| Wilhelminism | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1890–1918 | |||
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| Including | Gründerzeit | ||
| Monarch(s) | Wilhelm II | ||
Chronology
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TheWilhelmine period orWilhelmian era (German:Wilhelminische Zeit, Wilhelminische Epoche) comprises the period ofGerman history between 1890 and 1918, embracing the reign ofKaiserWilhelm II in theGerman Empire from the resignation of ChancellorOtto von Bismarck until the end of World War I and Wilhelm's abdication during theNovember Revolution.
It represented an era of creative ferment in the society, politics,culture, art, literature, and architecture of Germany. It also roughly coincided with the lateVictorian andEdwardian eras in theBritish Empire, theGilded Age in theUnited States, theBelle Époque in theThird French Republic, and theSilver Age in theRussian Empire.
The term "Wilhelminism" (Wilhelminismus) is not meant as a conception of society associated with the name Wilhelm and traceable to an intellectual initiative of theGerman Emperor. Rather, it relates to the image presented by Wilhelm II and his demeanour, as manifested by the public presentation of grandiosemilitary parades and self-aggrandisement on his part. The latter tendency had already been noticed by his grandfather, EmperorWilhelm I, while Wilhelm II's father, laterFrederick III, was Crown Prince.
Wilhelminism also characterizes the social, literary, artistic, and cultural climate of Wilhelm II's reign, which on the one hand was dominated by the rigidly-conservative opinions of thePrussian Junkeraristocracy, those associated with theGerman Agrarian League, and of the German industrialists, which closely mirrored those of theBritish upper class during the parallelVictorian era in theBritish Empire. Ironically, Germany during the Wilhelmian era was, on the other hand, distinguished by escalatingsecularization and growing belief inprogress among intellectuals, in response to recent medical and scientific advances and the enormous prosperity of the heavily-industrialized German Empire, but which was at polar odds with the last Kaiser's belief in bothLutheranism andsocial conservatism. Even so, Otto von Bismarck'sAnti-Socialist Laws were not renewed and the Iron Chancellor's efforts to renew them were the catalyst for his forced resignation at the last Kaiser's insistence.
The final break between the Iron Chancellor and the last Kaiser came when Bismarck initiated discussions with the opposition to form a new parliamentary majority without consulting with the monarch first. TheKartell, the shiftingcoalition government that Bismarck had been able to maintain since 1867, had finally lost its majority of seats in the Reichstag due to the Anti-Socialist Laws fiasco. The remaining powers in the Reichstag were theCatholic Centre Party and the Conservative Party.
In mostparliamentary systems, the head of government depends upon the confidence of the parliamentary majority and has the right to form coalitions to maintain a majority of supporters. In theconstitutional monarchy of the German Empire, however, theChancellor was required to meet regularly with the monarch to explain his or her policies and intentions within the Government. A Chancellor also could not afford to make an enemy of the monarch, who represented the only real check and balance against a Chancellor's otherwiseabsolute power.[citation needed] This was because the constitutional monarch had plenty of means at his or her disposal of quietly blocking a Chancellor's policy objectives and was one of the only people who could forcibly remove an overly ambitious Chancellor from power.[citation needed] For these reasons, the last Kaiser believed that he had every right to be informedbefore Bismarck began coalition talks with the Opposition.
In a deeply ironic moment, a mere decade after expellingreligious orders, banningCatholic schools, and demonizing all members of theCatholic Church in Germany as (German:Reichsfeinde, "traitors to the Empire") during theKulturkampf, Bismarck decided to start coalition talks with the all-Catholic Centre Party. He invited that party's leader in the Reichstag,BaronLudwig von Windthorst, to meet with him and begin the negotiations. The Kaiser, who always had a warm relationship with Baron von Windthorst, whose decades long defence of German Catholics, Poles, Jews, and other minorities against the Iron Chancellor have since attracted high praise and comparisons toIrish nationalist statesmenDaniel O'Connell andCharles Stewart Parnell, was furious to hear about Bismarck's plans for coalition talks with the Centre Party only after they had already begun.[1]
After a heated argument at Bismarck's estate over the latter's alleged disrespect for the Imperial Family, Wilhelm stormed out. Bismarck, forced for the first time in his career into a crisis that he could not twist to his own advantage, wrote a blistering letter of resignation, decrying the Monarchy's involvement in both foreign and domestic policy. The letter was published only after Bismarck's death.[2]
In later years, Bismarck created the "Bismarck myth"; the view (which some historians have argued was confirmed by subsequent events) that Wilhelm II's successful demand for Bismarck's resignation destroyed any chance Imperial Germany ever had of stable government and international peace. According to this view, what Wilhelm termed "The New Course" is characterised as Germany'sship of state going dangerously off course, leading directly to the carnage of the First and Second World Wars.
