The Internationalism of the Outlaw: On the German Turn Towards International Law After the First World War

Presentation by postdoc Sandra Ricker, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

We have at INNER_LEAGUE the honour of hosting Sandra Ricker for a presentation of her doctoral dissertation 'The Other Internationalists: The German Quest for a League of Nations After Imperial Collapse'.

Brief

Germany after the First World War – international ‘outlaw’ state, revisionist disruptor, fragile ‘democracy without democrats’ reeling from imperial collapse. Questioning this common portrayal, this thesis argues that there was another Weimar Republic. Taking the German Union for a League of Nations (Deutsche Liga für Völkerbund) as an entry point, it reconstructs a contemporary German perspective that sought to transform Germany from its transgressive militarist imperial past into an avantgarde state of the ‘new international order’ inaugurated in 1919. An enclave of jurists, diplomats, politicians, civil servants, academics, intellectuals, feminists, social reformers, trade unionists, financiers and businessmen with a broadly internationalist disposition attached to the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), the Union was soon swept up in the heady political developments of the ‘German Revolution’, weaving together constitutional and international law in the hope of allowing Germany to emerge from the turmoil as a stable republic with a constitutive role in the making of the League of Nations and the new ground rules of international relations. Then came Versailles. Disillusioned but undeterred, German supporters of international organisation – some Social Democratic, some liberal, some pacifist, some feminist and a few conservative – developed a legalist critique of the peace settlement, contesting its elaboration on its own terms amid a wider German turn towards international law.

This thesis charts their various interventions, interventions that, at least initially, sought to lay the groundwork for a radical new departure in German foreign policymaking, complicated at every turn by the difficult politics of the Weimar Republic. It reveals a doubled preoccupation with sovereignty as the leitmotif tying together their various efforts – the ‘compromised’, unequal sovereignty of Germany as a problem but also an anticipation of its deeper change in an internationalist age.

The presentation will include a discussion where participants are welcome to ask Sandra questions about her research and results. Everyone is welcome and there will be served coffee, tea, and cake. 

We hope to see you there!