to a gradual increase in doses. This had two consequences, namely physical habituation to higher doses and the individual’s adaption to the physical limitations and the symptoms of the poisoning. Applied to society, this meant that alcoholism would initially not be conspicuous, but society would gradually get used to widespread drinking and to an increasing number of alcoholics.

The slow but steady progressivity of alcoholism was described evocatively by the German physician Alfred Grotjahn (1869–1931), who taught social hygiene at the Charité University Clinic in Berlin. He focused on the consequences for the individual:

Unlike many of his colleagues, Grotjahn argued for temperance and not for abstinence. He believed in the ability of medical progress and the rise of statistical methods to accurately determine the acceptable level of harmless alcohol consumption. Available statistics provided evidence of the alcohol problem. However, they were limited to the detection of the worst results of alcohol consumption, not of the many stages before. As Bunge put it: ‘From the first glass to insanity, to crime, to despair and suicide there are a thousand stages of misery. Only the lowest ones are revealed in statistics.’⁴⁵ To people like Bunge, the full extent of alcohol-related problems was not yet fully understood. Therefore alcoholism was a process in society not to be underestimated.

Efficiency, rationalisation and the irrationality of the ‘masses’

The question emerges as to why alcoholism had not been problematised as a societal issue before. Medical experts such as Bunge and Forel attributed the alcohol problem to the irrationality of the masses. Masse (the masses; the crowd) became a concept of political-social language in Germany in the nineteenth century, alongside Klasse (class), Volk (people) or Nation (nation). The term derived from the Greek word for dough and, unlike ‘class’, denoted the unformed crowd of the poor and uneducated.⁴⁶ The concept of the masses also expressed the fear in bourgeois circles of uncontrollable social problems. This perception changed significantly during the last few decades of the century, by which time everyone had become part of a mass society, regardless of social status, and particularly in regard to alcohol.⁴⁷ Alcoholism seemed to be an unavoidable result of modernity and cultural development, because efficient yet monotonous working conditions seemed to produce a need for regular drinking. These conditions affected a broad part of society – workers and office labourers alike. But unlike in the 1830s, indulgence in alcohol was not taken as an indicator of miserable working conditions, but as a threatening symbol of a way of life that had become prevalent throughout society.

The effects of technological progress were not the only issues discussed in relation to alcohol. In particular, the cognitive aspects of rationalisation were also addressed while the needs of a changing society challenged the individual. Bunge even suggested that the observed escape from modernity through alcohol might not simply originate from the irrationality of the masses, but instead from their discontent about and the dire consequences of rationalisation. In his view, people were wary of a technologically rationalised society that functions on the basis of calculated efficiency principles that led people to become ‘cold, reasonable and calculating’, and the world being ruled by ‘cold calculation’.⁴⁸ For Bunge, alcoholism was not the result of bad living and working conditions as assumed by the socialists, but the result of imitation and cultural preferences: ‘People drink because others drink.’⁴⁹

Another social change observed alongside rationalisation was the increase in occupations that involved desk-based work, which came to be regarded as exhausting and as promoting regular drinking. Emil Kraepelin did research on human capability, measuring especially mental capability. He experimented with various substances (such as tea, coffee and morphine) to determine the ideal balance between exercise and fatigue in the work process, with a particular focus on mental fatigue.⁵⁰ Forel assumed that people believed they needed ‘drugs because of modern culture and all the intellectual [geistige] work’ they performed.⁵¹ Paul Wurster (1860–1923), a German theologian, suggested that the accomplishments of science conflicted with the superstition of the people.⁵² Irrational masses seemed to hamper scientific progress. Forel even suggested that ‘Custom becomes indoctrination of the masses, and a priori an unquestioned belief in authority.’⁵³ He went on to say that people were accustomed to, or were looking for, well-established reasons and ‘dumb excuses’ to drink in order to ‘bestow a semblance of logic, of rationality, of expediency on their illogical behaviour’.⁵⁴ Views like these expressed a suspicion that the masses thought and behaved in an irrational manner.