According to Bismarck apologists, in foreign policy the Iron Chancellor had achieved a fragile balance of interests between Germany, France and Russia. Peace was allegedly at hand and Bismarck tried to keep it that way despite growing popular sentiment against Britain (regarding theGerman colonial empire) and especially against Russia. With Bismarck's dismissal, the Russians allegedly expected a reversal of policy in Berlin, so they quickly negotiated amilitary alliance with theThird French Republic, beginning a process that by 1914 largely isolated Germany.[3]
In contrast, historianModris Eksteins has argued that Bismarck's dismissal was actuallylong overdue. According to Eksteins, the Iron Chancellor, in his need for ascapegoat, had demonizedClassical Liberals in the 1860s,Roman Catholics in the 1870s, andSocialists in the 1880s with the highly successful and often repeated refrain, "The Reich is in danger." Therefore, in order todivide and rule, Bismarck ultimately left theGerman people even more divided in 1890 than they had ever been before 1871.[4]
In interviews withC.L. Sulzberger for the bookThe Fall of Eagles,Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, grandson and heir of Kaiser Wilhelm II, further commented, "Bismarck was certainly our greatest statesman, but he had very bad manners and he became increasingly overbearing with age. Frankly, I don't think his dismissal by my grandfather was a great tragedy. Russia was already on the other side because of theBerlin Congress of 1878. Had Bismarck stayed he would not have helped. He already wanted to abolish all the reforms that had been introduced. He was aspiring to establish a kind ofShogunate and hoped to treat our family in the same way the Japanese shoguns treated theJapanese emperors isolated inKyoto. My grandfather had no choice but to dismiss him."[5]
Subsequent ChancellorBernhard von Bülow continued to implement legislation at the last Kaiser's insistence that favored industrial worker's rights toorganized labor and collective bargaining, while still opposingMarxist ideas. Nevertheless, theGerman Social Democratic Party continued to expand its base and became the largestpolitical party elected to theReichstag during the1912 national elections. Despite the party's stronger influence, internal developments were characterised, similarly to theLabour Party in Great Britain, by an increasing loyalty of the party leadership towards both the Monarchy and theGerman colonial empire. This attitude was condemned as "revisionism" by its opponents, but ultimately culminated in theBurgfrieden policy of agreeing to support the war effort during the patriotic euphoria later dubbed theSpirit of 1914. These developments, however, were closely mirrored by other Leftist parties in other nations.
While "Wilhelmism" is equally applied to the last Kaiser's favored styles in both the visual arts and architecture, such as the ornate Germania postage stamps, numerous government buildings and the Wilhelmine Ring housing areas of Berlin and many other German cities, the term is also used to describe an essentially-Neo-Baroque and prestige-oriented style of architecture. Similarly to the architecture of other European Capitols of the era, the Neo-Baroque was calculated to express Germany's ambitions to become and remain a naval, imperial, and colonial power.
This neo-Baroque style was particularly exemplified by the grandioseSiegesallee, a boulevard of what were intended to be heroic-looking marble statues of the last Kaiser's ancestors in theTiergarten of Berlin.
Even though the Siegesallee was widely ridiculed by the infamously irreverent and sarcastic Berliners of the era asdie Puppenallee, 'The Boulevard of Dolls' and as an alley where, "even the bird-shit is made of marble", the neo-Baroque statues received Royal Assent in Kaiser Wilhelm'sRinnsteinrede (German for 'gutter speech'), which was also a very harsh criticism of the recent birth of German modernist art which the last Kaiser considered degenerate art, at the formal unveiling of the Siegesallee on 18 December 1901.
