Room 13

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN TIME - BISMARCK AS A NATIONAL MYTH

When William II ascended the throne on 15 June 1888, the power structure at the highest echelons of the German Empire changed for the first time since the 1870s. Since the young emperor had no intention of assuming his grandfather's role and subordinating himself largely to the will of the chancellor, he and Bismarck soon quarreled in the political arena, with the effects carrying over into the personal sphere as well. William II used Bismarck's long absence from Berlin in the winter of 1889-90 to develop plans for a social policy that went far beyond the chancellor's notions. As was to be expected, Bismarck strictly opposed this policy in the crown council session on 24 January 1890.

But when his bill for a permanent Socialist Law failed to win a majority in the Reichstag, he tendered his resignation as Prussian minister of trade, the post responsible for social policy and one he had held since 1880. Hans Hermann von Berlepsch succeeded him on 1 February 1890. Bismarck suffered his next defeat on 4 February, when William II ignored the chancellor's express advice by signing two decrees that detailed a social policy program and having them appear in the Imperial Law Gazette (Reichsanzeiger). At that point Bismarck attempted to mobilize the ministers of other departments against the emperor, basing his action on a royal order of 1852 that entitled the prime minister to be consulted in all discussions between monarch and individual ministers. The conflict between the emperor and the chancellor over the substance of social policy escalated into a power struggle. Bismarck, however, found that he no longer had much support in the conservative camp, either. On 18 March 1890 he submitted his resignation as prime minister of Prussia, chancellor of the Reich, and foreign minister. It was accepted by William II two days later.

On 3 April 1890 William II tried to justify Bismarck's dismissal in a letter to Emperor Francis Joseph I

He wanted to do everything and rule alone, and not allow the emperor even to work with him.... I again had him requested to submit the repeal of the [royal] order [of 1852] and to accommodate himself to the wishes and desires I had expressed to him earlier, which he flatly refused to do.... Then I lost patience.... Now the point was to force the stubborn old man to obedience or to bring about the separation; for now it was a matter of the emperor or the chancellor staying on top.

Bismarck was given very little time to move out of his working and living quarters on Wilhelmstrasse, which were reoccupied by his successor, Leo von Caprivi. The former chancellor complained that "we were turned out onto the streets like house burglars, and many belongings were lost in the hasty operation." On 29 March he departed for Friedrichsruh, where he spent the twilight of his life as the "old man in Sachsenwald."

Contemporaries saw the dismissed chancellor as he appears in the widely reproduced drawings by Christian Wilhelm Allers (Bismarck-Allers) a kind, patriarchal German paterfamilias with a common touch, happy in his family circle. In reality, Bismarck struggled against persistent depressions. He was unable to overcome disillusionment and bitterness over his political fate, while the obsession with power and the thirst for revenge left him no peace of mind. On the recommendation of his physician, Ernst Schweninger, he set about writing his memoirs, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, though without too much enthusiasm. He was far more interested in the politics of the day instead, and he used his good contacts with the press, especially the Hamburger Nachrichten, to publish scathing critiques of Berlin's current policies and to express concern for "his" empire.

In the first two years after his dismissal, the Bismarck cult kept within limits. Only persons officially opposed to Berlin's policies could afford to pay respects to the former chancellor without having to fear adverse consequences for their political careers. The mood changed in the summer of 1892, when William II wrote a letter to Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria and prevented Bismarck from being granted an audience while in Vienna even though the former chancellor had requested one. Caprivi had the Reichsanzeiger publish a corresponding decree that cut Bismarck off from almost all official contacts, an act that unleashed a storm of indignation and cast a dark shadow on the esteem of the emperor and the government. The rapprochement of the two antagonists in 1894 - the former chancellor's visit in the imperial palace in Berlin in January and the emperor's return call in Friedrichsruh on 19 February - was therefore welcomed with relief by the public and celebrated as a "historical reconciliation."