In his Psychologie des foules (Psychology of Crowds) of 1895, the psychologist and sociologist Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) characterised ‘the masses’ or ‘the crowd’ as impulsive, irritable and incapable of reason, relying on sentiment rather than on clear judgement.⁵⁵ Le Bon’s work was translated into German in 1908 by the philosopher Rudolf Eisler, by which time ‘the masses’ had already been conceptualised as ‘irrational’ and their relationship with alcohol was frowned upon.⁵⁶ The masses were seen as easily seduced by modern-style ‘beer palaces’ with ‘electric lights and the sound of a full orchestra’.⁵⁷ The temptation of alcohol became affiliated with a system of technical innovation and economic profiteering. Irrational leisure pursuits and rationalised working time seemed to complement each other. The living conditions of the working classes had improved, and regular but moderate beer consumption had replaced the excessive consumption of spirits that usually happened on paydays. But as regular drinking came to be seen as a danger to individual health and society, the changes of modernity made it necessary for the state to educate people. As Bunge demanded: ‘A good government should fight indefatigably and steadily against all stupidity and weaknesses of the masses.’⁵⁸ The idea of moderate but widespread alcohol consumption contradicted the principles of a rational modern society based on scientific knowledge.

Individual health and public health

The individual was understood to be directly connected to the collective. In this mutual relationship the individual became the key to improved public health. Drunkenness and moderate drinking were seen to endanger and degrade public health. Emil Kraepelin appealed to individuals’ responsibility: ‘The nation … desperately needs the personal model of all those who are wise to free themselves from the terrible poison that undermines their health, morality and prosperity.’⁵⁹ Here, abstinence became a sign of solidarity, especially in the case of the Trinkzwang (obligation to drink socially) in German student associations for example. The moderate drinker was always seen to be in danger of becoming an alcoholic. And even if he or she did not, moderate drinking could still encourage others to drink and succumb to alcoholism. The predisposition to develop a ‘pathological desire for repeated poisoning and larger doses’ was seen to differ from person to person.⁶⁰ This led Bunge to conclude: ‘The moderates are the seducers!’⁶¹ For him, it was even worse to drink moderately than excessively, because moderate drinking perpetuated the drinking culture and insidiously damaged public health and thereby the Volkskörper or body politic. Abraham Baer had previously advanced this view when he investigated alcoholism with respect to its ‘dispersion and impact on the individual and the social organism’.⁶²

The perception of society as a ‘social organism’ drew to some extent on the cellular pathology of Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). A famous physician and liberal politician, Virchow described the human organism as a Zellenstaat (state or nation of cells), in which the cells rely on each other and every cell contributes to the whole like a citizen contributing to the state. In popular scientific literature, Virchow’s metaphor was also interpreted in the opposite way: the organism became a model for society. His metaphor resonated with the idea of the ‘social organism’, incorporating increasingly materialistic and biologistic interpretations. During the debate on the observed declining birth rate in Germany in 1912, the population began to be seen by the state as a biological resource to be preserved at all costs. The economist Rudolf Goldscheid (1870–1931) created the concept of Menschenökonomie (people or population economics), according to which the population was capital not to be wasted.⁶³ This idea was interwoven with Social Darwinian and eugenicist thinking and was prevalent well before the rise of National Socialism and its focus on the Volkskörper, culminating in totalitarianism and the needs of the individual being subordinated to the needs of the whole.

Before the rise of the Nazis, the relationship between the individual and the collective may have been less extreme, but drinking was not considered a private matter either.⁶⁴ The individual’s responsibility for the wellbeing of society was also emphasised in the German Lebensreformbewegung (life reform movement) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example. This believed that the individual could change society by following a return to a lifestyle that was more at one with nature. In its vision ‘life’ was a spiritualistic concept in the Romantic tradition, and it appealed to intellectuals and bourgeois elite groups.⁶⁵