Foreign policy was founded on Kaiser Wilhelm's support for both his Government'scolonialist ambitions and their efforts to establish Germany as aworld power (Weltmacht). The desire for a "place in the sun" as coined by Foreign SecretaryBernhard von Bülow and was shared by a large number of German citizens and intellectuals.Pan-Germanism achieved a short-lived high point after theGerman colonial empire expanded in Africa, China, New Guinea, and in theSouth Seas and became the third largest colonial empire after those of theUnited Kingdom and theThird French Republic. Meanwhile, European diplomatic relations deteriorated. In 1890, Germany refused to prolong the secretReinsurance Treaty with theRussian Empire that had concluded by Bismarck in 1887, and Germany had to witness the forming of theFranco-Russian Alliance, which presenting a new threat of atwo-front war.
The distinctive spiked helmet, the so-calledPickelhaube had existed previously and not only in the German Empire, but it now symbolises Wilhelmian era and theImperial German Army andPrussian Army-inspiredmilitarism in general. (In fact, varioussign languages still have the extended forefinger placed in front of the forehead, indicating the spiked helmet, as the sign for "German".)
While men in uniform were still treated with enormous respect inGerman culture, it should not be pretended that the German people or their government were incapable of laughing at their own military or their own actions towards it. On 16 October 1906, former convictWilhelm Voigt secretly dressed himself in an elitePrussian Guards Captain's uniform, the elements of which he had purchased from different second hand shops. In an Oscar-worthy performance, Voigt bluffed a group ofImperial German Army enlisted men into placing the Mayor ofKöpenick and city treasurer of under arrest forpolitical corruption. Voigt then "confiscated" more that 4,000 marks from the city treasury, changed back into civilian clothing, and disappeared. Following a police and military investigation, Voigt was arrested, convicted offorgery,impersonating an officer, andfalse imprisonment, and incarcerated. The case was cited by British writers such asG.K. Chesterton to criticize what they saw as the excessive militarism of the Second Reich and theblind obedience and subservience to authority inGerman culture. In contrast, theGerman people overwhelmingly found the exploit both clever and hysterically funny. Eventually the last Kaiser, who also admired Voigt's cleverness and boldness, pardoned him and ordered his early release from incarceration. Voigt then spent many years giving public lectures about the exploit to paying audiences and abandoned his former life of crime.
Meanwhile, relations with Britain were badly strained by theScramble for Africa and, even more so, by theAnglo-German naval arms race. Wilhelm's fascination with theRoyal Navy, which led him to give his full support to Grand AdmiralAlfred von Tirpitz's ambition to see theImperial German Navy established as an instrument of national prestige, were still reflected in everydayGerman culture long after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1918.
Until the mid-20th century, young German boys were still dressed insailor suits to impress them at an early age with the Navy's aura and prestige as the gentlemen's branch of the service. For this reason, the Imperial German Navy's most successful combat commanders of the Great War, such asMaximilian von Spee,Felix von Luckner,Karl von Müller,Hellmuth von Mücke,Otto Hersing,Otto Weddigen, andLothar von Arnauld de la Perière, became widely revered national icons and, if they fell, martyrs.
A very similar national iconization also took place within theImperial German Flying Corps following the advent of aerial warfare. The most successfulWorld War Iflying aces such asMax Immelmann,Oswald Boelcke,Manfred von Richthofen,Werner Voss, andKarl Allmenröder, were regarded as national heroes and, if they fell, as martyrs. Their fellow World War I flying aceHermann Göring was once similarly regarded, until his heroic image was first tarnished and then destroyed completely by his role in later chapters ofGerman history.
The gravesites of Oswald Boelcke and Manfred von Richthofen, on the other hand, remain sites of secularpilgrimage for both officers and enlisted men of the 21st centuryAir Force of theFederal Republic of Germany, which regards both World War I flying aces as their founding fathers. Furthermore, to many people worldwide who both admire and revere the flying aces of the Great War, Richthofen, in particular, is seen as embodying the best traditions of the officer corps of the last Kaiser's Germany.
