Inner Courtyard

THE CENTURY OF EUROPE

The age of Bismarck was marked by great internal and external tensions. Brandenburg's landed aristocracy, highly conservative in its social origin, way of life, and culture, lived and reigned in decades of profound social, cultural, and economic changes in Prussia, Germany, and Europe. Class structures displaced the prerevolutionary estates of the realm. Middle-class society increasingly penetrated the aristocracy's economic and social system and the political elite that the nobility supplied. After the crisis of preindustrial and early industrial society with its pauperism, industrialization became the main factor of the epoch in the German sphere as well. New social movements emerged.

After 1870-71 Bismarck's response to the growing labor movement was twofold: repression of the socialists and other figures of the opposition, and development of a social insurance system that became a precedent far and wide. The old and the new in society and culture collided, necessitating a host of compromises. These diverse forces and currents were captured and passed down in vivid images by the visual arts. The colossal dimensions of "strictly realistic" history painting are thus juxtaposed with momentous treaties and publications such as the document founding the German Confederation, and the Communist Manifesto - to convey the first impressions in this exhibition.

The time axis of the central courtyard's panorama stretches from the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 to the beginning of World War I, illustrated by Germania, who raises sword and shield as the armed personification of the German Empire. Two exhibits, Gilbert Rogers's Gassed and a field first-aid kit, recall the apocalypse of World WarI, which ushered in a new age.

Whereas Engelbert Seibertz's study for a fresco, Statesmen of the Restoration Period, gathers those old social elites that set the tone politically until well into the second half of the nineteenth century, Meeting of the Superrisory Board at Krupp shows the new elites of bourgeois capital. By 1900 heavy industry, combined with the rapid growth of the electrical and chemical industries, which at that time were still young sectors of production, had enabled the German Empire to become the third-largest industrial power in the world, surpassed only by the United States of America and Great Britain. On the threshold of the twentieth century, additional arenas opened for the tug-of-war between progress and inertia and between new and old elites: conflicts over constitutional issues and the parliamentary system, over demands of the labor movement and the implications that economic growth had for social peace, and over imperialism and hegemonic aspirations of the young German Empire in the European system of powers.

Monumental paintings of battles by the Prussian history painters Wilhelm Camphausen and Christian Sell contrast with the large depictions by artists critical of society. Instead of heroizing military scenes in detail, the Bavarian Hubert von Herkomer, the Dane Frantz Henningsen, the Italian Guiseppe Pelizza da Volpedo, and others treated themes associated with the labor movement and the social question. These pictorial subjects paralleled the apprehension expressed by the conservative state socialist Carl von Rodbertus-Jagetzow in November 1871: Like Napoleon's armies had bled to death on the snow fields of Russia, "the social question will become the campaign of Bismarck's fame." The Bismarck apotheoses, which appeared both during and after his life, represent only a narrow selection of the many monuments that served to mythicize him. They bear witness to the late-nineteenth century's predilection for monumentalizing history.

Tied into the biographical stations of the protagonist, those views and monuments convey the tensions, struggles, and compromises within the traditional order. Halfway rebuttressed after profound modifications in 1815, that order seemed increasingly shaky, but basic elements of it survived until World War I. With increasing dynamism the new forces of emancipation, rationalization, and modernization, whether revolutionary or reformist, posed an ever more serious challenge and gradually eroded the pillars of the establishment. Conservatism and the desire for radical change faced off, social conflicts smoldered, national conflicts worsened throughout Europe and hampered relations between the Great Powers. Bloody wars were fought to preserve spheres of influence, control unification movements, and shore up international constellations of power. The statues of Alfred Krupp and Joseph-Eugene Schneider allude to the rise of heavy industry and arms capital in those decades.

At the same time, however, efforts were growing to mitigate the consequences of war through the founding of the International Red Cross at the Geneva Convention of 1864. Agreements establishing the neutrality of medical care in the field were signed in that year by sixteen states, an act of civilization captured in the huge painting by Charles Edouard Armand-Dumaresq. There were often emotionally charged disputes over the ways in which war was waged and the relation between ends and means. One conflict of this kind between military and political leaders was reconstructed by Anton von Werner in his patriotic painting entitled Council of War in Versailles (1881, 1900).