From a more moral-pragmatic perspective, Kraepelin noted that in a society where alcohol was widely consumed, individuals were exposed to certain risks, such as becoming victims of accidents or violent crimes.⁶⁶ In a similar vein, Bunge therefore regarded his dedication to abstinence as a ‘right to self-defence’.⁶⁷ In 1900 Heinrich Quensel, a civil servant in Cologne, also stressed the close link between the individual and society. He blamed alcohol for diminishing ‘the entire capacity of the individual and of the whole of society’.⁶⁸ He was particularly concerned about economic disadvantages that affected not only the individual, but also the general public. These were manifest in the reduced productivity of the individual, increased costs of health insurance and a heightened risk of accidents. Quensel even regarded families as a type of collective that were prevented from making worthwhile investments if one member was an alcoholic. Alcohol thus also undermined future potential. In regard to the nation, Quensel postulated a general weakening of the Volkskraft (people’s strength) because any cereals used for alcohol production were not available for Volksnahrung (people’s food).⁶⁹ For him, alcoholism undermined the foundations of life. The money lost through alcohol would be better spent on the war fleet, Quensel suggested. Quensel’s thinking and that of many of his contemporaries was guided by Social Darwinism, with the ‘struggle for existence’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ becoming core principles. They saw alcoholism as a barrier to further social development. In the resulting eugenicist thinking, the individual was subordinated to the species and became the physical resource of a whole integrated societal entity.⁷⁰ From a demographic point of view, the population was the decisive factor on which the wealth of the nation was built, and, as Weipert has shown, efforts were made to improve this resource and increase its efficiency.⁷¹

Within this wider context, scientists, such as the Austrian bacteriologist and hygienist Max von Gruber (1853–1927), advocated a society of ‘people voluntarily serving the whole’.⁷² Gruber asked: ‘Is our nation healthy in every respect?’⁷³ According to the metaphor of the Volkskörper or people’s body, he understood any rise in the number of ill or weak individuals as a sign of a nation’s disease. He referred to an increase in mental illnesses, disabilities and suicides, describing one-third of school-age children as sickly and weak, over 40 per cent of men as unfit for military service and a large number of young women as no longer able to breastfeed their children.⁷⁴ Morbidity statistics were part of the eugenicist reasoning Gruber pursued in his particularly severe form of racial hygiene. Gruber’s main concern was the nation as a whole, not the individual. In 1909 he mused:

Degeneration: physical, mental and moral

The French psychiatrist Benedict Augustin Morel (1809–1873) had previously postulated the inheritability of bad characteristics, inborn or acquired (through poisoning, illness or adverse social environments). He predicted that they would develop progressively until the human race was extinguished.⁷⁶ On this basis, protagonists of abstinence postulated the heredity of mental illnesses acquired through alcoholic intoxication. This assumption chimed in well with the Neo-Lamarckian view that Abraham Baer had adopted during the 1870s:

Gustav Bunge shared the idea of transmitted deterioration:

Degeneration in this sense led to the extinction of the nation or, in eugenicist terms, the race. Stopping alcoholism became an urgent task for the nation.

The connection between the individual and society had become particularly significant because of the idea of degeneration that flourished alongside Neo-Darwinian and eugenicist thinking. Degeneration was regarded as the worst problem resulting from alcoholism. Kraepelin suggested that alcohol was ‘one of the most important causes of degeneration we know’.⁷⁹ Statistics and physiological observations obtained from autopsies of alcoholics seemed to substantiate this suggestion. However, most descriptions of damages inheritable through alcoholism remained largely unclear about what exactly would be inherited. It was speculated that an irreparable deterioration would ensue in the individual’s organism as well as in society. Bunge claimed that ‘The fight against no other misery tolerates as little delay as the fight against drinking, because it is hereditable. The misery caused by alcohol cannot be reversed afterwards.’⁸⁰ A popular example of physical degeneration was the enlarged and adipose ‘beer heart’ (see Figure 6.1), which Quensel illustrated in his Der Alkohol und seine Gefahren (Alcohol and its Dangers).⁸¹ Other popular medical self-help books used comparisons between diseased and healthy organs to raise awareness of the risks of regular drinking. In her famous publication Die Frau als Hausärztin (The Woman as Family Doctor) of 1911, the physician Anna Fischer-Dückelmann (1856–1917) exemplified with ‘pictures from a drinker’s life’ (see Figure 6.2) the consequences of alcoholism for the general appearance of the drinker as well as the drinker’s stomach and liver. Fischer-Dückelmann was one of the first female doctors practising in Germany. Her argument that moderate drinking would lead to alcoholism was based on statistical evidence.⁸² She was not the only one to conclude that there was no such thing as harmless alcohol consumption.