Even though theGerman people aretraditionally stereotyped as law-abiding and subservient to the authority of the police and the courts,[6] this stereotype does not fit the Wilhelmian era.
For example, the 1900-1902 manhunt forMathias Kneißl, a peasant outlaw, copkiller, and poacher in theDachau District ofKingdom of Bavaria witnessed the local Bavarian peasantry overwhelmingly cheering him on as aJohn Dillinger-stylefolkanti-hero. Policemen were assigned from other regions of Bavaria and often could not speak or understand the local dialect. What was worse,police corruption was considered so common in the region that Kneißl's slaying of two cops during aWild West-style gunfight on 30 November 1900 made him very popular, long after his capture, trial, and execution for their murders in 1902.[7] According to Germanforensic scientistMark Benecke, however, Mathias Kneißl never saw himself as aRobin Hood figure and was, in reality, "just a man who went astray with no way of getting back."[8]
In 1891, the Imperial Capital of Berlin witnessed the birth oforganized crime in Germany in the form of oath boundsecret societies for former convicts called theRingvereine (Sporting Clubs"). The Ringvereine often carried romantic sounding names such asImmertreu ("Forever True"),Felsenfest ("Firm as a Rock"),Nordpiraten ("Northern Pirates"), andApachenblut ("Apache Bloods") and completely dominated bothracketeering,prostitution, and the illegaldrug trade of Berlin. As early as 1895, the Ringvereine were having their first "business" dealings with theAmerican Mafia, but their power and political influence only reached its height after the November Revolution of 1918. Only thesecret police forces ofNazism and postwarStalinism, who shot both real and suspected Ringverein members en masse and sent many others to concentration camps without requiring the niceties of evidence, broke the Sporting Clubs' power.[9][10][11][12]
In a December 1931 conversation inFrankfurt with journalistHeinrich Simon,Harry Graf Kessler was asked for the reasons why, despite being a descendant of theGerman nobility, he embraced the concept ofRepublicanism and opposed the post-1918 restoration of theHouse of Hohenzollern. According to Count von Kessler, "William II's downright perverse bad taste, I said, was more responsible than anything else. Bad taste in the selection of his friends and advisors; bad taste in art, literature, politics and his style of living; bad taste revealed by every word he uttered... A crowned barbarian who gave the whole German nation a reputation forbarbarity."[13]
Despite Count von Kessler's later contempt for the cultural life during the final decades of theGerman Empire, the Wilhelmian era also seethed with radical innovation, literary, artistic, and cultural ferment inside the literary coffee houses, theatres, andbohemian urban quarters of Berlin, Munich, and many other German cities.
Meanwhile, theDresden-based artist's groupDie Brücke(The Bridge) was one of two groups of iconoclastic German painters fundamental toexpressionism, the other being the Munich-basedDer Blaue Reiter(The Blue Rider) group.
In addition to witnessing the birth of modern art, the same era also witnessed the introduction of theSymbolist movement intoGerman literature and the creation of the modern Germanliterary language by passionatelyFrancophile poetStefan George and theGeorge-Kreis, the circle of younger poets and writers that surrounded him.
Among many other examples of the power and influence the George-Kreis wielded over Germany cultural and literary life, the scholarly and editorial skills of one member,Norbert von Hellingrath, were singlehandedly responsible for the revival of interest in theGerman romantic poetFriedrich Hölderlin, who had died unrecognized following decades of incarceration in a tower atTübingen following a mental breakdown in 1806. Hellingrath, who later fell at theBattle of Verdun in 1916, collected and published the collected works of Hölderlin in 1913 and succeeded in gaining for theSwabian poet in death the literary recognition that always eluded him in life. Norbert von Hellingrath is why Hölderlin is now widely considered one of the greatest poets ever to write in the German language.
