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OCR A Level History AY314/01 The Challenge of German Nationalism 1789–1919 MERGED QUESTION PAPER AND MARK SCHEME FOR MAY 2024 £8.84
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OCR A Level History AY314/01 The Challenge of German Nationalism 1789–1919 MERGED QUESTION PAPER AND MARK SCHEME FOR MAY 2024

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OCR A Level History AY314/01 The Challenge of German Nationalism 1789–1919 MERGED QUESTION PAPER AND MARK SCHEME FOR MAY 2024

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  • November 10, 2024
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  • 2024/2025
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Thursday 23 May 2024 – Morning
A Level History A
Y314/01 The Challenge of German Nationalism 1789–1919
Time allowed: 2 hours 30 minutes




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, 2

SECTION A

Read the two passages and answer Question 1.


1 Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages.

Explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the impact of economic growth
under Wilhelm II.
[30]


Passage A

The German economy expanded widely and rapidly during the Wilhelmine period with far‑reaching
effects. On the one hand, German workers were likely to be better off than ever before. Their jobs
were secure and the material benefits of the new industries reached them, if not immediately, in the
form of consumer goods. On the other hand, working conditions were often unpleasant and more
and more Germans found themselves crowding into the industrial centres, many of which were
concentrated in a single small area. Significantly, the world’s first slum clearance programme was
undertaken in Hamburg in 1893, while at the same time many German cities were having a range of
amenities installed.

The new conditions stimulated the development of working‑class movements. Workers could see
both the wealth that they had created for others and the prospect of more material possessions for
themselves, each of which encouraged them to demand higher pay. At the same time, their working
hours and conditions led them to demand improvements from their employers. Yet the one organ
through which they might hope to orchestrate any opposition – the SPD* in the Reichstag – was
apparently stifled by the franchise system and the constitutional weakness of the Reichstag. In such
conditions, the development of extra‑parliamentary forms of protest, and revolutionary ideas, might
have been expected.

* SDP – Social Democratic Party

R. Wolfson, Years of Change, published in 1978.

, 3

Passage B

Overall, the German economy experienced a period of massive growth that was perceived as a boom
by contemporaries. From the already accelerated levels of the Bismarckian era, German industrial
production increased again by an incredible third in the years 1895–1900 alone. With a limited
German market for this vast output, external markets were explored, and exports went through the
roof. Just before the First World War, the value of goods passing through the port of Hamburg was
the third highest in the world. German shipbuilding too had grown immensely, not in small part due
to Wilhelm’s personal love for all things nautical. Germany had become an economic powerhouse
that began to rival the biggest in the world. This gave the German people and their kaiser a sense of
national confidence in light of which Bismarck’s old warnings about foreign political caution seemed a
relic of a time gone by.

However, the impression of rapid progress is only one part of the picture. With specific new industries
shooting ahead into a prosperous future, many other sectors of the German economy were left behind
and fell into repeated cycles of depression and boom. This, in turn, created a constant undercurrent
of anti‑capitalist sentiment and economic anxiety among sections of the population. Wages were out
of step with the pace of economic growth overall. Where comparable Western economies saw an
average rise in real wages of 4% between 1890 and 1914, Germany’s only rose by 1%. Employees
had very little leverage when negotiating for working hours, salaries or conditions. The desire for
co‑ordination on their side led to increased trade union membership and increasing politicisation of
this social class. The SPD* became the single largest party in the Reichstag and thus posed a serious
source of opposition on the eve of the First World War.

* SDP – Social Democratic Party

Katja Hoyer, Blood and Iron, published in 2021.




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