Nevertheless, the horrors of Sevastopol, Solferino, Düppel, Königgrätz, Sedan, and other campaigns did not prevent the willingness to keep making war as the "continuation of state policy by other means" even though some army leaders were taken aback as they reflected upon the consequences. As Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William noted in his diary in 1866:

Riding across the battlefield was ghastly, and the dreadful maiming to behold simply cannot be described. War is really something appalling, and the nonsoldier who creates one with the flick of a pen by ignoring realities has no idea what he is bringing about.

In 1883 the heroic painting entitled Field Hospital by Otto von Faber du Faur gave a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes of battle. Thousands died in the base and reserve hospitals not only from wounds inflicted by bullets, artillery, and cutting and thrusting weapons but also from the lack of antiseptic treatment for dysentery and typhus. During table talk at his Pomeranian estate, Varzin, in October 1877, Prince Bismarck brooded over his political responsibility:

Without me, three great wars would not have been fought, eighty thousand mcn would not have died, and parents, brothers, sisters, widows would not have grieved. I have meanwhile settled with God over that. But I have had absolutely no joy from everything I have done, only a great deal of trouble, worry, and toil.

The nineteenth century was the age of migration movements caused by economic and political conditions. In many cases it was precisely the boldest figures who were compelled to emigrate. The conflicts between the nationalities marked the dramatic character of this epoch, but social and technological upheavals changed Europe as well. Population growth and the migration of the rural population into towns led to headlong urbanization in the capitals and residencies of Europe. The railroad network shortened distances, telegraph and telegram services accelerated the flow of news. The feeling for time changed, as did the perception of reality. Photography and film took their place alongside the visual arts. These innovations found use in politics, a field that thereby promoted their development.

All these contradictions and simultaneities converge in the biography of Bismarck, a man who is still as controversial today as he was in his own day. His compromise between traditional dynastic, monarchical rule and the principle of the nation-state helped to reduce conflict in the three "Wars of Unification" 1864, 1866, and 1870-71. But the explosion of the conflicts between the nationalities and the triumph and development of the nation-state were issues throughout Europe, not just in Germany. The specific form they assumed and the consequences they had for the structure of Europe differed from country to country. The struggle of the Poles for their political independence, of the Italians behind Cavour and Garibaldi for national unity, of the Hungarians for national sovereignty, of the Germans and other European peoples for unity and liberty, law and constitutional government, freedom of thought and the right to vote - for all their differences, they shared a common goal: political participation against the forces of the Restoration. Parliamentary structures and the party system, a politically aware public, as well as strikes and labor conflicts created new political foci and new majorities to which the rulers and governments in all European states had to orient themselves, at least by the time the Revolution of 1848 broke out.

Referring to the significance of Europe, Otto von Bismarck remarked rather cynically in 1876 that "I have always found the word Europe in the mouth of those politicians who were demanding from other powers something that they did not dare demand in their own name." Despite his conservative principles, Bismarck's knack of perceiving the modernizing forces of his time enabled him to influence, shape, and, if necessary, exploit them. In 1815, the year Bismarck was born, the European system of states was reconstituted at the Congress of Vienna after the final defeat of Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo. In 1898, the year of Bismarck's death, the English publisher W. F. Stead concluded his emphatic necrology on the first chancellor of the German Empire with the words: "and now that he, too, has passed to that silent land, Germany without Bismarck seems like Switzerland without her Alps."

If the presentation in the inner courtyard recalls the sheer abundance of Bismarck busts that have come down to posterity, his larger-than-life dimensions are scaled down by the views of his contemporaries. Their shrewd, keen eye for his politics within Germany and on the European stage is documented and annotated by the domestic and foreign cartoons and caricatures in the films made for the exhibition.

The clash between the monarchical principle of rule and the demands of liberalism and democracy lay at the heart of the constitutional history of those decades. Revolution, constitutional conflict, the North German Confederation, the imperial constitution, expansion of the empire these are the stations of Bismarck's compromise. The elements typical for processes of modernization determined the dramatics of the political stage. They were interlinked, mutually superimposed, and mutually reinforcing. They were reified in Otto von Bismarck.

Marie-Louise von Plessen and Leonore Koschnick