Jeremy Adler has written thatwar poet andplaywrightAugust Stramm, who began publishing his poetry in early 1914, treated, "language like a physical material" and, "honed downsyntax to its bare essentials." Citing Stramm's fondness for "fashioning new words out of old," Adler has also written that, "whatJames Joyce did on a grand scale forEnglish, Stramm achieved more modestly forGerman."[14]
Adler has also written that August Stramm's "essential innovation (still too little recognized in Germany) was to create a new, non-representational kind of poetry," which is, "comparable," toPablo Picasso's creation ofabstract art and toArnold Schoenberg's revolution in the writing ofClassical music.[15]
In his 1985 book,The German Poets of the First World War, Patrick Bridgwater dubbed theliterary movement inspired by Stramm's poetry, "the German variety ofImagism."[16]
Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1914,T.E. Hulme heard the kind of poetry that Stramm had created and inspired being read aloud at theCabaret Gnu in Berlin. Hulme later wrote, "Very short sentences are used, sometimes so terse and elliptical as to produce a blunt and jerky effect ... It is clear that a definite attempt is being made to use the language in a new way, an attempt to cure it of certain vices."[17]
Even though it is widely associated with the later plays ofBerthold Brecht, the Second Reich also witnessed the iconoclastic invention of modern theatrical staging by Catholic poet andplaywrightReinhard Sorge and stage directorMax Reinhardt, under the influence of Stefan George,Friedrich Nietzsche, andRichard Dehmel.
Sorge'sThe Beggar was written during the last three months of 1911.[18] According to Michael Paterson, "The play opens with an ingenious inversion: the Poet and Friend converse in front of a closed curtain, behind which voices can be heard. It appears that we, the audience, are backstage and the voices are those of the imagined audience out front. It is a simple, but disorienting trick of stagecraft, whose imaginative spatial reversal is self-consciously theatrical. So the audience is alerted to the fact that they are about to see a play and not a 'slice of life.'"[19]
According to Walter H. Sokel, "The lighting apparatus behaves like the mind. It drowns in darkness what it wishes to forget and bathes in light what it wishes to recall. Thus the entire stage becomes a universe of [the] mind, and the individual scenes are not replicas of three-densional physical reality, but visualizes stages of thought."[20][21]
Tragically and in an added parallel to the many other nations experiencing similar cultural ferment during the same era, many of Germany's most gifted and innovative poets, writers, artists, and intellectuals were soon to die prematurely upon the battlefields of the Great War.
The Wilhelmian era ended in theNovember Revolution of 1918, which had very close parallels to theFebruary Revolution which had toppled theHouse of Romanov from the throne of theRussian Empire. First, riots broke out in the Imperial Capital, the last Kaiser announced his intention to divert troops from the battlefield to restore order, and found to his shock that he had lost the support of the Generals, who all demanded his immediate abdication. In response toPaul von Hindenburg's implied threat that theImperial German Army would not protect the last Kaiser if he faced a similar death to that of his late cousinTsar Nicholas II, Wilhelm II took Hindenburg's advice and requestedpolitical asylum in the neutralNetherlands.
Nevertheless,nostalgia for the German Empire and a desire for its restoration continued to exist. During theWeimar Republic, theGerman National People's Party (DNVP) and it'sparamilitary wingDer Stahlhelm, openly sought to restore the Monarchy but instead found itself manipulated, outmaneuvered, sidelined, and then banned outright byAdolf Hitler and theNazi Party.
During the same era, thedeath squadOrganisation Consul, which considered both the November Revolution and theVersailles Treaty to be treasonous, routinely targeted political leaders involved with both for assassination. Even when they were caught and prosecuted, Organisation Consul members tended to receive lenient sentences from judges sympathetic to their views.
Even after theSecond World War, nostalgia for the Wilhelmian era continued. In 1968Der Spiegel reported that in a survey of their readers byQuick magazine about who would be the most honorable person to becomePresident of the Federal Republic of Germany, the last Kaiser's grandson and heir,Prince Louis Ferdinand, the only one of twelve candidates who was not a politician, won with 39.8% beforeCarlo Schmid andLudwig Erhard.[22] In a similar survey by the tabloidBild, readers chose Louis Ferdinand by 55.6%.[22] In an interview withQuick, the prince indicated that he might accept the presidency but would not relinquish his claim to the Imperial or Prussian crowns.[22]
In interviews withC.L. Sulzberger for the bookThe Fall of Eagles, Prince Louis Ferdinand further expressed a deep sense of admiration for the informalbicycle monarchy andcrowned republic style favored and used by the Dutch, Belgian, and Scandinavian royal families. Praising how vehicles carrying the King or Queen would stop and wait at traffic lights, Louis Ferdinand stated that if theHouse of Hohenzollern were ever restored to the German throne during his lifetime, this same informality was a quality he fully intended to emulate.[23]
Even afterGerman Reunification in 1990, nostalgia continues. For example, the rebuilding of cities in the formerEast Germany which remained devastated byWorld War II bombing raids has often involved the reconstruction of demolished historic buildings from theGerman Empire or even earlier.
