Johann Plenge

In his book 1789 and 1914, Plenge contrasted the 'Ideas of 1789' (liberty) and the 'Ideas of 1914' (organisation). He argued: "Under the necessity of war, socialist ideas have been driven into German economic life, its organisation has grown together into a new spirit, and so the assertion of our nation for mankind has given birth to the idea of 1914, the idea of German organisation, the national unity of state socialism". To Plenge, as for many other German nationalists and socialists, organization meant socialism and a planned economy (central direction). He regarded the war between Germany and England as a war between opposite principles, and believed that the "struggle for victory were new forces born out of the advanced economic life of the nineteenth century: socialism and organization".

Early life

Plenge was born into a prominent patrician family in Bremen. In the early 1890s he studied at Leipzig University under Karl Lamprecht and Karl Bucherer. He then studied under Heinrich Dietzel at the University of Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1897. Around 1900 he visited Brussels and Paris, completing Gründung und Geschichte des Credit Mobilier (Foundation And History of Crédit Mobilier), which he submitted as his habilitation thesis. At this time he also developed an interest in the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, the French utopian socialist. He was also influenced by Johann Karl Rodbertus, Lorenz von Stein and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He took an 18-month study tour of the United States from 1903–1905.