Gottlieb von Jagow and the war guilt question 1918 to 1935. The role of Imperial Germany's leading diplomat in the political debates on war guilt during the Weimar Republic. A historiographical and biographical study

• Applicant: Dr. Reinhold Zilch
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; History of Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397638807

Gottlieb von Jagow (1863 to 1935) the top diplomat of Germany from 1913 to 1916 (undersecretary of state of the Foreign Office) was a major figure in the debates on German war guilt postulated in Versailles Treaty (esp. Art. 231). But Jagow stand in the 2nd line; he was avoiding the limelight. His closed collaboration with the Foreign Office and his position in a wide network of former and active diplomats and politicians, historians, and publicists is nearly unknown. There was a special department in the Office dealing with the war guilt question (Schuldreferat). It was not only reporting on national and international discussion but it was also organizing research to publish “Arguments of German innocence concerning war guilt“ (Große Kracht). The state of the art in the scientific literature on this question is dominated by the studies of Geiss, Heinemann, and Dreyer/Lembke, published between 1983 and 1993. Theiy discribed the organization of the Schuldreferat, the research on war guilt, and the collaboration with academic historians. The role of the contemporary witnesses was not in the main focus. It is thus the project’s goal to discover the role of Jagow in these debates as an arch-typical figure of the former imperial politicians and representatives of the Prussian-German right wing conservative elites before and during Ward War I, as well as after the monarchy’s demise during revolution and until the National-Socialist’s rise to power. Jagow played an unknown part in the strategy of the Weimar government to end the Versailles dictates. To discover these relations and motives the project will analyse Jagow’s political correspondence with the Office, with other politicians, diplomats, the Office and the reactions of it’s civil servants, as well the project will analyse Jagow’s unprinted secret memoirs. These big numbers of documents have been nearly ignored till now by the historians. You can find these sources in the Jagow papers and the files of the Schuldreferat kept in Foreign Office political archive as well as in numerous archives. To discover Jagow’s role the project will compare these documents with his own publications. These sources greatly extend beyond his publication „Causes and Outbreak of World War I“ (1919) concerning the covered period as well as his seemingly neutral and forced objective cadence; in fact, the named documents allow for a much clearer and more focused analysis of certain events and figures as well as their motives, including Jagow himself. The project will enable researchers to scrutinize the Weimar Republic’s political, cultural, and intellectual history, as well as individuals‘ and groups‘ biographies. Historians are thus enabled to study the Empire’s bureaucratic elites, including the analysis of political networks dealing with the issue of war guilt.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Hans-Christof Kraus