Figure 6.1 ‘The healthy heart and the “beer heart”’

In 1906 Auguste Forel coined the term ‘blastophtory’ to describe the ‘poisoning of the germinating cells’ by alcohol.⁸³ The Swiss physician Eduard Bertholet (1883–1965) pursued this thesis by physiologically investigating the effects of chronic alcoholism on the reproductive ability of men.⁸⁴ He identified four stages of alcohol-related fertility impairment. Those suffering from the two final stages he described as ‘particularly dangerous for the future of the race, as they equip their offspring with many and varied infirmities’.⁸⁵ Bertholet described obesity and the loss of seminal filaments as typical damages to the reproductive organs caused by chronic alcoholism. The consequences for the offspring were vaguely summarised as weakened general constitution and reduced vitality. Bertholet conceded that other causes, such as tuberculosis, syphilis and a number of infectious diseases, could have a negative effect on reproductive ability. However, he stressed that their damaging effects ‘could not be compared with the extremely severe degeneration caused by chronic alcoholism’.⁸⁶

Figure 6.2 ‘Four pictures from a drinker’s life’

Not all alcoholics were equally affected by infertility, for only 17 per cent lacked the capacity to reproduce.⁸⁷ In Bertholet’s view, the majority of alcoholics were therefore a problem for the health of society. Firstly, alcohol-induced damage to reproductive ability occurred gradually and was difficult to ascertain in the early phases. Secondly, according to him, alcoholics were particularly driven by their crude desires, frequently prone to Eifersuchtswahn (delusional jealousy) and hence all the more eager to reproduce.⁸⁸ For Bertholet, not only contemporary society, but also the ‘future of the race’ was endangered by an accelerating process of genetic dissemination of the irrational.⁸⁹

It is striking that the issue of alcoholism and pregnancy was not discussed widely. Bertholet focused predominantly on male reproductivity. The contemporary fear was that a man would damage the unborn child if it was conceived in drunkenness.⁹⁰ Overall, there was a gender bias in the alcohol debate, and it was mainly the effects of alcohol consumption on men that were investigated. Although it was less common for women to drink to excess, the overwhelming extent to which the alcohol debate concentrated on the male body, even within debates on reproduction, is striking. Max von Gruber took the extinction of the male line in Swedish noble families as an example of degeneration, pointing out that the sex ratio had gradually changed in favour of female descendants.⁹¹ Male labour and soldiers and hence the economic and military capability of a nation seemed to weaken as well.⁹² In regard to women, the ability to breastfeed and to give birth was considered to be affected by the alcohol problem, but it was assumed that morals still offered some protection against female alcoholism. As Gruber put it: ‘In the abstinence or strict moderation of women we undoubtedly still have a valuable barrage at the moment against an even more rapid decay of the race.’⁹³ This supposition came to be challenged with the development of the women’s emancipation movement and the expected participation of women in every part of social life. According to Kraepelin, degeneration had taken place at half of the expected rate on the basis that women consumed less alcohol than men. He considered that equality in drinking habits would be a deathblow for the people, so that ‘the fate of our descendants would be sealed’.⁹⁴ This was especially so because alcoholism among women was regarded as having wider consequences in the shape of increased prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases. Moreover, female alcoholics were presented as particularly resistant to therapy, except hypnosis.⁹⁵ Kraepelin even perceived alcohol as an annihilator of masculine qualities such as ‘clarity of thought, self-control, willpower and drive’.⁹⁶ At least since the Enlightenment, masculinity had been aligned with the rational. From the late nineteenth century, this connection was increasingly seen to have weakened, leading to a sense that society was disintegrating from the inside out.⁹⁷

The technical and economic changes that rationalisation had brought about in society reminded Auguste Forel of ‘an incurable internal infectious disease: emasculation, effeminacy and degeneration through sensual pleasures and destruction of ethics and of morals’.⁹⁸ According to Kraepelin, moral degeneration was visible in an individual’s ‘loss of joy in working’, and in idleness, neglect of duty, divorce, economic distress, thievery and physical assault.⁹⁹ Degeneration was morally entwined with the decay of culture and tradition. The alcohol question became linked with the decline in birth rates, particularly from 1911 onwards, when a debate on birth rates coincided with the opening of the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden.¹⁰⁰ Both were interpreted as signifiers of moral decay. Von Gruber’s work on alcohol and birth rates in particular represents the transition to racial hygiene. Together with Alfred Ploetz and Ernst Rüdin, he initiated the first exhibition of racial hygiene, which occurred at the same time as the International Hygiene Exhibition.¹⁰¹ Gruber suggested: ‘For me there is no doubt that the increasing tendencies to live unmarried and childless are only symptoms of this alcoholic depravation, and I consider this moral degeneration to be worse than any other causes of alcohol abuse!’¹⁰²

