Eugen Peter Schwiedland: Der Nationalismus Westeuropas (1921)

Schwiedland’s English-language review of Waldemar Mitsch­erlich’s 1920 book examines nationalism through the relationship between sociological method and historical change. Its central concern is how nationalism arises under particular conditions, rather than expressing a principle continuously present throughout European history.

The review contrasts an evolutionary model, in which the present develops organically from the past, with Mitscherlich’s alternative:

His own theory of pluralism regards every social phenomenon as something isolated and distinct in itself, arising under special conditions, and developing along its own lines.

Schwiedland presents this plurality as a fresh perspective on human institutions. Its importance for nationalism lies in directing inquiry toward distinctive origins and enabling circumstances, rather than presuming continuity across different forms of society.

The historical account makes this discontinuity explicit:

In the Middle Ages the individualistic nationalist idea was utterly foreign to the structure and essence of society.

Early nationalism therefore required fundamental changes in society and the state. The modern state’s conceptions of unity and law, combined with growing individualism, subsequently established its foundations. Yet these conditions did not immediately give nationalism its full creative importance: the review places that development only toward the end of the eighteenth century.

The argument distinguishes institutional preconditions from the later ascendancy of nationalism as an organizing idea. Schwiedland’s compressed exposition thus gives methodological significance to the historical sequence: nationalism becomes intelligible through the particular social and political arrangements that made it possible, rather than through an assumption that national identity necessarily governs every age.