East German PremierWalter Ulbricht had ordered the demolition of both theBerlin Imperial Palace and theGarrison Church inPotsdam, sites which were closely associated with the formerGerman Imperial Family and the ideology of the German Empire. Both buildings, however, are now being rebuilt, almost exactly as they were.
Moreover, the last Kaiser's home in exile and ultimate burial place,Huis Doorn in the Netherlands, opened its doors as ahistoric house museum in 1956. It remains an annual site of secularpilgrimage on the anniversary of the last Kaiser's death, which are organized by Germanmonarchist organisations, such asCologne-basedTradition und Leben, whose members often attend wearing period costumes.[24]
In August 2011, despite the desire of both the bride and groom to keep things modest and low key, "Germany's own Royal wedding" betweenPrince George Friedrich of Prussia, the last Kaiser's great-great grandson and heir, andPrincess Sophie of Isenburg was televised live and widely covered by the German news media.[25][26][27] The 700 guests included:Prince Hassan bin Talal andPrincess Sarvath al-Hassan of Jordan;Prince Laurent of Belgium;Lord andLady Nicholas Windsor; and thenCrown Princess Margareta of Romania. Following the ceremony, a reception was held on the grounds of theSanssouci palace.[28][29]
A less benign form of nostalgia for the Wilhelmian era was on display in the2022 German coup d'état plot, by members of theReichsbürger, 'Citizens of the Reich' movement, which considers theFederal Republic of Germany to be both illegal and illegitimate, as organized by the allegedlyanti-Semitic "Patriotic Union" organization. The Patriotic Union, whose members included doctors, police officers, at least one judge, and many active dutyGerman armed forces personnel, sought to violently overthrow the government of the Federal Republic and placePrince Henrich XIII of theHouse of Reuß upon the throne as the new Kaiser of a Fourth Reich. The Patriotic Union intended, however, for the Fourth Reich to be a restoration of theSecond Reich as it existed prior to the November Revolution of 1918, rather than as a continuation of theThird Reich. The coup was prevented only by nationwide arrests by theGerman Federal Criminal Police (BKA), followed by multiple prosecutions. While it is known that meetings took place in which Prince Heinrich XIII sought the covert assistance of theRussian Federation's diplomats andforeign intelligence services, the Russian Government has repeatedly denied involvement in the coup plot.[30][31][32]
In a letter dated 9 June 2020, Prince Heinrich XIII, who resented having bankrupted himself unsuccessfully seeking the restoration of his family's expropriated estates in the formerGDR followingGerman reunification, had previously denounced German royalists who desired the Fourth Reich to be aconstitutional monarchy led by Prince Georg Friedrich, a known critic of Reichsbürger ideology, and Princess Sophie, as the new Kaiser and Empress. Such a Fourth Reich, according to the Prince of Reuss, would merely be a "monarchy at the mercy of the Allies" and the "federal republic 2.0."[33]
German left wing politicians' and law enforcement's claims that the survival of democracy was in danger, however, drew contemptuous mockery by the conservative press in both Germany andSwitzerland. In particular, theBerliner Zeitung termed the raids and criminal charges a “well-orchestrated PR stunt” which interrupted wishful thinking by “25 senile loons”.[34]
While similarly reporting on the arrests forThe Spectator, journalist Katja Hoyer commented, "While this kind of extremism is still rare, there has long been residual monarchism in Germany. Around 10 percent of Germans support the restoration of the royals; among those under thirty-four, that number is nearly one in five."[35]
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