During the late 1880s Bunge had already affirmed the contemporary idea that society was experiencing intellectual progress accompanied by moral decay. Although this process was perceived as a consequence of rationalisation, the ambition was to eliminate moral decay by rational means in order to effect intellectual and moral progress. But before this could be achieved, it was necessary to educate the public and press for total abstinence rather than mere moderation. As Bunge pointed out:

Only abstinence could ensure the moral progress of mankind.

Bunge was also at the forefront of debates on the link between moral and mental degeneration. The hereditary nature of mental illnesses was discussed particularly in regard to nervousness and delirium. Bunge noted: ‘Almost all physicians agree that many of these diseases, especially the multiple nervous diseases acquired by alcohol – from the slightest nervousness to the most obvious insanity – are highly hereditary.’¹⁰⁴ As Radkau showed in Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (The Age of Nervousness) in 1998, alcohol was also seen to be involved in neurasthenia.¹⁰⁵

Furthermore, a vaguely conceptualised tendency to drink, the addiction itself, was regarded as transferable to offspring. And even ‘vice’, in the form of moral degeneration, returned to the alcohol debate after an interlude when the idea of alcoholism as a disease had been predominant, concomitant to the medicalisation of the alcohol discourse following Magnus Huss’s coining of the term ‘chronic alcoholism’ in 1849. The alcoholic once again became seen as immoral, albeit not within a purely religious framework. While lack of self-control had previously been considered as a sin, now hereditary alcoholism enshrined three forms of degeneration – physical, mental and moral.

Nearly three decades after Bunge, in 1912, Auguste Forel examined the effects of alcohol on mental illness in more detail. As a hypnosis expert and brain researcher, he considered ‘brain degeneration’ to be the most severe stage of alcohol abuse. Alcoholism was a slow and gradual process in which

As the inheritability of mental illness became a central aspect of his research, eugenicist thinking became increasingly important to his argumentation. As Bugmann has shown, Forel changed his 1891 designation of alcohol from ‘brain poison’ to ‘racial poison’ within just the few years in 1908.¹⁰⁷

Nations in competition

Degeneration was seen to affect the physical and mental health of the nation, leading to a decay of morality in society. This stood in contrast to the idea of a progressive process of ‘social evolution’ in which the nations were in constant competition.¹⁰⁸ Kraepelin underlined this when he claimed: ‘The demands on the nations in their hard struggle for existence are constantly growing.’¹⁰⁹ The German Emperor Wilhelm II emphasised the nation’s need for ‘strong nerves and a clear mind’ in times of peace, but even more in times of war, because the next war was expected to be a ‘modern war’ and therefore completely different from previous wars.¹¹⁰ The Emperor’s words ‘The nation that consumes the smallest amount of alcohol wins’ became a popular slogan.¹¹¹ In this view inclining towards Social Darwinism, hereditary mental illnesses could possibly lead to extinction.

By the 1910s, attention to ‘population’ had become key to the survival of the nation in order to succeed in the competition with other nations. In Germany, the aspiration to become a global power was encapsulated in the terms Weltgeltung (world or global recognition) and Weltpolitik (world or global politics). A conflict between Western civilisation and German culture, in which the Germans had to succeed, was assumed.¹¹² With a world war looming on the horizon, a large and healthy population was therefore required to secure the nation’s ‘position as a great cultural power’ and its autonomy in the future.¹¹³ But even beyond a war, the ‘struggle for existence’ was considered to remain a vital issue. As Bunge put it in 1886,

