Tobias Sander Bücher

Ingenieure spielten eine zentrale Rolle in der industriellen Moderne, standen jedoch im Kaiserreich und der Weimarer Republik vor ungünstigen Arbeitsbedingungen und Einkommen, insbesondere Diplom-Ingenieure. Die Akademisierung entsprach oft nicht den industriellen Anforderungen. Die Untersuchung beleuchtet, ob die völkisch-rechtskonservative Radikalisierung technischer Experten vor dem Dritten Reich vollständig durch diese beruflich-sozialen Spannungen erklärt werden kann.

Engineers represent the (industrial) modern age like no other profession. In the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, however, the enormous numerical expansion of the profession was contrasted by comparatively unfavorable working conditions and incomes. This was particularly true of the graduate engineers, whose academization failed to meet industrial requirements. Can the völkisch, right-wing political radicalization of many technical experts on the eve of the 'Third Reich' actually be fully explained by these professional-social frictions? Data on the professional-social situation, consumption, leisure time and political behaviour of engineers in the higher and academic professions, which have been made available for the first time, already reveal the contours of late-modern, contemporary society in the period under consideration. This makes more complex explanatory approaches necessary and enables general insights into the dynamics of social crises. This study of (historical) professional, inequality, and political sociology is published in its third, fully revised edition.