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. This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.

New Profession, Old Order explores the creative tension between modern technology and preindustrial Germany. It offers an explanation of why the engineering profession is so successful in transforming the physical world, did not achieve the professional power, cohesion, and prestige that its technological accomplishments would seem to have warranted.

At the end of the Second World War, Germany lay at the mercy of its occupiers, all of whom launched programmes of scientific and technological exploitation. Each occupying nation sought to bolster their own armouries and industries with the spoils of war, and Britain was no exception. Shrouded in secrecy yet directed at the top levels of government and driven by ingenuity from across the civil service and armed forces, Britain made exploitation a key priority. By examining factories and laboratories, confiscating prototypes and blueprints, and interrogating and even recruiting German experts, Britain sought to utilise the innovations of the last war to prepare for the next. This ground-breaking book tells the full story of British exploitation for the first time, sheds new light on the legacies of the Second World War, and contributes to histories of intelligence, science, warfare and power in the midst of the twentieth century.

Analyzes the First and Second World Wars.