The veneration of Bismarck now became a patriotic duty for all who loved the fatherland. Affection and recognition was not in honor of the active politician but of the living monument, the already historic hero who had laid the foundations for "Germany's greatness" with the founding of the German Empire. In current political matters, however, he was scarcely listened to. On Bismarck's eightieth birthday on 1 April 1895, legions of people, including delegations representing German federal states (Länder) and deputations of innumerable professional groups, made the pilgrimage to Friedrichsruh. Over 450 cities conferred honorary citizenship on Bismarck. The post office in Friedrichsruh had to call in twenty-three additional clerks and in one week received 9,875 telegrams while delivering 450,000 letters, postcards, and packages of printed matter. Seventy reporters from all over the world covered the event. The finest and most original gifts were displayed that very year in the Berlin concert hall on Leipziger Strasse. The catalogue for that exhibition listed more than 1,100 items, including many embroidered pillows, bedside rugs, and similar handcrafted presents from women supporters.

This veneration of Bismarck was looked upon very critically by the pioneers of emancipation. "Why did German womanhood not bring the godlike man enthusiastic tributes and costly testimonials twenty-three years ago?" asked Gisela von Streitberg in her study, Die deutschen Frauen und der Bismarkkultus (German Women and the Bismarck Cult, 1895). She pointed out that

only in the very final years ... [has] this raving about Bismarck broken out like an epidemic, as blind in its way as the erstwhile hatred. However, this miracle was not produced, for example, by the awakening of the idea of the national empire but by the sympathy with the temporary martyrdom of the former Reich chancellor and by the joy over his reconciliation with Emperor William II. The Bismarck cult is very similar to the Wagner cult.

Many towns and communities as well as associations and private individuals took the eightieth birthday of the former chancellor as an occasion to commission a Bismarck memorial. Since the founding of the empire, a certain type of monument had become prevalent. It depicted Bismarck, with or without a helmet, as a uniformed cavalryman wearing a breastplate of armor and standing on a pedestal, with one hand resting on a broadsword and the other sometimes holding the rolled or unrolled constitutional charter of the German Empire. Monuments portraying Bismarck as a private citizen were less common and did not appear until the 1890s. Equestrian statues, which were actually reserved only for sovereign princes, were erected in Bremen and Leipzig. In 1895 William II announced a major competition for a Bismarck national monument destined to stand before the Reichstag. Much to the emperor's chagrin, first prize went to Otto Lessing. To give another chance to William's favorite sculptor, Reinhold Begas, a second competition was held in 1896-97, this time with the desired result. The monument by Begas was ceremoniously dedicated in 1901 and stands today at the Grosser Stern (in Berlin's Tiergarten), a major crossroads dominated by the memorial to Prussia's victory in the Franco-Prussian War.

Individual Bismarck columns were also planned in 1895. After the death of the ex-chancellor in 1898, German university students called for columns and towers honoring him to be erected throughout the country. The cult of monuments from 1898 to the World War I was aptly characterized by Karl Scheffler in his Bismarck study of 1919:

One must not be mistaken about the pathos with which Bismarck memorials of menacingly monumental form had been built or planned on an even larger scale in many places in the empire shortly before the war. One must not be mistaken about the attempts to elevate the figure to the realm of the superhuman, to force it into the sphere of the enigmatically heroic, and to speak about it in terms of "Germanic valiance,"of "Siegfried"or "Hagen." All this spoke more against than for a living relationship. The Bismarck memorials from the period prior to 1914 are not to the great figure at all; they are conceived as universal national monuments that avail themselves of a given name.

In addition to national monuments, there were streets, squares, and entire regions and groups of islands in the German colonies that were named after the founder of the empire. The Munich painter Franz von Lenbach was involved in the creation of the national cult figure in a different manner. He portrayed the chancellor of the Reich before and after his dismissal in more than eighty variations. Shortly before the death of the old statesman at the end of July 1898, the artist was permitted to sketch a very personal portrait of the eighty-three-year-old man. Whereas the cult of monuments and the genre of history painting are regarded today largely only as curious manifestations of the nineteenth century, it is granted that the works by Lenbach have abiding artistic value. He has had the greatest influence on posterity's image of Bismarck.

Leonore Koschnick