While ideas about racial competition and anti-Semitism were rife during the late German Empire, Jews such as the physician and Zionist Max Nordau embraced similarly evolutionist and racist language by creating a positive stereotype: the Muskeljude (muscle or athletic Jew).¹¹⁵ In 1911 the German sociologist Werner Sombart postulated a ‘rationalisation of life’ in Judaism.¹¹⁶ Sombart claimed that the Jews had chosen a rational way of life through strict religious regulations, which had a beneficial effect on their efficiency and the preservation of the population. His ideas were highly controversial and problematic. Even contemporaries were not sure whether his work, which was full of racist statements and attributions, could be interpreted philo-Semitically or anti-Semitically. Importantly, the debates reveal the complexity of contemporary assumptions about an all-pervasive rationalisation process and prevalent concerns about population growth. Alcohol discourse could not but be affected by these varied ideas. For example, Bunge suggested that anti-Semites should ‘refrain from disgusting beer drinking’ in order to enter into the ‘peaceful competition’ to increase labour and population.¹¹⁷ As in the debates about birth rates, competition in reproduction, in which the survival of a nation was built on an increase in population, was alluded to here.

The competition between nations also had ramifications in the sphere of colonialism. Here abstinence seemed to provide advantages. Bunge noted:

According to Bunge, alcohol had posed an obstacle to successful colonisation long before the German Empire announced its colonial ambitions in 1897. Moderate alcohol consumption impeded the influence of German immigrants in the emerging USA and hence the progress of the entire American nation. German immigrants were held responsible for making regular beer consumption in North America socially acceptable and for unsettling the exemplary progress of the temperance movement.¹¹⁹ Nevertheless, America and England were regarded as Germany’s major competitors and as exemplary when it came to temperance. The Christian abstinence campaigner Paul Wurster suggested in 1911 that Germany had to catch up in order to compete on the global market and improve the Volkskraft und Volksgesundheit (the people’s and the nation’s power and health).¹²⁰ Even the creation of a ‘New Man’ was mooted to prevent degeneration and extinction.

The ideal of a ‘New Man’ became particularly prevalent in totalitarian systems during the twentieth century. Radical as well as conservative ideologies pursued this kind of human self-optimisation. This kind of thinking, which reached its peak in twentieth-century totalitarian Germany, had originated in the 1890s, when high hopes were pinned on the role of the younger generation.¹²¹ In 1910 Kraepelin appealed to young people to remain abstinent:

Constant vigilance could be achieved only through educational work. The young were supposed to generate ‘goal-oriented fighters’ who would not only fight against the temptations of alcohol, but also participate in the competition of cultures.¹²³ Gruber mirrored these ideas in 1909 when he demanded the ‘production of a physically, mentally and morally capable humanity’ as well as ‘enthusiasm for human perfection’.¹²⁴ His desire for perfecting humankind through outside intervention matched his idea of racial hygiene and eugenics nearly two decades before the rise of National Socialism.

Abstinence was clearly not regarded as a value in itself by people like Kraepelin, and Forel had warned that abstinence should not become idolised. Like progress in cultural development, it served to ‘achieve higher purposes’.¹²⁵ Forel clarified what he was aiming at: ‘We don’t want to become contemplative ascetics, but lively, active people who can love, sing, exercise, ride, fight, and then certainly win the struggle for existence.’¹²⁶ His aspirations to improve humanity and cultural development formed the theoretical basis for radical measures such as forced sterilisation of patients in the Burghölzli psychiatric institution, which Forel managed.¹²⁷

Science was expected to correct undesirable cultural developments. In Forel’s words, ‘It is a difficult and important task of the future social sciences to adapt family life more and more to the higher social interests of all people. This is unavoidable in the further development of our social body.’¹²⁸ Forel’s trust in the power of science was demonstrated not least by the fact that he motivated his students to test the positive effects of abstinence for themselves. In fact, in the 1890s, Forel implemented the kind of mass educational work that Bunge had demanded a decade earlier.¹²⁹ He addressed his student listeners in Uppsala as ‘human material’ that should carefully choose suitable women as the ‘breeding choice of the future’.¹³⁰ Teaching staff were urged to convey the message of abstinence to pupils.¹³¹ Such appeals to youth embodied the hope that the alcohol problem could be solved through science and education. They were located firmly within eugenicist thinking.

The idea of alcohol as a ‘nerve poison’ that infiltrates the life forces led the protagonists of abstinence to the conclusion that a fundamental renewal of life was necessary. Just as evolution seemed to demand constant adaptation, cultural progress could be achieved through the education of young people. In 1910 the judge and member of the Guttempler temperance movement Hermann Popert (1871–1932) wrote a novel featuring a teetotal hero named Helmut Harringa who became a popular model for this way of living. Harringa, a North Frisian, represents the ‘Deutschtum der Werdenden’ (Germanness of the new generation to be).¹³² He repeatedly encounters the negative effects of alcohol abuse throughout the plot. The novel was part of the emerging völkische Bewegung (people’s national movement) and was well received in the Jugendbewegung (Youth Movement).¹³³ The teacher Robert Theuermeister followed a similar path in his novels directed at young people. Under the pseudonym Karl Albert Schöllenbach, in 1915 he published the novel Wilm Heinrich Berthold, which was partly autobiographical and was focused on an abstinent protagonist.¹³⁴ Although his work has fallen into oblivion, Theuermeister is considered an important author of the Youth Movement.¹³⁵ Abstinence had been a theme in literature earlier. In 1889 the famous novelist and dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) wrote a drama in which the protagonist Loth leaves the love of his life because he fears the alcoholic degeneration of her family.¹³⁶ Hauptmann’s socially critical drama constitutes an important contribution to literary naturalism, and he received international recognition when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912. He was close to the life reform movement at Monte Verità, where alternative ways of life were explored.¹³⁷

Conclusion

The alcohol debates among medical experts during the period from the 1870s to the 1910s followed from the ideas promulgated by Abraham Baer. Baer’s successors anticipated that the detrimental effects of alcohol would accelerate more quickly than he had assumed. Alcoholism was seen as shackled to modern life and a misguided process of rationalisation. It was also feared that alcoholism would develop its own momentum and thwart the prospect of a progressive and rational future. Alcoholism was described as an insidious process. Mass culture was held responsible for the promotion of widespread alcohol consumption. Because the damage caused by alcohol consumption had been scientifically proven, drinking was considered an irrational behaviour of the masses based on bad habits and customs. Modern lifestyles led to alcoholism because alcohol offered an escape from increased technological rationalisation.

For many experts the solution to the alcohol problem lay in the mutual relationship of the individual and public health. Some promoted abstinence for the sake of solidarity, while others refused to regard drinking as merely a private matter. Within the wider context of emerging ideas of a ‘social organism’ and a Volkskörper, the way alcoholism was perceived changed considerably. Eugenicist thinking entered the discourse on alcohol, and the needs and actions of the individual became subordinated to the wellbeing of the whole. While during the alcohol debates of the 1830s and 1840s drunkenness was identified as the root of social problems, from the 1870s to the 1910s it was seen as a cause of degeneration.

Degeneration took many shapes and forms. Physical decay, the ‘beer heart’, long-term addiction and bad sperm cells were seen as signs of physical degeneration. The decline of culture and of the modern lifestyle – especially among women – was attributed to moral degeneration. Mental degeneration, caused by inheritance of mental diseases and addiction itself, was considered particularly serious. These ideas also had an effect on and fostered certain politics. Within the context of the ‘competition of nations’, a rational lifestyle became essential. Abstinence would facilitate colonisation and ensure the survival of the nation and ‘the race’ in the future. In order to achieve this goal, it was necessary to educate the young generation to remain abstinent. Finally, as Social Darwinian and eugenicist thinking became central to debates on alcohol, the ideal of a ‘New Man’ emerged, and abstemious heroes appeared even in contemporary popular literature.

The debates that raged over a period of about four decades can arguably be seen to have culminated in the idea of the rationalisation of the irrational. The aim was to turn the irrational ‘masses’ into a controlled and controllable population. The discourse on the ‘rationalisation of birth control’ was closely enmeshed with the discussions on alcohol. Mental illnesses and many other diseases were considered avoidable through abstinence rather than mere moderation. The iconic International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1911 aimed to create further insights into disease causation and, not least, into the link between mental illness and alcohol. The individual became responsible for the health of the nation. Alcoholism could be thwarted, and thus the nation’s mind could be saved.